James VI and the Gowrie Mystery
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Title: James VI and the Gowrie Mystery
Author: Andrew Lang
Release date: January 20, 2010 [eBook #31033]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31033
Credits: Transcribed from the 1902 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAMES VI AND THE GOWRIE MYSTERY ***
Transcribed from the 1902 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: The Gowrie Coat of Arms. In the 'Workman' MS.]
JAMES VI
AND
THE GOWRIE MYSTERY
* * * * *
BY
ANDREW LANG
* * * * *
WITH GOWRIE'S COAT OF ARMS IN COLOUR, 2 PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAITS
AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS
* * * * *
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902
All rights reserved
* * * * *
TO
THE LADY CECILY BAILLIE-HAMILTON
THIS INQUIRY
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
INTRODUCTION
An old Scottish lady, four generations ago, used to say, 'It is a great
comfort to think that, at the Day of Judgment, we shall know the whole
truth about the Gowrie Conspiracy at last.' Since the author, as a
child, read 'The Tales of a Grandfather,' and shared King Jamie's
disappointment when there was no pot of gold, but an armed man, in the
turret, he had supposed that we do know all about the Gowrie Conspiracy,
that it was a plot to capture the King, carry him to Fastcastle, and 'see
how the country would take it,' as in the case of the Gunpowder Plot.
But just as Father Gerard has tried to show that the Gunpowder affair may
have been Cecil's plot, so modern historians doubt whether the Gowrie
mystery was not a conspiracy by King James himself. Mr. Hume Brown
appears rather to lean to this opinion, in the second volume of his
'History of Scotland,' and Dr. Masson, in his valuable edition of the
'Register of the Privy Council,' is also dubious. Mr. Louis Barbe, in
his 'Tragedy of Gowrie House,' holds a brief against the King. Thus I
have been tempted to study this 'auld misterie' afresh, and have
convinced myself that such historians as Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Frazer
Tytler, and Mr. Hill Burton were not wrong; the plot was not the King's
conspiracy, but the desperate venture of two very young men. The precise
object remains obscure in detail, but the purpose was probably to see how
a deeply discontented Kirk and country 'would take it.'
In working at this fascinatingly mysterious puzzle, I have made use of
manuscript materials hitherto uncited. The most curious of these, the
examinations and documents of the 'country writer,' Sprot, had been
briefly summarised in Sir William Fraser's 'Memorials of the Earls of
Haddington.' My attention was drawn to this source by the Rev. John
Anderson, of the General Register House, who aided Sir William Fraser in
the compilation of his book. The Earl of Haddington generously permitted
me to have copies made of the documents, which Lady Cecily
Baillie-Hamilton was kind enough to search for and rediscover in an
enormous mass of documents bequeathed by the learned first Earl.
On reading the Calendars of the Hatfield MSS. I had observed that several
letters by the possible conspirator, Logan of Restalrig, were in the
possession of the Marquis of Salisbury, who was good enough to permit
photographs of some specimens to be taken. These were compared, by Mr.
Anderson, with the alleged plot-letters of Logan at Edinburgh; while
photographs of the plot-letters were compared with Logan's authentic
letters at Hatfield, by Mr. Gunton, to whose acuteness and energy I owe
the greatest gratitude. The results of the comparison settle the riddle
of three centuries.
The other hitherto unused manuscripts are in no more recondite place than
the Record Office in London, and I do not know how they managed to escape
the notice of previous writers on the subject. To Dr. Masson's 'Register
of the Privy Council' I am indebted for the sequel of the curious
adventure of Mr. Robert Oliphant, whose part in the mystery, hitherto
overlooked, is decisive, if we accept the evidence--a point on which the
reader must form his own opinion. For copies made at the Record Office I
have to thank the care and accuracy of Miss E. M. Thompson.
To Mr. Anderson's learning and zest in this 'longest and sorest chase'
(as King James called his hunt on the morning of the fatal August 5) I am
under the deepest obligations. The allurements of a romantic conclusion
have never tempted him to leave the strait path of historical
impartiality.
I have also to thank Mr. Henry Paton for his careful copies of the
Haddington MSS., extracts from the Treasurer's accounts, and other
researches.
For permission to reproduce the picture of Fastcastle by the Rev. Mr.
Thomson of Duddingston, I have to thank the kindness of Mrs.
Blackwood-Porter. The painting, probably of about 1820, when compared
with the photograph of to-day, shows the destruction wrought by wind and
weather in the old fortalice.
My obligations to Sir James Balfour Paul (Lyon King of Arms) for
information on points of Heraldry ought to be gratefully acknowledged.
Since this book was written, the author has had an opportunity to read an
Apology for the Ruthvens by the late Andrew Bisset. This treatise is apt
to escape observation: it is entitled 'Sir Walter Scott,' and occupies
pp. 172-303 in 'Essays on Historical Truth,' long out of print. {0a} On
many points Mr. Bisset agreed with Mr. Barbe in his 'Tragedy of Gowrie
House,' and my replies to Mr. Barbe serve for his predecessor. But Mr.
Bisset found no evidence that the King had formed a plot against Gowrie.
By a modification of the contemporary conjecture of Sir William Bowes he
suggested that a brawl between the King and the Master of Ruthven
occurred in the turret, occasioned by an atrocious insult offered to the
Master by the King. This hypothesis, for various reasons, does not
deserve discussion. Mr. Bisset appeared to attribute the Sprot papers to
the combined authorship of the King and Sir Thomas Hamilton: which our
new materials disprove. A critic who, like Mr. Bisset, accused the King
of poisoning Prince Henry, and many other persons, was not an
unprejudiced historian.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
I. THE MYSTERY AND THE EVIDENCE 1
II. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE RUTHVENS 11
III. THE KING'S OWN NARRATIVE 35
IV. THE KING'S NARRATIVE. II 55
V. HENDERSON'S NARRATIVE 60
VI. THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. ROBERT OLIPHANT 71
VII. THE CONTEMPORARY RUTHVEN VINDICATION 80
VIII. THE THEORY OF AN ACCIDENTAL BRAWL 94
IX. CONTEMPORARY CLERICAL CRITICISM 99
X. POPULAR CRITICISM OF THE DAY 111
XI. THE KING AND THE RUTHVENS 118
XII. LOGAN OF RESTALRIG 148
XIII. THE SECRETS OF SPROT 168
XIV. THE LAIRD AND THE NOTARY 182
XV. THE FINAL CONFESSIONS OF THE NOTARY 201
XVI. WHAT IS LETTER IV? 232
XVII. INFERENCES AS TO THE CASKET LETTERS 240
_APPENDICES_
A. THE FRONTISPIECE 245
B. THE CONTEMPORARY RUTHVEN VINDICATION 252
C. FIVE LETTERS FORGED BY SPROT, AS FROM LOGAN 257
INDEX 265
ILLUSTRATIONS
_IN COLOURS_
GOWRIE'S COAT OF ARMS _Frontispiece_
_PHOTOGRAVURES_
JAMES VI. _to face p._ 4
_From the picture painted by Paul Van Somer_
(1621) _now in the National Portrait Gallery_
QUEEN ANNE 138
_From a painting by Paul Van Somer in Queen Anne's
Room_, _St. James's Palace_
_OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS_
FALKLAND PALACE 33
_From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons_,
_Dundee_
DIRLETON CASTLE 82
_From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons_,
_Dundee_
FALKLAND PALACE: THE COURTYARD 116
_From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons_,
_Dundee_
RESTALRIG HOUSE 150
_From a Photograph by W. J. Hay_, _Edinburgh_
RESTALRIG VILLAGE 150
_From a Photograph by W. J. Hay_, _Edinburgh_
FASTCASTLE (_circ._ 1820) 154
_From a picture by the Rev. Mr. Thomson_, _of
Duddingston_, _in the possession of Mrs.
Blackwood-Porter_
FASTCASTLE _to face p._ 176
_From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons_,
_Dundee_
FASTCASTLE
_From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons_,
_Dundee_
HANDWRITING OF LOGAN (_January_ 1585-6) 196
HAND OF LOGAN AS FORGED BY SPROT (second page of 202
Letter IV)
HANDWRITING OF SPROT (_July_ 5, 1608) 210
_PLANS_
SITUATION AND TOPOGRAPHY OF GOWRIE HOUSE 15
INTERIOR OF GOWRIE HOUSE 16
THE GALLERY CHAMBER AND THE TURRET, GOWRIE HOUSE 59
I. THE MYSTERY AND THE EVIDENCE
There are enigmas in the annals of most peoples; riddles put by the
Sphinx of the Past to the curious of the new generations. These
questions do not greatly concern the scientific historian, who is busy
with constitution-making, statistics, progress, degeneration, in short
with human evolution. These high matters, these streams of tendency,
form the staple of history, but the problems of personal character and
action still interest some inquiring minds. Among these enigmas nearly
the most obscure, 'The Gowrie Conspiracy,' is our topic.
This affair is one of the haunting mysteries of the past, one of the
problems that nobody has solved. The events occurred in 1600, but the
interest which they excited was so keen that belief in the guilt or
innocence of the two noble brothers who perished in an August afternoon,
was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants,
the strife of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since
attracted the curious, as do the enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true
character of Richard III, the real face behind 'The Iron Mask,' the
identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence or guilt of Mary Stuart.
In certain respects the Gowrie mystery is necessarily less attractive
than that of 'the fairest and most pitiless Queen on earth.' There is no
woman in the story. The world, of course, when the Ruthvens died, at
once acted on the maxim, _cherchez la femme_. The woman in the case, men
said, was the beautiful Queen, Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI. That
fair and frivolous dame, 'very very woman,' certainly did her best, by
her behaviour, to encourage the belief that she was the cause of these
sorrows. Even so, when the Bonny Earl Moray--the tallest and most
beautiful man in Scotland--died like a lion dragged down by wolves, the
people sang:
He was a brave gallant,
And he rode at the ring,
And the Bonny Earl Moray,
He might have been the King.
He was a brave gallant,
And he rode at the glove,
And the Bonny Earl Moray
He was the Queen's love.
On one side was a beautiful Queen mated with James VI, a pedant and a
clown. On the other side were, first the Bonny Earl, then the Earl of
Gowrie, both young, brave, handsome, both suddenly slain by the King's
friends: none knew why. The opinion of the godly, of the Kirk, of the
people, and even of politicians, leaped to the erroneous conclusion that
the young men perished, like Konigsmarck, because they were beautiful and
beloved, and because the Queen was fair and kind, and the King was ugly,
treacherous, and jealous. The rumour also ran, at least in tradition,
that Gowrie 'might have been the King,' an idea examined in Appendix A.
Here then was an explanation of the slaying of the Ruthvens on the lines
dear to romance. The humorous King Jamie (who, if he was not always
sensible, at least treated his flighty wife with abundance of sense) had
to play the part of King Mark of Cornwall to Gowrie's Sir Tristram. For
this theory, we shall show, no evidence exists, and, in 'looking for the
woman,' fancy found two men. The Queen was alternately said to love
Gowrie, and to love his brother, the Master of Ruthven, a lad of
nineteen--if she did not love both at once. It is curious that the
affair did not give rise to ballads; if it did, none has reached us.
In truth there was no woman in the case, and this of course makes the
mystery much less exciting than that of Mary Stuart, for whom so many
swords and pens have been drawn. The interest of character and of love
is deficient. Of Gowrie's character, and even of his religion, apart
from his learning and fascination, we really know almost nothing. Did he
cherish that strongest and most sacred of passions, revenge; had he
brooded over it in Italy, where revenge was subtler and craftier than in
Scotland? Did this passion blend with the vein of fanaticism in his
nature? Had he been biding his time, and dreaming, over sea, boyish
dreams of vengeance and ambition? All this appears not improbable, and
would, if true, explain all; but evidence is defective. Had Gowrie
really cherished the legacy of revenge for a father slain, and a mother
insulted; had he studied the subtleties of Italian crime, pondered over
an Italian plot till it seemed feasible, and communicated his vision to
the boy brother whom he found at home--the mystery would be transparent.
[Picture: James VI]
As to King James, we know him well. The babe 'wronged in his mother's
womb;' threatened by conspirators before his birth; terrified by a harsh
tutor as a child; bullied; preached at; captured; insulted; ruled now by
debauched favourites, now by godly ruffians; James naturally grew up a
dissembler, and betrayed his father's murderer with a kiss. He was
frightened into deceit: he could be cruel; he became, as far as he might,
a tyrant. But, though not the abject coward of tradition, James (as he
himself observed) was never the man to risk his life in a doubtful brawl,
on the chance that his enemies might perish while he escaped. For him a
treachery of that kind, an affair of sword and dagger fights on
staircases and in turrets and chambers, in the midst of a town of
doubtful loyalty, had certainly no attractions. Moreover, he had a sense
of humour. This has been the opinion of our best historians, Scott, Mr.
Tytler, and Mr. Hill Burton; but enthusiastic writers have always
espoused the cause of the victims, the Ruthvens, so young, brave,
handsome; so untimely slain, as it were on their own hearthstone. Other
authors, such as Dr. Masson in our own day, and Mr. S. R. Gardiner, have
abstained from a verdict, or have attempted the _via media_; have leaned
to the idea that the Ruthvens died in an accidental brawl, caused by a
nervous and motiveless fit of terror on the part of the King. Thus the
question is unsettled, the problem is unsolved. Why did the jolly hunt
at Falkland, in the bright August morning, end in the sanguinary scuffle
in the town house at Perth; the deaths of the Ruthvens; the tumult in the
town; the King's homeward ride through the dark and dripping twilight;
the laying of the dead brothers side by side, while the old family
servant weeps above their bodies; and the wailing of the Queen and her
ladies in Falkland Palace, when the torches guide the cavalcade into the
palace court, and the strange tale of slaughter is variously told, 'the
reports so fighting together that no man could have any certainty'?
Where lay the actual truth?
This problem, with which the following pages are concerned, is much
darker and more complex than that of the guilty 'Casket Letters'
attributed to Mary, Queen of Scots. The Queen did write these, in the
madness of a criminal passion; or she wrote parts of them, the rest being
garbled or forged. In either case, her motives, and the motives of the
possible forgers, are distinct, and are human. The Queen was in love
with one man, and hated another to the death; or her enemies desired to
prove that these were her moods. Absolute certainty escapes us, but,
either way, motives and purposes are intelligible.
Not so with the Gowrie mystery. The King, Mary's son, after hunting for
four hours, rides to visit Lord Gowrie, a neighbour. After luncheon,
that nobleman and his brother are slain, in their own house, by the
King's attendants. The King gives his version of the events instantly;
he never varies from it in any essential point, but the story is almost
incredible. On the other hand, the slain men cannot speak, and only one
of them, if both were innocent, could have told what occurred. But one
of their apologists, at the time, produced a version of the events which
is, beyond all doubt, boldly mendacious. It was easy to criticise and
ridicule the King's version; but the opposite version, hitherto unknown
to historians, destroys itself by its conspicuous falsehoods. In the
nature of the case, as will appear, no story accounting for such wild
events could be easily credible, so extraordinary, motiveless, and
inexplicable do the circumstances appear. If we try the theory that the
King wove a plot, we are met by the fact that his plot could not have
succeeded without the voluntary and vehement collaboration of one of his
victims, a thing that no man could have reckoned on. If we adopt the
idea that the victims had laid a trap for the King, we have only a vague
surmise as to its aim, purpose, and method. The later light which seemed
to fall on the affair, as we shall see, only darkens what was already
obscure. The inconceivable iniquity of the Government, at a later date,
reflects such discredit on all concerned on their side, that we might
naturally, though illogically, be inclined to believe that, from the
first, the King was the conspirator. But _that_, we shall find, was
almost, or quite, a physical impossibility.
Despite these embroilments, I am, in this case, able to reach a
conclusion satisfactory to myself, a thing which, in the affair of the
Casket Letters and Queen Mary, I was unable to do. {7} There is no
doubt, in my own mind, that the Earl of Gowrie and his brother laid a
trap for King James, and fell into the pit which they had digged.
To what precise end they had plotted to seize the King's person, what
they meant to do with him when they had got him, must remain matter of
conjecture. But that they intended to seize him, I have no doubt at all.
These pages, on so old and vexed a problem, would not have been written,
had I not been fortunate enough to obtain many unpublished manuscript
materials. Some of these at least clear up the secondary enigma of the
sequel of the problem of 1600. Different readers will probably draw
different conclusions from some of the other documents, but perhaps
nobody will doubt that they throw strange new lights on Scottish manners
and morals.
The scheme adopted here is somewhat like that of Mr. Browning's poem,
'The Ring and the Book.' The personages tell their own stories of the
same set of events, in which they were more or less intimately concerned.
This inevitably entails some repetition, but I am unable to find any plan
less open to objection.
It must, of course, be kept in mind that all the evidence is of a
suspicious nature. The King, if he were the conspirator, or even if
innocent, had to clear himself; and, frankly, his Majesty's word was not
to be relied upon. However, he alone was cross-examined, by an acute and
hostile catechist, and that upon oath, though not in a court of justice.
The evidence of his retinue, and of some other persons present, was also
taken on oath, three months after the events, before a Parliamentary
Committee, 'The Lords of the Articles.' We shall see that, nine years
later, a similar Committee was deceived shamelessly by the King's
Government, he himself being absent in England. But the nature of the
evidence, in the second case, was entirely different: it did not rest on
the sworn testimony of a number of nobles, gentlemen, and citizens, but
on a question of handwriting, _comparatio literarum_, as in the case of
the Casket Letters. That the witnesses in 1600 did not perjure
themselves, in the trial which followed on the slaughter of the Ruthvens,
is what I have to argue. Next, we have the evidence, taken under
torture, of three of the slain Earl's retainers, three weeks after the
events. No such testimony is now reckoned of value, but it will be shown
that the statements made by the tortured men only compromise the Earl and
his brother incidentally, and in a manner probably not perceived by the
deponents themselves. They denied all knowledge of a plot, disclaimed
belief in a plot by the Earl, and let out what was suspicious in a casual
way, without observing the import of their own remarks.
Finally, we have the evidence of the only living man, except the King,
who was present at the central point of the occurrences. That this man
was a most false and evasive character, that he was doubtless amenable to
bribes, that he was richly rewarded, I freely admit. But I think it can
be made probable, by evidence hitherto overlooked, that he really was
present on the crucial occasion, and that, with all allowances for his
character and position, his testimony fits into the facts, while, if it
be discarded, no hypothesis can account for _him_, and his part in the
adventure. In short, the King's tale, almost incredible as it appears,
contains the only explanation which is not demonstrably impossible. To
this conclusion, let me repeat, I am drawn by no sentiment for that
unsentimental Prince, 'gentle King Jamie.' He was not the man to tell
the truth, 'if he could think of anything better.' But, where other
corroboration is impossible, by the nature of the circumstances, facts
corroborate the King's narrative. His version 'colligates' them; though
extravagant they become not incoherent. No other hypothesis produces
coherency: each guess breaks down on demonstrated facts.
II. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE RUTHVENS
In the month of August 1600 his Majesty the King of Scotland, James,
sixth of that name, stood in more than common need of the recreation of
the chase. Things had been going contrary to his pleasure in all
directions. 'His dearest sister,' Queen Elizabeth (as he pathetically
said), seemed likely 'to continue as long as Sun or Moon,' and was in the
worst of humours. Her minister, Cecil, was apparently more ill disposed
towards the Scottish King than usual, while the minister's rival, the
Earl of Essex, had been suggesting to James plans for a military
demonstration on the Border. Money was even more than normally scarce;
the Highlands were more than common unruly; stories of new conspiracies
against the King's liberty were flying about; and, above all, a
Convention of the Estates had just refused, in June, to make a large
grant of money to his Majesty. It was also irritating that an old and
trusted servant, Colonel Stewart, wished to quit the country, and take
English service against the Irish rebels. This gentleman, sixteen years
before, had been instrumental in the arrest and execution of the Earl of
Gowrie; the new young Earl, son of the late peer, had just returned from
the Continent to Scotland, and Colonel Stewart was afraid that Gowrie
might wish to avenge his father. Therefore he desired to take service in
Ireland.
With all these frets, the King needed the refreshment of hunting the buck
in his park of Falkland. He ordered his own hunting costume; it was
delivered early in August, and (which is singular) was paid for
instantly. Green English cloth was the basis of his apparel, and five
ounces of silver decorated his second-best 'socks.' His boots had velvet
tops, embroidered; his best 'socks' were adorned with heavy gold
embroidery; he even bought a new horse. His gentlemen, John Ramsay, John
Murray, George Murray, and John Auchmuty, were attired, at the Royal
expense, in coats of green cloth, like the King. {12a}
Thus equipped, the Royal party rose early on the morning of Tuesday,
August 5, left the pleasant house of Falkland, with its strong round
towers that had lately protected James from an attack by his cousin, wild
Frank Stewart, the Earl of Bothwell; and rode to the stables in the park;
'the weather,' says his Majesty, 'being wonderful pleasant and
seasonable.' {12b} 'All the jolly hunt was there;' 'Tell True' and the
other hounds were yelping at the limits of their leashes; the Duke of
Lennox and the Earl of Mar, friends of James from his youth, and
honourable men, were the chief nobles in the crowd; wherein were two or
three of the loyal family of Erskine, cousins of Mar, and a Dr. Herries,
remarkable for a club foot.
At the stables, hacks were discarded, hunters were led out, men were
mounting, the King had his foot in the stirrup, when a young gentleman,
the Master of Ruthven, rode swiftly up from the town of Falkland. He had
trotted over, very early, from the town house, at Perth (some twelve or
fourteen miles away), of his brother, the Earl of Gowrie. He was but
nineteen years of age, tall, handsome, and brother of the Queen's
favourite maid of honour, Mrs. Beatrix Ruthven. That he was himself one
of the Gentlemen of the Household has often been said, but we find no
trace of money spent for him in the Royal accounts: in fact he had asked
for the place, but had not yet obtained it. {13} However, if we may
believe the Royal word (which is a matter of choice), James 'loved the
young Master like a brother.'
The Master approached the King, and entered into conversation with him.
James's account of what he had to say must be given later. For the
present we may be content with the depositions on oath, which were made
later, at a trial in November, by the attendants of the King and other
witnesses. Among these was the Duke of Lennox, who swore to the
following effect. They hunted their buck, and killed him. The King, in
place of trotting back to lunch at the House of Falkland (to which the
progress of the chase had led the sportsmen round in a circle), bade the
Duke accompany him to Perth, some twelve miles away, 'to speak with the
Earl of Gowrie.' His Majesty then rode on. Lennox despatched his groom
for his sword, and for a fresh horse (another was sent after the King);
he then mounted and followed. When he rejoined James, the King said 'You
cannot guess what errand I am riding for; I am going to get a treasure in
Perth. The Master of Ruthven' ('Mr. Alexander Ruthven') 'has informed me
that he has found a man with a pitcher full of gold coins of great
sorts.' James also asked Lennox what he deemed of the Master, whose
manner he reckoned very strange. 'Nothing but an honest, discreet
gentleman,' said the Duke. The King next gave details about the
treasure, and Lennox said he thought the tale 'unlikely,' as it was, more
or less. James then bade Lennox say nothing on the matter to Ruthven,
who wanted it to be a secret. At about a mile from Perth, the Master
galloped forward, to warn his brother, the Earl, who met the Royal party,
on foot, with some companions, near the town. {14} This was about one
o'clock in the afternoon.
[Picture: Situation and topography of Gowrie House]
The Royal party, of thirteen nobles and gentlemen, then entered the
Earl's house. It faced the street, as the House of Falkland also does,
and, at the back, had gardens running down to the Tay. It is necessary
to understand the situation and topography of Gowrie House. Passing down
South Street, or 'Shoe Gait,' the chief street in Perth, then a pretty
little town, you found it crossed at right angles by a street called, on
the left, Water Gate, on the right, Spey Gate. Immediately fronting you,
as you came to the end of South Street, was the gateway of Gowrie House,
the garden wall continuing towards your right. On your left were the
houses in Water Gate, occupied by rich citizens and lairds. Many will
understand the position if they fancy themselves walking down one of the
streets which run from the High Street, at Oxford, towards the river.
You then find Merton College facing you, the street being continued to
the left in such old houses as Beam Hall. The gate of Gowrie House
fronted you, as does the gate-tower of Merton, and led into a quadrangle,
the front court, called The Close. Behind Gowrie House was the garden,
and behind that ran the river Tay, as the Isis flows behind Merton and
Corpus. Entering the quadrangle of Gowrie House you found, on your right
and facing you, a pile of buildings like an inverted L. The basement was
occupied by domestic offices: at the angle of the [inverted L] was the
main entrance. On your right, and much nearer to you than the main
entrance, a door opened on a narrow spiral staircase, so dark that it was
called the Black Turnpike.
[Picture: Interior of Gowrie House]
As to the interior, entering the main doorway you found yourself in the
hall. A door led thence into a smaller dining-room on the left. The
hall itself had a door and external stair giving on the garden behind.
The chief staircase, which you entered from the hall, led to the Great
Gallery, built and decorated by the late Earl. This extended above the
dining-room and the hall, and, to the right, was separated by a partition
and a door from the large upstairs room on the same flat called 'The
Gallery Chamber.' At the extremity of this chamber, on the left hand as
you advanced, was a door leading into a 'round,' or turret, or little
circular-shaped 'study,' of which one window seems to have looked to the
gateway, the other to the street. People below in the street could see a
man looking out of the turret window. A door in the gallery chamber gave
on the narrow staircase called 'The Black Turnpike,' by which the upper
floor might be reached by any one from the quadrangle, without entering
the main door, and going up the broad chief staircase. Thus, to quote a
poet who wrote while Gowrie House was extant (in 1638):
The Palace kythes, may nam'd be Perth's White Hall
With orchards like these of Hesperides.
The palace was destroyed, to furnish a site for a gaol and county
buildings, in 1807, but the most interesting parts had long been in
ruins. {18}
In 1774, an antiquary, Mr. Cant, writes that the palace, after the Forty
Five, was converted into artillery barracks. 'We see nothing but the
remains of its former grandeur.' The coats of arms of 'the nobility and
gentlemen of fortune,' who dwelt in Spey Gate and Water Gate, were, in
1774, still visible on the walls of their houses. A fragment of the old
palace is said to exist to-day in the Gowrie Inn. Into this palace the
King was led by Gowrie: he was taken to the dining chamber on the left of
the great hall; in the hall itself Lennox, Mar, and the rest of the
retinue waited and wearied, for apparently no dinner had been provided,
and even a drink for his thirsty Majesty was long in coming. Gowrie and
the Master kept going in and out, servants were whispered to, and Sir
Thomas Erskine sent a townsman to buy him a pair of green silk stockings
in Perth. {19} He wanted to dine comfortably.
Leaving the King's retinue in the hall, and the King in the dining
chamber off the hall, we may note what, up to this point, the nobles and
gentlemen of the suite had to say, at the trial in November, about the
adventures of that August morning. Mar had not seen the Master at
Falkland; after the kill Mar did not succeed in rejoining James till they
were within two or three miles of Perth.
Drummond of Inchaffray had nodded to the Master, at Falkland, before the
Master met the King at the stables. He later saw the Master in
conference for about a quarter of an hour with James, outside the
stables. The Master then left the King: Inchaffray invited him to
breakfast, but he declined, 'as his Majesty had ordered him to wait upon
him.' (According to other evidence he had already breakfasted at
Falkland.) Inchaffray then breakfasted in Falkland town, and next rode
along the highway towards his own house. On the road he overtook Lennox,
Lindores, Urchill, Hamilton of Grange, Finlay Taylor, the King, and the
Master, riding Perthwards. He joined them, and went with them into
Gowrie House.
Nobody else, among the witnesses, did anything but agree with Lennox's
account up to this point. But four menials of James, for example, a
cellarer and a porter, were at Gowrie House, in addition to the nobles
and gentlemen who gave this evidence.
To return to Lennox's tale: dinner was not ready for his hungry Majesty,
as we have said, till an hour after his arrival; was not ready, indeed,
till about two o'clock. He had obviously not been expected, or Gowrie
did not wish it to be known that he was expected, and himself had dined
before the King's arrival, between twelve and one o'clock. A shoulder of
mutton, a fowl, and a solitary grouse were all that the Earl's caterer
could procure, except cold meat: obviously a poor repast to set before a
king. It is said that the Earl had meant to leave Perth in the
afternoon. When James reached the stage of dessert, Gowrie, who had
waited on him, entered the hall, and invited the suite to dine. When
they had nearly finished, Gowrie returned to them in the hall, and sent
round a grace-cup, in which all pledged the King. Lennox then rose, to
rejoin the King (who now passed, with the Master, across and out of the
hall), but Gowrie said 'His Majesty was gone upstairs quietly some quiet
errand.' Gowrie then called for the key of the garden, on the banks of
the Tay, and he, Lindores, the lame Dr. Herries, and others went into the
garden, where, one of them tells us, they ate cherries. While they were
thus engaged, Gowrie's equerry, or master stabler, a Mr. Thomas
Cranstoun, who had been long in France, and had returned thence with the
Earl in April, appeared, crying, 'The King has mounted, and is riding
through the Inch,' that is, the Inch of Perth, where the famous clan
battle of thirty men a side had been fought centuries ago. Gowrie
shouted 'Horses! horses!' but Cranstoun said 'Your horse is at Scone,'
some two miles off, on the further side of the Tay. Why the Earl that
day kept his horse so remote, in times when men of his rank seldom
walked, we may conjecture later (cf. p. 86, _infra_).
The Earl, however (says Lennox), affected not to hear Cranstoun, and
still shouted 'Horses!' He and Lennox then passed into the house,
through to the front yard, or Close, and so to the outer gate, giving on
the street. Here Lennox asked the porter, Christie, if the King had
gone. The porter said he was certain that the King had not left the
house. On this point Lindores, who had been with Gowrie and Lennox in
the garden, and accompanied them to the gate, added (as indeed Lennox
also did) that Gowrie now explained to the porter that James had departed
by the back gate. 'That cannot be, my Lord,' said the porter, 'for I
have the key of the back gate.' Andrew Ray, a bailie of Perth, who had
been in the house, looking on, told the same tale, adding that Gowrie
gave the porter the lie. The porter corroborated all this at the trial,
and quoted his own speech about the key, as it was given by Lindores. He
had the keys, and must know whether the King had ridden away or not.
In this odd uncertainty, Gowrie said to Lennox, 'I am sure the King has
gone; but stay, I shall go upstairs, and get your lordship the very
certainty.' Gowrie thereon went from the street door, through the court,
and up the chief staircase of the house, whence he came down again at
once, and anew affirmed to Lennox that 'the King was forth at the back
gate and away.' They all then went out of the front gate, and stood in
the street there, talking, and wondering where they should seek for his
Majesty.
Where was the King? Here we note a circumstance truly surprising. It
never occurred to the Earl of Gowrie, when dubiously told that the King
had 'loupen on'--and ridden off--to ask, _Where is the King's horse_? If
the Royal nag was in the Earl's stable, then James had not departed.
Again--a thing more astonishing still--it has never occurred to any of
the unnumbered writers on the Gowrie conspiracy to ask, 'How did the
Earl, if guilty of falsehood as to the King's departure, mean to get over
the difficulty about the King's horse?' If the horse was in the stable,
then the King had not ridden away, as the Earl declared. Gowrie does not
seem to have kidnapped the horse. We do not hear, from the King, or any
one, that the horse was missing when the Royal party at last rode home.
The author is bound, in honour, to observe that this glaring difficulty
about the horse did not occur to him till he had written the first draft
of this historical treatise, after reading so many others on the subject.
And yet the eagle glance of Mr. Sherlock Holmes would at once have
lighted on his Majesty's mount. However, neither at the time, nor in the
last three centuries (as far as we know), was any one sensible enough to
ask 'How about the King's horse?'
We return to the question, 'Where was the King?'
Some time had elapsed since he passed silently from the chamber where he
had lunched, through the hall, with the Master, and so upstairs, 'going
quietly a quiet errand,' Gowrie had explained to the men of the retinue.
The gentlemen had then strolled in the garden, till Cranstoun came out to
them with the news of the King's departure. Young John Ramsay, one of
James's gentlemen, had met the Laird of Pittencrieff in the hall, and had
asked where his Majesty was. Both had gone upstairs, had examined the
fair gallery filled with pictures collected by the late Earl, and had
remained 'a certain space' admiring it. They thence went into the front
yard, the Close, where Cranstoun met them and told them that the King had
gone. Instead of joining the gentlemen whom we left loitering and
wondering outside the front gate, on the street, Ramsay ran to the
stables for his horse, he said, and, as he waited at the stable door
(being further from the main entrance than Lennox, Mar, and the rest), he
heard James's voice, 'but understood not what he spake.' {23}
The others, on the street, just outside the gate, being nearer the house
than Ramsay, suddenly heard the King's voice, and even his words. Lennox
said to Mar, 'The King calls, be he where he will.' They all glanced up
at the house, and saw, says Lennox, 'his Majesty looking out at the
window, hatless, his face red, and a hand gripping his face and mouth.'
The King called: 'I am murdered. Treason! My Lord of Mar, help, help!'
Mar corroborated: Inchaffray saw the King vanish from the window, 'and in
his judgment, his Majesty was pulled, perforce, in at the same window.'
Bailie Ray of Perth saw the window pushed up, saw the King's face appear,
and heard his cries. Murray of Arbany, who had come to Perth from
another quarter, heard the King. Murray seems to have been holding the
King's falcon on his wrist, in hall; he had later handed the bird to
young Ramsay.
On beholding this vision of the King, hatless, red-faced, vociferous, and
suddenly vanishing, most of his lords and gentlemen, and Murray of
Arbany, rushed through the gate, through the Close, into the main door of
the house, up the broad staircase, through the long fair gallery, _and
there they were stopped by a locked door_. They could not reach the
King! Finding a ladder, they used it as a battering-ram, but it broke in
their hands. They sent for hammers, and during some half an hour they
thundered at the door, breaking a hole in a panel, but unable to gain
admission.
Now these facts, as to the locked door, and the inability of most of the
suite to reach the King, are denied by no author. They make it certain
that, if James had contrived a plot against the two Ruthvens, he had not
taken his two nobles, Mar and Lennox, and these other gentlemen, and
Murray of Arbany, into the scheme. He had not even arranged that another
of his retinue should bring them from their futile hammer-work, to his
assistance, by another way.
For there _was_ another way. Young Ramsay was not with Lennox and the
rest, when they saw and heard the flushed and excited King cry out of the
window. Ramsay, he says, was further off than the rest; was at the
stable door: he heard and recognised James's voice, but saw nothing of
him, and distinguished no words. He ran into the front yard, through the
outer gate. Lennox and the rest had already vanished within the house.
Ramsay noticed the narrow door in the wall of the house, giving on the
quadrangle, and nearer him than the main door of entrance, to reach which
he must cross the quadrangle diagonally. He rushed into the narrow
doorway, ran up a dark corkscrew staircase, found a door at the top,
heard a struggling and din of men's feet within, 'dang open' the door,
_caught a glimpse of a man behind the King's back_, and saw James and the
Master 'wrestling together in each other's arms.'
James had the Master's head under his arm, the Master, 'almost upon his
knees,' had his hand on the King's face and mouth. 'Strike him low,'
cried the King, 'because he wears a secret mail doublet'--such as men
were wont to wear on a doubtful though apparently peaceful occasion, like
a Warden's Day on the Border. Ramsay threw down the King's falcon, which
he had taken from Murray and bore on his wrist, drew his dagger or
_couteau de chasse_, and struck the Master on the face and neck. The
King set his foot on the falcon's leash, and so held it. Ramsay might
have spared and seized the Master, instead of wounding him; James later
admitted _that_, but 'Man,' he said, 'I had neither God nor the Devil
before me, but my own defence.' Remember that hammers were thundering on
a door hard by, and that neither James nor Ramsay knew who knocked so
loud--enemies or friends.
The King then, says Ramsay, pushed the wounded Master down the steep
narrow staircase up which the young man had run. The man of whom Ramsay
had caught a glimpse, standing behind the King, had vanished like a
wraith. Ramsay went to a window, looked out, and, seeing Sir Thomas
Erskine, cried, 'Come up to the top of the staircase.'
Where was Erskine, and what was he doing? He had not followed Lennox and
Mar in their rush back into the house. On hearing James's cries from the
window, he and his brother had tried to seize Gowrie, who had been with
the party of Lennox and Mar. If James was in peril, within Gowrie's
house, they argued, naturally, that Gowrie was responsible. Not drawing
sword or dagger--daggers, indeed, they had none--the two Erskine brothers
rushed on Gowrie, who was crying 'What is the matter? I know nothing!'
They bore him, or nearly bore him, to the ground, but his retainers
separated the stragglers, and one, a Ruthven, knocked Sir Thomas down
with his fist. The knight arose, and ran into the front court, where Dr.
Herries asked him 'what the matter meant.' At this moment Erskine heard
Ramsay cry 'Come up here,' from the top of the narrow dark staircase, he
says, _not_ from the window; Ramsay may have called from both. Erskine,
who was accompanied by the lame Dr. Herries, and by a menial of his
brother's named Wilson, found the bleeding Master near the foot of the
stair, and shouted 'This is the traitor, strike him.' The stricken lad
fell, saying, 'Alas, I had not the wyte of it,' and the three entered the
chamber where now were only the King and Ramsay. Words, not very
intelligible as reported by Erskine (we consider them later), passed
between him and the King. Though Erskine does not say so, they shut
James up in the turret opening into the chamber where they were, and
instantly Cranstoun, the Earl's equerry, entered with a drawn sword,
followed by Gowrie, with 'two swords,' while some other persons followed
Gowrie.
Where had Gowrie been since the two Erskines tried to seize him in the
street, and were separated from him by a throng of his retainers? Why
was Gowrie, whose honour was interested in the King's safety, later in
reaching the scene than Erskine, the limping Dr. Herries, and the serving
man, Wilson? The reason appears to have been that, after the two
Erskines were separated from Gowrie, Sir Thomas ran straight from the
street, through the gateway, into the front court of the house, meeting,
in the court, Dr. Herries, who was slow in his movements. But Gowrie, on
the other hand, was detained by certain of Tullibardine's servants, young
Tullibardine being present. This, at least, was the story given under
examination by Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, Gowrie's master stabler, while other
witnesses mention that Gowrie became involved in a struggle, and went
'back from' his house, further up or down the street. Young
Tullibardine, present at this fray, was the heir of Murray of
Tullibardine, and ancestor, in the male line, of the present Duke of
Atholl. He later married a niece of the Earl of Gowrie. His father
being a man of forty in 1600, young Tullibardine must have been very
young indeed. The Murrays were in Perth on the occasion of the marriage
of one of their clan, an innkeeper.
Some of their party were in the street, and seeing an altercation in
which two of the King's gentlemen were prevented from seizing Gowrie,
they made an ineffectual effort to capture the Earl. Gowrie ran from
them along the street, and there 'drew his two swords out of one
scabbard,' says Cranstoun. {28} The Earl had just arrived in Scotland
from Italy, where he had acquired the then fashionable method of fencing
with twin-swords, worn in a single scabbard. Gowrie, then, had retreated
from the Murrays to the house of one Macbreck, as Cranstoun and Macbreck
himself declared. Cranstoun too drew his sword, and let his cloak fall,
asking Gowrie 'what the fray was.' The Earl said that 'he would enter
his own house, or die by the way.' Cranstoun said that he would go
foremost, 'but at whom should he strike, for he knew not who was the
enemy?' He had only seen the Erskines collar Gowrie, then certain
Murrays interfere, and he was entirely puzzled. Gowrie did not reply,
and the pair advanced to the door of the house through a perplexed
throng. A servant of Gowrie's placed a steel cap on his head, and with
some four or five of Gowrie's friends (Hew Moncrieff, Alexander Ruthven,
Harry Ruthven, and Patrick Eviot) the Earl and Cranstoun entered the
front court.
Here Cranstoun saw the body of a man, whether dead or wounded he knew
not, lying at 'the old turnpike door,' the entry to the dark narrow
staircase up which Ramsay had run to the King's rescue. 'Who lies
there?' asked Cranstoun. Gowrie only replied, 'Up the stair!' Cranstoun
led the way, Gowrie came next; the other four must have followed, for
several witnesses presently saw them come down again, wounded and
bleeding. Cranstoun found Erskine, Ramsay, and Herries with drawn swords
in the chamber. The King, then in the turret, he did not see. He
taunted Herries; Ramsay and Gowrie crossed swords; Cranstoun dealt, he
says, with Herries, Erskine, and perhaps Wilson. But, though Cranstoun
'nowise knew who followed him,' the four men already named, two Ruthvens,
a Moncrieff, and Eviot, were in the fray, though there was some
uncertainty about Eviot. {30}
The position of the King, at this moment, was unenviable. He was shut up
in the little round turret room. On the other side of the door, in the
chamber, swords were clashing, feet were stamping. James knew that he
had four defenders, one of them a lame medical man; who or how many their
opponents might be, he could not know. The air rang with the thunder of
hammers on the door of the chamber where the fight raged; were they
wielded by friends or enemies? From the turret window the King could
hear the town bell ringing, and see the gathering of the burgesses of
Perth, the friends of their Provost, Gowrie. We know that they could
easily muster eight hundred armed men. Which side would they take? The
Murrays, as we saw, had done nothing, except that some of them had
crowded round Gowrie. Meanwhile there was clash of steel, stamping of
feet, noise of hammers, while the King, in the turret, knew not how
matters were going.
Cranstoun only saw his own part of the fight in the chamber. How Ramsay
and Gowrie sped in their duel he knew not. Ramsay, he says, turned on
_him_, and ran him through the body; Herries also struck him. Of Gowrie
he saw nothing; he fled, when wounded, down the turret stair, his
companions following or preceding him. Gowrie, in fact, had fallen,
leaving Ramsay free to deal with Cranstoun. Writers of both parties
declare that Ramsay had cried to Gowrie, 'You have slain the King!' that
Gowrie dropped his points, and that Ramsay lunged and ran him through the
body. Erskine says that he himself was wounded in the right hand by
Cranstoun; Herries lost two fingers. When Ramsay ran Gowrie through, the
Earl, says Erskine, fell into the arms of a man whom he himself knew not;
Gowrie's party retreated, but it seems they returned to the head of the
narrow staircase, and renewed hostilities by pushing swords and halberts
under the narrow staircase door. This appears from the evidence of
Lennox.
After pounding at the door so long, Lennox's party at last sent Robert
Brown (a servant of James's, who had brought the hammers) round to
discover another way of reaching the King. Brown, too, now went up the
narrow staircase, and in the gallery chamber he found the King, with
Herries, Erskine, Ramsay, Wilson, and the dead Earl. He reassured James;
the hammerers were his friends. They handed, says Lennox, one of the
hammers to the King's party, through a shattered panel, 'and they within
broke the doors, and gave them entry.' At this time, halberts and swords
were being struck, by Gowrie's retainers, under the door, and through the
sides of the door, of the chamber; this door apparently being that from
the chamber to the narrow staircase. Murray of Arbany (who had come into
the house at the end of dinner) was stricken through the leg by one of
these weapons. Deacon Rhynd of Perth saw Hew Moncrieff striking with 'a
Jeddart staff,' a kind of halbert. A voice, that of Alexander Ruthven (a
cousin of the fallen Earl), cried 'For God's sake, my lord, tell me how
the Earl of Gowrie does.' 'He is well. Go your way; you are a fool; you
will get no thanks for this labour,' answered Lennox, and all was
silence. Alexander Ruthven and the rest retreated; Ruthven rushed to the
town, rousing the people, and rifling shops in search of gunpowder. The
King and the nobles knelt in prayer on the bloody floor of the chamber
where the dead Gowrie lay. For some time the confused mob yelled
outside, shaking their fists at the King's party in the window: men and
women crying 'Come down, Green-coats, ye have committed murder! Bloody
butchers!' Others cried 'The King is shot!' The exits of the house were
guarded by retainers of Gowrie--Rentoul, Bissett, and others.
Mar and Lennox, from the window, explained to the mob that the King was
well. James showed himself, the magistrates and nobles pacified the
people, who, some armed, some unarmed, were all perplexed, whether they
were anxious about the King or about their Provost, the Earl. From the
evidence of scores of burghers, it appears that the tumult did not last
long. One man was reaping in the Morton haugh. Hearing the town bell he
hastened in, 'when all the tumult was ceased,' and the magistrates, Ray
and others, were sending the people to their houses, as also did young
Tullibardine. A baker, hearing the bell, went to the town cross, and so
to Gowrie's house, where he met the stream of people coming away.
Another baker was at work, and stayed with his loaves, otherwise he
'would have lost his whole baking.' The King represents that it was
between seven and eight in the evening before matters were quiet enough
for him to ride home to Falkland, owing to the tumult. The citizens
doubtless minimised, and James probably exaggerated, the proportions and
duration of the disturbance.
[Picture: Falkland place]
This version of that strange affair, the slaughter of the Ruthvens, is
taken entirely from the lips of sworn witnesses. We still know no more
than we did as to what passed between the moment when James and the
Master, alone, left the dining chamber, and the moment when the King
cried 'Treason!' out of the turret window.
The problem is, had James lured the Master to Falkland for the purpose of
accompanying him back to Perth, as if by the Master's invitation, and of
there craftily begetting a brawl, in which Gowrie and the Master should
perish at the hands of Ramsay? Or had the Master, with or without his
brother's knowledge, lured James to Perth for some evil end? The
question divided Scotland; France and England were sceptical as to the
King's innocence. Our best historians, like Mr. Hill Burton and Mr.
Tytler, side with the King; others are dubious, or believe that James was
the conspirator, and that the Ruthvens were innocent victims.
III. THE KING'S OWN NARRATIVE
So far we have not gained any light on the occurrences of the mysterious
interval between the moment when the King and Alexander Ruthven passed
alone through the hall, after dinner, up the great staircase, and the
moment when the King cried 'Treason!' out of the turret window. In the
nature of the case, the Master being for ever silent, only James could
give evidence on the events of this interval, James and _one other man_,
of whose presence in the turret we have hitherto said little, as only one
of the witnesses could swear to having seen a man there, none to having
seen him escaping thence, or in the tumult. Now the word of James was
not to be relied on, any more than that of the unequalled Elizabeth. If
we take the King's word in this case, it is from no prejudice in his
favour, but merely because his narrative seems best to fit the facts as
given on oath by men like Lennox, Mar, and other witnesses of all ranks.
It also fits, with discrepancies to be noted, the testimony of _the other
man_, the man who professed to have been with the Master and the King in
the turret.
The evidence of that other man was also subject, for reasons which will
appear presently, to the gravest suspicion. James, if himself guilty of
the plot, had to invent a story to excuse himself; the other man had to
adopt the version of the King, to save his own life from the gibbet. On
the other hand, James, if innocent, could not easily have a credible
story to tell. If the Master was sane, it was hardly credible that, as
James averred, he should menace the King with murder, in his brother's
house, with no traceable preparations either for flight or for armed
resistance. In James's narrative the Master is made at least to menace
the King with death. However true the King's story might be, his
adversaries, the party of the Kirk and the preachers, would never accept
it. In Lennox's phrase they 'liked it not, because it was not likely.'
Emphatically it was not likely, but the contradictory story put forward
by the Ruthven apologist, as we shall see, was not only improbable, but
certainly false.
There was living at that time a certain Mr. David Calderwood, a young
Presbyterian minister, aged twenty-five. He was an avid collector of
rumour, of talk, and of actual documents, and his 'History of the Kirk of
Scotland,' composed at a much later date, is wonderfully copious and
accurate. As it was impossible for King James to do anything at which
Calderwood did not carp, assigning the worst imaginable motives in every
case, we shall find in Calderwood the sum of contemporary hostile
criticism of his Majesty's narrative. But the criticism is negative.
Calderwood's critics only pick holes in the King's narrative, but do not
advance or report any other explanation of the events, any complete
theory of the King's plot from the Ruthven side. Any such story, any
such hypothesis, must be to the full as improbable as the King's
narrative.
There is nothing probable in the whole affair; every system, every
hypothesis is _difficile a croire_. Yet the events did occur, and we
cannot reject James's account merely because it is 'unlikely.' The
improbabilities, however, were enormously increased by the King's theory
that the Ruthvens meant to _murder_ him. This project (not borne out by
the King's own version of Ruthven's conduct) would have been insane: the
Ruthvens, by murdering James, would have roused the whole nation and the
Kirk itself against them. But if their object was to kidnap James, to
secure his person, to separate him from his Ministers (who were either
secretly Catholics, or Indifferents), and to bring in a new
administration favourable to Kirk, or Church, then the Ruthvens were
doing what had several times been done, and many times attempted. James
had been captured before, even in his own palace, while scores of other
plots, to take him, for instance, when hunting in Falkland woods, remote
from his retinue, had been recently planned, and had failed. To kidnap
the King was the commonest move in politics; but as James thought, or
said, that the idea at Gowrie House was to _murder_ him, his tale, even
if true, could not be easily credible.
The first narrative was drawn up at Falkland in the night of August 5.
Early on August 6 the letter reached the Chancellor in Edinburgh, and the
contents of the letter were repeated orally by the Secretary of State
(Elphinstone, later Lord Balmerino) to Nicholson, the English resident at
the Court of Holyrood. Nicholson on the same day reported what he
remembered of what the Secretary remembered of the Falkland letter, to
Cecil. Yet though at third hand Nicholson's written account of the
Falkland letter of August 5 {38} contains the same version as James later
published, with variations so few and so unessential that it is needless
to dwell upon them, they may safely be attributed to the modifications
which a story must suffer in passing through the memories of two persons.
Whatever the amount of truth in his narrative, the King had it ready at
once in the form to which he adhered, and on which he voluntarily
underwent severe cross-examination, on oath, by Mr. Robert Bruce, one of
the Edinburgh ministers; a point to which we return.
James declares in a later narrative printed and published about the end
of August 1600, that the Master, when he first met him at Falkland, made
a very low bow, which was not his habit. The Master then said (their
conference, we saw, occupied a quarter of an hour) that, while walking
alone on the previous evening, he had met a cloaked man carrying a great
pot, full of gold in large coined pieces. Ruthven took the fellow
secretly to Gowrie House, 'locked him _in a privy derned house_, and,
after locking many doors on him, left him there and his pot with him.'
It might be argued that, as the man was said to be locked in a _house_,
and as James was not taken out of Gowrie House to see him, James must
have known that, when he went upstairs with the Master, he was not going
to see the prisoner. The error here is that, in the language of the
period, a _house_ often means a _room_, or chamber. It is so used by
James elsewhere in this very narrative, and endless examples occur in the
letters and books of the period.
Ruthven went on to explain, what greatly needed explanation, that he had
left Perth so early in the morning that James might have the first
knowledge of this secret treasure, concealed hitherto even from Gowrie.
James objected that he had no right to the gold, which was not treasure
trove. Ruthven replied that, if the King would not take it, others
would. James now began to suspect, very naturally, that the gold was
foreign coin. Indeed, what else could it well be? Coin from France,
Italy, or Spain, brought in often by political intriguers, was the least
improbable sort of minted gold to be found in poor old Scotland. In the
troubles of 1592-1596 the supplies of the Catholic rebels were in Spanish
money, whereof some was likely enough to be buried by the owners. James,
then, fancied that Jesuits or others had brought in gold for seditious
purposes, 'as they have ofttimes done before.' Sceptics of the period
asked how one pot of gold could cause a sedition. The question is
puerile. There would be more gold where the potful came from, if
Catholic intrigues were in the air. James then asked the Master 'what
kind of coin it was.' 'They seemed to be foreign and uncouth' (unusual)
'strokes of coin,' said Ruthven, and the man, he added, was a stranger to
him.
James therefore suspected that the man might be a disguised Scottish
priest: the few of them then in Scotland always wore disguises, as they
tell us in their reports to their superiors. {40} The King's inferences
as to _popish_ plotters were thus inevitable, though he may have
emphasised them in his narrative to conciliate the preachers. His horror
of 'practising Papists,' at this date, was unfeigned. He said to the
Master that he could send a servant with a warrant to Gowrie and the
magistrates of Perth to take and examine the prisoner and his hoard.
Contemporaries asked why he did not 'commit the credit of this matter to
another.' James had anticipated the objection. He _did_ propose this
course, but Ruthven replied that, if others once touched the money, the
King 'would get a very bad account made to him of that treasure.' He
implored his Majesty to act as he advised, and not to forget him
afterwards. This suggestion may seem mean in Ruthven, but the age was
not disinterested, nor was Ruthven trying to persuade a high-souled man.
The King was puzzled and bored, 'the morning was fair, the game already
found,' the monarch was a keen sportsman, so he said that he would think
the thing over and answer at the end of the hunt.
Granting James's notorious love of disentangling a mystery, granting his
love of money, and of hunting, I agree with Mr. Tytler in seeing nothing
improbable in this narration. If the Master wanted to lure the King to
Perth, I cannot conceive a better device than the tale which, according
to the King, he told. The one improbable point, considering the morals
of the country, was that Ruthven should come to James, in place of
sharing the gold with his brother. But Ruthven, we shall see, had
possibly good reasons, known to James, for conciliating the Royal favour,
and for keeping his brother ignorant. Moreover, to seize the money would
not have been a safe thing for Ruthven to do; the story would have leaked
out, questions would have been asked. James had hit on the only
plausible theory to account for a low fellow with a pot of gold; he
_must_ be 'a practising Papist.' James could neither suppose, nor expect
others to believe that he supposed, one pot of foreign gold enough 'to
bribe the country into rebellion.' But the pot, and the prisoner,
supplied a clue worth following. Probabilities strike different critics
in different ways. Mr. Tytler thinks James's tale true, and that he
acted in character. That is my opinion; his own the reader must form for
himself.
Ruthven still protested. This hunt of gold was well worth a buck! The
prisoner, he said, might attract attention by his cries, a very weak
argument, but Ruthven was quite as likely to invent it on the spur of the
moment, as James was to attribute it to him falsely, on cool reflection.
Finally, if James came at once, Gowrie would then be at the preaching
(Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays were preaching days), and the Royal
proceedings with the captive would be undisturbed.
Now, on the hypothesis of intended kidnapping, this was a well-planned
affair. If James accepted Ruthven's invitation, he, with three or four
servants, would reach Gowrie House while the town of Perth was quiet.
Nothing would be easier than to seclude him, seize his person, and
transport him to the seaside, either by Tay, or down the north bank of
that river, or in disguise across Fife, to the Firth of Forth, in the
retinue of Gowrie, before alarm was created at Falkland. Gowrie had
given out (so his friends declared) that he was to go that night to
Dirleton, his castle near North Berwick, {42} a strong hold, manned, and
provisioned. Could he have carried the King in disguise across Fife to
Elie, Dirleton was within a twelve miles sail, on summer seas. Had
James's curiosity and avarice led him to ride away at once with Ruthven,
and three or four servants, the plot might have succeeded. We must
criticise the plot on these lines. Thus, if at all, had the Earl and his
brother planned it. But Fate interfered, the unexpected occurred--_but
the plot could not be dropped_. The story of the pot of gold could not
be explained away. The King, with royal rudeness, did not even reply to
the new argument of the Master. 'Without any further answering him,' his
Majesty mounted, Ruthven staying still in the place where the King left
him. At this moment Inchaffray, as we saw, met Ruthven, and invited him
to breakfast, but he said that he was ordered to wait on the King.
At this point, James's narrative contains a circumstance which,
confessedly, was not within his own experience. He did not know, he
says, that the Master had any companion. But, from the evidence of
another, he learned that the Master had a companion, indeed two
companions. One was Andrew Ruthven, about whose presence nobody doubts.
The other, one Andrew Henderson, was not seen by James at this time.
However, the King says, on Henderson's own evidence, that the Master now
sent him (about seven o'clock) to warn Gowrie that the King was to come.
Really it seems that Henderson was despatched rather later, during the
first check in the run.
It was all-important to the King's case to prove that Henderson had been
at Falkland, and had returned at once with a message to Gowrie, for this
would demonstrate that, in appearing to be unprepared for the King's
arrival (as he did), Gowrie was making a false pretence. It was also
important to prove that the ride of Ruthven and Henderson to Falkland and
back had been concealed, by them, from the people at Gowrie House. Now
this _was_ proved. Craigengelt, Gowrie's steward, who was tortured,
tried, convicted, and hanged, deponed that, going up the staircase, just
after the King's arrival, he met the Master, booted, and asked 'where he
had been.' 'An errand not far off,' said the Master, concealing his long
ride to Falkland. {44a} Again, John Moncrieff, a gentleman who was with
Gowrie, asked Henderson (who had returned to Perth much earlier than the
King's arrival) where he had been, and he said 'that he had been two or
three miles above the town.' {44b} Henderson himself later declared that
Gowrie had told him to keep his ride to Falkland secret. {44c} The whole
purpose of all this secrecy was to hide the fact that the Ruthvens had
brought the King to Perth, and that Gowrie had early notice, by about 10
a.m., of James's approach, from Henderson. Therefore to make out that
Henderson had been in Falkland, and had given Gowrie early notice of
James's approach, though Gowrie for all that made no preparations to
welcome James, was almost necessary for the Government. They specially
questioned all witnesses on this point. Yet not one of their witnesses
would swear to having seen Henderson at Falkland. This disposes of the
theory of wholesale perjury.
The modern apologist for the Ruthvens, Mr. Louis Barbe, writes: 'We
believe that Henderson perjured himself in swearing that he accompanied
Alexander' (the Master) 'and Andrew Ruthven when . . . they rode to
Falkland. We believe that Henderson perjured himself when he asserted,
on oath, that the Master sent him back to Perth with the intelligence of
the King's coming.' {45}
On the other hand, George Hay, lay Prior of the famous Chartreux founded
by James I in Perth, deponed that Henderson arrived long before Gowrie's
dinner, and Peter Hay corroborated. But Hay averred that Gowrie asked
Henderson 'who was at Falkland with the King?' It would not follow that
Henderson had been at Falkland himself. John Moncrieff deponed that
Gowrie said nothing of Henderson's message, but sat at dinner, feigning
to have no knowledge of the King's approach, till the Master arrived, a
few minutes before the King. Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie's tutor, deponed that
Andrew Ruthven (the Master's other companion in the early ride to
Falkland) told him that the Master had sent on Henderson with news of the
King's coming. If Henderson had been at Falkland, he had some four
hours' start of the King and his party, and must have arrived at Perth,
and spoken to Gowrie, long before dinner, he himself says at 10 a.m.
Dinner was at noon, or, on this day, half an hour later. Yet Gowrie made
no preparations for welcoming the King.
It is obvious that, though the Hays and Moncrieff both saw Henderson
return, booted, from a ride somewhere or other, at an early hour, none of
them could _prove_ that he had ridden to Falkland and back. There was,
in fact, no evidence that Henderson had been at Falkland except his own,
and that of the poor tortured tutor, Rhynd, to the effect that Andrew
Ruthven had confessed as much to him. But presently we shall find that,
while modern apologists for Gowrie deny that Henderson had been at
Falkland, the contemporary Ruthven apologist insists that he had been
there.
To return to James's own narrative, he asserts Henderson's presence at
Falkland, but not from his own knowledge. He did not see Henderson at
Falkland. Ruthven, says James, sent Henderson to Gowrie just after the
King mounted and followed the hounds. Here it must be noted that
Henderson himself says that Ruthven did not actually despatch him till
after he had some more words with the King. This is an instance of
James's _insouciance_ as to harmonising his narrative with Henderson's,
or causing Henderson to conform to his. 'Cooked' evidence, collusive
evidence, would have avoided these discrepancies. James says that,
musing over the story of the pot of gold, he sent one Naismith, a surgeon
(he had been with James at least since 1592), to bring Ruthven to him,
during a check, and told Ruthven that he would, after the hunt, come to
Perth. James thought that this was _after_ the despatch of Henderson,
but probably it was before, to judge by Henderson's account.
During this pause, the hounds having hit on the scent again, the King was
left behind, but spurred on. At every check, the Master kept urging him
to make haste, so James did not tarry to break up the deer, as usual.
The kill was but two bowshots from the stables, and the King did not wait
for his sword, or his second horse, which had to gallop a mile before it
reached him. Mar, Lennox, and others did wait for their second mounts,
some rode back to Falkland for fresh horses, some dragged slowly along on
tired steeds, and did not rejoin James till later.
Ruthven had tried, James says, to induce him to refuse the company of the
courtiers. Three or four servants, he said, would be enough. The others
'might mar the whole purpose.' James was 'half angry,' he began to
entertain odd surmises about Ruthven. One was 'it might be that the Earl
his brother _had handled him so hardly_, that the young gentleman, being
of a high spirit, had taken such displeasure, as he was become somewhat
beside himself.' But why should Gowrie handle his brother hardly?
The answer is suggested by an unpublished contemporary manuscript, 'The
True Discovery of the late Treason,' {48a} &c. 'Some offence had passed
betwixt the said Mr. Alexander Ruthven' (the Master) 'and his brother,
for that the said Alexander, both of himself and by his Majesty's
mediation, had craved of the Earl his brother the demission and release
of the Abbey of Scone, which his Majesty had bestowed upon the said Earl
during his life. . . . His suit had little success.' {48b}
If this be fact (and there is no obvious reason for its invention), James
might have reason to suspect that Gowrie had 'handled his brother
hardly:' Scone being a valuable estate, well worth keeping. To secure
the King's favour as to Scone, Ruthven had a motive, as James would
understand, for making him, and not Gowrie, acquainted with the secret of
the treasure. Thus the unpublished manuscript casually explains the
reason of the King's suspicion that the Earl might have 'handled the
Master hardly.'
On some such surmise, James asked Lennox (who corroborates) whether he
thought the Master quite 'settled in his wits.' Lennox knew nothing but
good of him (as he said in his evidence), but Ruthven, observing their
private talk, implored James to keep the secret, and come _alone_ with
him--at first--to see the captive and the treasure. James felt more and
more uneasy, but he had started, and rode on, while the Master now
despatched Andrew Ruthven to warn Gowrie. Within a mile of Perth the
Master spurred on his weary horse, and gave the news to Gowrie, who,
despite the messages of Henderson and Andrew Ruthven, was at dinner,
unprepared for the Royal arrival. However, Gowrie met James with sixty
men (four, says the Ruthven apologist).
James's train then consisted of fifteen persons. Others must have
dropped in later: they had no fresh mounts, but rested their horses, the
King says, and let them graze by the way. They followed because,
learning that James was going to Perth, they guessed that he intended to
apprehend the Master of Oliphant, who had been misconducting himself in
Angus. Thus the King accounts for the number of his train.
An hour passed before dinner: James pressed for a view of the treasure,
but the Master asked the King not to converse with him then, as the whole
affair was to be kept secret from Gowrie. If the two brothers had been
at odds about the lands of Scone, the Master's attitude towards his
brother might seem intelligible, a point never allowed for by critics
unacquainted with the manuscript which we have cited. At last the King
sat down to dinner, Gowrie in attendance, whispering to his servants,
_and often going in and out of the chamber_. The Master, too, was seen
on the stairs by Craigengelt.
If Gowrie's behaviour is correctly described, it might be attributed to
anxiety about a Royal meal so hastily prepared. But if Gowrie had plenty
of warning, from Henderson (as I do not doubt), that theory is not
sufficient. If engaged in a conspiracy, Gowrie would have reason for
anxiety. The circumstances, owing to the number of the royal retinue,
were unfavourable, yet, as the story of the pot of gold had been told by
Ruthven, the plot could not be abandoned. James even 'chaffed' Gowrie
about being so pensive and _distrait_, and about his neglect of some
little points of Scottish etiquette. Finally he sent Gowrie into the
hall, with the grace-cup for the gentlemen, and then called the Master.
He sent Gowrie, apparently, that he might slip off with the Master, as
that gentleman wished. 'His Majesty desired Mr. Alexander to bring Sir
Thomas Erskine with him, who' (Ruthven) 'desiring the King to go forward
with him, and promising that he should make any one or two follow him
that he pleased to call for, desiring his Majesty to command _publicly_
that none should follow him.' This seems to mean, James and the Master
were to cross the hall and go upstairs; James, or the Master for him,
bidding no one follow (the Master, according to Balgonie, did say that
the King would be alone), while, presently, the Master should return and
privately beckon on one or two to join the King. The Master's excuse for
all this was the keeping from Gowrie and others, for the moment, of the
secret of the prisoner and the pot of gold.
Now, if we turn back to Sir Thomas Erskine's evidence, we find that, when
he joined James in the chamber, after the slaying of the Master, he said
'I thought your Majesty would have concredited more to me, than to have
commanded me to await your Majesty at the door, if you thought it not
meet to have taken me with you.' The King replied, 'Alas, the traitor
deceived me in that, as in all else, for I commanded him expressly to
bring you to me, and he returned back, as I thought, to fetch you, but he
did nothing but _steik_ [shut] the door.'
What can these words mean? They appear to me to imply that James sent
the Master back, according to their arrangement, to bring Erskine, that
the Master gave Erskine some invented message about waiting at some door,
that he then shut a door between the King and his friends, but told the
King that Erskine was to follow them. Erskine was, beyond doubt, in the
street with the rest of the retinue, before the brawl in the turret
reached its crisis, when Gowrie had twice insisted that James had ridden
away.
In any case, to go on with James's tale, he went with Ruthven up a
staircase (the great staircase), 'and through three or four
rooms'--'three or four sundry _houses_'--'the Master ever locking behind
him every door as he passed, and so into a little study'--the turret.
This is perplexing. We nowhere hear in the evidence of more than two
doors, in the suite, which were locked. The staircase perhaps gave on
the long gallery, with a door between them. The gallery gave on a
chamber, which had a door (the door battered by Lennox and Mar), and the
chamber gave on a turret, which had a door between it and the chamber.
We hear, in the evidence, of no other doors, or of no other locked doors.
However, in the Latin indictment of the Ruthvens, 'many doors' are
insisted on. As all the evidence tells of opposition from only _one_
door--that between the gallery and the chamber of death--James's reason
for talking of 'three or four doors' must be left to conjecture. 'The
True Discourse' (MS.) gives but the gallery, chamber, and turret, but
appears to allow for a door between stair and gallery, which the Master
'closed,' while he 'made fast' the next door, that between gallery and
chamber. One Thomas Hamilton, {52a} who writes a long letter (MS.) to a
lady unknown, also speaks of several doors, on the evidence of the King,
and some of the Lords. This manuscript has been neglected by historians.
{52b}
Leaving this point, we ask why a man already suspicious, like James, let
the Master lock any door behind him. We might reply that James had
dined, and that 'wine and beer produce a careless state of mind,' as a
writer on cricket long ago observed. We may also suppose that, till
facts proved the locking of one door at least (for about that there is no
doubt), James did not know that any door _was_ locked. On August 11 the
Rev. Mr. Galloway, in a sermon preached before the King and the populace
at the Cross of Edinburgh, says that the Master led the monarch upstairs,
'and through a _trans_' (a passage), 'the door whereof, so soon as they
had entered, _chekit to with ane lok_, then through a gallery, whose door
also _chekit to_, through a chamber, and the door thereof _chekit to_,
also,' and thence into the turret of which he 'also locked the door.'
{53}
Were the locks that 'chekit to' spring locks, and was James unaware that
he was locked in? But Ramsay, before the affray, had wandered into 'a
gallery, very fair,' and unless there were two galleries, he could not do
this, if the gallery door was locked. Lennox and Mar and the rest speak
of opposition from only one door.
While we cannot explain these things, _that_ door, at least, between the
gallery and the gallery chamber, excluded James from most of his friends.
Can the reader believe that he purposely had that door locked, we know
not how, or by whom, on the system of compelling Gowrie to 'come and be
killed' by way of the narrow staircase? Could we see Gowrie House, and
its 'secret ways,' as it then was, we might understand this problem of
the locked doors. Contemporary criticism, as minutely recorded by
Calderwood, found no fault with the number of locked doors, but only
asked 'how could the King's fear but increase, perceiving Mr. Alexander'
(the Master) 'ever to lock the doors behind them?' If the doors closed
with spring locks (of which the principle had long been understood and
used), the King may not have been aware of the locking. The problem
cannot be solved; we only disbelieve that the King himself had the door
locked, to keep his friends out, and let Gowrie in.
NOTE.--_The Abbey of Scone_. On page 48 we have quoted the statement
that James had bestowed on Gowrie the Abbey of Scone 'during his life.'
This was done in 1580 (_Registrum Magni Sigilli_, vol. iii. No. 3011).
On May 25, 1584, William Fullarton got this gift, the first Earl of
Gowrie and his children being then forfeited. But on July 23, 1586, the
Gowrie of the day was restored to all his lands, and the Earldom of
Gowrie included the old church lands of Scone (_Reg. Mag. Sig._ iv. No.
695, No. 1044). How, then, did John, third Earl of Gowrie, hold only
'for his life' the Commendatorship of the Abbey of Scone, as is stated in
S. P. Scot. (Eliz.) vol. lxvi. No. 50?
IV. THE KING'S NARRATIVE--II. THE MAN IN THE TURRET
We left James entering the little 'round,' or 'study,' the turret
chamber. Here, at last, he expected to find the captive and the pot of
gold. And here the central mystery of his adventure began. His Majesty
saw standing, 'with a very abased countenance, not a bondman but a
freeman, with a dagger at his girdle.' Ruthven locked the door, put on
his hat, drew the man's dagger, and held the point to the King's breast,
'_avowing now that the King behoved to be at his will_, _and used as he
list_; swearing many bloody oaths that if the King cried one word, or
opened a window to look out, that dagger should go to his heart.'
If this tale is true, murder was not intended, unless James resisted: the
King was only being _threatened_ into compliance with the Master's
'will.' Ruthven added that the King's conscience must now be burthened
'for murdering his father,' that is, for the execution of William, Earl
of Gowrie, in 1584. His conviction was believed to have been procured in
a dastardly manner, later to be explained.
James was unarmed, and obviously had no secret coat of mail, in which he
could not have hunted all day, perhaps. Ruthven had his sword; as for
the other man he stood 'trembling and quaking.' James now made to the
Master the odd harangue reported even in Nicholson's version of the
Falkland letter of the same day. As for Gowrie's execution, the King
said, he had then been a minor (he was eighteen in 1584), and Gowrie was
condemned 'by the ordinary course of law'--which his friends denied.
James had restored, he said, all the lands and dignities of the House,
two of Ruthven's sisters were maids of honour. Ruthven had been educated
by the revered Mr. Rollock, he ought to have learned better behaviour.
If the King died he would be avenged: Gowrie could not hope for the
throne. The King solemnly promised forgiveness and silence, if Ruthven
let him go.
Ruthven now uncovered his head, and protested that the King's life should
be safe, if he made no noise or cry: in that case Ruthven would now bring
Gowrie to him. 'Why?' asked James; 'you could gain little by keeping
such a prisoner?' Ruthven said that he could not explain; Gowrie would
tell him the rest. Turning to _the other man_, he said 'I make you the
King's keeper till I come again, and see that you keep him upon your
peril.' He then went out, and locked the door. The person who later
averred that he had been the man in the turret, believed that Ruthven
never went far from the door. James believed, indeed averred, that he
ran downstairs, and consulted Gowrie.
If there was an armed man in the turret, he was either placed there by
the King, to protect him while he summoned his minions by feigned cries
of treason, or he was placed there by Gowrie to help the Master to seize
the King. In the latter case, the Master's position was now desperate;
in lieu of an ally he had procured a witness against himself. Great need
had he to consult Gowrie, but though Gowrie certainly entered the house,
went upstairs, and returned to Lennox with the assurance that James had
ridden away, it is improbable that he and his brother met at this moment.
James, however, avers that they met, Ruthven running rapidly downstairs,
but this was mere inference on the King's part.
James occupied the time of Ruthven's absence in asking the man of the
turret what he knew of the conspiracy. The man replied that he knew
nothing, he had but recently been locked into the little chamber.
Indeed, while Ruthven was threatening, the man (says James) was
trembling, and adjuring the Master not to harm the King. James, having
sworn to Ruthven that he would not open the window himself, now,
characteristically, asked the man to open the window 'on his right hand.'
If the King had his back to the turret door, the window on his right
opened on the courtyard, the window on his left opened on the street.
The man readily opened the window, says the King, and the person claiming
to be the man deponed later that he first opened what the King declared
to be the wrong window, but, before he could open the other, in came the
Master, who, 'casting his hands abroad in desperate manner, said "he
could not mend it, his Majesty behoved to die."' Instead of stabbing
James, however, he tried to bind the Royal hands with a garter, 'swearing
he behoved to be bound.' (A garter was later picked up on the floor by
one of the witnesses, Graham of Balgonie, and secured by Sir Thomas
Erskine. {58})
A struggle then began, James keeping the Master's right hand off his
sword-hilt; the Master trying to silence James with his left hand. James
dragged the Master to the window, which the other man had opened. (In
the Latin indictment of the dead Ruthvens, James opens the window
himself.) The turret man said, in one of two depositions, that he
stretched across the wrestlers, and opened the window. The retinue and
Gowrie were passing, as we know, or loitering below; Gowrie affected not
to hear the cries of treason; Lennox, Mar, and the rest rushed up the
great staircase. Meanwhile, struggling with the Master, James had
brought him out of the turret into the chamber, so he says, though, more
probably, the Master brought _him_. They were now near the door of the
chamber that gave on the narrow staircase, and James was 'throwing the
Master's sword out of his hand, thinking to have stricken him therewith,'
when Ramsay entered, and wounded the Master, who was driven down the
stairs, and there killed by Erskine and Herries. Gowrie then invaded the
room with seven others: James was looking for the Master's sword, {59}
which had fallen, but he was instantly shut into the turret by his
friends, and saw none of the fight in which Gowrie fell. After that
Lennox and the party with hammers were admitted, and--the tumult
appeased--James rode back, through a dark rainy night, to Falkland.
[Picture: The Gallery Chamber and the Turret, Gowrie House]
V. HENDERSON'S NARRATIVE
The man in the turret had vanished like a ghost. Henderson, on the day
after the tragedy, was also not to be found. Like certain Ruthvens, Hew
Moncrieff, Eviot, and others, who had fought in the death-chamber, or
been distinguished in the later riot, Henderson had fled. He was, though
a retainer of Gowrie, a member of the Town Council of Perth, and
'chamberlain,' or 'factor,' of the lands of Scone, then held by Gowrie
from the King. To find any one who had seen him during the tumult was
difficult or impossible. William Robertson, a notary of Perth, examined
in November before the Parliamentary Committee, said then that he only
saw Gowrie, with his two drawn swords, and seven or eight companions, in
the forecourt of the house, and so, 'being afraid, he passed out of the
place.' The same man, earlier, on September 23, when examined with other
citizens of Perth, had said that he followed young Tullibardine and some
of his men, who were entering the court 'to relieve the King.' {60} He
saw the Master lying dead at the foot of the stair, and saw Henderson
'come out of the said turnpike, over the Master's belly.' He spoke to
Henderson, who did not answer. He remembered that Murray of Arbany was
present. Arbany, before the Parliamentary Committee in November, said
nothing on this subject, _nor did Robertson_. His evidence would have
been important, had he adhered to what he said on September 23. But,
oddly enough, if he perjured himself on the earlier occasion (September
23), he withdrew his perjury, when it would have been useful to the
King's case, in the evidence given before the Lords of the Articles, in
November. Mr. Barbe, perhaps misled by the sequence of versions in
Pitcairn, writes: 'Apparently it was only when his memory had been
stimulated by the treatment of those whose evidence was found to be
favourable to the King that the wily notary recalled the details by which
he intended to corroborate Henderson's statement. . . . ' {61a}
The reverse is the case: the wily notary did not offer, at the trial in
November, the evidence which he had given, in September, at the
examination of the citizens of Perth. It may perhaps be inferred that
perjury was not encouraged, but depressed. {61b}
Despite the premiums on perjury which Ruthven apologists insist on, not
one witness would swear to having seen Henderson during or after the
tumult. Yet he instantly fled, with others who had been active in the
brawl, and remained in concealment. Calderwood, the earnest collector of
contemporary gossip and documents, assures us that when the man in the
turret could not be found, the first proclamation identified him with a
Mr. Robert Oliphant, a 'black grim man,' but that Oliphant proved his
absence from Perth. One Gray and one Lesley were also suspected, and one
Younger (hiding when sought for, it is said) was killed. But we have no
copy of the proclamation as to Mr. Robert Oliphant. To Mr. Robert
Oliphant, who had an alibi, we shall return, for this gentleman, though
entirely overlooked by our historians, was probably at the centre of the
situation (p. 71, _infra_).
Meanwhile, whatever Henderson had done, he mysteriously vanished from
Gowrie House, during or after the turmoil, 'following darkness like a
dream.' Nobody was produced who could say anything about seeing
Henderson, after Moncrieff and the Hays saw him on his return from
Falkland, at about ten o'clock in the morning of August 5.
By August 12, Henderson was still in hiding, and was still being
proclaimed for, with others, of whom Mr. Robert Oliphant was not one:
they were Moncrieff, Eviot, and two Ruthvens. {63a} But, on August 11 at
the Cross of Edinburgh, in presence of the King, his chaplain, the Rev.
Patrick Galloway, gave news of Henderson. Mr. Galloway had been minister
of Perth, and a fierce Presbyterian of old.
Blow, Galloway, the trumpet of the Lord!
exclaimed a contemporary poet. But James had tamed Galloway, he was now
the King's chaplain, he did not blow the trumpet of the Lord any longer,
and, I fear, was capable of anything. He had a pension, Calderwood tells
us, from the lands of Scone, and knew Henderson, who, as Chamberlain, or
steward, paid the money. In his exciting sermon, Galloway made a
dramatic point. Henderson was found, and Henderson was the man in the
turret! Galloway had received a letter from Henderson, in his own hand;
any listener who knew Henderson's hand might see the letter. Henderson
tells his tale therein; Galloway says that it differs almost nothing from
the King's story, of which he had given an abstract in his discourse.
And he adds that Henderson stole downstairs while Ramsay was engaged with
the Master. {63b}
Henderson, being now in touch with Galloway, probably received promise of
his life, and of reward, for he came in before August 20, and, at the
trial in November, was relieved of the charge of treason, and gave
evidence.
Here we again ask, Why did Henderson take to flight? What had he to do
with the matter? None fled but those who had been seen, sword in hand,
in the fatal chamber, or stimulating the populace to attack the King
during the tumult. Andrew Ruthven, who had ridden to Falkland with
Henderson and the Master, did not run away, no proclamation for _him_ is
on record. Nobody swore to seeing Henderson, like his fellow fugitives,
armed or active, yet he fled and skulked. Manifestly Henderson had, in
one way or other, been suspiciously concerned in the affair. He had come
in, and was at Falkland, by August 20, when he was examined before the
Chancellor, Montrose, the King's Advocate, Sir Thomas Hamilton, Sir
George Hume of Spot (later Earl of Dunbar), and others, in the King's
absence. He deponed that, on the night of August 4, Gowrie bade him and
Andrew Ruthven ride early to Falkland with the Master, and return, if the
Master ordered him so to do, with a message. At Falkland they went into
a house, {64} and the Master sent him to learn what the King was doing.
He came back with the news; the Master talked with the King, then told
Henderson to carry to Gowrie the tidings of the King's visit, 'and that
his Majesty would be quiet.' Henderson asked if he was to start at once.
Ruthven told him to wait till he spoke to the King again. They did
speak, at a gap in a wall, during the check in the run; Ruthven returned
to Henderson, sent him off, and Henderson reached Perth about ten
o'clock. Gowrie, on his arrival, left the company he was with (the two
Hays), and here George Hay's evidence makes Gowrie ask Henderson 'who was
with the King at Falkland?' Hay said that Gowrie then took Henderson
into another room. Henderson says nothing about a question as to the
King's company, asked in presence of Hay, a compromising and improbable
question, if Gowrie wished to conceal the visit to Falkland.
Apart, Gowrie put some other questions to Henderson as to how the King
received the Master. Henderson then went to his house; an hour later
Gowrie bade him put on his secret coat of mail, and plate sleeves, as he
had to arrest a Highlander. Henderson did as commanded; at twelve the
steward told him to bring up dinner, as Craigengelt (the caterer) was
ill. Dinner began at half-past twelve; at the second course the Master
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 Kin
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