KENMURE, WILLIAM GORDON, 6th viscount (d. 1716), Jacobite leader, son of Alexander, 5th viscount (d. 1698), was descended from the same family as Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar (d. 1604), whose grandson, Sir John Gordon (d. was created Viscount Kenmure in 1633. The family had generally adhered to the Presbyterian cause, but Robert, the 4th viscount, had been excepted from the amnesty granted to the Scottish royalists in 1654, and the 5th viscount, who succeeded his kins man Robert in 1663, after some vacillation, joined the court of the exiled Stuarts. The 6th viscount's adherence to the Pretender in 1715 is said to have been due to his wife Mary Dalzell (d. 1776), sister of Robert, 6th earl of Carnwath.
The sixth earl raised the royal standard of Scotland at Loch maben on Oct. 12, 1715, and was joined by about two hundred gentlemen. This small force received some additions before Ken mure reached Hawick, where he learnt the news of the English rising. He effected a junction with Thomas Forster and James Radclyffe, 3rd earl of Derwentwater, at Rothbury. Their united
forces of some fourteen hundred men were reinforced at Kelso by a brigade under William Mackintosh. Threatened by an Eng.: lish army under General George Carpenter, they eventually crossed the English border to join the Lancashire Jacobites, and the command was taken over by Forster. Kenmure was taken prisoner at Preston on Nov. 14. In January 1716 he was tried with other Jacobites before the House of Lords, when he pleaded guilty and appealed to the king's mercy. At his execution on Tower Hill on Feb. 24, he reiterated his belief in the claims of the Pretender. His estates and titles were forfeited, but in an act of parliament repealed the forfeiture and his descendant, John Gordon (1750-1840), became Viscount Kenmure. On the death of the succeeding peer, Adam, 8th viscount, without issue in 1847, the title became dormant.