The title Marquess of Huntly was created in the peerage of Scotland in 1599, making it the oldest existing marquessate in Scotland, and the second-oldest in the British Isles, only the English Marquessate of Winchester being older.
The subsidiary titles of the Marquess of Huntly are: Earl of Aboyne (1660), Lord Gordon of Strathavon and Glenlivet (1660) and Baron Meldrum, of Morven in the County of Aberdeen (1815). All titles are in the Peerage of Scotland, except for the Barony of Meldrum, which is in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.
The title Earl of Huntly was originally created for Alexander Gordon in 1499. Gordon's descendant, the sixth Earl, became a Marquess a century after the creation of the Earldom. Then, the Dukedom of Gordon was bestowed upon the fourth Marquess; the Dukedom became extinct with the fifth duke's death.
His grandson George, 4th earl (1514-1562), who in 1548 was granted the earldom of Moray, played a leading part in the troubles of his time in Scotland, and in 1562 revolted against Queen Mary and was killed in fight at Corrichie, near Aberdeen.
George Gordon, ISt marquess of Huntly (1562-1626), son of the 5th earl of Huntly, and of Anne, daughter of James Hamilton, earl of Arran and duke of Chatelherault, was born in 1562, and educated in France as a Roman Catholic.
He next involved himself in a private war with the Grants and the Mackintoshes, who were assisted by the earls of Atholl and Murray; and on the 8th of February 1592 he set fire to Murray's castle of Donibristle in Fife, and stabbed the earl to death with his own hand.
The Earl had in 1424 been one of the hostages sent to England as security for the ransom of James I., and his son George, the second Earl, married the Princess Joanna, daughter of that King, from whom all the later heads of the house have the royal Stewart blood in their veins.
Earl George’s second son, Adam, Lord of Aboyne, marrying Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, became Earl of Sutherland in her right, and ancestor of the great Sutherland family, while the third son, Sir William Gordon, became ancestor of the Gordons of Gight, and so of George Gordon, Lord Byron, in the nineteenth century.
The 4th Earl known as "Cock of the North" had aspirations to marry one of his sons to Mary, Queen of Scots and through a series of misunderstandings there was a rebellion which brought about the collapse of Gordon power after defeat at Corrichie in 1562.
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