Their grandson, John Gordon, succeeded his grandmother in the earldom in 1535 (see Earl of Sutherland for further history about this branch of the family).

He was succeeded by his grandson, the fourth Earl, Lord Chancellor of Scotland from 1546 to 1562, who was killed in the latter year, and in 1563 an Act of Attainder was passed through Parliament with all his titles forfeited.

[citation needed] George Gordon, became the 1st Marquess, he was the son of the 5th earl; born in 1562, educated in France as a Roman Catholic.

He went about clan feuds and started a private war, this inspired the ballad The Bonnie Earl O' Moray.

His son was raised protestant in England; in the civil war he became a royalist and in 1647 was given a pardon for his actions, yet later beheaded.

[1][2] In 1632, four years before his father's death, the seventh Earl was created Viscount Aboyne in the Peerage of Scotland in his own right, with remainder that the title should be passed on to his second son the Hon.

Known as "Cock o' the North", he was a Scottish Representative Peer from 1767 to 1784 and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire and as Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland.

The earldom of Norwich had become extinct on the death of the fourth Earl (also the ninth Duke of Norfolk) in 1777 and was now revived in Gordon's favour.

[citation needed] His son, the fifth Duke, was a general in the Army and served as Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire and as Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland.

In 1807 he was summoned to the House of Lords through a writ of acceleration in his father's junior title of Baron Gordon of Huntley.

His eldest son, the eleventh Marquess, was a Liberal politician and served briefly under William Ewart Gladstone as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms in 1881.

[citation needed] Before the passing of the Peerage Act 1963, which granted all Scottish peers a seat in the House of Lords, the Marquesses of Huntly sat in the House of Lords in virtue of their junior title of Baron Meldrum, which was in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

He married Lady Augusta Fitzclarence, daughter of King William IV by his mistress Dorothy Jordan.

[citation needed] The heir apparent is the present holder's only son, Alastair Gordon, Earl of Aboyne (born 1973).