James VI and the Gowrie Mystery Part 13

But, if readers do not accept our conclusions, they may still rest, perhaps, on the arguments adduced in the earlier chapters of this essay, to demonstrate that neither accident nor the machinations of the King, but an enterprise of their own, caused the Slaughter of the Ruthvens.

The infamous conduct of the Privy Council in 16081609 does not prove that, in 1600, the King carried out a conspiracy in itself impossible.

I have found nothing tending to show that King James was ever made aware of Sprot's confessions of forgery. It is true that Sir William Hart, the Lord Justice, went to Court after Sprot's death, and, in September, the Scottish Privy Council asked James to send him home again. {239} But Hart need not have told all the truth to James.

There is a kind of rejoicing _navete_ in all of James's references to the Gowrie affair, which seems to me hardly consistent with his disbelief in his own prowess on that occasion. If one may conjecture, one would guess that the Privy Council and the four preachers managed to persuade themselves, Sprot being the liar whom we know, that he lied when he called his Logan papers forgeries. The real facts may have been concealed from the King. Mr. Gunton, the Librarian at Hatfield, informs me that, had he not seen Letter IV (which he is sure was _written_ by Sprot), he does not think he should have suspected the genuineness of Letters II and III, after comparing them with the undoubted letters of Logan in the Cecil ma.n.u.scripts. The Government and the four preachers, with such doc.u.ments in their hands, doc.u.ments still apt to delude, may easily have brought themselves to disbelieve Sprot's a.s.sertion that they were all forgeries. Let us hope that they did!

XVII. INFERENCES AS TO THE CASKET LETTERS

The affair of Sprot has an obvious bearing on that other mystery, the authenticity of the Casket Letters attributed to Queen Mary. As we know, she, though accused, was never allowed to see the letters alleged to be hers. We know that, in December 1568, these doc.u.ments were laid before an a.s.sembly of English n.o.bles at Hampton Court. They were compared, for orthography and handwriting, with genuine letters written by the Queen to Elizabeth, and Cecil tells us that 'no difference was found.' It was a rapid examination, by many persons, on a brief winter day, partly occupied by other business. If experts existed, we are not informed that they were present. The Casket Letters have disappeared since the death of the elder Gowrie, in 1584. From him, Elizabeth had vainly sought to purchase them. They were indispensable, said Bowes, her amba.s.sador, to 'the secrecy of the cause.' Gowrie would not be tempted, and it is not improbable that he carried so valuable a treasure with him, when, in April 1584, he retired to Dundee, to escape by sea if the Angus conspiracy failed.

At Dundee he was captured, after defending the house in which he was residing. That house was pulled down recently; nothing was discovered.

But fable runs that, at the destruction of another ancient house in Dundee, 'Lady Wark's Stairs,' _a packet of old letters in French_ was found in a hiding hole contrived within a chimney. The letters were not examined by any competent person, and n.o.body knows what became of them.

Romance relates that they were the Casket Letters, entrusted by Gowrie to a friend. It is equally probable that he yielded them to the King, when he procured his remission for the Raid of Ruthven. In any case, they are lost.

Consequently we cannot compare the Casket Letters with genuine letters by Mary. On the other hand, as I chanced to notice that genuine letters of Logan's exist at Hatfield, I was enabled, by the kindness of the Marquis of Salisbury, and of Sir Stair Agnew, to have both the Hatfield Logan letters, and the alleged Logan letters produced in 1609, photographed and compared, at Hatfield and at the General Register House in Edinburgh. By good fortune, the Earl of Haddington also possesses (what we could not expect to find in the case of the Casket Letters) doc.u.ments in the ordinary handwriting of George Sprot, the confessed forger of the plot-letters attributed to Logan. The result of comparison has been to convince Mr. Gunton at Hatfield, Mr. Anderson in Edinburgh, Professor Hume Brown, and other gentlemen of experience, that Sprot forged all the plot-letters. Their reasons for holding this opinion entirely satisfy me, and have been drawn up by Mr. Anderson, in a convincing report. To put the matter briefly, the forged letters present the marked peculiarities of Logan's orthography, noted by the witnesses in 1609.

But they also contain many peculiarities of spelling which are not Logan's, but are Sprot's. The very dotting of the 'i's' is Sprot's, not Logan's. The long 's' of Logan is heavily and clumsily imitated. There is a distinct set of peculiarities never found in Logan's undisputed letters: in Sprot's own letters always found. The hand is more rapid and flowing than that of Logan. Not being myself familiar with the Scottish handwriting of the period, my own opinion is of no weight, but I conceive that the general effect of Logan's hand, in 1586, is not precisely like that of the plot-letters.

My point, however, is that, in 1609, Sprot's forgeries were clever enough to baffle witnesses of unblemished honour, very familiar with the genuine handwriting of Logan. The Rev. Alexander Watson, minister of the Kirk of Coldinghame (where Logan was wont to attend), alleged that '_the character of every letter_ resembles perfectly Robert's handwrit, _every way_.' The spelling, which was peculiar, was also Logan's as a rule.

Mr. Watson produced three genuine letters by Logan, before the Lords of the Articles (who were very sceptical), and satisfied them that the plot-letters were the laird's. Mr. Alexander Smith, minister of Chirnside, was tutor to Logan's younger children; he gave identical evidence. Sir John Arnott, Provost of Edinburgh, a man of distinction and eminence, produced four genuine letters by the Laird, 'agreeing perfectly in spelling and character with the plot-letters. The sheriff clerk of Berwick, William Home, in Aytoun Mill (a guest, I think, at Logan's 'great Yules'), and John Home, notary in Eyemouth, coincided.

The minister of Aytoun, Mr. William Hogg, produced a letter of Logan to the Laird of Aytoun, but was not absolutely so certain as the other witnesses. 'He thinks them' (the plot-letters) 'like [to be] his writing, and that the same appear to be very like his write, by the conformity of letters and spelling.' {243a}

Thus, at the examination of Logan's real and forged letters, as at the examination of Queen Mary's real and Casket letters, in spelling and handwriting 'no difference was found.' Yet the plot-letters were all forged, and Mr. Anderson shows that, though 'no difference was _found_,'

many differences existed. Logan had a better chance of acquittal than Mary. The Lords of the Articles, writes Sir Thomas Hamilton to the King (June 21, 1609), 'had preconceived hard opinions of Restalrig's process.'

{243b} Yet they were convinced by the evidence of the witnesses, and by their own eyes.

From the error of the Lords of the Articles, in 1609, it obviously follows that the English Lords, at Hampton Court, in 1568, may have been unable to detect proofs of forgery in the Casket Letters, which, if the Casket Letters could now be compared with those of Mary, would be at once discovered by modern experts. In short, the evidence as to Mary's handwriting, even if as unanimously accepted, by the English Lords, as Cecil declares, is not worth a 'hardhead,' a debased copper Scottish coin. It is worth no more than the opinion of the Lords of the Articles in the case of the letters attributed to Restalrig.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A. THE FRONTISPIECE

_Gowrie's Arms and Ambitions_

The frontispiece of this volume is copied from the design of the Earl of Gowrie's arms, in what is called 'Workman's MS.,' at the Lyon's office in Edinburgh. The s.h.i.+eld displays, within the royal treasure, the arms of Ruthven in the first and fourth, those of Cameron and Halyburton in the second and third quarters. The supporters are, dexter, a Goat; sinister, a Ram; the crest is a Ram's head. The motto is not given; it was DEID SCHAW. The s.h.i.+eld is blotted by transverse strokes of the pen, the whole rude design having been made for the purpose of being thus scored out, after Gowrie's death, posthumous trial and forfeiture, in 1600.

On the left of the sinister supporter is an armed man, in the Gowrie livery. His left hand grasps his sword-hilt, his right is raised to an imperial crown, hanging above him in the air; from his lips issue the words, TIBI SOLI, 'for thee alone.' Sir James Balfour Paul, Lyon, informs me that he knows no other case of such additional supporter, or whatever the figure ought to be called.

This figure does not occur on any known Ruthven seal. It is not on that of the first Earl of Gowrie, affixed to a deed of February 15831584. It is not on a seal used in 1597, by John, third Earl, given in Henry Laing's 'Catalogue of Scottish Seals' (vol. i. under 'Ruthven'). But, in Crawford's 'Peerage of Scotland' (1716), p. 166, the writer gives the arms of the third Earl (John, the victim of August 5, 1600). In place of the traditional Scottish motto _Deid Schaw_, is the Latin translation, _Facta Probant_. The writer says (Note C), 'This from an authentic copy of his arms, _richly illuminated in the year_ 1597, with his name and t.i.tles, _viz._ "Joannes Ruthven, Comes de Gowry, Dominus de Ruthven,"

&c., in my hands.'

In 1597, as the archives of the Faculty of Law, in the University of Padua, show, Gowrie was a student of Padua. It is also probable that, in 1597, he attained his majority. He certainly had his arms richly illuminated, and he added to his ancestral bearings what Crawfurd describes thus: 'On the dexter a chivaleer, garnish'd with the Earl's coat of arms, _pointing with a sword upward to an imperial crown_, with this device, TIBI SOLI.'

In Workman's MS., the figure points to the crown with the open right hand, and the left hand is on the sword-hilt. The illuminated copy of 1597, once in the possession of Crawfurd, must be the more authentic; the figure _here_ points the sword at a crown, which is _Tibi Soli_, 'For thee' (Gowrie?) 'alone.'

Now on no known Ruthven seal, as we saw, does this figure appear, not even on a seal of Gowrie himself, used in 1597. Thus it is perhaps not too daring to suppose that Gowrie, when in Italy in 1597, added this emblematic figure to his ancestral bearings. What does the figure symbolise?

On this point we have a very curious piece of evidence. On June 22, 1609, Ottavio Baldi wrote, from Venice, to James, now King of England.

His letter was forwarded by Sir Henry Wotton. Baldi says that he has received from Sir Robert Douglas, and is sending to the King by his nephew-a Cambridge student-'a strange relique out of this country.' He obtained it thus: Sir Robert Douglas, while at home in Scotland, had 'heard speech' of 'a certain emblem or impresa,' left by Gowrie in Padua.

Meeting a Scot in Padua, Douglas asked where this emblem now was, and he was directed to the school of a teacher of dancing. There the emblem hung, 'among other devices and remembrances of his scholars.' Douglas had a copy of the emblem made; and immediately 'acquainted me with the quality of the thing,' says Baldi. 'We agreed together, that it should be fit, if possible, to obtain the very original itself, and to leave in the room thereof the copy that he had already taken, which he did effect by well handling the matter.

'Thus hath your Majesty now a view, _in umbra_, of those detestable thoughts which afterwards appeared _in facto_, according to the said Earl's own _mot_. For what other sense or allusion can the reaching at a crown with a sword in a stretched posture, and the impersonating of his device in a blackamore, yield to any intelligent and honest beholder?'

{247}

From Baldi's letter we learn that, in the device left by Gowrie at Padua, the figure pointing a sword at the crown was a negro, thus varying from the figure in Workman's MS., and that in the illuminated copy emblazoned in 1597, and possessed in 1716 by Crawfurd. Next, we learn that Sir Robert Douglas had heard talk of this emblem in Scotland, before he left for Italy. Lastly, a _mot_ on the subject by the Earl himself was reported, to the effect that the device set forth 'in a shadow,' what was intended to be executed 'in very deed.'

Now how could Sir Robert Douglas, in Scotland, hear talk of what had been done and said years ago by Gowrie in Padua? Sir Robert Douglas was descended from Archibald Douglas of Glenbervie (_ob._ 1570), who was ancestor of the Catholic Earl of Angus (_flor._ 1596). This Archibald of Glenbervie had a son, Archibald, named in his father's testament, but otherwise unknown. {248} Rather senior to Gowrie at the University of Padua, and in the same faculty of law, was an Archibald Douglas. He may have been a kinsman of Sir Robert Douglas, himself of the Glenbervie family, and from him Sir Robert, while still in Scotland, may have heard of Gowrie's device, left by him at Padua, and of his _mot_ about _in umbra_ and _in facto_. But, even if these two Douglases were not akin, or did not meet, still Keith, Lindsay, and Ker of Newbattle, all contemporaries of Gowrie at Padua, might bring home the report of Gowrie's enigmatic device, and of his _mot_ there-anent. Had the emblem been part of the regular arms of Ruthven, Sir Robert Douglas, and every Scot of quality, would have known all about it, and seen no mystery in it.

It will scarcely be denied that the a.s.sumption by Gowrie of the figure in his livery, pointing a sword at the crown, and exclaiming 'For Thee Only,' does suggest that wildly ambitious notions were in the young man's mind. What other sense can the emblem bear? How can such ideas be explained?

In an anonymous and dateless MS. cited in 'The Life of John Earl of Gowrie,' by the Rev. John Scott of Perth (1818), it is alleged that Elizabeth, in April 1600, granted to Gowrie, then in London, the guard and honours appropriate to a Prince of Wales. The same Mr. Scott suggests a Royal pedigree for Gowrie. His mother, wife of William, first Earl, was Dorothea Stewart, described in a list of Scottish n.o.bles (1592) as 'sister of umquhile Lord Methven.' Now Henry Stewart, Lord Methven ('Lord m.u.f.fin,' as Henry VIII used to call him), was the third husband of the sister of Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor, wife, first of James IV, then of the Earl of Angus (by whom she had Margaret, Countess of Lennox, and grandmother of James VI), then of Lord Methven. Now if Margaret Tudor had issue by Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, and if that issue was Dorothea, mother of John, third Earl of Gowrie, or was Dorothea's father or mother, that Earl was Elizabeth's cousin. Now Burnet, touching on the Gowrie mystery, says that his own father had 'taken great pains to inquire into that matter, and did always believe it was a real conspiracy. . . . Upon the King's death, Gowrie stood next to the succession of the crown of England,' namely, as descended from Margaret Tudor by Henry (Burnet says 'Francis'!), Lord Methven. Margaret and Methven, says Burnet, had a son, 'made Lord Methven by James V. In the patent he is called _frater noster uterinus_'-'Our brother uterine.' '_He_ had only a daughter, who was mother or grandmother to the Earl of Gowrie, so that by this he might be glad to put the King out of the way, that so he might stand next to the succession of the crown of England.' {249} If this were true, the meaning of Gowrie's device would be flagrantly conspicuous. But where is that patent of James V? Burnet conceivably speaks of it on the information of his father, who 'took great pains to inquire into the particulars of that matter,' so that he could tell his son, 'one thing which none of the historians have taken any notice of,' namely, our Gowrie's Tudor descent, and his claims (failing James _and his issue_) to the crown of England. Now Burnet's father was almost a contemporary of the Gowrie affair. Of the preachers of that period, the King's enemies, Burnet's father knew Mr. Davidson (_ob._ 1603) and Mr. Robert Bruce, and had listened to their prophecies. 'He told me,' says Burnet, 'of many of their predictions that he himself heard them throw out, which had no effect.' Davidson was an old man in 1600; Bruce, for his disbelief in James's account of the conspiracy, was suspended in that year, though he lived till 1631, and, doubtless, prophesied in select circles. Mr. Bruce long lay concealed in the house of Burnet's great-grandmother, daughter of Sir John Arnot, a witness in the trial of Logan of Restalrig. Thus Burnet's father had every means of knowing the belief of the contemporaries of Gowrie, and he may conceivably be Burnet's source for the tale of Gowrie's Tudor descent and Royal claims. They were almost or rather quite baseless, but they were current.

In fact, Dorothea Stewart, mother of Gowrie, was certainly a daughter of Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, and of Janet Stewart, of the House of Atholl. We find no trace of issue born to Margaret Tudor by her third husband, Lord Methven. Yet Gowrie's emblem, adopted by him at Padua in 1597, and his device left in the Paduan dancing school, do distinctly point to some wild idea of his that some crown or other was 'for him alone.' At the trial of Gowrie's father, in 1584, we find mention of his 'challenginge that honor to be of his Hignes blud,' but _that_ must refer to the relations.h.i.+p of the Ruthvens and the King through the Angus branch of the Douglases. {250a}

This question as to the meaning of Gowrie's emblem came rather early into the controversy. William Sanderson, in 1656, published Lives of Mary and of James VI; he says: 'I have a ma.n.u.script which relates that, in Padua, the Earl of Gowrie, among other impressa (_sic_) in a fencing school, caused to be painted, for his devise, a hand and sword aiming at a crown.' {250b} Mr. Scott, in 1818, replied that the device, with the Ruthven arms, 'is engraven on a stone taken from Gowrie House in Perth, and preserved in the house of Freeland' (a Ruthven house). 'There is also, I have been told, a seal with the same engraving upon it, which probably had been used by the Earls of Gowrie and by their predecessors, the Lords of Ruthven.' {251a} But we know of no such seal among Gowrie or Ruthven seals, nor do we know the date of the engraving on stone cited by Mr. Scott. In his opinion the armed man and crown might be an addition granted by James III to William, first Lord Ruthven, in 148788.

Ruthven took the part of the unhappy King, who was mysteriously slain near Bannockburn. Mr. Scott then guesses that this addition of 1488 implied that the armed man pointed his sword at the crown, and exclaimed _Tibi Soli_, meaning 'For Thee, O James III alone, _not_ for thy rebellious son,' James IV. It may be so, but we have no evidence for the use of the emblem before 1597. Moreover, in Gowrie's arms, in Workman's MS., the sword is sheathed. Again, the emblem at Padua showed a 'black-a-more,' or negro, and Sir Robert Douglas could not but have recognised that the device was only part of the ancestral Ruthven arms, if that was the case. The 'black-a-more' was horrifying to Ottavio Baldi, as implying a dark intention.

Here we leave the additional and certainly curious mystery of Gowrie's claims, as 'shadowed' in his chosen emblem. I know not if it be germane to the matter to add that after Bothwell, in 1593, had seized James, by the aid of our Gowrie's mother and sister, he uttered a singular hint to Toby Matthew, Dean of Durham. He intruded himself on the horrified Dean, hot from his successful raid, described with much humour the kidnapping of the untrussed monarch, and let it be understood that he was under the protection of Elizabeth, _that there was a secret candidate for James's crown_, and that he expected to be himself Lieutenant of the realm of Scotland. Bothwell was closely _lie_ with Lady Gowrie (Dorothea Stewart), and our Gowrie presently joined him in a 'band' to serve Elizabeth and subdue James. {251b}

APPENDIX B: THE CONTEMPORARY RUTHVEN VINDICATION

(State Papers, Scotland (Elizabeth), vol. lxvi. No. 52)

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 Matie being present.

Vpone thurisday the last of July . . . . Perth from Strebrane . . . .

bene ahunting accompainit wth . . . . purpose to have ridden to . . . .

mother. Bot he had no sooner . . . . aspersauit fyn . . . . vpone such .

. . . addressit thame selffis . . . thay continewit daylie . . . Amangis the rest Doctor Herries . . . Satirday the first of August feinying himself to . . . of purpose to . . . and my lordis house. This man be my Lord was w . . . and convoyit throche . . the house and the secreit pairts schawin him.

Vpon tysday my [lordis?] servanttis vnderstanding that my [lord?] was to ryde to Lot [Lothian] . . . obteinit licence to go . . . thair effairis and to prepare thameselfis. Whylk my lord wold [not] have grant.i.t to thame if they . . . any treason in . . .

The same day Mr. Alexander being send for be the king . . . tymes befoir, raid to facland accompaneit wth Andro Ruthven and Andro Hendirson, of mynd not to have returnit . . . bot to have met his brother my lord the next morning at the watter syde. And Andro Hendirsonis confessioun testifeit this . . . tuke his ludgeing in facland for this nygt.

At his c.u.ming to facland he learnit that his Matie was a huntting, quhair eftir brekfast he addrest him self. And eftir conference wt his Matie, he direct.i.t Andro Hendirsone to ryd befoir, and schaw my lord [that] the king wald come to Perth [for?] quhat occasion he knew not, and desyrit him to haist becaus he knew my lord vnforsene and vnprovydit for his c.u.ming.

The kingis Matie eftir this resolution raid to Perth accompaneit wth thrie score horse quhair (?) threttie come a lytle before him . . .