James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

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.’ [9 - The evidence of these witnesses is in Pitcairn, ii. 171–191.]

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. [10 - Cranstoun’s deposition in Pitcairn, ii. 156, 157. At Falkland August 6.] 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. [11 - The adversaries of the King say that these men ran up, and were wounded, later, in another encounter. As to this we have no evidence, but we have evidence of their issuing, wounded, from the dark staircase at the moment when Cranstoun fled thence.]

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.

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 à 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 [12 - Quoted by Pitcairn, ii. 209. The Falkland letter, as we show later, was probably written by David Moysie, but must have been, more or less, ‘official.’ Cf. p. 100, infra.] 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. [13 - Many of these may be read in Narratives of Scottish Catholics, by Father Forbes-Leith, S.J.] 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, [14 - Carey to Cecil. Berwick, Border Calendar, vol. ii. p. 677, August 11, 1600.] 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. [15 - Deposition of Craigengelt, a steward of Gowrie’s, Falkland, August 16, 1600. Pitcairn, ii. 157.] 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.’ [16 - Pitcairn, ii. p. 185.] Henderson himself later declared that Gowrie had told him to keep his ride to Falkland secret. [17 - Pitcairn, ii. p. 179.] 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 Barbé, 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.’ [18 - Barbé, p. 91.]

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,’ [19 - State Papers, Scotland (Elizabeth), vol. lxvi. No. 50.] &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.’ [20 - Mr. S. R. Gardiner alone remarks on this point, in a note to the first edition of his great History. See note to p. 54, infra.]

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.