GORDON, William (1785-1858), of Minories, Aberdeenshire

The sailor brother of George Hamilton Gordon, 4th earl of Aberdeen, Gordon was ‘a specimen of the staunch old Tory school’. He was ‘one of the last of the old school of [Scottish] county Tory members who steadily adhered to the government of the day, so long as their party was in power’.1Caledonian Mercury, 24 Aug. 1854. The painter Sir George Hayter recalled that Gordon sat in the gallery with other long-serving Scottish Conservative county members such as Hugh Arbuthnott and Charles Lennox Cumming-Bruce, forming a group of MPs generally known as ‘“The Scotch Dilly”’.2A. Hayter, ‘Diary of Sir George Hayter, 1st January 1838-21st June 1858’, transcript, 22 June 1857, National Portrait Gallery, Heinz Library. In the 1830s Gordon was a loyal supporter of Sir Robert Peel and was appointed as a lord of admiralty in 1841. However, he parted company with Peel’s government and broke with his brother over the repeal of the corn laws in 1846 and was thereafter regarded as a Derbyite.

First elected for Aberdeenshire in 1820, Gordon was narrowly re-elected in 1832 after warning electors that Reformers would ‘pull down our Church establishment’ and ‘destroy … your corn laws’.3Aberdeen Journal, 19 Dec. 1832. In Parliament he complained that the Grey ministry was pursuing Scottish burgh reform without a prior inquiry, as in England and Ireland, 12 Mar. 1833. With other Scottish Tories he cast votes in favour of measures to relieve agriculture, including currency reform, 21 Mar. 1833, and he supported Sir William Ingilby’s proposals to reduce or repeal malt duty, 26 Apr. 1833, 27 Feb. 1834. Predictably he opposed a low fixed duty on corn, having earlier warned constituents that it would lead to ‘the destruction of the agriculture of this country, by throwing out of cultivation large portions of land which cannot possibly compete with the foreign grower’.4Aberdeen Journal, 26 Dec. 1832.

Unsympathetic to the demands of Scottish Evangelical Churchmen for the abolition of lay patronage, Gordon spoke against George Sinclair’s motion for a select committee on the issue, 27 Feb. 1834, arguing that any legislation would require the consent of the General Assembly of the Kirk. He complained that Althorp’s budget reduced the duty on Irish whisky, but not Scottish spirits, 25 July 1834. His amendment to equalise the duties was defeated 9-36, 29 July 1834, a vote which Gordon said would be ‘ruinous to the distilleries of Scotland’, 30 July 1834.

Gordon opposed political reforms as a matter of course, even regarding the Reform Act as a ‘most delusive and mischievous measure’ that had produced no real benefit.5Aberdeen Journal, 5 Nov. 1834. For this reason, his professions of support for reforming proved abuses at the 1835 general election, when he was returned unopposed, lacked credibility. Now that his brother and Peel were in government, Gordon refused to commit to the remission of malt duty.6Aberdeen Journal, 14 Jan. 1835. He sided with Peel in all the key party votes of the 1835 session, including opposing the marquess of Chandos’s motion for the repeal of malt duty, 10 Mar. 1835. Once his party was out of office, he was free to support Chandos’s motion for agricultural relief, 27 Apr. 1836, but continued to vote against Irish church and municipal reform.

Gordon was unchallenged after his easy victory at the 1837 general election and in the ensuing parliament welcomed a number of the Scottish measures proposed by the Whig government, including the promise of extra funding to extend parochial schools in the Highlands, 6 Feb. 1838. Although he approved of Fox Maule’s scheme to improve prison discipline and the establishment of a central board, similar to the English poor law commission, to ensure uniformity, he feared that the proposed authority would be unaccountable, 4 Apr. 1838. He later called for the system of county and district police constabularies recently established in England to be adopted in Scotland, where magistrates currently lacked civil forces to restore public order, 24 July 1839. He again complained about the level of duty on Scottish spirits, especially given the reductions to the duty on French brandy. This policy would lead to ‘deficient revenue’ and the ‘demoralising system of illicit distillation’, Gordon predicted, 22 May 1840.

Despite his favourable response to the Whig ministry’s Scottish measures, Gordon continued to oppose them in all the other key party divisions, including Peel’s motion of no confidence, 4 June 1841. At the ensuing general election, Gordon argued that the Whigs’ proposed fixed duty on corn ‘would afford no protection to the agricultural interest’.7Aberdeen Journal, 7 July 1841. He was in the majority that voted Melbourne’s government out of office, 27 Aug. 1841, and was appointed as a lord of the admiralty by Peel in the new Conservative government, in which his brother Lord Aberdeen was foreign secretary for a second time. Gordon’s duties included occasionally replying on behalf of the government in naval debates.8Hansard, 16 Feb. 1843, vol. 66, cc. 702-3; 3, 6 Mar. 1843, vol. 67, cc. 273-4, 287-8, 311, 314-18; 25 Mar. 1843, vol. 68, c. 898.

Before 1846 Gordon was a loyal member of the Conservative government, supporting the revision of the corn laws and reintroduction of income tax in 1842, opposing a ten hour factory day and the reduction of duties on colonial sugar in 1844, and backing the Maynooth college bill at every stage in 1845. Given this record it was perhaps surprising that Gordon resigned from the government over the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, the same year he was promoted to admiral.9N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel (1972), 571. He offered steadfast opposition to free trade in the division lobby, although he supported Peel in the vote on the Irish coercion bill that ejected the government from office, 25 June 1846. Despite these votes, there was some local criticism of Gordon’s ‘trimming policy’, and at the 1847 general election he declared that the free trade ‘experiment must be fairly tried. Indeed, it appears to me that the principle involved must still be carried further, in order to do justice to the experiment’.10Aberdeen Herald, qu. in Elgin Courier, 18 June 1847; Aberdeen Journal, 11 Aug. 1847. He explained with some regret that his past protestations in favour of the corn laws meant that it would have been dishonourable to support repeal.

After 1847 Gordon’s parliamentary activity followed a protectionist or Derbyite trajectory. He opposed Roman Catholic and Jewish relief, 8 Dec. 1847, 11 Feb. 1848, and the repeal of the navigation laws in 1849. He backed Disraeli’s motions for agricultural relief in 1849, 1850 and 1851. His protectionism was strengthened by the slump in agricultural prices, as Lord John Manners noted after visiting the Aberdeen family in autumn 1850: ‘The Admiral & Haddo [Gordon’s nephew, are] both Protectionists; the former said all his farmer constituents are strong in that sense, & complain bitterly of the low price of cattle & oats on which they depend: the yield of the crop this year will be very light’.11Lord John Manners to Benjamin Disraeli, 10 Sept. 1850, Hughenden papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, B/XX/N/65, qu. in The Benjamin Disraeli letters, ed. M.G. Wiebe et al (1993), v. 364, n. 9. At the 1852 general election Gordon conceded that ‘it would not be wise nor prudent to re-open’ the question of protection. However, he opposed Villiers’s celebratory free trade motion, instead preferring Palmerston’s moderated version, 27 Nov. 1852, and divided in favour of the readjustment of taxation proposed in Disraeli’s budget as an alternative form of agricultural relief, 16 Dec. 1852. Gordon’s activity dwindled after his brother became prime minister of a Whig-Peelite coalition in December 1852, and his vote in favour of Gladstone’s budget, 2 May 1853, was almost certainly due to fraternal loyalty.

In the late 1840s and early 1850s Gordon typically voted in 10-25% of divisions each session, but in 1854 the Liberal Caledonian Mercury complained that he was not present for a single vote and ‘appears to have virtually resigned his office’.12In 1849 Gordon voted in 35 (or 16%) out of 219 divisions; the corresponding figures for 1851, 1852 and 1853 were 24.7% (60/242), 10.2% (13/127), and 21% (54/257) respectively: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849; Caledonian Mercury, 8 July 1852, 24 Aug. 1854; Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. He retired after he was appointed as commander-in-chief of the naval base at Nore in August 1854. His place in the Commons was taken by his nephew George John James Hamilton Gordon, Lord Haddo, who represented Aberdeenshire until succeeding as 5th earl of Aberdeen in 1860. Two more of Gordon’s nephews became MPs: Arthur Hamilton Gordon, Liberal MP for Beverley, 1854-7, and Alexander Gordon, Liberal MP for East Aberdeenshire, 1875-85.

A lifelong bachelor, Gordon died in 1858. An obituary noted that he was a diligent representative of local interests and ‘there was a straightforward honesty of purpose in all he said and did’.13Aberdeen Journal, 10 Feb. 1858.