Will the Real Janet Gordon Please Stand Up?
I've invited Charles to return to this thread and comment on the flaws I discovered in his genealogical claims. Since I came across information indicating that the mysterious Janet Gordon was the illegitimate half-sister of Lord John Gordon I've come across other problems with the Stewarts of Appin link. The following account is primarily for Charles' benefit, so avert your eyes if you've had enough of the Stewarts to last you a lifetime.
According to Charles:
The fourth Lord of Appin, Duncan Stewart (1515-1547), married Janet Gordon, daughter of Lord John Gordon (1477-1517) and Lady Margaret Jane Stewart (1493-1517), eldest but "illegitimate" daughter of King James IV and Lady Margaret Drummond (1476-1501). I am descended from the 2nd son of Duncan Stewart 6th of Appin (b. abt 1570), John Stewart.
According to
Burke’s Peerage(
BP), these are the children of Lord John Gordon (son of Alexander Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly) and the King’s illegitimate daughter Margaret Stewart:
1a John, Lord Gordon; married Nov 1512 Margaret Stewart (married 2nd 20 Jan 1530/1 Sir John Drummond of Innerpeffray), illegitimate daughter of JAMES IV by Margaret Drummond (see PERTH, E), and died in the lifetime of the father 5 Dec 1517, leaving:
1b GEORGE, 4th Earl
2b Alexander; titular Archbp Athens, Bp of the Isles, later of Galloway
3b James; Chllr of Moray
2a Alexander, of Strathavon; ancestor of the GORDONs OF CLUNY
3a William; Bp Aberdeen 1547–77
http://www.burkespeerage.com/Search/FamilyHomepageFull.aspx?FID=7080
No mention of a daughter called Janet.
However, the
BP entry for the Stewarts of Appin says:
ALAN STEWART, 3rd of Appin, who with five of his sons was with JAMES IV at Flodden 1513, said to have married a daughter of Alan Cameron, 12th of Lochiel (see that family), and died c 1562, having had, with other issue,
1a DUNCAN; married Janet (died post 1562), daughter of 3rd Earl of Huntly (see HUNTLY, M), and died in the lifetime of the father ante 10 Sept 1547, leaving issue, a son,
1b JOHN, succeeded his grandfather.
http://www.burkespeerage.com/Search/FamilyHomepageFull.aspx?FID=13020
(It’s a minor point, but note that according to
BP Duncan died before his father Alan, so it was Duncan’s son John who became 4th chief of Appin.) So Janet was the daughter of the 3rd Earl of Huntly, which would make her the SISTER of Lord John Gordon and not his daughter. This obviously means that she had no royal blood to transmit to her descendents. But we’ve already hit a problem, because as we’ve seen there is no mention of the 3rd Earl having a daughter named Janet. So who was the Janet Gordon who married Duncan Stewart of Appin? Perhaps the 3rd Earl had a daughter named Janet who for some reason isn’t mentioned in
BP?
After a bit of Googling I found this site,
http://thepeerage.com/p1340.htm, according to which the 3rd Earl of Huntly did in fact have a daughter named Janet. No mother is named so I assume she was illegitimate. The source for this information is given as
The Complete Peerage, published between 1910 and 1959. When I first came across this version I assumed that Janet was the half-sister of Lord John Gordon and fully expected to read that she married Duncan Stewart of Appin. No such luck - no mention is made of any marriage, merely that Janet gave birth to an illegitimate daughter,Agnes Campbell, by Archibald Campbell, 4th Earl of Argyll.
At this point things stop being merely confusing and get downright weird. The
Complete Peerage also assigns the 3rd Earl of Huntly a legitimate daughter, Jean. The names Janet and Jean were often used interchangeably in that period so perhaps this lady was Charles’ ancestor? Alas, no. Jean married none other than...Colin Campbell, 3rd Earl of Argyll, and became the mother of Archibald Campbell, 4th Earl of Argyll!
Now, the
Complete Peerage version would have us believe that the hot-blooded young Archibald Campbell got his mother’s half-sister pregnant. If such a thing had happened in a 16th century noble family the affair would have been hushed up and the resulting offspring quietly given away to be brought up in ignorance of its origins. Instead, the
Complete Peerage informs us that Agnes Campbell was married off to Sir Turlough Lynach O’Neil, a cousin of the 2nd Earl of Tyrone.
What on earth are we to make of all this? Although
BP doesn’t list Jean Stewart as one of the 3rd Earl of Huntly’s children it does record her marriage to the 3rd Earl of Argyll:
COLIN CAMPBELL, 3rd Earl of Argyll; Lt the Borders, Warden Marches, Heritable Sheriff Argyllshire, Justice-Gen Scotland, Master King's Household 1528; married c 28 Feb 1506/7 Jean Gordon, daughter of 3rd Earl of Huntly (see HUNTLY, M), and died by 26 March 1529, leaving an eldest son:
ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, 4th Earl of Argyll
http://www.burkespeerage.com/Search/FamilyHomepageFull.aspx?FID=388
Needless to say, there is no mention in
BP of the 4th Earl of Argyll having an illegitimate daughter by anyone, let alone his “half-aunt” Janet Gordon!
In conclusion – who was the Janet Gordon who married Duncan Stewart of Appin? I find it rather odd that the book “The Stewarts of Appin”, published in 1880 and available in pdf form here:
http://www.chuckspeed.com/balquhidder/history/Stewarts_of_Appin.pdf
...describes “Jonet” Gordon merely as “the daughter of the Earl of Huntly”. Did the authors – both surnamed Stewart and probably part of the family – not think it worth mentioning that she was the grand-daughter of King James IV? Were they aware of the family legend concerning her origins but knew it to be false? Or did the story not exist in 1880, but was later invented or grew out of a misunderstanding of the complex web of relationships between Scotland’s leading families?
Most people would have learned their lesson from this embarrassing mistake, but being unfettered by reality Charles simply went on to project his royal fantasies onto the obscure Janet Gordon and turn her into an illegitimate granddaughter of King James IV. He learned nothing from the more cautious genealogists at the Jacobite forum just as he learned nothing from critical thinkers here.
