Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/162

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Goranus
156
Gordon

end of his resources, he applied himself zealously to practice at the bar, to which he had been called in 1791. A pamphlet in defence of Burke's ‘Reflections on the French Revolution,’ ‘against all his opponents,’ gained him the honour of an invitation to Beaconsfield, and an introduction to Lord Fitzwilliam, made useless by the viceroy's prompt recall. In 1799 Goold wrote an ‘Address to the People of Ireland on the subject of the projected Union,’ and sat in the last session of the Irish parliament as a member of the opposition. In 1818 he gave evidence at the bar of the House of Commons upon the inquiry into the conduct of Windham Quin. Meanwhile his practice had been rapidly increasing. In 1824 W. H. Curran calls him one of the most prominent members of the Irish bar, and he had been appointed third serjeant in the previous year. Indeed it has been said that he was the best nisi prius lawyer who ever held a brief at the Irish bar. In 1830 he was appointed king's serjeant, and a master in chancery in 1832. He died at Lissadell, co. Sligo, the seat of his son-in-law, Sir R. G. Booth, bart., on 16 July 1846.

[Ann. Reg. 1846; W. H. Curran's Sketches of the Irish Bar, i. 183-207.]

L. C. S.

GORANUS, GABHRAN (538–560?), king of Scotland, was the son of Domgardus (Domangart), son of Fergus Mor MacEarc, and is reckoned as the forty-fifth king of Scotland according to the fictitious chronology of Fordun and Buchanan, but, according to the rectified chronology of Father Innes and Mr. Skene, was fourth king of the kingdom of Dalriada, founded by his grandfather Fergus in 503. He succeeded his brother Congallus I [q. v.] in 538 (Tigernach), and is called, as his father and brother also are, Ri Albain, which may imply, as Skene suggests, that during their reigns the Dalriad kingdom had extended beyond its original bounds in Argyle and the isles. Buchanan gives, following Fordoun, a full but unreliable account of the events of the reign of Goranus, whom he makes the ally of Loth, king of the Picts, the eponymus of Lothian and the contemporary of Arthur. But almost all we really know of it is the brief notice of Tigernach in the year 560, when he records the death of Gabhran, king of Alban, and the flight of the men of Alban before Brude MacMailchon, king of the Cruithnigh (Picts). He was succeeded in Dalriada by Conall son of Congallus, his brother, who reigned till 574, when Aidan, Gabhran's younger son, was inaugurated king at Iona by St. Columba, in preference to his elder brother Eoganan, and through the influence of Columba obtained the recognition at the Council of Drumceat (515) of the independence of Scottish Dalriada from tribute formerly exacted by Irish Dalriada, although the Scots were to continue to assist the parent stock in war. From this king the Cinal (or tribe) Gabhran, one of the three powerfuls, i.e. powerful tribes, of Dalriada who occupied Kintyre, Cowall, and several islands on the coast of Argyle, derived its name. The other two were the Cinal Loarn in Lorn, and the Cinal Angus in Isla.

[Innes's Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland; Skene's Chronicles of Picts and Scots, and Celtic Scotland, vol. i.; Reeves's Adamnan.]

Æ. M.

GORDON, Sir ADAM de (d. 1305), warrior. [See Gurdon.]

GORDON, Sir ADAM de (d. 1333), lord of Gordon, statesman and warrior, was the son and heir of Adam de Gordon in Berwickshire. His great-grandfather, likewise Adam de Gordon, was younger son of an Anglo-Norman nobleman who came to Scotland in the time of David I, and settled on a tract of land called Gorden, within sight of the English border. The second Sir Adam, grandfather of the fourth Sir Adam, married Alicia, only child and heiress of Thomas de Gordon, who represented the elder branch of the family, and by this alliance the whole estates were united into one property. His son William de Gordon was one of the Scottish nobles who in 1268 joined Louis IX of France in his crusade for the recovery of the holy sepulchre, and died during the expedition. He was succeeded by his brother, the third Sir Adam, who died on 3 Sept. 1296, and was succeeded by his son, the fourth Sir Adam. An historian of the Gordon family says that this last Sir Adam joined Sir William Wallace in 1297, and the statement is accepted by Lord Hailes as correct. It is probably true, as the English estates were forfeited at that time, but were recovered by Marjory, mother of Gordon, who submitted to the English rule and brought to her son a great inheritance on both sides of the border. The year 1303 was spent by Edward I in Scotland. On his return to England he carried with him certain sons of the nobles as hostages, and Gordon followed as a deputy with power to arrange for the pacification of the country.

About 1300 Gordon confirmed several charters granted by his predecessors to the abbey of Kelso. The earliest of these was granted by Richard de Gordon, elder son of the founder of the family, previous to 1180. In 1308 there was a formally dated agreement between the monks of Kelso and Sir Adam Gordon, knight, regarding some lands