Chapter 2

entered, Andrew Ruthven had arrived earlier. The company rose from table, and Henderson, who was not at the moment in the room, heard them moving, and thought that they were 'going to make breeks for Maconilduy,' that is, to catch the Highlander. Finding he was wrong, he threw his steel gauntlet into the pantry, and sent his boy to his house with his steel cap. He then followed Gowrie to meet the King, and, after he had fetched 'a drink' (which James says 'was long in coming'), the Master bade him ask Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie's old tutor, for the key of the gallery, which Rhynd brought to the Master. Gowrie then went up, and spoke with the Master, and, after some coming and going, Henderson was sent to the Master in the gallery. Thither Gowrie returned, and bade Henderson do whatever the Master commanded. (The King says that Gowrie came and went from the room, during his dinner.) The Master next bade Henderson enter the turret, and locked him in. He passed the time in terror and in prayer.

There follows the story of the entry of James and the Master, and Henderson now avers that he 'threw' the dagger out of the Master's hand. He declares that the Master said that he wanted 'a promise from the King,' on what point Gowrie would explain. The rest is much as in the King's account, but Henderson was 'pressing to have opened the window,' he says, when the Master entered for the second time, with the garter to bind the King's hands. During the struggle Henderson removed the Master's hand from the King's mouth, and opened the window. The Master said to him, 'Wilt thou not help? Woe betide thee, thou wilt make us all die.' {67a}

Henderson's later deposition, at the trial in November, was mainly, but not without discrepancies, to the same effect as his first. He said that he prayed, when alone in the turret, but omits the statement (previously made by him) that he deprived Ruthven of his dagger, a very improbable tale, told falsely at first, no doubt, as Robertson the notary at first invented his fable about meeting with Henderson, coming out of the dark staircase. This myth Robertson narrated when examined in September, but omitted it in the trial in November. Henderson now explained about his first opening the wrong window, but he sticks to it that he took the garter from Ruthven, of which James says nothing. He vows that he turned the key of the door on the staircase, so that Ramsay could enter, whereas Ramsay averred that he himself forced the door. Mr. Hudson (James's resident at the Court of England), who in October 1600 interviewed both Henderson and the King, says that, in fact, the Master had not locked the door, on his re-entry. {67b} Henderson slunk out when Ramsay came in. He adds that it was _his_ steel cap which was put on Gowrie's head by a servant (there was plenty of evidence that a steel cap was thus put on).

One singular point in Henderson's versions is this: after Ruthven, in deference to James's harangue in the turret, had taken off his hat, the King said, 'What is it ye crave, man, if ye crave not my life?' '_Sir_, _it is but a promise_,' answered Ruthven. The King asked 'What promise?' and Ruthven said that his brother would explain. This tale looks like a confusion made, by Henderson's memory, in a passage in James's narrative. 'His Majesty inquired what the Earl would do with him, since (if his Majesty's life were safe, _according to promise_) they could gain little in keeping such a prisoner.' Ruthven then, in James's narrative, said 'that the Earl would tell his Majesty at his coming.' It appears that the word 'promise' in the Royal version, occurring at this point in the story, clung to Henderson's memory, and so crept into his tale. Others have thought that the Ruthvens wished to extort from James a promise about certain money which he owed to Gowrie. But to extort a promise, by secluding and threatening the King, would have been highly treasonable and dangerous, nor need James have kept a promise made under duress.

Perhaps few persons who are accustomed to weigh and test evidence, who know the weaknesses of human memories, and the illusions which impose themselves upon our recollections, will lay great stress on the discrepancies between Henderson's first deposition (in August), his second (in November), and the statement of the King. In the footnote printed below, {69a} Hudson explains the origin of certain differences between the King's narrative and Henderson's evidence, given in August. Hudson declares that James boasted of having taken the dagger out of Ruthven's hands (which, in fact, James does not do, in his published narration), and that Henderson claimed to have snatched the dagger away, 'to move mercy by more merit.' It is clear that James would not accept his story of disarming Ruthven; Henderson omits _that_ in his second deposition. For the rest, James, who was quite clever enough to discover the discrepancies, let them stand, at the end of his own printed narrative, with the calm remark, that if any differences existed in the depositions, they must be taken as 'uttered by the deponer in his own behouf, for obtaining of his Majesty's princely grace and favour.' {69b} Henderson's first deposition was one of these which James printed with his own narrative, and thus treated _en prince_. He was not going to harmonise his evidence with Henderson's, or Henderson's with his. On the other hand, from the first, Henderson had probably the opportunity to frame his confession on the Falkland letter of August 5 to the Chancellor, and the Provost of Edinburgh; and, later, on the printed narrative officially issued at the close of August 1600. He varied, when he did vary, in hopes of 'his Majesty's princely grace and favour,' and he naturally tried to make out that he was not a mere trembling expostulating caitiff. He clung to the incident of the garter which he snatched from the Master's hand.

Henderson had no Royal model for his account of how he came to be in the turret, which James could only learn from himself. Now that is the most incredible part of Henderson's narrative. However secret the Ruthvens may have desired to be, how could they trust everything to the chance that the town councillor of Perth, upper footman, and Chamberlain of Scone, would act the desperate part of seizing a king, without training and without warning?

But _was_ Henderson unwarned and uninstructed, or, did he fail after ample instruction? That is the difficult point raised by the very curious case of Mr. Robert Oliphant, which has never been mentioned, I think, by the many minute students of this bewildering affair.

VI. THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. ROBERT OLIPHANT

Suppose that men like the Ruthvens, great and potent nobles, had secretly invited their retainer, Andrew Henderson, to take the _role_ of the armed man in the turret, what could Henderson have done? Such proposals as this were a danger dreaded even by the most powerful. Thus, in March 1562, James Hepburn, the wicked Earl of Bothwell, procured, through John Knox, a reconciliation with his feudal enemy, Arran. The brain of Arran was already, it seems, impaired. A few days after the reconciliation he secretly consulted Knox on a delicate point. Bothwell, he said, had imparted to him a scheme whereby they should seize Queen Mary's person, and murder her secretary, Lethington, and her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, later Earl of Moray. Arran explained to Knox that, if ever the plot came to light, he would be involved in the crime of guilty concealment of foreknowledge of treason. But, if he divulged the plan, Bothwell would challenge him to trial by combat. Knox advised secrecy, but Arran, now far from sane, revealed the real or imagined conspiracy.

To a man like Henderson, the peril in simply listening to treasonable proposals from the Ruthvens would be even greater. If he merely declined to be a party, and kept silence, or fled, he lost his employment as Gowrie's man, and would be ruined. If the plot ever came to light, he would be involved in guilty concealment of foreknowledge. If he instantly revealed to the King what he knew, his word would not be accepted against that of Gowrie: he would be tortured, to get at the very truth, and probably would be hanged by way of experiment, to see if he would adhere to his statement on the scaffold--a fate from which Henderson, in fact, was only saved by the King.

What then, if the Gowries offered to Henderson the _role_ of the man in the turret, could Henderson do? He could do what, according to James and to himself, he did, he could tremble, expostulate, and assure the King of his ignorance of the purpose for which he was locked up, 'like a dog,' in the little study.

That this may have been the real state of affairs is not impossible. We have seen that Calderwood mentions a certain Mr. Robert Oliphant (Mr. means Master of Arts) as having been conjectured at, immediately after the tragedy, as the man in the turret. He must therefore have been, and he was, a trusted retainer of Gowrie. But Oliphant at once proved an alibi; he was not in Perth on August 5. His name never occurs in the voluminous records of the proceedings. He is not, like Henderson, among the persons who fled, and for whom search was made, as far as the documents declare, though Calderwood says that he was described as a 'black grim man' in 'the first proclamation.' If so, it looks ill for James, as Henderson was a brown fair man. In any case, Oliphant at once cleared himself.

But we hear of him again, though historians have overlooked the fact. Among the Acts of Caution of 1600--that is, the records of men who become sureties for the good behaviour of others--is an entry in the Privy Council Register for December 5, 1600. {73} 'Mr. Alexander Wilky in the Canongate for John Wilky, tailor there, 200_l._, not to harm John Lyn, also tailor there; further, to answer when required touching his (John Wilky's) pursuit of Lyn for revealing certain speeches spoken to him by Mr. Robert Oliphant anent his foreknowledge of the treasonable conspiracy of the late John, sometime Earl of Gowrie.'

Thus Robert Oliphant, M.A., had spoken to tailor Lyn, or so Lyn had declared, about his own foreknowledge of the plot; Lyn had blabbed; tailor Wilky had 'pursued' or attacked Lyn; and Alexander Wilky, who was bailie of the Canongate, enters into recognisances to the amount of 200_l._ that John Wilky shall not further molest Lyn.

Now what had Oliphant said?

On the very day, December 5, when Alexander Wilky became surety for the good behaviour of John Wilky, Nicholson, the English resident at Holyrood, described the facts to Robert Cecil. {74a} Nicholson says that, at a house in the Canongate, Mr. Robert Oliphant was talking of the Gowrie case. He was a man who had travelled, and he inveighed against the unfairness of Scottish procedure in the case of Cranstoun.

We have seen that Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, Gowrie's equerry, first brought to Lennox and others, in the garden, the report that the King had ridden away. We have seen that he was deeply wounded by Ramsay just before or after Gowrie fell. Unable to escape, he was taken, examined, tortured, tried on August 22, and, on August 23, hanged at Perth. He had invaded and wounded Herries, and Thomas Erskine, and had encouraged the mob to beleaguer the back gate of Gowrie House, against the King's escape. He had been in France, he said, since 1589, had come home with Gowrie, but, he swore, had not spoken six words with the Ruthvens during the last fortnight. {74b} This is odd, as he was their Master Stabler, and as they, by their friends' account, had been making every preparation to leave for Dirleton, which involved arrangements about their horses.

In any case, Mr. Robert Oliphant, in a house in the Canongate, in November or early December 1600, declared that Cranstoun, who, he said, knew nothing of the conspiracy, had been hanged, while Henderson, _who was in the secret_, _and had taken the turret part_, escaped, and retained his position as Chamberlain of Scone. Henderson, at the critical moment, had 'fainted,' said Oliphant; that is, had failed from want of courage. Oliphant went on to say that he himself had been with Gowrie in Paris (February-March 1600), and that, both in Paris and at home in Scotland later, Gowrie had endeavoured to induce him to take the part later offered to Henderson. He had tried, but in vain, to divert Gowrie's mind from his dangerous project. This talk of Oliphant's leaked out (through Lyn as we know), and Oliphant, says Nicholson, 'fled again.' {75}

Of Oliphant we learn no more till about June 1608. At that time, the King, in England, heard a rumour that he had been connected with the conspiracy. A Captain Patrick Heron {76} obtained a commission to find Oliphant, and arrested him at Canterbury: he was making for Dover and for France. Heron seized Oliphant's portable property, 'eight angels, two half rose-nobles, one double pistolet, two French crowns and a half, one Albertus angel; two English crowns; one Turkish piece of gold, two gold rings, and a loose stone belonging to one; three Netherland dollars; one piece of four royals; two _quart decuria_; seven pieces of several coins of silver; two purses, one sword; one trunk, one "mail," and two budgetts.' Oliphant himself lay for nine months in 'the Gate House of Westminster,' but Heron, 'careless to justify his accusation, and discovering his aim in that business' (writes the King), 'presently departed from hence.' 'We have tried the innocency of Mr. Robert Oliphant,' James goes on, 'and have freed him from prison.' The Scottish Privy Council is therefore ordered, on March 6, 1609, to make Heron restore Oliphant's property. On May 16, 1609, Heron was brought before the Privy Council in Edinburgh, and was bidden to make restitution. He was placed in the Tolbooth, but released by Lindsay, the keeper of the prison. In March 1610, Oliphant having again gone abroad, Heron expressed his readiness to restore the goods, except the trunk and bags, which he had given to the English Privy Council, who restored them to Robert Oliphant. The brother of Robert, Oliphant of Bauchiltoun, represented him in his absence, and, in 1611, Robert got some measure of restitution from Heron.

We know no more of Mr. Robert Oliphant. {77} His freedom of talk was amazing, but perhaps he had been drinking when he told the story of his connection with the plot. By 1608 nothing could be proved against him in London: in 1600, had he not fled from Edinburgh in December, something might have been extracted. We can only say that his version of the case is less improbable than Henderson's. Henderson--if approached by Gowrie, as Oliphant is reported to have said that he _was_--could not divulge the plot, could not, like Oliphant, a gentleman, leave Perth, and desert his employment. So perhaps he drifted into taking the _role_ of the man in the turret. If so, he had abundance of time to invent his most improbable story that he was shut up there in ignorance of the purpose of his masters.

Henderson was not always of the lamblike demeanour which he displayed in the turret. On March 5, 1601, Nicholson reports that 'Sir Hugh Herries,' the lame doctor, 'and Henderson fell out and were at offering of strokes,' whence 'revelations' were anticipated. They never came, and, for all that we know, Herries may have taunted Henderson with Oliphant's version of his conduct. He was pretty generally suspected of having been in the conspiracy, and of having failed, from terror, and then betrayed his masters, while pretending not to have known why he was placed in the turret.

It is remarkable that Herries did not appear as a witness at the trial in November. He was knighted and rewarded: every one almost was rewarded out of Gowrie's escheats, or forfeited property. But that was natural, whether James was guilty or innocent; and we repeat that the rewards, present or in prospect, did not produce witnesses ready to say that they saw Henderson at Falkland, or in the tumult, or in the turret. Why men so freely charged with murderous conspiracy and false swearing were so dainty on these and other essential points, the advocates of the theory of perjury may explain. How James treated discrepancies in the evidence we have seen. His account was the true account, he would not alter it, he would not suppress the discrepancies of Henderson, except as to the dagger. Witnesses might say this or that to secure the King's princely favour. Let them say: the King's account is true. This attitude is certainly more dignified, and wiser, than the easy method of harmonising all versions before publication. Meanwhile, if there were discrepancies, they were held by sceptics to prove falsehood; if there had been absolute harmony, that would really have proved collusion. On one point I suspect suppression at the trial. Almost all versions aver that Ramsay, or another, said to Gowrie, 'You have slain the King,' and that Gowrie (who certainly did not mean murder) then dropped his points and was stabbed. Of this nothing is said, at the trial, by any witnesses.

VII. THE CONTEMPORARY RUTHVEN VINDICATION

We now come to the evidence which is most fatally damaging to the two unfortunate Ruthvens. It is the testimony of their contemporary Vindication. Till a date very uncertain, a tradition hung about Perth that some old gentlemen remembered having seen a Vindication of the Ruthvens; written at the time of the events. {80} Antiquaries vainly asked each other for copies of this valuable apology. Was it printed, and suppressed by Royal order? Did it circulate only in manuscript?

In 1812 a Mr. Panton published a vehement defence of the Ruthvens. Speaking of the King's narrative, he says, 'In a short time afterwards a reply, or counter manifesto, setting forth the matter in its true light, written by some friend of the Ruthven family, made its appearance. The discovery of this performance would now be a valuable acquisition; but there is no probability that any such exists, as the Government instantly ordered the publication to be suppressed. . . . '

The learned and accurate Lord Hailes, writing in the second half of the eighteenth century (1757), says, 'It appears by a letter of Sir John Carey, Governor' (really Deputy Governor) 'of Berwick, to Cecil, 4th September, 1600, that some treatise had been published in Scotland, in vindication of Gowrie.' That 'treatise,' or rather newsletter, unsigned, and overlooked by our historians (as far as my knowledge goes), is extant in the Record Office. {81} We can identify it as the document mentioned by Carey to Cecil in his letter of September 4, 1600. Carey was then in command of Berwick, the great English frontier fortress, for his chief, 'the brave Lord Willoughby,' was absent on sick leave. On September 4, then, from Berwick, Carey wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, 'I have thought good to send you such' (information) 'as I have received out of Scotland this morning on both sides, both on the King's part and the Earl's part, that you may read them both together.'

Now we possess a manuscript, 'The Verie Maner of the Erll of Gowrie and his brother their Death, quha war killit at Perth, the fyft of August, by the Kingis Servanttis, his Majestie being present.' This paper is directed to 'My Lord Governor,' and, as Carey was acting for 'My Lord Governor,' Lord Willoughby, at Berwick, he received and forwarded the document to Cecil. This is the Vindication, at least I know no other, and no printed copy, though Nicholson writes that a 'book on the Ruthven side was printed in England' (October 28, 1600).

The manuscript is in bad condition, in parts illegible; acids appear to have been applied to it. The story, however, from the Gowrie side, can be easily made out. It alleges that, 'on Saturday, August 1' (really August 2), the lame Dr Herries came, on some pretext, to Gowrie's house. 'This man by my Lord was convoyed through the house, and the secret parts shown him.'

Now there was no 'secret part' in the house, as far as the narratives go. The entry to the narrow staircase was inconspicuous, but was noticed by Ramsay, and, of course, was familiar to Gowrie and his men. On Tuesday, the fatal day (according to the Ruthven Vindication), Gowrie's retainers were preparing to go with him 'to Lothian,' that is to Dirleton, a castle of his on the sea, hard by North Berwick. The narrator argues, as all the friends of the Ruthvens did, that, if Gowrie had intended any treason, his men would not have been busy at their houses with preparations for an instant removal. The value of this objection is null. If Gowrie had a plot, it probably was to carry the King to Dirleton with him, in disguise.

[Picture: Dirleton Castle]

The Master, the apology goes on, whom the King had sent for 'divers times before, and on August 5,' rode early to Falkland, accompanied by Andrew Ruthven, and _Andrew Henderson_. None of James's men, nor James himself, as we have remarked, saw Henderson at Falkland, and modern opponents of the King deny (as the aforesaid Mr. Panton does) that he was there. Here they clash with 'The Verie Manner' &c. issued at the time by Gowrie's defenders. It avers that the Master, and his two men, did not intend to return from Falkland to Perth. They meant to sleep at Falkland on the night of the Fifth, and meet Gowrie, next day, August 6, 'at the waterside,' and cross with him to the south coast of the Firth of Forth, thence riding on (as other friendly accounts allege) to Dirleton, near North Berwick. 'And Andrew Henderson's confessions testified this.' As published, they do nothing of the sort. The Master 'took his lodging in Falkland for this night.' Hearing that James was to hunt, the Master breakfasted, and went to look for him. After a conversation with James, he bade Henderson ride back to Perth, and tell Gowrie that, '_for what occasion he knew not_,' the King was coming. Now after they all arrived at Perth, the Master told Gowrie's caterer, Craigengelt, that the King had come, 'because Robert Abercrombie, that false knave, had brought the King there, to make his Majesty take order for his debt.' {83} This fact was stated by Craigengelt himself, under examination. If Ruthven spoke the truth, he did know the motive, or pretext, of the King's coming, which the apologist denies. But Ruthven was not speaking the truth; he told Craigengelt, as we saw, that he had been 'on an errand not far off.'

As to the debt, James owed Gowrie a large sum, with accumulated interest, for expenses incurred by Gowrie's father, when Lord Treasurer of Scotland (1583-1584). James, in June 1600, as we shall see, gave Gowrie a year's respite from the pursuit of his father's creditors, hoping to pay him in the meanwhile. Whether this exemption would not have defended Gowrie from Robert Abercromby; whether James would act as debt collector for Robert Abercromby (a burgess of Edinburgh, the King's saddler), the reader may decide. But the Master gave to Craigengelt this reason for James's unexpected arrival, though his contemporary apologist says, as to James's motive for coming to Perth, that the Master '_knew nothing_.'

Henderson having cantered off with his message, James rode to Perth (nothing is said by the apologist of the four hours spent in hunting), 'accompanied by sixty horsemen, of whom thirty came a little before him.' No trace of either the sixty or the thirty appears anywhere in the evidence. No witness alludes to the arrival of any of the King's party in front of him. On hearing from Henderson of the King's approach, says the Vindication, Gowrie, who was dining, ordered a new meal to be prepared. All the other evidence shows that Henderson came back to Perth long before Gowrie dined, and that nevertheless Gowrie made no preparations at all. Gowrie, with four others, then met the King, on the Inch of Perth says the apologist. James kissed him when they met, the kiss of Judas, we are to understand. He entered the house, and all the keys were given to James's retainers. The porter, as we saw, really had the keys, and Gowrie opened the garden gate with one of them. The apologist is mendacious.

Dinner was soon over. James sent the Master to bid Ramsay and Erskine 'follow him to his chamber, where his Majesty, Sir Thomas Erskine, John Ramsay, Dr. Herries, and Mr. Wilson, being convened, slew the Master, and threw him down the stair, how, and for what cause they [know best] themselves.' Of course it is absolutely certain that the Master did not bring the other three men to James, in the chamber where the Master was first wounded. Undeniably Herries, Ramsay, and Erskine were not brought by the Master, at James's command, to this room. They did not enter it till after the cries of 'Treason' were yelled by James from the window of the turret. A servant of James's, says the apologist, now brought the news that the King had ridden away. Cranstoun, Gowrie's man, really did this, as he admitted. Gowrie, the author goes on, hearing of James's departure, called for his horse, and went out into the street. There he stood 'abiding his horse.' Now Cranstoun, as he confessed, had told Gowrie that his horse was at Scone, two miles away. By keeping his horses there, Gowrie made it impossible for him to accompany the Royal retinue as they went on their useless errand (p. 21, _supra_). In the street Gowrie 'hears his Majesty call on him out at the chamber window, "My Lord of Gowrie, traitors has murdered your brother already, and ye suffer me to be murdered also!"'

Nobody else heard this, and, if Gowrie heard it, how inept it was in him to go about asking 'What is the matter?' He was occupied thus while Lennox, Mar, and the others were rushing up the great staircase to rescue the King. James, according to the Ruthven apologist, had told Gowrie what the matter was, his brother was slain, and slain by Erskine, who, while the Earl asked 'What is the matter?' was trying to collar that distracted nobleman. The Master had brought Erskine to the King, says the apologist, Erskine had slain the Master, yet, simultaneously, he tried to seize Gowrie in the street. Erskine was in two places at once. The apology is indeed 'a valuable acquisition.' Gowrie and Cranstoun, and they alone, the apologist avers, were now permitted by James's servants to enter the house. We know that many of James's men were really battering at the locked door, and we know that others of Gowrie's people, besides Cranstoun, entered the house, and were wounded in the scuffle. Cranstoun himself says nothing of any opposition to their entry to the house, after Gowrie drew his two swords.

Cranstoun, according to the apologist, first entered the chamber, alone, and was wounded, and drawn back by Gowrie--which Cranstoun, in his own statement, denies. After his wounds he fled, he says, seeing no more of Gowrie. Then, according to the apologist, Gowrie himself at last entered the chamber; the King's friends attacked him, but he was too cunning of fence for them. They therefore parleyed, and promised to let him see the King (who was in the turret). Gowrie dropped his points, Ramsay stabbed him, he died committing his soul to God, and declaring that he was a true subject.

This narrative, we are told by its author, is partly derived from the King's men, partly from the confessions of Cranstoun, Craigengelt, and Baron (accused of having been in the chamber-fight, and active in the tumult). All these three were tried and hanged. The apologist adds that James's companions will swear to whatever he pleases. This was unjust; Ramsay would not venture to recognise the man of whom he caught a glimpse in the turret, and nobody pretended to have seen Henderson at Falkland, though the presence of Henderson at Falkland and in the chamber was an essential point. But, among the King's crew of perjurers, not a man swore to either fact.

What follows relates to Gowrie's character; 'he had paid all his father's debts,' which most assuredly he had not done. As to the causes of his taking off, they are explained by the apologist, but belong to a later part of the inquiry.

Such was the contemporary Vindication of Gowrie, sent to Carey, at Berwick, for English reading, and forwarded by Carey to Cecil. The narrative is manifestly false, on the points which we have noted. It is ingeniously asserted by the vindicator that _a servant of James_ brought the report that he had ridden away. It is not added that the false report was really brought by Cranstoun, and twice confirmed by Gowrie, once after he had gone to make inquiry upstairs. Again, the apologist never even hints at the locked door of the gallery chamber, whereat Mar, Lennox, and the rest so long and so vainly battered. Who locked that door, and why? The subject is entirely omitted by the apologist. On the other hand, the apologist never alludes to the Murrays, who were in the town. Other writers soon after the events, and in our own day, allege that James had arranged his plot so as to coincide with the presence of the Murrays in Perth. What they did to serve him we have heard. John Murray was wounded by a Ruthven partisan after the Earl and Master were dead. Some Murrays jostled Gowrie, before he rushed to his death. Young Tullibardine helped to pacify the populace. That is all. Nothing more is attributed to the Murrays, and the contemporary apologist did not try to make capital out of them.

Though the narrative of the contemporary apologist for the Ruthvens appears absolutely to lack evidence for its assertions, it reveals, on analysis, a consistent theory of the King's plot. It may not be verifiable; in fact it cannot be true, but there is a theory, a system, which we do not find in most contemporary, or in more recent arguments. James, by the theory, is intent on the destruction of the Ruthvens. His plan was to bring the Master to Falkland, and induce the world to believe that it was the Master who brought _him_ to Perth. The Master refuses several invitations; at last, on his way to Dirleton, he goes to Falkland, taking with him Andrew Ruthven and Andrew Henderson. The old apologist asserts, what modern vindicators deny, that Henderson was at Falkland.

Then the Master sends Henderson first, Andrew Ruthven later, to warn Gowrie that, for some unknown reason, the King is coming. To conceal his bloody project (though the apologist does not mention the circumstance), James next passes four hours in hunting. _To omit this certain fact is necessary for the apologist's purpose_. The King sends thirty horsemen in front of him, and follows with thirty more. After dinner he leaves the hall with the Master, but sends him back for Erskine, Wilson, and Ramsay. James having secured their help, and next lured the Master into a turret, the minions kill Ruthven and throw his body downstairs; one of them, simultaneously, is in the street. James has previously arranged that one of his servants shall give out that the King has ridden away. This he does announce at the nick of time (though Gowrie's servant did it), so that Gowrie shall go towards the stables (where he expects to find his horse, though he knows it is at Scone), thus coming within earshot of the turret window. Thence James shouts to Gowrie that traitors are murdering him, and have murdered the Master. Now this news would bring, not only Gowrie, but all the Royal retinue, to his Majesty's assistance. But, as not knowing the topography of the house, the retinue, James must have calculated, will run up the main stairs, to rescue the King. Their arrival would be inconvenient to the King (as the nobles would find that James has only friends with him, not traitors), so the King has had the door locked (we guess, though we are not told this by the apologist) to keep out Lennox, Mar, and the rest. Gowrie, however, has to be admitted, and killed, and Gowrie, knowing the house, will come, the King calculates, by the dark stair, and the unlocked door. Therefore James's friends, in the street, will let him and Cranstoun enter the house; these two alone, and no others with them. They, knowing the narrow staircase, go up that way, naturally. As naturally, Gowrie lets Cranstoun face the danger of four hostile swords, alone. Waiting till Cranstoun is disabled, Gowrie then confronts, alone, the same murderous blades, is disarmed by a _ruse_, and is murdered.

This explanation has a method, a system. Unfortunately it is contradicted by all the evidence now to be obtained, from whatever source it comes, retainers of Gowrie, companions of James, or burgesses of Perth. We must suppose that Gowrie, with his small force of himself and Cranstoun, both fencers from the foreign schools, would allow that force to be cut off in detail, one by one. We must suppose that Erskine was where he certainly was not, in two places at once, and that Ramsay and Herries and he, unseen, left the hall and joined the King, on a message brought by the Master, unmarked by any witness. We must suppose that the King's witnesses, who professed ignorance on essential points, perjured themselves on others, in batches. But, if we grant that Mar, Lennox, and the rest--gentlemen, servants, retainers and menials of the Ruthvens, and citizens of Perth--were abandoned perjurers on some points, while scrupulously honourable on others equally essential, the narrative of the Ruthven apologist has a method, a consistency, which we do not find in modern systems unfavourable to the King.

For example, the modern theories easily show how James trapped the Master. He had only to lure him into a room, and cry 'Treason.' Then, even if untutored in his part, some hot-headed young man like Ramsay would stab Ruthven. But to deal with Gowrie was a more difficult task. He would be out in the open, surrounded by men like Lennox and Mar, great nobles, and his near kinsmen. They would attest the innocence of the Earl. They must therefore be separated from him, lured away to attack the locked door, while Gowrie would stand in the street asking 'What is the matter?' though James had told him, and detained by the Murrays till they saw fit to let him and Cranstoun go within the gate, alone. Then, knowing the topography, Gowrie and Cranstoun would necessarily make for the murder-chamber, by the dark stair, and perish. The Royal wit never conceived a subtler plot, it is much cleverer than that invented by Mr. G. P. R. James, in his novel, 'Gowrie.' Nothing is wrong with the system of the apologist, except that the facts are false, and the idea a trifle too subtle, while, instead of boldly saying that the King had the gallery chamber locked against his friends, the apologist never hints at that circumstance.

We have to help the contemporary vindicator out, by adding the detail of the locked door (which he did not see how to account for and therefore omitted), and by explaining that the King had it locked himself, that Lennox, Mar, and the rest might not know the real state of the case, and that Gowrie might be trapped through taking the other way, by the narrow staircase.

An author so conspicuously mendacious as he who wrote the Apology for English consumption is unworthy of belief on any point. It does not follow that Henderson was really at Falkland because the apologist says that he was. But it would appear that this vindicator could not well deny the circumstance, and that, to work it conveniently into his fable, he had to omit the King's hunting, and to contradict the Hays and Moncrieff by making Henderson arrive at Perth after twelve instead of about ten o'clock.

The value of the Apology, so long overlooked, is to show how very poor a case was the best that the vindicator of the Ruthvens was able to produce. But no doubt it was good enough for people who wished to believe. {93}

VIII. THE THEORY OF AN ACCIDENTAL BRAWL

So far, the King's narrative is least out of keeping with probability.

But had James been insulted, menaced, and driven to a personal struggle, as he declared? Is the fact not that, finding himself alone with Ruthven, and an armed man (or no armed man, if you believe that none was there), James lost his nerve, and cried 'Treason!' in mere panic? The rest followed from the hot blood of the three courtiers, and the story of James was invented, after the deaths of the Gowries, to conceal the truth, and to rob by forfeiture the family of Ruthven. But James had certainly told Lennox the story of Ruthven and the pot of gold, before they reached Perth. If he came with innocent intent, he had not concocted that story as an excuse for coming.

We really must be consistent. Mr. Barbe, a recent Ruthven apologist, says that the theory of an accidental origin of 'the struggle between James and Ruthven may possibly contain a fairly accurate conjecture.' {94} But Mr. Barbe also argues that James had invented the pot of gold story before he left Falkland; that, if James was guilty, 'the pretext had been framed'--the myth of the treasure had been concocted--'long before their meeting in Falkland, and was held in readiness to use whenever circumstances required.' If so, then there is no room at all for the opinion that the uproar in the turret was accidental, but Mr. Barbe's meaning is that James thus forced a quarrel on Ruthven. For there was no captive with a pot of gold, nor can accident have caused the tragedy, if Ruthven lured James to Falkland with the false tale of the golden hoard. That tale, confided by James to Lennox on the ride to Perth, was either an invention of the King's--in which case James is the crafty conspirator whom Mr. Bruce, in 1602, did not believe him to be (as shall be shown);--or it is true that Ruthven brought James to Perth by the feigned story--in which case Ruthven is a conspirator. I reject, for reasons already given, the suggestion that Lennox perjured himself, when he swore that James told him about Ruthven's narrative as to the captive and his hoard. For these reasons alone, there is no room for the hypothesis of accident: either James or Ruthven was a deliberate traitor. If James invented the pot of gold, he is the plotter: if Ruthven did, Ruthven is guilty. There is no _via media_, no room for the theory of accident.

The _via media_, the hypothesis of accident, was suggested by Sir William Bowes, who wrote out his theory, in a letter to Sir John Stanhope, from Bradley, on September 2, 1600. Bowes had been English ambassador in Scotland, probably with the usual commission to side with the King's enemies, and especially (much as Elizabeth loathed her own Puritans) with the party of the Kirk. His coach had been used for the kidnapping of an English gentleman then with James, while the Governor of Berwick supplied a yacht, in case it seemed better to carry off the victim by sea (1599). Consequently Bowes was unpopular, and needed, and got, a guard of forty horsemen for his protection. He was no friend, as may be imagined, of the King.

Bowes had met Preston, whom James sent to Elizabeth with his version of the Gowrie affair. Bowes's theory of it all was this: James, the Master, 'and one other attending' (the man of the turret) were alone in a chamber of Gowrie House. Speech arose about the late Earl of Gowrie, Ruthven's father, whether by occasion of his portrait on the wall, or otherwise. 'The King angrily said he was a traitor, whereat the youth showing a grieved and expostulatory countenance, and haplie Scotlike words, the King, seeing himself alone and without weapon, cried Treason!' The Master placed his hand on James's mouth, and knelt to deprecate his anger, but Ramsay stabbed him as he knelt, and Gowrie was slain, Preston said, after Ramsay had made him drop his guard by crying that the King was murdered. The tale of the conspiracy was invented by James to cover the true state of the case. {96}

This Bowes only puts forth as a working hypothesis. It breaks down on the King's narrative to Lennox about Ruthven's captive and hoard. It breaks down on 'one other attending'--the man in the turret--whatever else he may have been, he was no harmless attendant. It breaks down on the locked door between the King, and Lennox and Mar, which Bowes omits. It is ruined by Gowrie's repeated false assurances that the King had ridden away, which Bowes ignores.

The third hypothesis, the _via media_, is impossible. There was a deliberate plot on one side or the other. To make the theory of Bowes quite clear, his letter is appended to this section. {97}

IX. CONTEMPORARY CLERICAL CRITICISM

The most resolute sceptics as to the guilt of the Ruthvens were the Edinburgh preachers. They were in constant opposition to the King, and the young Gowrie was their favourite nobleman. As to what occurred when the news of the tragedy reached Edinburgh, early on July 6, we have the narrative of Mr. Robert Bruce, then the leader of the Presbyterians. His own version is printed in the first volume of the Bannatyne Club Miscellany, and is embodied, with modifications, and without acknowledgment (as references to such sources were usually omitted at that period), in Calderwood's History.

It is thus better to follow Mr. Bruce's own account, as far as it goes.

The preachers heard the 'bruit,' or rumour of the tragedy, by nine o'clock on the morning of August 6. By ten o'clock arrived a letter from James to the Privy Council: the preachers were called first 'before the Council of the town,' and the King's epistle was read to them. '_It bore that his Majesty was delivered out of a peril_, and therefore that we should be commanded to go to our Kirks, convene our people, ring bells, and give God praises.' While the preachers were answering, the _Privy_ Council sent for the Provost and some of the _Town_ Council.

The preachers then went to deliberate in the East Kirk, and decided 'that we could not enter into the particular defence of' (the existence of?) 'the treason, seeing that the King was silent of the treason in his own letter, and the reports of courtiers varied among themselves.'

This is not easily intelligible. The letter from Falkland of which Nicholson gives an account on August 6, was exceedingly 'particular as to the treason.' It is my impression, based mainly on the Burgh Records quoted by Pitcairn, that the letter with full particulars cited by Nicholson, was written, more or less officially, by the notary, David Moysie, who was at Falkland, and that the King's letter was brief, only requiring thanksgiving to be offered. Yet Nicholson says that the letter with details (written by the King he seems to think), was meant for the preachers as well as for the Privy Council (cf. p. 38, note).

The preachers, in any case, were now brought before the Privy Council and desired, by Montrose, the Chancellor, to go to church, and thank God for the King's 'miraculous delivery from that vile treason.' They replied that 'they could not be certain of the treason,' but would speak of delivery 'from a great danger.' Or they would wait, and, when quite sure of the treason, would blaze it abroad.

'They' (the Council) 'said it should be sufficient to read his Majesty's letter.'

This appears to mean that the preachers would content the Lords by merely reading James's letter aloud to the public.

'We answered that we could not read his letter' (aloud to the people?) 'and doubt of the truth of it. It would be better to say generally, "if the _report_ be true."'

The preachers would have contented the Lords by merely reading James's letter aloud to their congregations. But this they declined to do; they wished, in the pulpit, to evade the Royal _letter_, and merely to talk, conditionally, of the possible truth of the _report_, or 'bruit.' This appears to have been a _verbal_ narrative brought by Graham of Balgonie, which seemed to vary from the long letter probably penned by Moysie. At this moment the Rev. David Lindsay, who had been at Falkland, and had heard James's story from his own mouth, arrived. He, therefore, was sent to tell the tale publicly, at the Cross. The Council reported to James that the six Edinburgh preachers 'would in no ways praise God for his delivery.' In fact, they would only do so in general terms.

On August 12, James took the preachers to task. Bruce explained that they could thank, and on Sunday had thanked God for the King's delivery, but could go no further into detail, 'in respect we had no certainty.' 'Had you not my letter?' asked the King. Bruce replied that the letter spoke only 'of a danger in general.' Yet the letter reported by Nicholson was 'full and particular,' but that letter the preachers seem to have regarded as unofficial. 'Could not my Council inform you of the particulars?' asked the King. The President (Fyvie, later Chancellor Dunfermline) said that they had assured the preachers of the certainty of the treason. On this Bruce replied that they had only a report, brought orally by Balgonie, and a letter by Moysie, an Edinburgh notary then at Falkland, and that these testimonies 'fought so together that no man could have any certainty.' The Secretary (Elphinstone, later Lord Balmerino) denied the discrepancies.

James now asked what was the preachers' present opinion? They had heard the King himself, the Council, and Mar. Bruce replied that, as a minister, he was not fully persuaded. Four of the preachers adhered to their scepticism. Two, Hewat and Robertson, now professed conviction. The other four were forbidden to preach, under pain of death, and forbidden to come within ten miles of Edinburgh. They offered terms, but these were refused. The reason of James's ferocity was that the devout regarded the preachers as the mouthpieces of God, and so, if _they_ doubted his word, the King's character would, to the godly, seem no better than that of a mendacious murderer.

From a modern point of view, the ministers, if doubtful, had a perfect right to be silent, and one of them, Hall, justly objected that he ought to wait for the verdict in the civil trial of the dead Ruthvens. We shall meet this Hall, and Hewatt (one of the two ministers who professed belief), in very strange circumstances later (p. 217). Here it is enough to have explained the King's motives for severity.

In September the recalcitrants came before the King at Stirling. All professed to be convinced (one, after inquiries in Fife), except Bruce. We learn what happened next from a letter of his to his wife. He had heard from one who had been at Craigengelt's execution (August 23), that Craigengelt had then confessed that Henderson had told him how he was placed by Gowrie in the turret. {103} Bruce had sent to verify this. Moreover he would believe, if Henderson were hanged, and adhered to his deposition to the last: a pretty experiment! The Comptroller asked, 'Will you believe a condemned man better than the King and Council?' Mr. Bruce admitted that such was his theory of the Grammar of Assent. 'If Henderson die penitently I will trust him.' Later, as we shall see, this pleasing experiment was tried in another case, but, though the witness died penitently, and clinging to his final deposition, not one of the godly sceptics was convinced.

'But Henderson saved the King's life,' replied the Comptroller to Mr. Bruce.

'As to that I cannot tell,' said Mr. Bruce, and added that, if Henderson took the dagger from Ruthven, he deserved to die for not sheathing it in Ruthven's breast.

Henderson later, we know, withdrew his talk of his seizure of the dagger, which James had never admitted. James now said that he knew not what became of the dagger.

'Suppose,' said the Comptroller, 'Henderson goes back from that deposition?'

'Then his testimony is the worse,' said Mr. Bruce.

'Then it were better to keep him alive,' said the Comptroller; but Mr. Bruce insisted that Henderson would serve James best by dying penitently. James said that Bruce made him out a murderer. 'If I would have taken their lives, I had causes enough' (his meaning is unknown), 'I need not have hazarded myself so.' By the 'causes,' can James have meant Gowrie's attempts to entangle him in negotiations with the Pope? {104} These were alleged by Mr. Galloway, in a sermon preached on August 11, in the open air, before the King and the populace of Edinburgh (see _infra_, p. 128).

Mar wondered that Bruce would not trust men who (like himself) heard the King cry, and saw the hand at his throat. Mr. Bruce said that Mar might believe, 'as he were there to hear and see.'

He was left to inform himself, but Calderwood says, that the story about Craigengelt's dying confession was untrue. Bruce had frankly given the lie to the King and Mar, though he remarked that he had never heard Mar and Lennox tell the tale 'out of their own mouths.' Mar later (September 24) most solemnly assured Mr. Bruce by letter, that the treason, 'in respect of that I saw,' was a certain fact. This he professed 'before God in heaven.' Meanwhile Mr. Hall was restored to his Edinburgh pulpit, and Mr. Bruce, after a visit to _Restalrig_, a place close to Edinburgh and Leith, went into banishment. {105a} If he stayed with the Laird of Restalrig, he had, as will presently appear, a strange choice in friends (pp. 148-167).

A later letter of Bruce's now takes up the tale. In 1601, Bruce was in London, when Mar was there as James's envoy. They met, and Bruce said he was content to abide by the verdict in the Gowrie trial of November 1600. What he boggled at, henceforward, was a public apology for his disbelief, an acceptance, from the pulpit, of the King's veracity, as to the events. In London, Bruce had found that the Puritans, as to the guilt of Essex (which was flagrant), were in the same position as himself, regarding the guilt of Gowrie. {105b} But they bowed to the law, and so would he--'for the present.'

The Puritans in England would not _preach_ that they were persuaded of the guilt of Essex, nor would Bruce preach his persuasion of the guilt of Gowrie, 'from my knowledge and from my persuasion.' He assured Mar 'that it was not possible for any man to be fully persuaded, or to take on their conscience, but so many as saw and heard.' However Bruce is self-contradictory. He _would_ be persuaded, if Henderson swung for it, adhering to his statement. Such were Mr. Brace's theories of evidence. He added that he was not fully persuaded that there was any hell to go to, yet probably he scrupled not to preach 'tidings of damnation.' He wanted to be more certain of Gowrie's guilt, than he was that there is hell-fire. 'Spiteful taunts' followed, Mar's repartee to the argument about hell being obvious. Bruce must have asserted the existence of hell, from the pulpit: though not 'fully persuaded' of hell. So why not assert the King's innocence?

Bruce returned later to Scotland, and met the King in April 1602. Now, he said, according to Calderwood, that he was 'resolved,' that is, convinced. What convinced him? Mar's oath. 'How could _he_ swear?' asked James; 'he neither saw nor heard'--that is, what passed between James, the man in the turret, and the Master. 'I cannot tell you how he could swear, but indeed he swore very deeply,' said Bruce, and reported the oath, which must have been a fine example. James took Bruce's preference of Mar's oath to his own word very calmly. Bruce was troubled about the exact state of affairs between James and the Master. 'Doubt ye of that?' said the King, 'then ye could not but count me a murderer.' 'It followeth not, if it please you, Sir,' said Mr. Robert, '_for ye might have had some secret cause_.' {107a}

Strange ethics! A man may slay another, without incurring the guilt of murder, if he has 'a secret cause.' Bruce probably referred to the tattle about a love intrigue between Gowrie, or Ruthven, and the King's wife. Even now, James kept his temper. He offered his whole story to Bruce for cross-examination. 'Mr. Robert uttered his doubt where he found occasion. The King heard him gently, and with a constant countenance, which Mr. Robert admired.' But Mr. Robert would not _preach_ his belief: would not apologise from the pulpit. 'I give it but a doubtsome trust,' he said.

Again, on June 24, 1602, James invited cross-examination. Bruce asked how he could possibly know the direction of his Majesty's intention when he ordered Ramsay to strike the Master. 'I will give you leave to pose me' (interrogate me), said James. {107b}

'Had you a purpose to slay my Lord?'--that is, Gowrie.

'As I shall answer to God, I knew not that my Lord was slain, till I saw him in his last agony, and was very sorry, yea, prayed in my heart for the same.'

'What say ye then concerning Mr. Alexander?'

'I grant I was art and part in Mr. Alexander's slaughter, for it was in my own defence.'

'Why brought you not him to justice, seeing you should have God before your eyes?'

'I had neither God nor the Devil, man, before my eyes, but my own defence.'

'Here the King began to fret,' and no wonder. He frankly said that 'he was one time minded to have spared Mr. Alexander, but being moved for the time, the motion' (passion) 'prevailed.' He swore, in answer to a question, that, in the morning, he loved the Master 'as his brother.'

Bruce was now convinced that James left Falkland innocent of evil purpose, but, as he was in a passion and revengeful, while struggling with the Master, 'he could not be innocent before God.'

Here we leave Mr. Bruce. He signed a declaration of belief in James's narrative; public apologies in the pulpit he would not make. He was banished to Inverness, and was often annoyed and 'put at,' James reckoning him a firebrand.

The result, on the showing of the severe and hostile Calderwood, is that, in Bruce's opinion, in June 1602, James was guiltless of a plot against the Ruthvens. The King's crime was, not that strangely complicated project of a double murder, to be inferred from the Ruthven apology, but words spoken in the heat of blood. Betrayed, captured, taunted, insulted, struggling with a subject whom he had treated kindly, James cried to Ramsay 'Strike low!' He knew not the nature and extent of the conspiracy against him, he knew not what knocking that was at the door of the chamber, and he told Ramsay to strike; we have no assurance that the wounds were deadly.

This is how the matter now appeared to Mr. Bruce. The King swore very freely to the truth of his tale, and that influenced Bruce, but the King's candour as to what passed in his own mind, when he bade Ramsay strike Ruthven, is more convincing, to a modern critic, than his oaths. For some reason, Bruce's real point, that he was satisfied of the King's innocence of a plot, but not satisfied as regards his yielding to passion when attacked, is ignored by the advocates of the Ruthvens. Mr. Barbe observes: 'What slight success there ever was remained on Bruce's side, for, in one conference, he drew from the King the confession that he might have saved Ruthven's life, and brought him to justice.' That confession shows unexpected candour in James, but does not in the slightest degree implicate him in a conspiracy, and of a conspiracy even the rigid Bruce now acquitted the King. Mr. Pitcairn, at first a strong King's man, in an appendix to his third volume credits Bruce with the best of the argument. This he does, illogically, because the King never ceased to persecute Bruce, whom he thought a firebrand. However wicked this conduct of James may have been, it in no way affects the argument as to his guilt in the conspiracy. Of _that_ Mr. Bruce acquitted the King. Calderwood's words (vi. 156) are 'Mr. Robert, by reason of his oaths, thought him innocent of any purpose that day in the morning to slay them. Yet because he confessed he had not God or justice before his eyes, but was in a heat and mind to revenge, he could not be innocent before God, and had great cause to repent, and to crave mercy for Christ's sake.' The thing is perfectly clear. Bruce acquitted James of the infamous plot against the Ruthvens. {110} What, then, was the position of the Ruthvens, if the King was not the conspirator? Obviously they were guilty, whether James, at a given moment, was carried away by passion or not.

X. POPULAR CRITICISM OF THE DAY

Calderwood has preserved for us the objections taken by sceptics to the King's narrative. {111} First, the improbability of a _murderous_ conspiracy, by youths so full of promise and Presbyterianism as Gowrie and his brother. To Gowrie's previous performances we return later. The objection against a scheme of murder hardly applies to a plan for kidnapping a King who was severe against the Kirk.

The story of the pot of gold, and the King's desire to inspect it and the captive who bore it, personally, and the folly of thinking that one pot of gold could suffice to disturb the peace of the country, are next adversely criticised. We have already replied to the criticism (p. 40). The story was well adapted to entrap James VI.

The improbabilities of Ruthven's pleas for haste need not detain us: the King did not think them probable.

Next it was asked 'Why did James go alone upstairs with Ruthven?'

He may have had wine enough to beget valour, or, as he said, he may have believed that he was being followed by Erskine. The two reasons may well have combined.

'Why did not Gowrie provide better cheer, if forewarned?' (by Henderson?) it was asked.

To give the impression, we reply, that he was taken by surprise, and that the King came uninvited and unexpected.

'Why did Ruthven aim a dagger at James, and then hold parley?'

Because he wanted to frighten the King into being 'at his will.'

'How could Ruthven trust the King, with the armed man alone in the turret?'

What else could he do? He locked them in, and was, through the failure of the man, in a quandary which made clear reflection necessary--and impossible.

'It was strange that the man had not been trained in his task.'

If Oliphant is correctly reported, he had been trained, but 'fainted.'

'Why bind the King with a garter?'

In helpless pursuit of the forlorn idea of capturing him.

'Why execute the enterprise when the courtiers were passing the window?'

Ruthven could not have known that they were coming at that moment; it was Gowrie's ill-timed falsehoods, to the effect that the King had ridden away, which brought them there. Gowrie had not allowed for Henderson's failure.

'How could the King struggle successfully with the stalwart Master?'

He fought for his life, and Ruthven probably even then did not wish to injure him bodily.

'Why was not the Master made prisoner?'

James answered this question when 'posed' by Mr. Bruce. His blood was up, and he said 'Strike!'

'The Earl likewise might, after he was stricken, have been preserved alive.'

Perhaps--by miracle; he died instantly.

The discrepancies as to the dagger and the opening of the window we have already treated, also the locking and unlocking, or leaving unlocked, of the chamber door, giving on the dark staircase, after Ruthven's last hurried entrance (p. 69).

There follow arguments, to be later considered, about the relations between James and the Earl previous to the tragedy, and a statement, with no authority cited, that James had written to Gowrie's uncle, to meet him at Perth on August 5, implying that James had made up his mind to be there, and did not go on Ruthven's sudden invitation.

'The Earl and Cranstoun were alone with the four in the fatal chamber. The others who were wounded there went up after Gowrie's death.'

It may be so, but the bulk of the evidence is on the other side.

'It is reported' that Henderson was eating an egg in the kitchen, and went into the town when the fray arose.

It is also denied, on oath, by Gowrie's cook, who added that he was 'content to be hanged,' if it could be proved. {114}

The Ruthven apologist (MS.) says that Henderson was waiting on the Lords who dined in the hall, and was _there_ when _the King's servant_ brought the news that the King had ridden away.

'The Master's sword, after his death, was found rusted tight in his scabbard.'

The Master must have been a very untidy gallant. No authority is cited for the story.

The Murrays (who were well rewarded) were in Perth, 'whether of set purpose let the reader judge.'

By all means let the reader judge.

The King knew Henderson (so the anonymous Goodman of Pitmillie said), but did not recognise the man in the turret. It was reported that Patrick Galloway, the king's chaplain, induced Henderson to pretend to be the man in the turret.

As to the good man of Pitmillie, Calderwood did not even know his name. This is mere gossip.

Again, Calderwood, who offers these criticisms, does not ask why, of all concerned, Henderson was the only man that fled who had not been seen in connection with the fray and the tumult. If he was not the man of the turret, and if Andrew Ruthven, who also had ridden to Falkland, did not abscond, why did Henderson?

As to the man in the turret, if not a retainer of Ruthven, he was a minion of James, or there was no man at all. If there was no man at all, could James be so absurd as to invent him, on the off chance that somebody, anybody, would turn up, and claim to have been the man? That is, frankly, incredible. But if James managed to insert a man into the turret, he was not so silly as not to have his man ready to produce in evidence. Yet Henderson could not be produced, he had fled, and certainly had not come in by August 12, when he was proclaimed.

That James had introduced and suborned Henderson and that Henderson fled to give tone and colour to his narrative, is not among the most probable of conjectures. I do not find that this desperate hypothesis was put forward at the time. It could not be, for apologists averred (1) that Henderson was eating an egg in the kitchen: (2) that he was waiting on the gentlemen in the hall, at the moment when, by the desperate hypothesis, he was, by some machination of James, in the turret: (3) there is a third myth, a Perth tradition, that Henderson had been at Scone all day, and first heard the tragic news, when all was over, as, on his return, he crossed the bridge over Tay. As it is incredible that there was no man in the turret at all, and that James took the outside chance that somebody, anybody, would claim to be the man; the assailants of the King must offer a working hypothesis of this important actor in the drama. My own fancy can suggest none. Was he in four places at once, in the kitchen, in the hall, on the bridge, and in the turret? If he was in the kitchen, in the hall, or on the bridge, why did he instantly abscond? If _James_ put him in the turret, why did he fly?

The King's word, I repeat, was the word that no man could rely on. But, among competing improbabilities, the story which was written on the night of August 5, and to which he adhered under Bruce's cross-examination, is infinitely the least improbable. The Master of Gray, an abominable character, not in Scotland when the events occurred, reported, _not_ from Scotland, that Lennox had said that, if put on his oath, 'he could not say whether the practice proceeded from Gowrie or the King.' (Sept 30, 1600)

[Picture: Falkland Palace]

The Master of Gray wrote from Chillingham, on the English side of the Border, where he was playing the spy for Cecil. Often he played the double spy, for England and for Rome. Lennox may well have been puzzled, he may have said so, but the report rests on the evidence of one who did not hear his words, who wished to flatter the scepticism of James's English enemies, and whose character (though on one point he is unjustly accused) reeks with infamy.

That of James does not precisely 'smell sweet and blossom in the dust.' But if the question arises, whether a man of James's position, age, and temperament, or whether a young man, with the antecedents which we are about to describe, was the more likely to embark on a complicated and dangerous plot--in James's case involving two murders at inestimable personal risk--it is not unnatural to think that the young man is the more likely to 'have the wyte of it.'

XI. THE KING AND THE RUTHVENS

Having criticised the contemporary criticism of the Gowrie affair, we must look back, and examine the nature of Gowrie's ancestral and personal relations with James before the day of calamity. There were grounds enough for hatred between the King and the Earl, whether such hatred existed or not, in a kind of hereditary feud, and in political differences. As against James's grandmother, Mary of Guise, the grandfather of Gowrie, Lord Ruthven, had early joined the Reformers, who opposed her in arms. Later, in 1566, it was Gowrie's grandfather who took the leading part in the murder of Riccio. He fled to England, and there died soon after his exploit, beholding, it was said, a vision of angels. His son, Gowrie's father (also one of the Riccio murderers), when Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven (June 1567) was in charge of her, but was removed, 'as he began to show great favour to her, and gave her intelligence.' {118} Mary herself, through the narrative of Nau, her secretary, declares that Ruthven (then a married man) persecuted her by his lust. He aided Lindsay in extorting her abdication at Loch Leven. Such was his record as regards Mary: James too had little reason to love him.

The early reign of James in Scotland was a series of Court revolutions, all of the same sort. James was always either, unwillingly, under nobles who were allies of Elizabeth, and who used the Kirk as their instrument, or under vicious favourites who delivered him from these influences. When Morton fell in 1581, the King was under D'Aubigny (Lennox), a false Protestant and secret Catholic intriguer, and Arran (Captain James Stewart), a free lance, and, in religion, an Indifferent. Lennox entangled James in relations with the Guises and Catholic Powers; Gowrie, and the Protestant nobles, being threatened by Arran and Lennox, captured James, in an insulting manner, at Gowrie's castle of Ruthven. He came as a guest, for hunting; he remained a prisoner. (1582.) The Kirk approved and triumphed: James waited and dissembled, while Gowrie was at the head of the Government. In June 1583, James, by a sudden flight to St. Andrews Castle, where his friends surrounded him, shook himself free of Gowrie, who, however, secured a pardon for his share in James's capture, in the 'Raid of Ruthven' of 1582. Lennox being dead, the masterful and unscrupulous Arran now again ruled the King, and a new Lennox came from France, the Duke of Lennox who was present at the tragedy of August 5, 1600.

The Lords who had lost power by James's escape to St. Andrews now conspired anew. Angus, Mar, and others were to march on Stirling, Gowrie was waiting at Dundee. (April 1584) Arran knew of the plot, and sent Colonel Stewart to arrest Gowrie. After holding his house against Stewart's men, the Earl was taken and carried to Edinburgh. The other Lords, his allies, failed and fled. Gowrie was brought to trial. He had a pardon for the Raid of Ruthven, he had done nothing ostensible in the recent rising, which followed his capture at Dundee. Nevertheless he was tried, condemned, executed, and forfeited. There exists a manuscript of the date, which, at least, shows what Gowrie's friends thought of the method by which his conviction was procured. Arran and Sir Robert Melville, it is said, visited him in prison, and advised him to make his peace with James. How was that to be done? Gowrie entreated for the kind offices of Melville and Arran. They advised him to write to the King confessing that he had been in several conspiracies against his person which he could reveal in a private interview. 'I should confess an untruth,' said Gowrie, 'and frame my own indictment.'

The letter, the others urged, being general, would move the King's curiosity: he would grant an interview, at which Gowrie might say that the letter was only an expedient to procure a chance of stating his own case.

Gowrie, naturally, rejected so perilous a practice.

'You _must_ confess the foreknowledge of these things,' said Arran, 'or you must die.'

Gowrie replied that, if assured of his life, he would take the advice. Arran gave his word of honour that Gowrie should be safe. He wrote the letter, he received no answer, but was sent to Stirling. He was tried, nothing was proved against him, and Arran produced his letter before the Court. Gowrie was called, confessed to his handwriting, and told the tale of Arran's treachery, which he repeated to the people from the scaffold.

This is, briefly, the statement of a newsletter to England, written, as usual, against the Government, and in the Protestant interest. {121a} A manuscript in the British Museum gives a somewhat different version. {121b} One charge against Gowrie, we learn, was that of treasonable intercommuning with Hume of Godscroft, an envoy of the Earl of Angus, who, before Gowrie's arrest, was arranging a conspiracy. This charge was perfectly true. Godscroft, in his History of the Douglases (ii. 317-318), describes the circumstances, and mentions the very gallery whose door resisted Lennox and Mar on August 5, 1600. Godscroft rode from the Earl of Angus to Gowrie in his house at Perth. 'Looking very pitifully upon his gallery, where we were walking at that time, which he had but newly built and decored with pictures, he brake out into these words, having first fetched a deep sigh. "_Cousin_" says he, "_is there no remedy_? _Et impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit_? _Barbarus has segetes_?" Whereupon Godscroft was persuaded of his sincerity, and at his return persuaded the Earl of Angus thereof also.' So the plot went on, Gowrie pretending that he meant to leave the country, says his accomplice, Godscroft, while both the Court and the conspirators were uncertain as to his trimming intentions. He trimmed too long; he was taken, the plot exploded and failed. Gowrie was thus within the danger of the law, for treasonably concealing foreknowledge of the conspiracy.

According to the British Museum MS., Gowrie now told the jury that he was being accused on the strength of his own letter, treacherously extorted under promise of life, by Montrose, Doune, Maitland, Melville, Colonel Stewart, and the Captain of Dumbarton, _not_ by Arran. In Gowrie's letter of confession, to the King, as printed by Spottiswoode, he does not mention Godscroft, but another intriguer, Erskine. However, in this letter he certainly confesses his concern with the conspiracy. But, says the MS., the nobles charged by Gowrie with having betrayed him under promise of life denied the accusations on oath. Gowrie himself, according to another copy of the MS., denied knowing Hume of Godscroft; if he did, he spoke untruly, _teste_ Godscroft.

However matters really stood, the Earl's friends, at all events, believed that he had been most cruelly and shamefully betrayed to the death, and, as the King was now eighteen, they would not hold him guiltless.

These were not the only wrongs of the Ruthvens. While the power of Arran lasted (and it was, on the whole, welcome to James, though he had moments of revolt), the family of Ruthven was persecuted. The widow of Gowrie was a daughter (see Appendix A) of Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, who, as a young man, had married Margaret, sister of Henry VIII, widow of James IV, and divorced from the Earl of Angus. As this lady, our Gowrie's mother, knelt to implore the pity of James in the street after her Lord's death, Arran pushed her aside, and threw her down. He received the Earl's forfeited estate and castle of Dirleton, near North Berwick.

In October 1585, Arran fell, in his turn; Angus, Mar, and others drove him into retirement. James acquiesced; his relations with the house of Mar remained most friendly. The house of Ruthven was now restored to its lands and dignities, in 1586, the new Earl being James, who died in early youth. He was succeeded by his brother, the Gowrie of our tragedy, who was born about 1577. He had many sisters; the eldest, Mary, married the Earl of Atholl, a Stewart, in January 1580. Lady Gowrie was thus mother-in-law of the Earl of Atholl, who died at Gowrie House in August 1594. Her grand-daughter, Dorothea (daughter of Atholl and Mary Ruthven, sister of our Gowrie), in 1604 married that young Tullibardine who was in Perth at the tragedy of August 5, 1600. Lady Atholl is said to have opposed the marriage. Another sister of Gowrie, Sophia, married (before 1600, she was dead by that time) the Duke of Lennox who was at the slaughter of the Ruthvens. Another sister, Beatrix, was Maid of Honour to James's Queen, and later married Hume of Cowdenknowes; hence come the Earls of Home. Gowrie had two younger brothers, Patrick and William, who fled to England from his castle of Dirleton, the day after the tragedy, and were forfeited and persecuted by James; Patrick was long imprisoned in the Tower.

The new Earl, John, the victim of 1600, does not come into public notice till 1592, when he was elected Provost of Perth. He went to Edinburgh University; his governor was the respected Mr. Rollock. Here a curious fact occurs. On August 12, 1593, young Gowrie read his thesis for his Master's degree. Three weeks earlier, on July 24, the wild Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, had captured, in Holyrood, his King, who was half dressed and untrussed. James at the time was suspected of favouring the Catholic Earls of the North, Huntly, Errol, and a new unpresbyterian Angus. The King was on ill terms with the Kirk; England had secretly abetted Bothwell; the clan of Stewart, including Lennox, lent aid and countenance, _but Bothwell's __success was due to Gowrie's mother_, the widow of the decapitated Earl, and to his sister, Lady Atholl. Bothwell entered Lady Gowrie's house, adjoining the palace, spent the night there, stole into Holyrood by a passage-way left open by Lady Atholl, and appeared before the King, sword in hand, when his Majesty was half dressed. Meanwhile our Gowrie, reading for his thesis, may not have been uninterested in the plot of his mother and sister. This was, in a way, the second successful Ruthven plot to seize the King; the first was the Raid of Ruthven. The new success was not enduring. James shook off Bothwell in September 1593, and, in October, Gowrie's brother-in-law Atholl, with our Gowrie himself, entered into alliance with Bothwell against King James, and offered their services to Queen Elizabeth.

James moved out against Atholl, Gowrie, and the Master of Montrose, who were at Castle Doune, intending to join hands with Bothwell, and seize the King. But Bothwell found the plan impracticable: Atholl fled; Gowrie and the Master of Montrose were pursued and taken. No harm was done to them: their excuses were accepted, but young Gowrie and Atholl continued to conspire. In April, 1594, Atholl, signing for himself and Gowrie, and Bothwell, signing for his associates, wrote a manifesto to the Kirk. They were in arms, they said, for Protestant purposes, and wished commissioners from among the preachers to attend them, and watch their proceedings. {126} Bothwell then took action, he made a demonstration in arms against Edinburgh, but the forces of Atholl and Gowrie did not arrive and Bothwell retreated. Atholl was threatened for this affair, but pardoned by the King, and died in August.

In the same month Gowrie informed the Town Council of Perth that he was going to study abroad. They retained him in the position of Provost. He went, with his tutor, Mr. Rhynd, to Padua, an university where Protestantism was protected by the toleration of the Republic of Venice, and where there was an Anglo-Scottish 'Nation' among the students. In 'The Return from Parnassus,' a satirical play of 1601, we find Gullio, the admirer of Shakespeare, professing to have studied at Padua. Gowrie is said to have been elected Rector, but I cannot find his name in the lists. He does appear in the roll of Scottish scholars, some of them characterised (unlike the English scholars) by personal marks. Most have scars on the face or hand; Archibald Douglas has a scar on the brow from left to right. James Lindsay, of Gowrie's year (1596-1597), has also a scar on his brow. Next him is Andrew Keith, with a scar on his right hand, and then _Dominus Ioannes Ruthuen_, _Scotus_, _cum signo albo in mento_, 'with a white mark on his chin.' Then we have his luckless tutor, Mr. Rhynd, who was tortured, _Scotus cum ledigine super facie_. Robert Ker of Newbattle ('Kerrus de Heubattel') is another of Gowrie's college companions. All were students of law. Magic was not compulsory at Padua, though Gowrie was said to have studied that art. {127a}

Concerning Gowrie's behaviour at Padua but a single circumstance is known. Probably through one of his fellow-students, Douglas, Ker, Keith, Lindsay or another, the report reached Scotland that the young Earl had left in Padua 'a strange relique,' an emblematic figure emblazoned; and had made, on the subject, a singular remark. The emblematic figure represented 'a blackamoor reaching at a crown with a sword, in a stretched posture:' the remark of Gowrie, 'the Earl's own _mot_,' was to the effect that the emblem displayed, _in umbra_, or foreshadowed, what was to be done _in facto_. This emblem was secured at Padua, in 1609, by Sir Robert Douglas, who had heard of it in Scotland, and it was sent to King James. {127b} If such ideas were in Gowrie's mind, he showed no signs of them in an early correspondence with the King. In 1595, James wrote 'a most loving letter' to Gowrie; the Earl replied in a tone of gratitude. At the same time Gowrie wrote to a preacher in Perth, extolling the conduct of an English fanatic, who had thrown down and trampled on the Host, at Rome. He hoped, he said, when he returned to Scotland, 'to amend whatever is amiss for lack of my presence.' {128a} Nevertheless, on December 25, 1598, Nicholson informed Cecil that Gowrie had been converted to Catholicism. {128b} In the Venice despatches and Vatican transcripts I find no corroboration. Gowrie appears to have visited Rome; the Ruthven apologist declares that he was there 'in danger for his religion.' Galloway, on August 11, 1600, in presence of the King and the people of Edinburgh, vowed that Gowrie, since his return from Italy, had laboured to make James 'revolt from Religion, at least in inward sincerity, to entertain purpose with the Pope, and he himself promised to furnish intelligence.'

If so, Gowrie was, indeed, 'a deep dissimulate hypocrite.'

Galloway's informant must have been the King. If Gowrie did or said anything to colour the story, it may have been for the purpose of discovering, by pretending to approve of them, these intrigues with Rome, of which James was constantly being accused.

A new complexity is added here, by a list of Scottish Catholic nobles, ready to join an invading Spanish force, which the Earl of Bothwell handed in to Philip III. of Spain, at a date not absolutely certain. At a time conjectured at by Major Hume, as 1600, Bothwell laid before the Spanish ministry a scheme for an invasion of Scotland. He made another more elaborate proposal at a date which, to all seeming, was July 1601. In the appended list of Scottish Catholic nobles appear the names of the Earl of Gowrie, and of 'Baron Rastellerse,' that is, Logan of Restalrig. But, in 1601, there was no Earl of Gowrie; the title was extinct, the lands were forfeited, and Gowrie's natural heir, William Ruthven, his brother, was a poor student at Cambridge. Could Bothwell refer to him, who was no Catholic? Can he have handed in (in 1601) an earlier list of 1600, without deleting the name of the dead Gowrie? As to Gowrie's real creed, Bothwell must have known the truth, through Home, a reluctant convert to Presbyterianism, who went from Paris to Brussels to meet Bothwell, leaving Gowrie in Paris, just before Home and Gowrie openly, and, as it was said, Bothwell secretly, returned to Scotland in April 1600. Was the Gowrie conspiracy a Bothwellian plot? {129a}

We know little more about Gowrie, after his letters of 1595, till, on August 18, 1599, Colville reports to Cecil that the party of the Kirk (who were now without a leader among the greater nobles) intend to summon home the Earl. {129b} He is said to have stayed for three months at Geneva with Beza, the famous reformer, who was devoted to him. He was in Paris, in February and March 1600. The English ambassador, Neville, recommended Gowrie to Cecil, as 'a man of whom there may be exceeding good use made.' Elizabeth and Cecil were then on the worst terms with James. At Paris, Gowrie would meet Lord Home, who, as we have said and shall prove in a later connection, had an interview with the exiled Bothwell, still wandering, plotting and threatening descents on Scotland (p. 206).

On April 3, Gowrie was in London. {130a} He was very well received; 'a cabinet of plate,' it is said, was given to him by Elizabeth; what else passed we do not know. In May Gowrie returned to Scotland, and rode into Edinburgh among a cavalcade of his friends. According to Sir John Carey, writing to Cecil, from Berwick, on May 29, James displayed jealousy of Gowrie, 'giving him many jests and pretty taunts,' on his reception by Elizabeth, and 'marvelling that the ministers met him not.' {130b} Calderwood adds a rumour that James, talking of Gowrie's entry to Edinburgh, said, 'there were more with his father when he went to the scaffold.' Again, as the Earl leaned on the King's chair at breakfast, James talked of dogs and hawks, and made an allusion to the death of Riccio, in which Gowrie's father and grandfather took part.

These are rumours; it is certain that the King (June 20) gave Gowrie a year's respite from pursuit of his creditors, to whom he was in debt for moneys owed to him by the Crown, expenditure by the late Earl of Gowrie when in power (1583). {131a} It is also certain that Gowrie opposed the King's demands for money, in a convention of June 21. {131b} But so did Lord President Fyvie, who never ceased to be James's trusted minister, and later, Chancellor, under the title of Earl of Dunfermline. Calderwood reports that, after Gowrie's speech, Sir David Murray said, 'Yonder is an unhappy man; they are but seeking occasion of his death, which now he has given.' This is absurd: Fyvie and the Laird of Easter Wemyss opposed the King as stoutly, and no harm followed to them; Fyvie rising steadily (and he had opposed the King yet more sturdily before) to the highest official position.

Calderwood adds a silly tale of Dr. Herries. Beatrix Ruthven laughed at his lame leg; he looked in her palm, and predicted a great disaster. The same anecdote, with, of course, another subject, is told of Gowrie's own prediction that a certain man would come to be hanged, which was fulfilled. Gowrie had been at Perth, before the convention at Holyrood of June 21. To Perth he returned; thence, some time in July (about the 20th), {131c} he went to his castle of Strabran, in Atholl, to hunt. Whether his brother the Master remained with him continuously till the Earl's return to Perth on Saturday, August 2, I know not how to ascertain. If there is anything genuine in the plot-letters produced eight years later, the Master once or twice visited Edinburgh in July, but that may have been before going to Strabran.

Concerning the Master, a romantic story of unknown source, but certainly never alluded to in the surviving gossip of the day, was published, late in the eighteenth century, by Lord Hailes. 'A report is handed down that Lord _Gowrie's_ brother received from the Queen a ribbon which she had got from the King, that _Mr. Alexander_ went into the King's garden at Falkland on a sultry hot day, and lay down in a shade, and fell asleep. His breast being open, the King passed that way and discovered part of the ribbon about his neck below his cravat, upon which he made quick haste into the palace, which was observed by one of the Queen's ladies who passed the same way. She instantly took the ribbon from his neck, went a near way to the Queen's closet, where she found her Majesty at her toilet, whom she requested to lay the ribbon in a drawer.' James entered, and asked to be shown the ribbon. The Queen produced it, and James retired, muttering, 'Devil tak' me, but like is an ill mark.'

Legend does not say when, or in what year this occurred. But the fancy of authors has identified the Queen's lady with Beatrix Ruthven, and has added that the Master, in disgrace (though undetected), retired with Gowrie to Strabane, or Strabran. History has no concern with such fables. It is certain, however, or at least contemporary letters aver, that Queen Anne of Denmark was grieved and angered by the slaying of the Gowries. On October 21, 1600, Carey, writing to Cecil from Woodrington, mentions this, and the tattle to the effect that, as the Queen is about to have a child (Charles I.), 'she shall be kept as prisoner ever after.' Was the Master supposed to be father of the Queen's child? Carey goes on, 'There is a letter found with a bracelet in it, sent from the Queen to the Earl of Gowrie, to persuade him to leave his country life and come to Court, assuring him that he should enjoy any contents that Court could afford.' {133} Can some amorous promise underlie this, as in the case of Mr. Pickwick's letter to Mrs. Bardell, about the warming-pan? 'This letter the King hath,' says Carey. Was it with Gowrie, not the Master, that the Queen was in love? She was very fond of Beatrix Ruthven, and would disbelieve in the guilt of her brothers; hence these tears and that anger of the Queen.

But James also, says Calderwood, was as anxious as Carey declares that the Queen was, to bring Gowrie to Falkland. 'When the Earl was in Strabran, fifteen days before the fact, the King wrote sundry letters to the Earl, desiring him to come and hunt with him in the wood of Falkland; which letters were found in my Lord's pocket, at his death, as is reported, but were destroyed.' {134a}

So James was not jealous; both he and the Queen were inviting Gowrie to their country house, the Queen adding the gift of a bracelet. She may have worked it herself, like the bracelet which Queen Mary is said to have sent to Bothwell.

All this is the idlest gossip. But it is certain that, on one occasion, at the end of July, 'close letters' were sent from the Court at Edinburgh to Atholl and Gowrie; and, later, to Inchaffray and the Master, the first three are in Bothwell's list of Catholics ready to meet the Spanish invaders. The fact of the letters appears from the Treasurer's accounts, where the money paid to the boy who carried the letters is recorded, without dates of the days of the month. The boy got 33 shillings, Scots, for the journey from Edinburgh to the Earls of Gowrie and Atholl; 24 for the other two, which he carried from Falkland. Craigengelt, in his deposition, 'denies that during my Lord's being in Strabran, neither yet in Perth, after his coming from Strabran, he knew any man or page to come from Court to my Lord, or that he commanded to give them any meat or drink.' {134b}

No conclusion as to James's guilt can be drawn, either from the fact that he wrote to Atholl, Inchaffray, the Master, and Gowrie at the end of July, or from the circumstance that Craigengelt professed to know nothing about any messenger. James might write to ask the Earl to hunt, we cannot guess what he had to say, at the same time, to Atholl or Inchaffray or the Master. He may even have written about the affair of the Abbey of Scone, if it is true that the Master wished to get it from his brother. We really cannot infer that, as the Ruthvens would not come and be killed, when invited, at Falkland, James went to kill them at Perth. Even if he summoned the Master for August 5, intending to make it appear that the Master had asked him to come to Perth, the Master need not have arrived before seven in the morning, when the King went and hunted for four hours. What conceivable reason had the Master, if innocent, for leaving Perth at 4 A.M. and visiting his sovereign at seven in the morning?

As to the coming of the Gowries to Perth from Strabran or Strabane before the tragedy, we only know what Craigengelt stated. His language is not lucid.

'Depones that, my Lords being in Strabrand, Alexander Ruthven' (a kinsman) 'came from Dunkeld to my Lord. And that upon Friday (August 1) my Lord commanded Captain Ruthven to ride, and tell my Lady' (Gowrie's mother), 'that he was to come, and Captain Ruthven met my Lord at the ferry-boat, and rode back to Dunkeld with my Lord, where he' (Gowrie) 'having supped, returned to his bed at Trochene, the deponer being in his company.'

Where, at the end of July, was Lady Gowrie? Was she within a day's ride of her sons? Was she at Perth? We know that she was at Dirleton Castle, near North Berwick, on August 6. Had she left the neighbourhood of Perth between the 1st and 5th of August? Captain Ruthven seems to have ridden to Lady Gowrie, and back again to Dunkeld with Gowrie. If so (and I can make no other sense of it), she was in Perthshire on August 1, and went at once to Dirleton. Did she keep out of the way of the performances of August 5?

It is curious that no apologist for Gowrie, as far as I have observed, makes any remark on this perplexing affair of 'my Lady.' We know that she had once already set a successful trap for the King. He had not punished her; he took two of her daughters, Barbara and Beatrix, into his household; and restored to Gowrie his inheritance of the lands of Scone, which, as we know, had been held by his father. He had written a loving letter to Gowrie at Padua, after the young man had for many months been conspiring against him with his most dangerous enemy, the wild Earl of Bothwell.

On the morning of the fatal August 5, Gowrie went to sermon. What else he did, we learn from John Moncrieff, who was the Earl's cautioner, or guarantee, for a large sum due by him to one Robert Jolly. {137} He was also brother of Hew Moncrieff, who fled after having been with Gowrie in arms, against Herries, Ramsay, and Erskine. Both Moncrieffs, says John, were puzzled when they found that the Master had ridden from Perth so early in the morning. Gowrie, says Moncrieff, did not attend the Town Council meeting after church; he excused himself on account of private affairs. He also sent away George Hay who was with him on business when Henderson arrived from Falkland, saying that he had other engagements. For the same reason, he, at first, declined to do a piece of business with Moncrieff, who dined with him and two other gentlemen. 'He made him to misknow all things,' that is affected to take no notice, when Andrew Ruthven came in, and 'rounded to him' (whispered to him) about the King's approach. Then the Master entered, and Gowrie went out to meet the King.

The rest we know, as far as evidence exists.

[Picture: Queen Anne of Denmark]

We now have all the essential facts which rest on fairly good evidence, and we ask, did the Ruthvens lay a plot for the King, or did the King weave a web to catch the Ruthvens? Looking first at character and probable motives, we dismiss the gossip about the amorous Queen and the jealous King. The tatlers did not know whether to select Gowrie or the Master as the object of the Queen's passion, or whether to allege that she had a polyandrous affection for both at once. The letters of the age hint at no such amour till after the tragedy, when tales of the _liaison_ of Anne of Denmark with the elder or younger Ruthven, or both, arose as a myth to account for the events. The Queen, no doubt, was deeply grieved in a womanly way for the sake of her two maidens, Beatrix and Barbara Ruthven. Her Majesty, also in a womanly way, had a running feud with Mar and the whole house of Erskine. To Mar, certainly one of the few men of honour as well as of rank in Scotland, James had entrusted his son, Prince Henry; the care of the heir to the Crown was a kind of hereditary charge of the Erskines. The Queen had already, in her resentment at not having the custody of her son, engaged in one dangerous plot against Mar; she made another quarrel on this point at the time (1603) when the King succeeded to the crown of England. Now Mar was present at the Gowrie tragedy, and his cousin, Sir Thomas Erskine, took part in the deeds. Hating the Erskines, devoted to the Ruthven ladies, and always feebly in opposition to her husband, the Queen, no doubt, paraded her grief, her scepticism, and her resentment. This was quite in keeping with her character, and this conduct lent colour to the myth that she loved Gowrie, or the Master, or both, _par amours_. The subject is good for a ballad or a novel, but history has nothing to make with the legend on which Mr. G. P. R. James based a romance, and Mr. Pinkerton a theory.

Leaving fable for fact, what motives had James for killing both the Ruthvens? He had dropped the hereditary feud, and had taken no measures against the young Earl to punish his conspiracies with Bothwell in 1593-1594. Of Gowrie, on his return to Scotland in May, he may have entertained some jealousy. The Earl had been for months in Paris, caressed by the English ambassador, and probably, as we have seen, in touch with the exiled and ceaselessly conspiring Bothwell. In London the Earl had been well received by Elizabeth, and by Lord Willoughby, who, a year earlier, as Governor of Berwick, had insulted James by kidnapping, close to Edinburgh, an English gentleman, Ashfield, on a visit to the King's Court. Guevara, a cousin of Lord Willoughby, lured Ashfield into the coach of the English envoy Bowes, and drove him to the frontier. Lord Willoughby had a swift yacht lying off Leith, in case it was thought better to abduct Ashfield by sea. This is an example of English insolence to the Scottish King--also of English kidnapping--and Lord Willoughby, the manager, had made friends with Gowrie in England.

Thus James, who was then on the worst terms, short of open war, with England, may have suspected and disliked the Earl, who had once already put himself at the service of Elizabeth, and might do so again. In the April of 1600, rumours of a conspiracy by Archibald Douglas, the infamous traitor; Douglas of Spot, one of Morton's brood, and John Colville--who, with Bothwell and, later, independently, had caught James, had tried to catch him, and proposed to Essex to catch him again,--were afloat. Colville was in Paris at the same time as Gowrie; Bothwell was reported to have come secretly to Scotland in April or May, and this combination of facts or rumours may have aroused the King's mistrust. Again, the Kirk was restive; the preachers, in need of a leader, were said by Colville to have summoned Gowrie home. {140a} Moreover there were persons about James--for example, Colonel Stewart--who had reason to dread the Earl's vengeance for his father. The Ruthven Apologist mentions this fact, and the predilection of the Kirk for Gowrie, among the motives for destroying him.

Once more there are hints, very vague, that, in 1593, Bothwell aimed at changing the dynasty. {140b} The fable that Gowrie was a maternal grandson of Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV, by Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, her third husband, and that Gowrie was thus a candidate for the succession to the English throne, perhaps also for the hand of Arabella Stuart, may conceivably have existed. (Compare Appendix A.) Again, Gowrie had sided with the burgesses and minor barons, as against the nobles, by refusing a grant of money to James, in the convention of June 1600, and James owed money to Gowrie, as he did to most people. But we have already seen that an exemption had been granted to Gowrie for a year from pursuit of creditors, as far, that is, as regarded his _father's_ debts (80,000_l._ Scots), (June 20, 1600). The College of Justice refused to grant any new legal summonses of creditors against Gowrie, and suspended all that were extant.

Mr. Barbe accuses the King of 'utter and unblushing disregard for common truth and common honesty.' Be this as it may, the exemption granted to Gowrie was not regarded by his father's creditors as extending to his mother, after his dishonoured death. On November 1, 1600, Lady Gowrie implored Elphinstone, the Secretary, to bring her suit for relief before the King. The security for these debts was on her 'conjunct fee lands,' and creditors, because, I suppose, the Gowrie estates were about to be forfeited, pressed Lady Gowrie, who, of course, had no exemption. We know nothing as to the success of Lady Gowrie's petition, but we have seen that her daughters married very well. I presume that Gowrie, not his mother, had previously paid interest on the debts, 'he had already paid many sums of money.' James had already restored to Gowrie the valuable lands of Scone. {142}

However, taking things as the King's adversaries regard them, the cumulative effect of these several grudges (and of the mystery of Gowrie's Catholicism) would urge James to lay his very subtle plot. He would secretly call young Ruthven to Falkland by six in the morning of August 5, he would make it appear that Ruthven had invited _him_ to Perth, he would lure the youth to a turret, managing to be locked in with him and an armed man; he would post Ramsay below the turret window, and warn him to run up the dark staircase at the King's cry of treason. By the locked door he would exclude Lennox and Mar, while his minions would first delay Gowrie's approach, by the narrow stairs, and then permit him to enter with only one companion, Cranstoun. He would cause a report of his own departure to be circulated, exactly at the right moment to bring Gowrie under the turret window, and within reach of his cries. This plot requires the minutest punctuality, everything must occur at the right moment, and all would have been defeated had Gowrie told the truth about the King's departure, or even asked 'Where is the King's horse?' Or Gowrie might have stood in the streets of Perth, and summoned his burgesses in arms. The King and the courtiers, with their dead man, would have been beleaguered, without provisions, in Gowrie's house. Was James the man, on the strength of the grudges which we have carefully enumerated, to risk himself, unarmed, in this situation? As to how he managed to have the door locked, so as to exclude the majority of his suite, who can conjecture? How, again, did he induce Gowrie to aver, and that after making inquiry, that he _had_ ridden homewards?

I cannot believe that any sane man or monarch, from the motives specified, would or could have laid, and that successfully, the plot attributed to the King.

Turning to Gowrie, we find that his grudges against James may have been deep and many. If revengeful, he had the treacherous method of his father's conviction, and the insults to his mother, to punish. For a boy of seventeen he had already attempted a good deal, in 1593-1594. His mother had set him an example of King-catching, and it looks as if his mother had been near him in Perth, while he was at Strabane. If ambitious, and devoted to Elizabeth and England (as he had been), Gowrie had motives for a new Raid of Ruthven, the unceasing desire of the English Government. He might, if successful, head a new administration resting on the support of England and the Kirk. Such a change was due in the natural course of things. Or, quite the reverse, if a secret Catholic he might hand the King over to Bothwell.

Thus Gowrie may well have wished to revenge his father; his mother had once already helped to betray James to an attack of the most insulting nature; he himself was strong for the Kirk, over which James was playing the despot; _or_, he desired toleration for Catholics; he had been well received in England, where all such plots--their name was legion--had always been fostered; he was very young, and he risked everything. Only his method was new--that of strict secrecy. He had previously spoken to Mr. Cowper, minister of Perth, in a general way, about the failure of plots for lack of deep secrecy, and through the admission of too many confederates. Cowper told this to Spottiswoode, at Falkland. Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie's tutor, told Cowper and the Comptroller, 'unrequired' (not under torture, nor in answer to a question under examination), that Gowrie, when abroad, several times said that 'he was not a wise man that, having the execution of a high and dangerous purpose, communicated the same to any but himself.'

As to this secrecy, we must remember that Gowrie was very young; that in Italy he may have heard or read of romantic and crafty plots; and may long have dreamed (as Robert Oliphant's reported allegation declared) of some such scheme as that in which he failed. We must remember, too, that James's own account at least suggests a plan quite feasible. To bring James to Gowrie House, early in the day, when the townsmen were at kirk, to bring him with only three or four attendants, then to isolate him and carry him off, was far from impossible; they might hurry him, disguised, to Dirleton, a castle garrisoned and provisioned, according to Carey, who reports the version of Gowrie's friends. A Scottish judge, Gibson (the ancestor of Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael), was later carried from Leith Sands across the Border, with perfect success. A fault of the plan was that, once undertaken, it could not be dropped, even though James came late and well attended. Ruthven could not tell the King that his story about a captive and a pot of gold was false. To do that would have subjected him to a charge of treason. He could have only one motive for thus deceiving his Majesty. Thus the plot _had_ to go on, even under circumstances very unfavourable. There was no place for repentance.

Thus considered, the conspiracy looks like the plot of a romance, not without meritorious points, but painfully amateurish.

As proof of Gowrie's guilt, the evidence, I think, distinctly proves that he intentionally concealed from those about him the ride of his brother, Henderson, and Andrew Ruthven to Perth; that he concealed his knowledge, derived from Henderson, of the King's approach; and that Ruthven concealed from Craigengelt, on his return, his long ride to Falkland, saying that he had been on 'an errand not far off.' Moncrieff swore that Henderson gave him a similar answer. Asked by Moncrieff where he had been, he said 'he had been two or three miles above the town.' Henderson corroborated Moncrieff's evidence on this point. There can have been no innocent motive for all this secrecy. It would have been natural for Gowrie to order luncheon for the King to be prepared, as soon as Henderson arrived.

Finally, the Earl's assertions that James had ridden away, assertions repeated after he had gone upstairs to inquire and make sure, are absolutely incompatible with innocence. They could have only one motive, to induce the courtiers to ride off and leave the King in his hands.

What was to happen next? Who can guess at the plot of such a plotter? It is perhaps least improbable that the King was to be conveyed secretly, by sea or across Fife, to Dirleton in the first place. Gowrie may have had an understanding with Guevara at Berwick. James himself told Nicholson that a large English ship had hovered off the coast, refusing communication with the shore. Bothwell, again, now desperate, may have lately been nearer home than was known; finally, Fastcastle, the isolated eyrie on its perpendicular rock above the Northern Sea, may have been at Gowrie's disposal. I am disinclined to conjecture, being only certain that a young man with Gowrie's past--'Italianate,' and of dubious religion--was more apt to form a wild and daring plot than was his canny senior, the King of Scots. But that a plot of some kind Gowrie had laid, I am convinced by his secrecy, and by his falsehoods as to the King's departure. Among the traps for the King contrived by Bothwell and Colville, and reported by Colville to his English paymasters, were schemes quite as wild as that which Gowrie probably entertained. The King once in the pious hands of so godly a man as Gowrie, the party of the Kirk, or the party of the Church, would have come in and made themselves useful. {147}

XII. LOGAN OF RESTALRIG

We now arrive at an extraordinary sequel of the Gowrie mystery: a sequel in which some critics have seen final and documentary proof of the guilt of the Ruthvens. Others have remarked only a squalid intrigue, whereby James's ministers threw additional disgrace on their master. That they succeeded in disgracing themselves, we shall make only too apparent, but if the evidence which they handled proves nothing against the Ruthvens, it does not on that account invalidate the inferences which we have drawn as to their conspiracy. We come to the story of the Laird and the country writer.

That we may know the Laird better, a brief description of his home may be introduced. Within a mile and a half of the east end of Princes Street, Edinburgh, lies, on the left of the railway to the south, a squalid suburb. You drive or walk on a dirty road, north-eastwards, through unambitious shops, factories, tall chimneys, flaming advertisements, and houses for artisans. The road climbs a hill, and you begin to find, on each side of you, walls of ancient construction, and traces of great old doorways, now condemned. On the left are ploughed fields, and even clumps of trees with blackened trunks. Grimy are the stacks of corn in the farmyard to the left, at the crest of the hill. On the right, a gateway gives on a short avenue which leads to a substantial modern house. Having reached this point in my pilgrimage, I met a gentleman who occupies the house, and asked if I might be permitted to view the site. The other, with much courtesy, took me up to the house, of which only the portion in view from the road was modern. Facing the west all was of the old Scottish chateau style, with gables, narrow windows, and a strange bulky chimney on the north, bulging out of the wall. The west side of the house stood on the very brink of a steep precipice, beneath which lay what is now but a large deep waterhole, but, at the period of the Gowrie conspiracy, was a loch fringed with water weeds, and a haunt of wild fowl. By this loch, Restalrig Loch, the witch more than three centuries ago met the ghost of Tam Reid, who fell in Pinkie fight, and by the ghost was initiated into the magic which brought her to the stake.

I scrambled over a low wall with a deep drop, and descended the cliff so as to get a view of the ancient chateau that faces the setting sun. Beyond the loch was a muddy field, then rows on rows of ugly advertisements, then lines of 'smoky dwarf houses,' and, above these, clear against a sky of March was the leonine profile of Arthur's Seat. Steam rose and trailed from the shrieking southward trains between the loch and the mountain, old and new were oddly met, for the chateau was the home of an ancient race, the Logans of Restalrig, ancestors of that last Laird with whom our story has to do. Their rich lands stretched far and wide; their huge dovecot stands, sturdy as a little pyramid, in a field to the north, towards the firth. They had privileges over Leith Harbour which must have been very valuable: they were of Royal descent, through a marriage of a Logan with a daughter of Robert II. But their glory was in their ancestor, Sir Robert Logan, who fell where the good Lord James of Douglas died, charging the Saracens on a field of Spain, and following the heart of Bruce. So Barbour sings, and to be named by Barbour, for a deed and a death so chivalrous, is honour enough.

[Picture: Restalrig House]

[Picture: Restalrig Village]

The Logans flourished in their eyrie above the Loch of Restalrig, and intermarried with the best houses, Sinclairs, Ogilvys, Homes, and Ramsays of Dalhousie. It may be that some of them sleep under the muddy floor of St. Triduana's Chapel, in the village of Restalrig, at the foot of the hill on the eastern side of their old chateau. This village, surrounded by factories, is apparently just what it used to be in the days of James VI. The low thick-walled houses with fore-stairs, retain their ancient, high-pitched, red-tiled roofs, with dormer windows, and turn their tall narrow gables to the irregular street. 'A mile frae Embro town,' you find yourself going back three hundred years in time. On the right hand of the road, walking eastward, what looks like a huge green mound is visible above a high ancient wall. This is all that is left of St. Triduana's Chapel, and she was a saint who came from Achaia with St. Regulus, the mythical founder of St. Andrews. She died at Restalrig on October 8, 510, and may have converted the Celts, who then dwelt in a crannog in the loch; at all events we hear that, in a very dry summer, the timbers of a crannog were found in the sandy deposit of the lake margin. The chapel (or chapter-house?), very dirty and disgracefully neglected, has probably a crypt under it, and certainly possesses a beautiful groined roof, springing from a single short pillar in the centre. The windows are blocked up with stones, the exterior is a mere mound of grass like a sepulchral tumulus. On the floor lies, broken, the gravestone of a Lady Restalrig who died in 1526. Outside is a patched-up church; the General Assembly of 1560 decreed that the church should be destroyed as 'a monument of idolatry' (it was a collegiate church, with a dean, and prebendaries), and in 1571 the wrought stones were used to build a new gate inside the Netherbow Port. The whole edifice was not destroyed, but was patched up, in 1836, into a Presbyterian place of worship. This old village and kirk made up 'Restalrig Town,' a place occupied by the English during the siege of Leith in 1560. So much of history may be found in this odd corner, where the sexton of the kirk speaks to the visitor about 'the Great Logan,' meaning that Laird who now comes into the sequel of the Gowrie mystery.

For some thirty years before the date of which we are speaking, a Robert Logan had been laird of Restalrig, and of the estate of Flemington, in Berwickshire, where his residence was the house of Gunnisgreen, near Eyemouth, on the Berwickshire coast. He must have been a young boy when, in 1560, the English forces besieging Leith (then held by the French for Mary of Guise) pitched their camp at Restalrig.

In 1573, Kirkcaldy of Grange and Maitland of Lethington gallantly held the last strength of the captive Mary Stuart, the Castle of Edinburgh. The fortress was to fall under the guns of the English allies of that Earl of Gowrie (then Lord Ruthven), who was the father of the Gowrie of our mystery.

On April 17, 1573, a compact was made between Lord Ruthven and Drury, the English general. One provision was (the rest do not here concern us) that Alexander, Lord Home; Lethington; and Robert Logan of Restalrig, if captured, 'shall be reserved to be justified by the laws of Scotland,' which means, hanged by the neck. But neither on that nor on any other occasion was our Logan hanged. {152} He somehow escaped death and forfeiture, when Kirkcaldy was gibbeted after the fall of the castle. In 1577, we find him, with Lord Lindsay and Mowbray of Barnbogle (now Dalmeny) surety for Queen Mary's half-brother, the Lord Robert Stewart, who vainly warned Darnley to escape from Kirk o' Field. Lord Robert was then confined by the Regent Morton in Linlithgow, and Logan with the rest was surety in 10,000_l._ that he would not attempt to escape. Later, Logan was again surety that Lord Robert would return after visiting his dominions, the Orkney Islands. {153}

Logan, though something of a pirate, was clearly a man of substance and of a good house, which he strengthened by alliances. One of his wives, Elizabeth Macgill, was the daughter of the Laird of Cranstoun Riddell, and one of her family was a member of the Privy Council. From Elizabeth Logan was divorced; she was, apparently, the mother of his eldest son, Robert. By the marriage of an ancestor of Logan's with an heiress of the family of Hume, he acquired the fortress and lands of Fastcastle, near St. Abbs, on the Berwickshire coast. The castle, now in ruins, is the model of Wolfscrag in 'The Bride of Lammermoor.' Standing on the actual verge of a perpendicular cliff above the sea, whence it is said to have been approached by a staircase cut in the living rock, it was all but inaccessible, and was strongly fortified. Though commanded by the still higher cliff to the south, under which it nestled on its narrow plateau of rock, Fastcastle was then practically impregnable, and twenty men could have held it against all Scotland. Around it was, and is, a roadless waste of bent and dune, from which it was severed by a narrow rib of rock jutting seawards, the ridge being cut by a cavity which was spanned by a drawbridge. Master of this inaccessible eyrie, Logan was most serviceable to the plotters of these troubled times.

His religion was doubtful, his phraseology could glide into Presbyterian cant, but we know that he indifferently lent the shelter of his fastness to the Protestant firebrand, wild Frank Stewart, Earl of Bothwell (who, like Carey writing from Berwick to Cecil, reckons Logan among Catholics), or to George Ker, the Catholic intriguer with Spain. Logan loved a plot for its own sake, as well as for chances of booty and promotion. He was a hard drinker, and associate of rough yeomen and lairds like Ninian Chirnside of Whitsumlaws (Bothwell's emissary to the wizard, Richard Graham), yet a man of ancient family and high connections. He seems to have been intimate with the family of Sir John Cranstoun of Cranstoun. On one occasion he informs Archibald Douglas, the detested and infamous murderer and deeply dyed traitor, that 'John of Cranstoun is the one man now that bears you best good will.' (January 1587?)

[Picture: Fastcastle (circ. 1820)]

In January 1600, the year of the Gowrie plot, we find Sir John Cranstoun in trouble for harbouring an outlawed Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, who was, with Douglas, the Laird of Spot, one of Bothwell's allies in all his most desperate raids on the person of King James. In 1592, Mr. Thomas Cranstoun was forfeited, he was informed against for 'new conspiracies against his Majesty's life and estate,' and, in January 1600, Sir John Cranstoun was sheltering this dangerous and desperate Bothwellian outlaw, as was his son-in law, Mr. William Cranstoun. {155a}

Now the Mr. Thomas Cranstoun who was hanged for his part in the Gowrie affair, was brother of Sir John Cranstoun of Cranstoun, the ally of that other Mr. Thomas Cranstoun who was so deep in Bothwell's wild raids on the King's person. In the spring of 1600 (as we have said, but must here repeat) there were reports that Bothwell had secretly returned to Scotland, and, on April 20, 1600, just before the date of Gowrie's arrival in Edinburgh from London, Nicholson reports suspected plots of Archibald Douglas, of John Colville, a ruined Bothwellian, and a spy, and of the Laird of Spot. {155b} This Colville had recently hinted to Essex that he could do a serviceable enterprise. 'As for the service I mean to do, if matters go to the worst, it shall be such, God willing--if I lose not my life in doing thereof--as no other can do with a million of gold, and yet I shall not exceed the bonds of humanity,' that is, he will not _murder_ the King. 'But for conscience sake and worldly honesty, I must first be absolved of my natural allegiance.' (April 27, 1598; again, October 20, 1598.) {156}

The point for us to mark is that all these conspirators and violent men, Bothwell (in exile or secretly in Scotland), Colville (in 1600 an exile in Paris), the Laird of Spot, the Cranstouns, the infamous Archibald Douglas, with Richard Douglas his nephew, and Logan of Restalrig, were united, if not by real friendship, at least, as Thucydides says, by 'partnership in desperate enterprises' and by 1600 were active in a subterranean way. If it is fair to say, _noscitur a sociis_, 'a man is known by the company he keeps,' Logan of Restalrig bears the mark of the secret conspirator. He had relations with persons more distinguished than his Chirnsides and Whittingham Douglases, though they were of near kin to the Earl of Morton. His mother, a daughter of Lord Gray, married Lord Home, after the death of Logan's father. The Laird of Restalrig was thus a half-brother of the new Lord Home, a Warden of the Border, and also was first cousin of the beautiful, accomplished, and infamous Master of Gray, the double spy of England and of Rome.

Logan, too, like the Master, had diplomatic ambitions. In 1586 (July 29) we find him corresponding with the infamous Archibald Douglas, one of Darnley's murderers, whom James had sent, in the crisis of his mother's fate, as his ambassador to Elizabeth. In 1586, Logan, with two other Logans, was on the packed jury which acquitted Douglas of Darnley's murder. Logan was a retainer of Bothwell, that meteor-like adventurer and king-catcher, and he asks Douglas to try to procure him employment (of course as a spy) from Walsingham, the English statesman. {157}

In October of the same year, we find the Master of Gray writing to Douglas, thus: 'Of late I was forced, at Restalrig's suit, to pawn some of my plate, and the best jewel I had, to get him money for his marriage'--his second marriage, apparently. By December 1586 we find Logan riding to London, as part of the suite of the Master of Gray, who was to plead with Elizabeth for Mary's life. He was the Master's most intimate confidant, and, as such, in February-March 1587, proposed to sell all his secrets to Walsingham! Nevertheless, when Gray was driven into exile, later in 1587, Logan was one of his 'cautioners,' or sureties. He had been of the party of Gowrie's father, during that nobleman's brief tenure of power in 1582, 1583, and, when Gowrie fell, Logan was ordered to hand his eyrie of Fastcastle over, at six hours' notice, to the officers of the King. Through the stormy years of Bothwell's repeated raids on James (1592-1594) Logan had been his partisan, and had been denounced a rebel. Later he appears in trouble for highway robbery committed by his retainers. Among the diversions of this country gentleman was flat burglary. In December 1593, 'when nichts are lang and mirk,' the Laird helped himself to the plate-chest of William Nesbit of Newton. 'Under silence of night he took spuilzie of certain gold and silver to the value of three thousand merks Scots.' The executors of Nesbit did not bring their action till after Logan died, in July 1606, 'in respect the said clandestine deed and fact came not to our knowledge, nor light as to who had committed the same,' till just before the action was brought.

In 1599, when conspiracies were in the air, Logan was bound over not to put Fastcastle in the hands of his Majesty's enemies and rebels. {158}

This brief sketch of a turbulent life is derived from Logan's own letters to Archibald Douglas, now among the Cecil Papers at Hatfield; from the 'Papers relating to the Master of Gray,' in which we find Logan, under a cypher name, betraying the Master, his cousin and ally, and from the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, in which all that dead world, from the King to the crofter, may be traced, often in circumstances peculiarly private.

At that time, civil processes of 'horning,' 'putting to the horn,' or outlawry, were the common resort of creditors against procrastinating debtors. Many of the most respectable persons, gentlemen and ladies, appear in these suits; Robert Abercromby sues a lady of rank for 150_l._ Scots. He is the burgess of Edinburgh, the King's saddler, who, as the Master of Ruthven told Craigengelt, had brought the King from Falkland to Perth, 'to take order for his debt.' Now the singular thing is that we never find Logan of Restalrig recorded as under 'horning' for debt, whereas, considering his character, we might expect him never to be free from 'the horn.' On the other hand, we know him to have been a lender, not a borrower. He was _sui profusus_. On January 1, 1599, Cecil had been making inquiries as to Logan, from Lord Willoughby commanding at Berwick. Cecil always had his eyes on Border Scots, likely to be useful in troubling King James. Willoughby replies, 'There is sutch a laird of Lesterigge as you write of, a vain lose man, a greate favourer of thefes reputed, yet a man of a good clan, as they here tearme it, and a gud felow.' {159}

Such was Logan of Restalrig, 'Old Rugged and Dangerous.' In 1601, May 30, we find him appearing as surety for Philip Mowbray, one of the Mowbrays of Barnbogle, whose sister stood by Queen Mary at the scaffold, and whose brother Francis was with the bold Buccleuch, when he swam 'that wan water' of Esk, and rescued Kinmont Willie from Carlisle Castle. This Francis Mowbray and his brother Philip were (1601-1603) mixed up with Cecil in some inscrutable spy-work, and intrigues for the murder of King James. The Mowbrays were old friends of Logan: they had been engaged in privateering enterprises together, but could produce no letters of marque! In 1603, Francis Mowbray, abandoned and extradited by Cecil, was killed in an attempt to escape from Edinburgh Castle. He had been accused, by an Italian fencing-master, of a conspiracy to kill James. Cecil had, of course, by this time made peace and alliance with James, who was on the point of ascending the English throne, and he gave up Francis. Mowbray challenged the Italian fencing-master to judicial combat; the Italian came down to fight him, the lists were actually pitched at Holyrood, when (January 31, 1603) Francis preferred to try the chance of flight; the rope of knotted sheet to which he trusted broke, and he was dashed to pieces on the Castle rocks. {160a}

Since 1592, Mowbray had been corresponding with Logan's friend, Archibald Douglas, and offering his services to Cecil. To Cecil, in September 1600, he was again applying, regarding Elizabeth as his debtor. In 1600, he was in touch with Henry Locke, who had been Cecil's go-between in his darkest intrigues against James, and his agent with Bothwell, Atholl, and the Gowrie slain on August 5, 1600. But, in the autumn of 1602, Cecil had become the secret ally of James, and gave up poor Francis, a broken tool of his and of Elizabeth's. {160b}

We have now learned a good deal about Logan's habitual associates, and we have merely glanced at a few of the numberless plots against James which were encouraged by the English Government. If James was nervously apprehensive of treason, he had good cause. But of Logan at the moment of the Gowrie Plot, we know nothing from public documents. We do know, however, on evidence which has previously been in part unpublished, in part unobserved, that from August 1600 onwards, Logan was oddly excited and restless. Though not in debt--or at least though no record of his 'horning' exists--he took to selling his lands, Restalrig, Flemington, Gunnisgreen, Fastcastle. {161} After 1600 he sold them all; he wallowed in drink; he made his wife wretched; with his eldest son he was on ill terms; he wandered to London, and to France in 1605, and he returned to die (of plague, it seems) in the Canongate, a landless but a monied man, in July 1606.

Why did Logan sell all his lands, investing in shipping property? The natural inference, at the time, was that he had been engaged in 'some ill turn,' some mysterious conspiracy, and people probably (certainly, if we believe the evidence to follow) thought that he had been an accomplice in the Gowrie affair.

He died, and his children by his first wives dissociated themselves from his executorship. The bulk of it was the unpaid part of the purchase money for his lands, sold by him to Balmerino, and Dunbar, James's trusted ministers, who owed some 33,000 marks to the estate.

Logan had a 'doer,' or law agent, a country writer, or notary, named Sprot, who dwelt at Eyemouth, a hungry creature, who did not even own a horse. When Logan rode to Edinburgh, Sprot walked thither to join him. Yet the two were boon companions; Sprot was always loitering and watching at Gunnisgreen, always a guest at the great Christmas festivals, given by the Laird to his rough neighbours. The death of Logan was a disaster to Sprot, and to all the parasites of the Laird.

Logan died, we saw, in July 1606. In April, 1608, Sprot was arrested by a legal official, named Watty Doig. He had been blabbing in his cups, it is said, about the Gowrie affair; certainly most compromising documents, apparently in Logan's hand, and with his signature, were found on Sprot's person. They still bear the worn softened look of papers carried for long in the pockets. {162} Sprot was examined, and confessed that he knew beforehand of the Gowrie conspiracy, and that the documents in his possession were written by Logan to Gowrie and other plotters. He was tortured and in part recanted; Logan, he said, had _not_ written the guilty letters: he himself had forged them. This was all before July 5, 1608, while Mr. Robert Oliphant lay in prison, in London, on the same charge of guilty foreknowledge. Early in July 1608, the Earl of Dunbar came from London to Edinburgh, to deal with the affairs of the Kirk. He took Sprot out of his dungeon, gave him a more wholesome chamber, secluded him from gentlemen who came and threatened him (or so he said) if he made revelations, and Dunbar provided him with medical attendance. The wounds inflicted in 'the boot' were healed.

For six weeks Sprot was frequently examined, before members of the Privy Council and others, without torture. What he said the public did not know, nor, till now, have historians been better informed. Throughout, after July 5, 1608, he persisted in declaring Logan's complicity in the Gowrie conspiracy, and his own foreknowledge. He was tried, solely on the evidence of guilty foreknowledge alleged in his own confessions, and of extracts, _given by him from memory only_, of a letter from Gowrie to Logan (_not_ one of those which he claimed to have forged), and another of Logan to Gowrie, both of July 1600. On August 12, Sprot was hanged at Edinburgh. He repeated his confession of guilt from every corner of the scaffold. He uttered a long religious speech of contrition. Once, he said, he had been nearly drowned: but God preserved him for this great day of confession and repentance. But 'no unbeliever in the guilt of Gowrie,' says Calderwood, 'was one whit the more convinced.' Of course not, nor would the death of Henderson--which they clamoured for--have convinced them. They said, falsely, that Sprot was really condemned as a forger, and, having to die, took oath to his guilt in the Gowrie conspiracy, in consideration of promises of help to his wife and family. {164}

Nearly a year later, in June 1609, the exhumed remains of Logan were brought into court (a regular practice in the case of dead traitors), and were tried for treason. Five letters by Logan, of July 1600, were now produced. Three were from Logan to conspirators unnamed and unknown. One was to a retainer and messenger of his, Laird Bower, who had died in January 1606. These letters were declared, by several honourable witnesses, to be in Logan's very unusual handwriting and orthography: they were compared with many genuine letters of his, and no difference was found. The Parliamentary Committee, 'The Lords of the Articles,' previously sceptical, were convinced by the five letters, the evidence to handwriting, the energy of the Earl of Dunbar, and the eloquence of the King's Advocate. Logan's children were all forfeited, and Dunbar saved the money which he owed to Logan's estate. This trial is not alluded to, either by Calderwood or Archbishop Spottiswoode, in their histories. The five letters produced in the trial of Logan exist, and have been accepted as authentic by Mr. Tytler and Mr. Hill Burton, but not by writers who favour the Ruthvens. We print all five letters in Appendix C.

Meanwhile what had Sprot really said, under private examination, between July 5 and August 12, 1608, when he was executed?

This question is to be answered, from the hitherto unpublished records, in the following chapters. But, in common charity, the reader must be warned that the exposition is inevitably puzzling and complex. Sprot, under examination, lied often, lied variously, and, perhaps, lied to the last. Moreover much, indeed everything, depends here on exact dates, and Sprot's are loose, as was natural in the circumstances, the events of which he spoke being so remote in time.

Consequently the results of criticism of his confession may here be stated with brevity. The persevering student, the reader interested in odd pictures of domestic life, and in strange human characters may read on at his own peril. But the actual grains of fact, extracted from tons of falsehood, may be set down in very few words.

The genuine and hitherto unknown confessions of Sprot add no absolute certainty as to the existence of a Gowrie conspiracy. His words, when uncorroborated, can have no weight with a jury. He confessed that _all_ the alleged Logan papers which, up to two days before his death, were in possession of the Privy Council, were forgeries by himself. But, on August 10, he announced that he had possessed one _genuine_ letter of Logan to Gowrie (dated July 29, 1600). That letter (our Letter IV) or a forged copy was then found in his repositories. Expert evidence, however, decides that this document, like all the others, is in a specious imitation of Logan's hand, but that it has other characteristics of Sprot's own hand, and was penned by Sprot himself. Why he kept it back so long, why he declared that it alone was genuine, we do not know. That it _is_ genuine, _in substance_, and was copied by Sprot from a real letter of Logan's in an imitation of Logan's hand, and that, if so, it proves Logan's accession to the conspiracy, is my own private opinion. But that opinion is based on mere literary considerations, on what is called 'internal evidence,' and is, therefore, purely a matter of subjective impression, like one's idea of the possible share of Shakespeare in a play mainly by Fletcher or another. Evidence of this kind is not historical evidence. It follows that the whole affair of Sprot, and of the alleged Logan letters, adds nothing certain to the reasons for believing that there was a Gowrie conspiracy. As far as Sprot and his documents are concerned, we know that all, as they stand, are pure fictitious counterfeits by that unhappy man, while, as to whether one letter (IV) and perhaps another (I) are genuine _in substance_, every reader must form his own opinion, on literary grounds, and no opinion is of much value. Such is a brief summary of the facts. But the tenacious inquirer who can follow us through the tangled mazes of Sprot's private confessions, will perhaps agree with me that they contain distinguishable grains of fact, raising a strong surmise that Logan was really involved with Gowrie in a plot. Yet this, again, is a subjective impression, which may vary with each reader.

XIII. THE SECRETS OF SPROT

The final and deepest mystery of the mysterious Gowrie affair rises, like a mist from a marsh, out of these facts concerning Sprot. When he was convicted, and hanged, persisting in his confessions, on August 12, 1608, no letters by Gowrie, or any other conspirator, were produced in Court. Extracts, however, of a letter from Gowrie to Logan, and of one from Logan to Gowrie, were quoted in Sprot's formal Indictment. They were also quoted in an official publication, an account of Sprot's case, prepared by Sir William Hart, the Chief Justice, and issued in 1608. Both these documents (to which we return) are given by Mr. Pitcairn, in the second volume of his 'Criminal Trials.' But later, when the dead Logan was tried in 1609, five of his alleged plot letters (never _publicly_ mentioned in Sprot's trial) were produced by the prosecution, and not one of these was identical with the letter of Logan cited in the Indictment of Sprot, and in the official account of his trial. There were strong resemblances between Logan's letter, quoted but not produced, in 1608, and a letter of Logan's produced, and attested to be in his handwriting, in 1609. But there were also remarkable variations.

Of these undeniable facts most modern historians who were convinced of the guilt of the Ruthvens take no notice; though the inexplicable discrepancies between the Logan letters _quoted_ in 1608, and the letters _produced_ as his in 1609, had always been matters of comment and criticism.

As to the letters of 1609, Mr. Tytler wrote, 'their import cannot be mistaken; _their authenticity has never been questioned_; they still exist . . . ' Now assuredly the letters exist. The five alleged originals were found by Mr. Pitcairn, among the Warrants of Parliament, in the General Register House, in Edinburgh, and were published by him, but without their endorsements, in his 'Criminal Trials' in Scotland. (1832). {169} Copies of the letters are also 'bookit,' or engrossed, in the Records of Parliament. These 'bookit' transcripts were made carelessly, and the old copyist was puzzled by the handwriting and orthography of the alleged originals before him. The controversy about the genuineness of the five letters took new shapes after Mr. Pitcairn discovered those apparently in Logan's hand, and printed them in 1832. Mr. Hill Burton accepts them with no hint of doubt, and if Mr. Tytler was the most learned and impartial, Mr. Hill Burton was the most sceptical of our historians. Yet on this point of authenticity these historians were too hasty. The authenticity of the letters (except one, No. IV) was denied by the very man, Sprot, in whose possession most of them were originally found. {170} The evidence of his denial has been extant ever since Calderwood wrote, who tells us, clearly on the authority of an older and anonymous History in MS. (now in the Advocates' Library), that Sprot, when first taken (April 13-19, 1608), accused Logan of writing the letters, but withdrew the charge under torture, and finally, when kindly treated by Lord Dunbar, and healed of his wounds, declared that he himself had forged all the Logan letters (save one). Yet Logan was, to Sprot's certain knowledge (so Sprot persistently declared), involved in the Gowrie conspiracy.

Now assuredly this appeared to be an incredible assertion of Calderwood, or of his MS. source. He was a stern Presbyterian, an enemy of the King (who banished him), and an intimate friend of the Cranstoun family, who, in 1600, were closely connected with conspirators of their name. Thus prejudiced, Calderwood was believed by Mr. Pitcairn to have made an untrue or confused statement. Logan is in a plot; Sprot knows it, and yet Sprot forges letters to prove Logan's guilt, and these letters, found in Sprot's possession, prove his own guilty knowledge. There seems no sense in such behaviour. It might have been guessed that Sprot knew of Logan's guilt, but had no documentary evidence of it, and therefore forged evidence for the purpose of extorting blackmail from Logan. But, by 1608, when Sprot was arrested with some of the documents in his pocket, Logan had been dead for nearly two years.

The guess, that Sprot knew of Logan's treason, but forged the proof of it, for purposes of blackmailing him, was not made by historians. The guess was getting 'warm,' as children say in their game, was very near the truth, but it was not put forward by criticism. Historians, in fact, knew that Logan would not have stood an attempt at extortion. He was not that kind of man. In 1594, he made a contract with Napier of Merchistoun, the inventor of Logarithms. Tradition declared that there was a hoard of gold in 'the place of Fastcastle.' Napier was to discover it (probably by the Divining Rod), and Logan was to give him a third of the profits. But Napier, knowing his man, inserted a clause in the deed, to the effect that, after finding the gold, _he was to be allowed a free exit from Fastcastle_. Whether he found the hoard or not, we do not know. But, two years later, in letting a portion of his property, Napier introduced the condition that his tenant should never sublet it to any person of the name of Logan! If he found the gold he probably was not allowed to carry off his third share. Logan being a resolute character of this kind, Sprot, a cowering creature, would not forge letters to blackmail him. He would have been invited to dine at Fastcastle. The cliffs are steep, the sea is deep, and tells no tales.

Thus where was Sprot's motive for forging letters in Logan's hand, and incriminating the Laird of Restalrig, and for carrying them about in his pocket in 1608? But where was his motive for confessing when taken and examined that he _did_ forge the letters, if his confession was untrue, while swearing, to his certain destruction, that he had a guilty foreknowledge of the Gowrie conspiracy? He _might_ conciliate Government and get pardoned as King's evidence, by producing what he called genuine Logan letters, and thus proving the conspiracy, and clearing the King's character; but this he did not do. He swore to the last that Logan and he were both guilty (so Calderwood's authority rightly reported), but that the plot letters were forged by himself, to what end Calderwood did not say. All this appeared midsummer madness. Calderwood, it was argued, must be in error.

A theory was suggested that Sprot really knew nothing of the Gowrie mystery; that he had bragged falsely of his knowledge, in his cups; that the Government pounced on him, made him forge the letters of Logan to clear the King's character by proving a conspiracy, and then hanged him, still confessing his guilt. But Mr. Mark Napier, a learned antiquary, replied (in a long Appendix to the third volume of the History by the contemporary Spottiswoode) to this not very probable conjecture by showing that, when they tried Sprot, Government produced no letters at all, only an alleged account by Sprot of two letters unproduced. Therefore, in August 1608, Mr. Napier argued, Government had no letters; if they had possessed them, they would infallibly have produced them. That seemed sound reasoning. In 1608 Government had no plot letters; therefore, the five produced in the trial of the dead Logan were forged for the Government, by somebody, between August 1608 and June 1609. Mr. Napier refused to accept Calderwood's wild tale that Sprot, while confessing Logan's guilt and his own, also confessed to having forged Logan's letters.

Yet Calderwood's version (or rather that of his anonymous authority in MS.) was literally accurate. Sprot, in _private_ examinations (July 5, August 11, 1608), confessed to having forged all the letters but one, the important one, Letter IV, Logan to Gowrie. This confession the Government burked.

The actual circumstances have remained unknown and are only to be found in the official, but _suppressed_, reports of Sprot's private examinations, now in the muniment room of the Earl of Haddington. These papers enable us partly to unravel a coil which, without them, no ingenuity could disentangle. Sir Thomas Hamilton, the King's Advocate, popularly styled 'Tam o' the Cowgate,' from his house in that old 'street of palaces,' was the ancestor of Lord Haddington, who inherits his papers. Sir Thomas was an eminent financier, lawyer, statesman, and historical collector and inquirer, who later became Lord Binning, and finally Earl of Haddington. As King's Advocate he held, and preserved, the depositions, letters, and other documents, used in the private examinations of Sprot, on and after July 5, 1608. The records of Sprot's examinations between April 19 and July 5, 1600, are not known to be extant.

Sir Thomas's collection consists of summonses, or drafts of summonses, for treason, against the dead Logan (1609). There is also a holograph letter of confession (July 5, 1608) from Sprot to the Earl of Dunbar. There are the records of the _private_ examinations of Sprot (July 5-August 11, 1600) and of other persons whom he more or less implicated. There are copies by Sprot, in his 'course,' that is, current, handwriting, of two of the five letters in Logan's hand (or in an imitation of it). These are letters I and IV, produced at the posthumous trial of Logan in June 1609. Finally, there are letters in Logan's hand (or in an imitation of it), addressed to James Bower and to one Ninian Chirnside, with allusions to the plot, and there is a long memorandum of matters of business, also containing hints about the conspiracy, in Logan's hand, or in an imitation thereof, addressed to John Bell, and James Bower.

Of these compromising papers, one, a letter to Chirnside, was found by the Rev. Mr. Anderson (in 1902) torn into thirteen pieces (whereof one is missing), wrapped up in a sheet of foolscap of the period. Mr. Anderson has placed the pieces together, and copied the letter. Of all these documents, only five letters (those published by Mr. Pitcairn) were 'libelled,' or founded on, and produced by the Government in the posthumous trial of Logan (1609). Not one was produced before the jury who tried Sprot on August 12, 1608. He was condemned, we said, merely on his own confession. In his 'dittay,' or impeachment, and in the official account of the affair, published in 1608, were cited fragments of two letters _quoted from memory by Sprot under private examination_. These quotations from memory differ, we saw, in many places from any of the five letters produced in the trial of 1609, a fact which has aroused natural suspicions. This is the true explanation of the discrepancies between the plot letter cited in Sprot's impeachment, and in the Government pamphlet on his case; and the similar, though not identical, letter produced in 1609. The indictment and the tract published by Government contain merely Sprot's recollections of the epistle from Logan to Gowrie. The letter (IV) produced in 1609 is the genuine letter of Logan, or so Sprot seems, falsely, to swear. _This_ document did not come into the hands of Government till after the Indictment, containing Sprot's quotation of the letter from memory, was written, or, if it did, was kept back.

All this has presently to be proved in detail.

As the Government (a fact unknown to our historians) possessed all the alleged Logan letters and papers _before_ Sprot was hanged, and as, at his trial, they concealed this circumstance even from Archbishop Spottiswoode (who was present at Sprot's public trial by jury), a great deal of perplexity has been caused, and many ingenious but erroneous conjectures have been invented. The Indictment or 'dittay' against Sprot, on August 12, 1608, is a public document, but not an honest one. It contains the following among other averments. We are told that Sprot, in July 1600, at Fastcastle, saw and read the beginning of a letter from Logan to Gowrie (Letter IV). Logan therein expresses delight at receiving a letter of Gowrie's: he is anxious to avenge 'the Macchiavelian massacre of our dearest friends' (the Earl decapitated in 1584). He advises Gowrie to be circumspect, 'and be earnest with your brother, that he be not rash in any speeches touching the purpose of Padua.'

[Picture: Fastcastle]

This letter, _as thus cited_, is not among the five later produced in 1609; it is a blurred reminiscence of parts of _two_ of them. The reason of these discrepancies is that the letter is quoted in the Indictment, _not_ from the document itself (which apparently reach the prosecution after the Indictment was framed), but from a version given from memory by Sprot, in one of his private examinations. Next, Sprot is told in his Indictment that, some time later, Logan asked Bower to find this letter, which Gowrie, for the sake of secrecy, had returned to Bower to be delivered to Logan. We know that this was the practice of intriguers. After the December riot at Edinburgh in 1596, the Rev. Robert Bruce, writing to ask Lord Hamilton to head the party of the Kirk, is said to request him to return his own letter by the bearer. Gowrie and Logan practised the same method. The indictment goes on to say that Bower, being unable to read, asked Sprot to search for Logan's letter to Gowrie, among his papers, that Sprot found it, 'abstracted' it (stole it), retained it, and 'read it divers times,' a _false quotation of the MS. confession_. Sprot really said that he kept the stolen letter (IV) '_till_' he had framed on it, as a model, three forged letters. It contained a long passage of which the 'substance' is quoted. This passage as printed in Sprot's Indictment is not to be found textually, in any of the five letters later produced. It is, we repeat, merely the version given from memory, by Sprot, at one of his last private examinations, before the letter itself came into the hands of Government. In either form, the letter meant high treason.

Such is the evidence of the Indictment against Sprot, of August 12, 1608. In the light of Sprot's real confessions, hitherto lying in the Haddington muniment room, we know the Indictment to be a false and garbled document. Next, on the part of Government, we have always had a published statement by Sir William Hart, the King's Justice, with an introduction by Dr. George Abbot, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in Edinburgh, and present when Sprot was hanged. This tract was published by Bradewood, London, in 1608, and is reprinted by Pitcairn.

After a verbose, pious, and pedantic diatribe, Abbot comes to the point. Sprot was arrested in April 1608, first on the strength 'of some words that fell from himself,' and, next, '_of some papers found upon him_.' What papers? They are never mentioned in the Indictment of Sprot. They are never alluded to in the sequel of Abbot's pamphlet, containing the official account, by Sir William Hart, of Sprot's Trial and Examinations. In mentioning 'some papers found upon' Sprot, Dr. Abbot 'let the cat out of the bag,' but writers like Mr. Napier, and other sceptics of his way of thinking, deny that any of the compromising letters were found at all.

No letters, we say, are mentioned by Sir William Hart, in Abbot's tract (1608), _as having been produced_. Archbishop Spottiswoode, who was present at Sprot's public trial (August 12, 1608), thought the man one of those insane self-accusers who are common enough, and observes that he did not 'show the letter'--that of Logan to Gowrie (IV). This remark of Spottiswoode, an Archbishop, a converted Presbyterian, a courtier, and an advocate for the King, has been a source of joy to all Ruthven apologists. 'Spottiswoode saw though the farce,' they say; 'there was no letter at all, and, courtier and recreant as he was, Spottiswoode had the honesty to say so in his History.'

To this there used to be no reply. But now we know the actual and discreditable truth. The Government was, in fact, engaged in a shameful scheme to which Archbishops were better not admitted. They meant to use this letter (IV) on a later occasion, but they also meant to use some of the other letters which Sprot (unknown to Spottiswoode) had confessed to be forgeries. The archiepiscopal conscience might revolt at such an infamy, Spottiswoode might tell the King, so the Scottish Government did not then allow the Archbishop, or the public, to know that they had any Logan letters. No letter at all came into open and public Court in 1608. Hart cites a short one, from Gowrie to Logan. Gowrie hopes to see Logan, or, at least, to send a trusty messenger, 'anent the purpose you know. But rather would I wish yourself to come, not only for that errand, but for some other thing that I have to advise with you.' There is no date of place or day. This letter, harmless enough, was never produced in Court, and Mr. Barbe supposes that it was a concoction of Hart's. This is an unlucky conjecture. The Haddington MSS. prove that Sprot really recited Gowrie's letter, or professed to do so, from memory, in one of his private examinations. The prosecution never pretended to possess or produce Gowrie's letter.

Next, Hart cites, _as Logan's answer to Gowrie's first letter_ (which it was not), the passages already quoted by the prosecution in Sprot's Indictment, passages out of a letter of Logan's given by Sprot from memory only. Hart goes on to describe, as if on Sprot's testimony, certain movements of the Laird's after he received Gowrie's reply to his own answer to Gowrie. Logan's letter (as given in 1609) is dated July 29, and it is argued that his movements, after receiving Gowrie's reply, are inconsistent with any share in the plot which failed on August 5. Even if it were so, the fact is unimportant, for Sprot was really speaking of movements at a date much earlier than July 29; he later gave a separate account of what Logan was doing at the time of the outbreak of the plot, an account _not_ quoted by Hart, who fraudulently or accidentally confused the dates. And next we find it as good as explicitly stated, by Hart, that this letter of Logan's to Gowrie was never produced in open Court. 'Being demanded where this above written letter, written by Restalrig to the Earl of Gowrie, which was returned again by James Bower, is now? Deponeth . . . that he (Sprot) left the above written letter in his chest, among his writings, when he was taken and brought away, and that it is closed and folded within a piece of paper,' so Hart declares in Abbot's tract. He falsified the real facts. He could not give the question as originally put to Sprot, for that involved the publication of the fact that all the letters but one were forged. The question in the authentic _private_ report ran thus: 'Demanded where is that letter which Restalrig wrote to the Earl of Gowrie, _whereupon the said George Sprot wrote and forged the missives produced_?' (August 10).

The real letter of Logan to Gowrie, the only genuine letter (if in any sense genuine), had not on August 10 been produced. The others were in the hands of the Government. Hart, in his tract, veils these circumstances. The Government meant to put the letters to their own uses, on a later occasion, at the trial of the dead Logan.

Meanwhile we must keep one fact steadily in mind. When Sprot confessed to having forged treasonable letters in Logan's handwriting (as Calderwood correctly reports that he did confess), he _did not include among them Letter IV_ (Logan to Gowrie July 29, 1600). _That_ letter was never heard of by Sprot's examiners till August 10, and never came into the hands of his examiners till late on August 11, or early on August 12, the day when Sprot was hanged. Spottiswoode was never made aware that the letter had been produced. Why Sprot reserved this piece of evidence so long, why, under the shadow of the gibbet, he at last produced it, we shall later attempt to explain, though with but little confidence in any explanation.

Meanwhile, at Sprot's public trial in 1608, the Government were the conspirators. They burked the fact that they possessed plot-letters alleged to be by Logan. They burked the fact that Sprot confessed all these, with one or, perhaps, two exceptions, to be forgeries by himself. What they quoted, as letters of Logan and Gowrie, were merely descriptions of such letters given by Sprot from memory of their contents.

XIV. THE LAIRD AND THE NOTARY

We have now to track Sprot through the labyrinth of his confessions and evasions, as attested by the authentic reports of his private examinations between July 5 and the day of his death. It will be observed that, while insisting on his own guilt, and on that of Logan, he produced no documentary evidence, no genuine letter attributed by him to Logan, nothing but his own confessed forgeries, till the cord was almost round his neck--if he did then.

In his confessions he paints with sordid and squalid realism, the life of a debauched laird, tortured by terror, and rushing from his fears to forgetfulness in wine, travel, and pleasure; and to strange desperate dreams of flight. As a 'human document' the confessions of Sprot are unique, for that period.

On July 5, 1608, Sprot, in prison, wrote, in his own ordinary hand, the tale of how he knew of Logan's guilt: the letter was conveyed to the Earl of Dunbar, who, with Dunfermline, governed Scotland, under the absent King. The prisoner gave many sources of his knowledge, but the real source, if any (Letter IV), he reserved till he was certain of death (August 10). Sprot 'knew perfectly,' he said, on July 5, that one letter from Gowrie and one from his brother, Alexander Ruthven, reached Logan, at Fastcastle and at Gunnisgreen, a house hard by Eyemouth, where Sprot was a notary, and held cottage land. {183} Bower carried Logan's answers, and 'long afterwards' showed Sprot 'the first of Gowrie's letters' (the harmless one about desiring an interview) and also a note of Logan's to Bower himself, 'which is amongst the rest of the letters produced.' It is No. II, but in this confession of July 5, Sprot appears to say that Gowrie's innocent letter to Logan, asking for an interview, was the source of his forgeries. 'I framed them all to the true meaning and purpose of the letter that Bower let me see, to make the matter more clear by these arguments and circumstances, for the cause which I have already' (before July 5) 'shewn to the Lords'--that is, for purposes of extorting money from Logan's executors.

This statement was untrue. The brief letter to Logan from Gowrie was not the model of Sprot's forgeries; as he later confessed he had another model, in a letter of Logan to Gowrie, which he held back till the last day of his life. But in this confession of July 5, Sprot admits that he saw, not only Gowrie's letter to Logan of July 6 (?) 1600 (a letter never produced), but also a 'direction' or letter from Logan to his retainer, Bower, dated 'The Canongate, July 18, 1600.' This is our Letter II. Had it been genuine, then, taken with Gowrie's letter to Logan, it must have aroused Sprot's suspicions. But this Letter II, about which Sprot told discrepant tales, is certainly not genuine. It is dated, as we said, 'The Canongate, July 18, 1600.' Its purport is to inform Bower, then at Brockholes, near Eyemouth, that Logan had received a _new_ letter from Gowrie, concerning certain proposals already made orally to him by the Master of Ruthven. Logan hoped to get the lands of Dirleton for his share in the enterprise. He ends 'keep all things very secret, that my Lord, my brother' (Lord Home) 'get no knowledge of our purposes, for I' (would) 'rather be _eirdit quick_,' that is, buried alive (p. 205).

Now we shall show, later, the source whence Sprot probably borrowed this phrase as to Lord Home, and being _eirdit quick_, which he has introduced into his forged letter. Moreover, the dates are impossible. The first of the five letters purports to be from Logan to an unnamed conspirator, addressed as 'Right Honourable Sir.' It is not certain whether this letter was in the hands of the prosecution before the day preceding Sprot's execution, nor is it certain whether it is ever alluded to by Sprot under examination. But it is dated from Fastcastle on July 18, and tells the unknown conspirator that Logan has just heard from Gowrie. It follows that Logan had heard from Gowrie on July 18 at Fastcastle, that he thence rode to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh wrote his letter (II) to Bower, bidding Bower hasten to Edinburgh, to consult. This is absurd. Logan would have summoned Bower from Fastcastle, much nearer Bower's home than Edinburgh. Again, in Letter I, Logan informs the unknown man that he is to answer Gowrie 'within ten days at furthest.' That being so, he does not need Bower in such a hurry, unless it be to carry the letter to the Unknown. But, in that case, he would have summoned Bower from Fastcastle, he would not have ridden to Edinburgh and summoned him thence. Once more, Sprot later confessed, as we shall see, that this letter to Bower was dictated to himself by Logan, and that the copy produced, apparently in Logan's hand, was forged by him from the letter as dictated to him. He thus contradicted his earlier statement that