GORDON, John last Bishop of Galloway in the Church of Scotland ¹

   Another name for John was GORDON, John Clement.³

  General Notes:

There was a John Gordon who held the post of Bishop of Galloway or Bishop of Whithorn in the Roman Catholic Church between 1575 and 1586.

This John Gordon, son of John Gordon of Coldwells, was an Episcopal minister who held the office of Bishop of Galloway in the period, 1688-97. He was consecrated in Glasgow when episcopacy was being rooted out of presbyterian Scotland. After he resigned the see in 1697 it disappeared until it was revived by the Roman Catholic Church in 1878. He became a Roman Catholic and took orders within the Roman Catholic Church. In later life he received a pension from the Pope with the honorary title of Abate Clemente, and is known also as John Clement Gordon.

"[" John Gordon, (son to John Gordon of Coldwells in Ellon parish, descended of the family of Haddo, by Marjory Cheyne daughter to William Cheyne of Arnage in the same parish,) having been formerly a sea chaplain, was promoted to the see of Galloway in 1688 as 'tis said, by the Earl of Melfort, (who being himself a Roman catholic, 'tis thought meant no kindness to the church of Scotland by it,) and consecrated at Glasgow by Archbishop Paterson. He is reported to have been of a very unguarded conversation, artfull, and pragmatical, and so complaisant on a view of interest as even to yeild [sic] up principles. He followed King James VII. into Ireland, where that Prince made him chancellor of Dublin, the archbishop having fled. He also attended that King into France. He is believed to have been the author of Pax Vobis,' a shrewd little book full of a sort of pulling sophistry, and designed against the reformation. About 1702 he went to Rome, Nullité des Ordinations Anglicanes par le R. P. Michel le Quien Professeur de Theologie, tome ii. , p. 313, á Paris, 1712 [in-l2.]); where having abjured his religion before Cardinal Sacripante, and having also renounced the orders he had received in 1704 the tonsure from the pope, Clement XI, (from whom he took the additional name of Clement,) and the four lesser orders from Cardinal Casoni, having declined the three greater. After this he had a pension from the pope, with the honorary title of Abbot, and was alive there in 1725, being then about eighty-two years old. He dyed [sic] at Rome in 1726, having survived all the other deprived Bishops of Scotland. We have a fragment of this Bishop's, (published by Le Quien,) written against M. Courayer's Defence of the Validity of the English Ordinations, which tends to give one but a low opinion either of his humility, charity, or politeness." (Account of Scotish [sic] Bishops, MS. in the library at Slaines, written about the year 1730."

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