Fagan's (Trecynon) and Aberaman carved out of the ancient
parish, has some twelve Anglican churches, one Roman Catholic
church (built in 1866 in Monk Street near the site of a
cell attached to Penrhys Abbey) and over fifty Noncoformist
chapels. The services in the majority of the chapels are in
Welsh. The whole parish falls within the parliamentary borough
of Merthyr Tydvil. The urban district includes what were
once the separate villages of Aberaman, Abernant, Cwmbach,
Cwmaman, Cwmdare, Llwydcoed and Trecynon. There are several
cairns and the remains of a circular British encampment on
the mountain between Aberdare and Merthyr. Hirwaun moor,
4 m. to the N.W. of Aberdare, was according to tradition
the scene of a battle at which Rhys ap Jewdwr, prince of
Dyfed, was defeated by the ailied forces of the Norman Robert
Fitzhamon and Iestyn ab Gwrgan, the last prince of Glamorgan.
ABERDEEN, GEORGE GORDON, 1ST EARL OF (1637-1720), lord
chancellor of Scotland, son of Sir John Gordon, 1st baronet
of Haddo, Aberdeenshire, executed by the Presbyterians in
1644, was born on the 3rd of October 1637. He graduated
M.A., and was chosen professor at King's College, Aberdeen, in
1658. Subsequently he travelled and studied civil law abroad.
At the Restoration the sequestration of his father's lands was
annulled, and in 1665 he succeeded by the death of his elder
brother to the baronetcy and estates. He returned home in
1667, was admitted advocate in 1668 and gained a high legal
reputation. He represented Aberdeenshire in the Scottish
parliament of 1669 and in the following assemblies, during his
first session strongly opposing the projected union of the two
legislatures. In November 1678 he was made a privy councillor
for Scotland, and in 1680 was raised to the bench as Lord
Haddo. He was a leading member of the duke of York's
administration, was created a lord of session in June and
in November 1681 president of the court. The same year
he is reported as moving in the council for the torture of
witnesses.1 In 1682 he was made lord chancellor of Scotland,
and was created, on the 13th of November, earl of Aberdeen,
Viscount Formartine, and Lord Haddo, Methllck, Tarves and
Kellie, in the Scottish peerage, being appointed also sheriff
principal of Aberdeenshire and Midlothian. Burnet reflects
unfavourably upon him, calls him ``a proud and covetous man,''
and declares ``the new chancellor exceeded all that had gone
before him.''2 He executed the laws enforcing religious
conformity with severity, and filled the parish churches, but
resisted the excessive measures of tyranny prescribed by the
English government; and in consequence of an intrigue of the
duke of Queensberry and Lord Perth, who gained the duchess of
Portsmouth with a present of L. 27,000, he was dismissed in 1684.
After his fall he was subjected to various petty prosecutions
by his victorious rivals with the view of discovering some
act of maladministration on which to found a charge against
him, but the investigations only served to strengthen his
credit. He took an active part in parliament in 1685 and
1686, but remained a non-juror during the whole of William's
reign, being frequently fined for his non-attendance, and
took the oaths for the first time after Anne's accession, on
the 11th of May 1703. In the great affair of the Union in
1707, while protesting against the completion of the treaty
till the act declaring the Scots aliens should be repealed,
he refused to support the opposition to the measure itself
and refrained from attending parliament when the treaty was
settled. He died on the 20th of April 1720, after having
amassed a large fortune. He is described by John Mackay as
``very knowing in the laws and constitution of his country and
is belleved to be the solidest statesman in Scotland, a fine
orator, speaks slow but sure.'' His person was said to be
deformed, and his ``want of mine or deportment'' was alleged
as a disqualification for the office of lord chancellor. He
married Anne, daughter and sole heiress of George Lockhart of
Torbrecks, by whom he had six children, his only surviving
son, William, succeeding him as 2nd earl of Aberdeen.
See Letters to George, earl of Aberdeen (with memoir: Spalding
Club, 1851); Hist. Account of the Senators of-the College
of Justice, by G. Brunton and D. Haig (1832), p. 408; G.
Crawfurd's Lives of the Officers of State (1726), p. 226;
Memoirs of Affairs in Scotland, by Sir G. Mackenzie (1821),
p. 148; Sir J. Lauder's (Lord Fountainhall) Journals (Scottish
Hist. Society, vol. xxxvi., 1900); J. Mackay's Memoirs
(1733), p. 215; A. Lang's Hist. of Scotland, iii. 369, 376.
(P. C. Y.)
1 Sir J. Lauder's Hist. Notices (Bannatyne Club, 1848), p. 297.
2 Hist. of his own Times, i. 523.
ABERDEEN, GEORGE HAMILTON GORDON, 4TH EARL OF (1784-1860),
English statesman, was the eldest son of George Gordon, Lord
Haddo, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of William Baird of
Newbyth, Haddingtonshire, and grandson of George, 3rd earl of
Aberdeen. Born in Edinburgh on the 28th of January 1784,
he lost his father in 1791 and his mother in 1795; and as
his grandfather regarded him with indifference, he went to
reside with Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville. At
the age of fourteen he was permitted by Scotch law to name
his own curators, or guardians, and selecting William Pitt
and Dundas for this office he spent much of his time at their
houses, thus meeting many of the leading politicians of the
day. He was educated at Harrow, and St John's College, Cambridge,
where he graduated as a nobleman in 1804. Before this time,
however, he had become earl of Aberdeen on his grandfather's
death in 1801, and had travelled over a large part of the
continent of Europe, meeting on his journeys Napoleon Bonaparte
and other persons of distinction. He also spent some time in
Greece, and on his return to England founded the Athenian
Society, membership of which was confined to those who had
travelled in that country. Moreover, he wrote an article in
the Edinburgh Review of July 1805 criticizing Sir William
Gill's Topography of Troy, and these circumstances led Lord
Byron to refer to him in Eniglish Bardo and Scotch Reviewers
as ``the travell'd thane, Athenian Aberdeen.'' Having attained
his majority in 1805, he married on the 28th of July Catherine
Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of John James, 1st marquess of
Abercorn. In December 1806 he was elected a representative
peer for Scotland, and took his seat as a Tory in the House of
Lords, but for some years he took only a slight part in public
business. However, by his birth, his abilities and his
connexions alike he was marked out for a high position, and
after the death of his wife in February 1812 he was appointed
ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at
Vienna, where he signed the treaty of Toplitz between Great
Britain and Austria in October 1813; and accompanying the
emperor Francis I. through the subsequent campaign against
France, he was present at the battle of Leipzig. He was
one of the British representatives at the congress of
Chatillon in February 1814, and in the same capacity was
present during the negotiations which led to the treaty of
Paris in the following May. Returning home he was created
a peer of the United Kingdom as Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen
(1814), and made a member of the privy council. On the 15th
of Juby 1815 he married Harriet, daughter of the Hon. John
Douglas, and widow of James, Viscount Hamilton, and thus
became doubly connected with the family of the marquess of
Abercorn. During the ensuing thirteen years Aberdeen took a
less prominent part in public affairs, although he succeeded
in passing the Entail (Scotland) Act of 1825. He kept in
touch, however, with foreign politics, and having refused to
join the ministry of George Canning in 1827, became a member
of the cabinet of the duke of Wellington as chancellor of the
duchy of Lancaster in January 1828. In the following June he
was transferred to the office of secretary of state for foreign
affairs, and having acquitted himself with credit with regard
to the war between Russia and Turkey, and to affairs in Greece,
Portugal and France, he resigned with Wellington in November
1830, and shared his leader's attitude towards the Reform
Bill of 1832. As a Scotsman, Aberdeen was interested in the
ecclesiastical controversy which culminated in the disruption of
1843. In 1840 he introduced a bill to settle the vexed question
of patronage; but disliked by a majority in the general assembly
of the Scotch church, and unsupported by the government, it
failed to become law, and some opprobrium was cast upon its
author. In 1843 he brought forward a similar measure ``to
remove doubts respecting the admission of ministers to
benefices.'' This Admission to Benefices Act, as it was called,
passed into law, but did not reconcile the opposing parties.
During the short administration of Sir Robert Peel in 1834
and 1835, Aberdeen had filled the office of secretary for
the colonies, and in September 1841 he took office again
under Peel, on this occasion as foreign secretary; the
five years during which he held this position were the most
fruitful and successful of his public life. He owed his
success to the confidence placed in him by Queen Victoria,
to his wide knowledge of European politics, to his intimate
friendship with Guizot, and not least to his own conciliatory
disposition. Largely owing to his efforts, causes of quarrel
between Great Britain and France in Tahiti, over the marriage
of Isabella II. of Spain, and in other directions, were
removed. More important still were his services in settling
the question of the boundary between the United States and
British North America at a time when a single injudicious
word would probably have provoked a war. In 1845 he supported
Peel when in a divided cabinet he proposed to suspend the duty
on foreign corn, and left office with that minister in July
1846. After Peel's death in 1850 he became the recognized
leader of the Peelites, although since his resignation his
share in public business had been confined to a few speeches
on foreign affairs. His dislike of the Ecclesiastical Titles
Assumption Bill, the rejection of which he failed to secure in
1851, prevented him from joining the government of Lord John
Russell, or from forming an administration himself in this
year. In December 1852, however, be became first lord of
the treasury and head of a coalition ministry of Whigs and
Peelites. Although united on free trade and in general
on questions of domestic reform, a cabinet which contained
Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, in addition to
Aberdeen, was certain to differ on questions of foreign
policy. The strong and masterful character of these and
other colleagues made the task of the prime minister one
of unusual difficulty, a fact which was recognized by
contemporaries. Charles Greville in his Memoirs says,
``In the present cabinet are five or six first-rate men of
equal, or nearly equal, pretensions, none of them likely to
acknowledge the superiority or defer to the opinions of any
other, and every one of these five or six considering himself
abler and more important than their premier''; and Sir James
Graham wrote, ``It is a powerful team, but it will require good
driving.'' The first year of office passed off successfully,
and it was owing to the steady support of the prime minister
that Gladstone's great budget of 1853 was accepted by the
