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}