James Gordon, 2nd Viscount Aboyne

For the next few years, a tenuous peace held in Scotland. Viscount Aboyne seems to have kept a low profile, living partially in England, but in 1642, the First English Civil War broke out, setting King Charles against his Parliament.

Aboyne now worked hard to arrange a military alliance with Clan Donald and the Irish Confederates, and came to be associated politically with the Scottish earls of Nithsdale, Crawford and Airlie - all open or suspected Catholics. Not unreasonably, their enemies saw this as a war plan to restore the old religion.

But Aboyne also found common cause with his former opponent Montrose, a loyal royalist as well as a committed Presbyterian; both of them believed the Scottish Covenanters were now likely to enter the war on Parliament's side.

Aboyne spent 1644 with royalist forces around Carlisle, while his brothers raised the family's forces in the north. The next spring, he returned to Scotland, fighting in Montrose's victories at Auldearn, Alford, and at Kilsyth; in each battle, he led a flanking charge on the left wing that broke the Covenanters' right. After Alford, there is some evidence that he was promoted in the peerage, under the title of Earl of Aboyne.

Yet while the army was victorious on the field, Aboyne's personal position was increasingly difficult. His father, the Marquess of Huntly, believed the family's troops should be used to eliminate the Covenanters in the north - in contrast with Montrose, who intended to march south into England. At the same time, the relationship between Montrose and Aboyne was becoming strained, not least when the Earl of Crawford was appointed to command the army's cavalry, an awkward role when Aboyne commanded the only large mounted force.

In September 1645, Aboyne and the Gordon cavalry withdrew to the north, shortly before the Battle of Philiphaugh. With hindsight, Aboyne's action is sometimes said to have cost the royalists the battle and the war.

In reality, the war was far from over at Philiphaugh. Montrose moved north, and in spite of Huntly's increasingly pathological inability to cooperate with him, the royalist armies proved largely successful in the field. Aboyne, caught between his father and his general, busied himself raising troops in the central Highlands.

The cause was undermined not by the Scottish war, but by the weakening position of the king in England. At the end of April 1646, King Charles decided that the best course was joining the Covenanters, and ordered his Scottish troops to lay down their arms.

Huntly and Aboyne doubted the Covenanters' mercy, and with their cavalry, they withdrew into the Highlands to wage a guerilla war. They remained under arms until December 1647, when the Marquess was captured in a Covenanter raid.

Aboyne escaped, but he had only a few troops left. Excluded from the general pardons issued to Scots royalists, he is said to have fled to France and died in exile in Paris around February 1649 - of a fever according to some, while others say he died of grief at the news of King Charles's beheading.

Viscount Aboyne had never married, and his title thus became extinct, although the title of Earl of Aboyne was later revived for his younger brother. Since his elder brother's death at Alford, he had also been heir to the Marquessate (with the courtesy title Earl of Enzie, although this was rarely used); these dignities now passed to his younger brother, Lord Lewis Gordon.

Peerage of Scotland
Preceded by George Gordon	Viscount Aboyne 1636–1649	Extinct