John Clement Gordon

Who was John Clement Gordon?

John Clement Gordon, originally just John Gordon, bishop of Galloway, was born in Scotland on 1644, and was a member of the Gordon family of Coldwells, near Ellon in Buchan, Aberdeenshire. He became a chaplain in the Royal Navy and then royal chaplain "at New York in America", by which time he was a Doctor of Theology; when, on a vacancy in the see of Galloway, a congé d'élire in his favour was issued 3 December 1687. He was accordingly elected bishop on 4 February 1688, and consecrated at Glasgow by John Paterson, Archbishop of Glasgow.

After the so-called "Glorious Revolution", he followed James VII/II to Ireland and then to France, and while residing at Saint-Germain he read the liturgy of the church of England to such English, Scottish and Irish protestants as resorted to his lodgings. Subsequently, however, he was converted to Catholicism by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. It appears that he was privately received into the Roman church during his sojourn in France, though at a later period he made a public abjuration of Protestantism at Rome, before Giuseppe Cardinal Sacripanti, the cardinal protector of the Scottish nation.