Scottish Jacobite who was miscast as a leader in the rebellion of 1715 on behalf of James Edward, the Old Pretender, against King George I.

His father, Alexander Gordon, 5th Viscount Kenmure (d. 1698), had fought for King William III against the forces of the Old Pretender's father, the deposed James II. William Gordon, however, spent part of his youth in France at the exiled Stuart court; and, though its Roman Catholicism was uncongenial to him, he nevertheless became a Jacobite. Partly, no doubt, under the influence of his wife, Mary Dalyell (d. 1776), who belonged to one of the most strongly Jacobite families in Scotland, he was induced (though he had no military ability and was a mild-mannered man) to lead the rising of 1715 in southern Scotland. On Oct. 11, 1715, he proclaimed the Old Pretender king of Scotland as James VIII and then led a small force to join Thomas Forster's (Forster, Thomas) Northumberland rebels. After an abortive march into Lancashire, Forster surrendered at Preston on November 14, and Kenmure was captured. Tried with several other rebel lords in January 1716, Kenmure was condemned to death and executed on Tower Hill. The viscountcy was forfeited, but it was revived for a descendant in 1824, and then again became dormant in 1847.