When Norfolk was sent to the Tower (October 1569), Gordon transferred his services to Mary herself, and seems to have remained with her till January 1572, when she was deprived of her household. Mary commended him to the French king, and he enjoyed the post of gentleman ordinary of the privy chamber to Charles IX, Henry III, and Henry IV, with a yearly pension of four hundred crowns. He saved the lives of several countrymen at the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, but never renounced Protestantism. In 1574 he exhibited his Hebrew learning in a public disputation at Avignon with the chief rabbi Benetrius. By his marriage in 1576 with Antoinette, widowed daughter of Rene de Marolles, he acquired an estate which gave him the style of "Sieur of Longorme". With the see of Galloway his connection was never more than nominal, the revenues going to his father or to his brother George.