Aberdeenshire covered a large area of north east Scotland, stretching from the North Sea coast in the east to the highlands of Invernessshire and Perthshire in the west. To the north, the shire was separated from Banffshire by the River Deveron, and to the south its border with Forfar and Kincardine shires mostly followed the River Dee. The shire was bisected by the River Don, which flowed eastwards from Braemar – an area dominated by the Erskines, earls of Mar, to the sea at Aberdeen. Atlas Scot. Hist. 24, 27. Other prominent Aberdeenshire families included the Gordons (headed by the marquesses of Huntly), the Frasers and Forbeses. Under their influence, Aberdeenshire acquired a reputation for loyalty to the Stuarts. In 1638 the shire was one of very few in Scotland where the National Covenant was poorly supported, and where the rival ‘king’s covenant’ was received with enthusiasm. D. Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution, 1637-44 (Newton Abbot, 1973), 92, 110-1. During the mid-1640s the shire paid dearly for its royalism. In the spring of 1644 Huntly, who had occupied Aberdeen, was forced out by Archibald Campbell*, marquess of Argyll, who then took control of the shire. In September 1644 the covenanter army chose to defend Aberdeen itself, and as a result the city was stormed by the army of James Graham, marquess of Montrose, and plundered despite its royalist sympathies. D. Stevenson, Revolution and Counter-revolution in Scotland, 1644-51 (1977), 6-8, 22-3. Thereafter the shire became a favoured route for the armies that crossed and re-crossed the coastal plain, with Montrose visiting three times before his victory against William Baillie at Alford in July 1645. The shire supported the Engagement in favour of Charles I in 1648, but with the failure of its army in England, the area once again came under the control of radical covenanters, encouraged by Argyll, who, after the execution of the Huntly in 1649, claimed the Gordon lands in the region as the main creditor of the family. J. Willcock, The Great Marquess (1903), 226. With the collapse of the royalist cause in northern Scotland after the siege of Dundee in September 1651, the English army occupied Aberdeenshire, and garrisoned large numbers of troops there in the next few years, although by 1656 only the city of Aberdeen and the castle at Braemar were retained as strongholds, and in October 1657 the number of soldiers stationed in the shire had dropped to fewer than 120. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke li, ff. 17, 19; xliii, f. 66.
Cromwellian rule brought a degree of stability to Aberdeenshire, and this was apparently welcomed by the inhabitants. In February 1652 the gentry accepted the tender of union without reservation, and sent its former parliamentary commissioner, John Udny of that ilk, as its deputy. Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 41-3. In the summer of 1653, as the royalist rebellion led by the earl of Glencairn broke out in the highlands, the Cromwellian commander in Scotland, Robert Lilburne*, trusted the Aberdeenshire gentry sufficiently to allow them to raise armed guards for defence of the shire. Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 107. The new regime also included Scots in the local administration from an early date. Thus, although the sheriff appointed in May 1652 was Colonel Richard Ashfield*, his commissary was Dr Alexander Douglas* of Downie, and the deputy sheriff was Thomas Gordon, son of a former royalist, John Gordon of Little Gowell. By April 1656 a former commissioner for the shire, Arthur Forbes of Echt, had replaced Ashfield as sheriff, and he was reappointed in 1657 and 1658. Thomas Gordon continued as his deputy until January 1659, when Forbes’s son, Alexander Forbes, replaced him. The sheriff clerk throughout this period was another local man, John Campbell, son of the laird of Moy. Recs. Sheriff Court of Aberdeenshire ed. D. Littlejohn (Aberdeen, 1897), 69-70, 76-7, 87-90. A similar picture emerges from the arrangements for assessment collection. By July 1653 the collector was a Scotsman, Robert Ker, and he continued in this role at least until September 1656. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliii, ff. 12, 21, 26; xlviii, unfol.: 1 Sept. 1656. The regulator was at first the commander of Aberdeen, but when the assessment commissioners were appointed in December 1655, the list included not only soldiers but also 19 local men, including the Master of Forbes, the Master of Fraser, the lairds of Echt and Udny, Robert Forbes tutor of Craigievar, Sir John Gordon of Haddo and Thomas Gordon, the deputy sheriff. Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 2, p. 838. The assessment commission of 1657 again drew on the established gentry, including four lairds who had sat for the shire in the Scottish Parliaments of the 1640s. A. and O.; Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 788-9. The justices of the peace appointed in 1656 were a similar line-up, and the degree of trust placed in them can be seen in an order of April 1657 which put responsibility for preventing royalist unrest into their hands. Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 308-9; Dow, Cromwellian Scot. 223. The degree of participation in local government in the later 1650s was unusually high: a meeting of the justices of the peace in 1658 was attended by nine lairds, including Echt and Haddo, the tutor of Craigievar, Alexander Jaffray* of Kingswell and Alexander Lord Pittsligo. NRS, JC26/25, ‘bundle 2’, unfol.
Despite the co-operation between the shire gentry and the English government, the electoral history of Aberdeenshire was eccentric. Under the ordinance for the distribution of Scottish elections of 27 June 1654, the shire was allowed one MP, but when it came to the first elections, held in Aberdeen on 2 August 1654, there were significant problems. As one garrison officer explained, the qualifications on voters, and the penalties threatened against those who contravened them, were major stumbling blocks, and the gentry resolved
that they were very willing and ready to serve and observe the commands of my lord protector in any thing, but in this they could not but acknowledge that they all came within the compass of the exceptions, and by the articles in the [Instrument of] Government could not see but each man was incapable of giving a voice in the election. Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 89, 90-1.
Although General George Monck* was willing to make concessions in other cases, there is no evidence that he did so for Aberdeenshire, and no Member was returned on this occasion. Supra, ‘Ayrshire and Renfrewshire’.
Such scruples seem to have been less of a problem in August 1656. Although the election indenture has not survived, the shire gentry met, presumably under their sheriff, the laird of Echt, to return the governor of Aberdeen, Colonel William Michell. Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xxviii, f. 65. The choice of Michell no doubt pleased the government; but that could not be said for the MP elected in January 1659: Archibald Campbell, marquess of Argyll. Monck and his ally on the Scottish council, Lord Keeper Samuel Disbrowe*, had done their best to prevent Argyll from sitting for his native Argyllshire, and instead the marquess used his influence as the overlord of the Huntly estates to secure his return for Aberdeenshire, although the details are unclear. TSP vii. 584; Eg. 2519, f. 19. Any willingness among the gentry to flirt with influential outsiders evaporated in 1660, when the Restoration saw the shire, like the city of Aberdeen, eager to assert its former royalist credentials, and two former royalist lairds – Sir Alexander Fraser of Philorth and George Keith of Aden – were elected as commissioners to the Scottish Parliament in 1661. Young, Parliaments of Scot. ii. 789.
