CHAPTER XLVI.

POSTSCRIPT.

It may seem strange to place at the end of a work like the present, those observations which are usually placed at the beginning, and to add in a postscript, that general view of a subject which is generally afforded in a preface. Except in those cases where a right understanding of the scope and object of the work, and a clear view of the principles upon which the author writes, are necessary to the comprehension of that which is to follow, I greatly object to prefaces. I do not wish to prepossess my reader in favour of my book, nor to imbue him with my own peculiar ideas in order to gain his assent to what is to come after. I, therefore, may as well say at the close, where the reader is more likely to peruse it, what many others would have said at the commencement, and having formed a very strong and decided opinion upon a matter of history, in regard to which, others, inconceivably to me, have adopted a different view, add a few remarks in justification of my own judgment.

On the work itself I have little to say, except inasmuch as it is an essay intended to prove what is really the feeling of the public in regard to cheap literature.

I was aware, from the first, that should the experiment not succeed, I might be met by the reply, that what the public desire is good as well as cheap literature, and I therefore chose a subject of deep interest, which I had pondered for some years, which was first brought to my attention by a gallant officer[12] descended from the family which figures most conspicuously in the foregoing pages. To those who have really read the book and arrived fairly at these concluding pages, I think I may venture to appeal as to whether I have spared labour, research, and thought upon the work. I know that I have not, and I believe the evidence thereof will be found in the tale itself.

I would have done as I have said, had it been merely because the work was to be given to the public at a cheaper rate than usual; but there were other strong motives for considering well every sentence I wrote. An important point of history was involved: a point which has been rendered dark by the passions and prejudices of partizans, who refused to judge of it as they would judge of any other matter of evidence brought before them.

The question is, whether the young Earl of Gowrie and his brother laid a plot for entrapping James VI., King of Scotland, to their house at Perth, for the purpose of murdering him, the king escaping by a miracle, and causing them to be slain in return: or whether he laid a plot for surprising them in their house, under the appearance of a friendly visit, and, by a pre-arranged plan, murdered them in their own dwelling.

I have maintained, as the reader has seen, and ever shall maintain, that the latter was the case.

When any man is accused of a crime, it must be shown that the crime was committed, that the accused had a sufficient motive, and that the act is brought home to him by conclusive evidence.

The crime of which the Earl of Gowrie and his brother were accused, was having seduced King James to their house at Perth, with the intention of putting him to death; for the intention in such cases is the crime.

The motive which has been assigned is the desire of succeeding to the throne of Scotland, as the next heir. This has been tenderly touched upon, because it was too shallow a pretence not to fail at once before examination; but it is still clearly indicated as the motive. Gowrie was only remotely related to James by Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, the king's great-grandmother, an English princess, whose blood gave him no claim whatever to the Scottish throne, whatever it might do to that of England. Moreover, the king had one son then living, and another was born two months after. So that had the king been killed on the fatal fifth of August, he would have been as far from the throne of Scotland as ever.

The evidence of any crime having been committed by the Earl and his brother, now comes to be examined; and I do not scruple to say, that to the eyes of any man of common understanding, it not only proves that Gowrie and his brother were innocent, but that James was guilty. First, let it be remarked, that this evidence was all on one side, that no defence was made on the part of the dead accused, that no witnesses were examined on their behalf, that those on the other part were not cross-examined. The king himself was the principal witness; for his statement must be taken as a deposition. He declared that Alexander Ruthven, the earl's brother, came up to him when he was going out to hunt at Falkland, and besought him to come immediately to Perth, as he, Alexander, had seized and imprisoned in his brother's house, a stranger with a pitcher full of foreign gold, which he wished to secure for the king; and that he must come privately, without letting any one know, for he feared that the man might cry out and call the attention of the earl, who knew nothing of the fact. James says he determined to go, (though the tale was too absurd to obtain credence from any rational being;) but instead of going immediately, he continued to hunt from seven till ten o'clock; and instead of going privately, took the whole court, all his usual attendants, and moreover, two lacquies from the palace, together with the porter at Falkland, and the keeper of his ale cellar. Of the conversation between the king and Alexander Ruthven, we have no testimony but that of James himself. It is true, as he rode towards Perth he related the tale privately to the Duke of Lennox, when that nobleman at once expressed his opinion of the improbability of the story; but yet the king went on. His majesty did not send forward to announce his coming to the young earl till he was within two miles of Perth; but then he was met and received, not by Gowrie and his attendants in private and alone, but by the earl as Lord Provost, at the head of the magistrates of the town, hurriedly assembled. The king then proceeds to relate what occurred at the earl's palace, and comments on the young nobleman's demeanour, which, instead of being courteous, flattering, and calculated to lull and deceive, was exactly what might be expected from a man taken unprepared by the sudden and unannounced visit of a sovereign, when he was about to set out on a journey of some length. He was distant, silent, and though attentive to the king, anything but so to the immense train he had brought with him.

After dinner the king was led by Alexander Ruthven to a chamber near the picture gallery to repose for a little, and the king says that he was taken through many rooms, the doors of which were all locked behind him. The king's prudence must have been sadly at fault to go on under such circumstances. In the chamber to which he was led, according to the account of the king, and also that of Ramsay, was a tall, dark, strong man, armed. The monarch described him particularly, but implied that he was not one of his own attendants, but a stranger; yet he remained some time conversing with Mr. Alexander Ruthven without any apparent alarm, and suffered the young gentleman to go out and in, he avers, to meet his brother. It is shown by the other depositions that Gowrie was during the whole of this time, except for one short moment, either in the hall with the large body of courtiers, or walking with them in his gardens. At length Alexander Ruthven assaulted the king, James declares, and attempted first to stab him with a dagger, and then to bind his hands with two garters, saying, coolly, "Traitor, thou must die, and therefore lay thy hands together that I may bind thee." If we are to credit the testimony of Moyses, one of the king's most faithful servants, there were five hundred gentlemen in Perth on that day, of whom it would appear full three hundred were of the family of Murray, sent for to meet the king under the Master of Tullibardine. The rest were the king's friends and followers, already completely in possession of Gowrie's palace. Many of these were in the street just below the room, with the Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Mar, Lord Lindores, and Sir Thomas Erskine. Alexander Ruthven must have been a bold man, and not a prudent one, if he really sought the king's death, to make so cool a proposal rather than run him through the body with his sword, especially if the armed man in the room was put there by himself to aid in the assassination. The armed man, however, according to the king's account, remained quaking and trembling; and Alexander Ruthven did not draw his sword during the whole day. James then declares he rushed to the window, and shouted treason, and when John Ramsay entered the room in haste--having been informed by some one how to reach it, which none of the others could divine--he found the younger Ruthven on his knees, trying to stop the king's vociferation. James did not give orders to apprehend him for trial, but to stab him, and even pointed out where he was to be stabbed. The king, then, was locked in the cabinet, while his friends laid wait for Gowrie to stab him likewise, when he came in search of his brother.

The other depositions--with one exception, which I shall notice presently--go to prove merely the facts which I have mentioned in the preceding chapters, that Gowrie was taken by surprise, and discontented with the king's unannounced visit, that he was unarmed during the whole day, that when the report was spread that the king was gone, he called for his horse, in order to ride after him with the rest of the court, unarmed as he was, that he never left his guests for more than a moment; and, as a very strict investigation has been made of his occupations during the whole of the early part of the day, it is shown that he attended the morning service at the parish church, transacted important business with several parties, invited some common acquaintances to dinner, dined with them calmly, made no preparation whatever against the king's coming, and even sent two of his servants to a distance, though he had but eight or nine in the house, one of whom was ill in bed. In the testimony of not one of the credible witnesses is there a word that implicates Gowrie, and there is much to show that it was well nigh impossible he could have any share in the attempt of his brother, if any attempt was really made. At the same time, however, a great deal transpires which shows that Gowrie was not the injurer, but the injured. No preparation is alleged for the commission of the crime, no force was collected, no arms laid up, he himself was totally unarmed, his brother had only an ordinary sword (for the dagger was said to have been snatched from the armed man.) Andrew Ruthven, who accompanied his cousin to Falkland, was totally unarmed, so was George Dewar, one of the Earl's servants. He had drawn round him no great body of friends. These are all negative testimonies to his innocence. Then again we find that when he called for his horse to follow the king with the rest of the court, he learned that his horse had been removed from his own house. Was this to prevent his escape? When the very act is said to have been doing which was intended to deprive his sovereign of life, he went unarmed and stood under the very window of the room where it was to take place, with a large party of the king's most attached friends--in the midst of the royal servants! Ramsay's deposition shows that he, Ramsay, knew at once how to find his way to the monarch; and Sir Thomas Erskine's proves that James did not go with Mr. Ruthven alone to the earl's cabinet, but that he, Erskine, accompanied them, and was stationed by the king himself at the door of the chamber. It is proved also by the various depositions, that when Erskine, Ramsay, James and George Wilson were together in the chamber after Gowrie's death, and before the bodies were searched, the key of the door into the gallery was amongst them, and was used to admit the nobles from the other side, and to exclude the earl's friends. It is not even pretended that any keys were found upon Alexander Ruthven after his death.

Moreover, it is proved that the king, who is represented as having been struggling for life with a traitor, was so cool, that while his friends despatched his enemy, he put his foot upon the jesses of the falcon, to prevent it from flying away.

Setting aside the monarch's own evidence, therefore, the testimony of all other persons was rather in favour of Gowrie, and against the king, than otherwise; and the proofs of the monarch having assembled a large body of men in Perth were easily to be obtained, showing a preconcerted plan for going to that city before Alexander Ruthven could, by any possibility, have told the story of the pot of gold. Moreover, that story was in itself so absurd, and many parts of the king's statement so unlike truth; and the fact of the earl and his brother having been slain unresisting, when they could, without difficulty or danger, have been taken and tried according to law, was so suspicious, that it must have seemed necessary to all James's advisers to support his testimony by some corroborative evidence or circumstance. No one could give any evidence of what took place in the gallery chamber or its cabinet, but the armed man who was present; but it would have been something to prove that the armed man was one of Gowrie's servants. He, therefore, was to be sought for, or at least a substitute; but unfortunately the king, in his first proclamation, had given a very accurate account of the man's personal appearance. He was described by the monarch as a black, grim man, and as his head was uncovered, and James had some conversation with him, he could not be mistaken in his complexion. David Calderwood, quoted by Mr. Scott in his life and death of the Earl of Gowrie, declares that the king first asserted the man was Robert Oliphant, one of Gowrie's servants. Oliphant proved, however, that he was not in Perth that day. Two others were then successively pointed at as the criminal, but they freed themselves from the imputation. The next person accused was Henry Younger, likewise one of the earl's servants; but setting out to establish his innocence, he was met, pursued through the fields, and put to death by a party of the king's horse. The matter now seemed settled; the dead body was exposed at the market cross at Falkland, and Galloway, the king's chaplain, had the assurance to address the monarch publicly at the cross, saying, "Sir, the man who should have helped to do the deed could not be taken alive, but now his dead body lies before you."

It was soon proved, however, that Henry Younger was at Dundee during the whole of the 5th of August, and another had to be sought for.

In this exigency, Andrew Henderson, the earl's factor, volunteered, or was persuaded, upon promise of pardon, to acknowledge himself the man whom the king and Ramsay had seen. How this was brought about has never been known; but he was suffered to make his deposition, and therein told a story even more incredible than that of the king. He said that his lord had commanded him to arm himself, to assist in apprehending a notorious robber, and for that purpose _to suffer himself to be locked into a closet at the top of the house_, where he remained for about half an hour--in fact, till the king and Alexander Ruthven came.

The other depositions clearly prove that this statement was false, as well as absurd; for from the time of the king's arrival to the moment at which James proceeded to the rooms above, and especially during the last three-quarters of an hour, every moment of which is accounted for, Gowrie never quitted the monarch's presence, except to go with the nobles to the adjoining hall, or afterwards to drink to them by the king's command. The contradictions between Henderson's evidence and the statement of the king are pointed out both by Lord Hailes and Robertson, and well summed up by Mr. Scott. The sermons of Bishop Cowper prove that many persons in Perth denied that Henderson was in Gowrie's palace at all after the king's arrival; and though that worthy pastor states he had spoken with persons who saw Henderson there, he seems not to have given information to the monarch, for whom he was so zealous, of the names of these parties; for not one of them was called forward to prove the truth of a tale which nobody believed. Even James himself threw discredit upon the account, by not naming Henderson as the armed man, though he published a statement after the depositions were taken, and indeed with no face could the king have done so; for he had previously stated that the man was a black, grim man, and Henderson was a little ruddy man with a light brown beard. Henderson was, moreover, contradicted by other witnesses upon various points, and by the king himself upon many. Yet Henderson, we may suppose, did James good service in some way; for we find that he was honoured and rewarded with lands and offices, as well as Christie, the Earl of Gowrie's porter, whose services are unknown, though strongly suspected; and another domestic, named Dogie, of whose deeds we know nothing.

The guilt of the Earl of Gowrie was disbelieved in Scotland all but universally, and the accusation of magic and sorcery brought against him was treated with the contempt it merited, except by a few persons more curious than intelligent. Five ministers of Edinburgh refused to offer thanks for the king's deliverance, in which they did not believe; and, three of them suffered severely for their contumacy and incredulity. The estates of the Earl of Gowrie were forfeited, and divided amongst favourites, and three of the earl's faithful servants were executed at Perth, declaring their innocence and his with their dying breath. An annual thanksgiving was appointed in England and Scotland, but the English laughed at the farce, and the Scotch were indignant at the impiety. An annual feast also was held, which Weldon mentions as follows: "Sir John Ramsay, for his good service in that preservation, was the principal guest; and so did the king grant him any boon he would ask that day. But he had such limitation made to his asking, as made his suit as unprofitable as the action which he asked it for was unserviceable to the king."

I have endeavoured, in the account of the last few days of the earl's life, to keep as near to the truth as possible, only indicating circumstances not absolutely proved as natural conclusions from established facts. I have not ventured to represent the scene which took place in the earl's gallery chamber and cabinet between his brother and the king, for my account would probably be nearly as wide of the truth as that of the monarch or the factor, though it might be less absurd. But I have not felt myself bound to adhere to historical truth in those parts of a romance which are conventionally established as fiction. The character of Julia Douglas is purely imaginary; and were there at present any descendants from the Regent Morton, I would apologize for the liberties I have taken with their ancestor. The lady whom it was proposed the earl should marry, was in reality the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of the Earl of Angus; but particular circumstances, which it would be tedious to dwell upon, prevented me from mixing her name up with this history; and there were rumours current, both before and after the earl's death, of another more powerful but secret attachment, which might probably have frustrated the views of friends under the influence of a stronger power.

T. C. Savill, Printer, 4, Chandos Street, Covent Garden.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This man, David Drummond, was tried and condemned shortly after, in the first justice court held by the young earl, and was executed for his offence, June 28,1600, as appears by the chronicles of the fair city of Perth.]

[Footnote 2: This curious anecdote is given in the manuscript memoirs of the Church of Scotland, by Mr. David Calderwood, a contemporary who was at this time about five-and-twenty years of age, and a keen observer of all that was passing.]

[Footnote 3: It is now the generally received opinion that the Earl of Angus did obtain possession of the treasures of the regent Morton, and that he spent the whole of them in acts of liberality to his fellow exiles.]

[Footnote 4: This anecdote of court scandal is to be found in Pinkerton's essay on what he calls the Gowrie conspiracy, in which it was inserted on the authority of Lord Hailes. The freedom of manners attributed to Anne of Denmark, both before and after the accession of her husband to the throne of England, and her fondness for several ladies of more than doubtful virtue, are mentioned by almost every writer of the day. All agree, however, that the character of Beatrice Ruthven, afterwards Lady Hume, one of Anne's earliest favourites, was perfectly irreproachable.]

[Footnote 5: This anecdote of Mr. William Cowper is given by Archbishop Spottiswood, a strong partizan of the king; and it is clear that he mentioned it with the view of supporting, by some independent testimony, the extraordinary statement of James himself--a statement which would not have deceived a child, so absurd, incongruous, and ridiculous it is, had not the friends and flatterers of the monarch exerted themselves, with all the zeal of sycophant ambition, to bolster up a puerile defence of his conduct, by corroborative circumstances often as false, and sometimes as puerile.]

[Footnote 6: This same Mr. Patrick Galloway, after the earl's death, did very imprudently go the length of saying, in a sermon preached at the market cross of Edinburgh, referring to the murdered nobleman, "He was an atheist, an incarnate devil, in the coat of an angel, a studier of magic, a conjurer with devils, some of whom he had under his command."]

[Footnote 7: If Henderson ever was at Falkland on that day, as he afterwards swore, he must have arrived at about half-past seven, and to have seen anything of what took place could not have quitted the ground till after eight. Yet he had returned to Perth by ten. He was met by Mr. John Moncrief, about that time, riding into Perth, and stopped to speak with him, so that he performed, in two hours, a journey which had taken Alexander Ruthven three, over the bad and tortuous roads then existing. But the whole of the man's evidence is invalidated by his subsequent perjury in regard to the other transactions of that day.]

[Footnote 8: The above is actually the story which James not only told to his courtiers, but afterwards wrote to several neighbouring princes, and embodied in his narrative of the events of that day, leaving his hearers and his readers the very unpleasant alternative of looking upon him either as an idiot or a knave. Lennox, in his deposition, very barely conceals what he thought of the story and of the king, for believing, or pretending to believe it.]

[Footnote 9: Moyses, in his Memoirs, declares that there were no less than five hundred gentlemen in Perth that day who bore testimony to the truth of the king's statement, and therefore were certainly not inimical to James. Yet we are told to believe that in presence of this imposing force of loyal subjects (assembled, who knows how?) Gowrie and his brother, with eight servants, attempted the king's life.]

[Footnote 10: This fact is indiscreetly suffered to appear in Erskine's deposition, where he says, "When all was over, I said to his majesty, I thought your majesty would have concredited more to me than to have commanded me to await your majesty at the door, if you had thought it not mete to take me with you." That Sir Thomas Erskine knew more of this foul transaction than he deposed to, is indicated by a letter from Nicholson, the Queen of England's agent in Scotland, 22nd September, 1602, in which he mentions that the king was much disturbed because his queen had revealed to Beatrice Ruthven some secrets told her by Sir Thomas Erskine.]

[Footnote 11: This fact is positively asserted in Calderwood's manuscript Memoirs, quoted by Mr. Scott.]

[Footnote 12: Lieut. Col. Cowell.]

End of Project Gutenberg's Gowrie:, by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James