Lieutenant colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...

Francis Arthur Gordon (20 January 1808 – 26 June 1857) was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

officer and amateur

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er. He was a member of the

Huntly Huntly ( gd, Srath Bhalgaidh or ''Hunndaidh'') is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, formerly known as Milton of Strathbogie or simply Strathbogie. It had a population of 4,460 in 2004 and is the site of Huntly Castle. Its neighbouring settlemen ...

family, part of the Scottish aristocracy. Gordon was the youngest son of George Gordon, 9th Marquess of Huntly and his wife Catherine (of the Cope baronets of Bruern). He was born at Orton Hall, the family seat at

Orton Longueville Orton is a mostly residential area of the city of Peterborough, in the Peterborough district, in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. For electoral purposes it comprises Orton Longueville, Orton Waterville and Orton with Hampton wa ...

in Huntingdonshire in 1808 and was educated at Thistledon School in

Rutland Rutland () is a ceremonial county and unitary authority in the East Midlands, England. The county is bounded to the west and north by Leicestershire, to the northeast by Lincolnshire and the southeast by Northamptonshire. Its greatest len ...

before going up to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

in 1828. He won a cricket

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...

in 1829. Gordon played cricket regularly during the late 1820s, including in a total of seven

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

matches, three for the University side, three for MCC and once for the

Gentlemen A gentleman (Old French: ''gentilz hom'', gentle + man) is any man of good and courteous conduct. Originally, ''gentleman'' was the lowest rank of the landed gentry of England, ranking below an esquire and above a yeoman; by definition, the ra ...

against the Players in 1827. He played alongside his brother,

Charles Gordon, 10th Marquess of Huntly Charles Gordon, 10th Marquess of Huntly (4 January 1792 – 18 September 1863), styled Lord Strathavon from 1794 to 1836 and Earl of Aboyne from 1836 to 1853, was a Scottish peer and first a Tory (1818–1830) and then a Whig (1830 onwards) po ...

, against the Players; his brother had been MCC President in 1821 and both he and Gordon's father were members of the club.Carlaw D ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806-1914'', pp.7–8.
Available online
at the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 26 December 2019.) Gordon also played in a number of non-first-class matches, including for MCC and sides such as the Gentlemen of Kent. Gordon joined the

1st Life Guards The 1st Regiment of Life Guards was a cavalry regiment in the British Army, part of the Household Cavalry. It was formed in 1788 by the union of the 1st Troop of Horse Guards and 1st Troop of Horse Grenadier Guards. In 1922, it was amalgamated w ...

and rose to the rank of

lieutenant colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...

. Because of ill health was obliged to relinquish his command in 1855. He married Isabel Grant, daughter of General William Keir Grant, and died in France at Paris in 1857 aged 49.Death notice, ''The Times'', London, 2 July 1857, page 12.Francis Gordon

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 26 December 2019.

References

1808 births 1857 deaths Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Cambridge University cricketers English cricketers English cricketers of 1826 to 1863 Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers Gentlemen cricketers British Life Guards officers Younger sons of marquesses {{England-cricket-bio-1800s-stub