Ruthvens in November, witnesses like Lennox swore to his quarter of an
hour of talk with Ruthven at Falkland before the hunt. The _early_
arrival of Andrew Henderson at Gowrie's house, about half-past ten, is
proved by two gentlemen named Hay, and one named Moncrieff, who were
then with Gowrie on business to which he at once refused to attend
further, in the case of the Hays. Henderson's presence with Ruthven at
Falkland is also confirmed by a manuscript vindication of the Ruthvens
issued at the time. None of the King's party saw him, and their
refusal to swear that they did see him shows their honesty, the point
being essential. Thus the circumstance that Gowrie ordered no dinner
for the King, despite Henderson's early arrival with news of his
coming, shows that Gowrie meant to affect being taken by surprise.
Again, the flight of Henderson on the very night of August 5 proves
that he was implicated: why else should a man fly who had not been
seen by anyone (except a Perth witness who withdrew his evidence) in
connection with the fatal events? No other man fled, except some of
Gowrie's retainers who took open part in the fighting.
James's opinion that Ruthven was deranged, in consequence of harsh
treatment by his brother, Gowrie, is explained by a dispute between
the brothers about the possession of the church lands of Scone, which
Gowrie held, and Ruthven desired, the King siding with Ruthven. This
is quite casually mentioned in a contemporary manuscript.[13] Again,
Lennox, on oath, averred that, as they rode to Perth, James told him
the story of the lure, the pot of gold. Lennox was a man of honour,
and he had married Gowrie's sister.
[Footnote 13: 'The True Discourse of the Late Treason,' _State
Papers_, Scotland, Elizabeth, vol. lvi. No. 50.]
Ruthven, on his return to Gowrie's house, told a retainer,
Craigingelt, that he 'had been on an errand not far off,' and
accounted for the King's arrival by saying that he was 'brought' by
the royal saddler to exact payment of a debt to the man. Now James had
just given Gowrie a year's immunity from pursuit of creditors, and
there is no trace of the saddler's presence. Clearly Ruthven lied to
Craigingelt; he had been at Falkland, _not_ 'on an errand not far
off.'
That Cranstoun, Gowrie's man, brought the news, or rumour, of the
King's departure was admitted by himself. That Gowrie went into the
house to verify the fact; insisted that it was true; gave the lie to
the porter, who denied it; and tried to make the King's party take
horse and follow, was proved by Lennox, Lindores, Ray (a magistrate of
Perth), the porter himself, and others, on oath.
That the King was locked in by a door which could not be burst open is
matter of undisputed certainty.
All these are facts that 'winna ding, and downa be disputed.' They
_were_ disputed, however, when Henderson, Gowrie's factor, or steward,
and a town councillor of Perth, came out of hiding between August 11
and August 20, told his story and confessed to having been the man in
the turret. He said that on the night of August 4 Gowrie bade him ride
very early next day with the Master of Ruthven to Falkland, and return
with any message that Ruthven might send. He did return--when the Hays
and Moncrieff saw him--with news that the King was coming. An hour
later Gowrie bade him put on a shirt of mail and plate sleeves, as he
meant to arrest a Highlander in the Shoe-gait. Later, the King
arriving, Henderson was sent to Ruthven, in the gallery, and told to
do whatever he was bidden. Ruthven then locked him up in the turret,
giving no explanation. Presently the King was brought into the turret,
and Henderson pretends that, to a faint extent, he hampered the
violence of Ruthven. During the struggle between Ramsay and Ruthven he
slunk downstairs, went home, and fled that night.
It was denied that Henderson had been at Falkland at all. Nobody swore
to his presence there, yet it is admitted by the contemporary
apologist, who accuses the King of having organised the whole
conspiracy against the Ruthvens. It was said that nobody saw Henderson
slink away out of the narrow stair, though the quadrangle was crowded.
One Robertson, however, a notary of Perth, gave evidence (September
23) that he did see Henderson creep out of the narrow staircase and
step over the Master's dead body; Robertson spoke to him, but he made
no reply. If Robertson perjured himself on September 23, he withdrew
his evidence, or rather, he omitted it, at the trial in November. His
life would not have been worth living in Perth--where the people were
partisans of the Ruthvens--if he had adhered to his first statement.
In the absence of other testimony many fables were circulated as to
Henderson's absence from Perth all through the day, and, on the other
hand, as to his presence, in the kitchen, during the crisis. He was
last seen, for certain, in the house just before the King's dinner,
and then, by his account, was locked up in the turret by the Master.
Probably Robertson's first story was true. Other witnesses, to shield
their neighbours, denied having seen retainers of Gowrie's who most
assuredly were present at the brawls in the quadrangle. It was never
explained why Henderson fled at once if he was not the man in the
turret. I therefore conceive that, as he certainly was at Falkland,
and certainly returned early, his story is true in the main.
Given all this, only one of two theories is possible. The affair was
not accidental; James did not fall into a panic and bellow 'Treason!'
out of the window, merely because he found himself alone in a
turret--and why in a secluded turret?--with the Master. To that theory
the locked door of the gallery is a conclusive reply. Somebody locked
it for some reason. Therefore either the Ruthvens plotted against the
King, or the King plotted against the Ruthvens. Both parties had good
grounds for hatred, as we shall show--that is, Gowrie and James had
motives for quarrel; but with the young Master, whose cause, as
regards the lands of Scone, the King espoused, he had no reason for
anger. If James was guilty, how did he manage his intrigue?
With motives for hating Gowrie, let us say, the King lays his plot. He
chooses for it a day when he knows that the Murrays of Tullibardine
will be in Perth at the wedding of one of the clan. They will defend
the King from the townsfolk, clients of their Provost, Gowrie. James
next invites Ruthven to Falkland (this was asserted by Ruthven's
defenders): he arrives at the strangely early hour of 6.30 A.M. James
has already invented the story of the pot of gold, to be confided to
Lennox, as proof that Ruthven is bringing him to Perth--that he has
not invited Ruthven.
Next, by secretly spreading a rumour that he means to apprehend the
Master of Oliphant, James secures a large train of retainers, let us
say twenty-five men, without firearms, while he escapes the suspicion
that would be aroused if he ordered them to accompany him. James has
determined to sacrifice Ruthven (with whom he had no quarrel
whatever), merely as bait to draw Gowrie into a trap.
Having put Lennox off with a false reason for his accompanying Ruthven
alone in the house of Gowrie, James privately arranges that Ruthven
shall quietly summon him, or Erskine, to follow upstairs, meaning to
goad Ruthven into a treasonable attitude just as they appear on the
scene. He calculates that Lennox, Erskine, or both, will then stab
Ruthven without asking questions, and that Gowrie will rush up, to
avenge his brother, and be slain.
But here his Majesty's deeply considered plot, on a superficial view,
breaks down, since Ruthven (for reasons best known to himself) summons
neither Lennox nor Erskine. James, observing this circumstance,
rapidly and cleverly remodels his plot, and does not begin to provoke
the brawl till, being, Heaven knows why, in the turret, he hears his
train talking outside in the street. He had shrewdly provided for
their presence there by ordering a servant of his own to spread the
false rumour of his departure, which Cranstoun innocently brought.
Why did the King do this, as his original idea involved no need of
such a stratagem? He had also, somehow, persuaded Gowrie to credit the
rumour, in the face of the porter's denial of its possibility, and to
persist in it, after making no very serious attempt to ascertain its
truth. To succeed in making Gowrie do this, in place of thoroughly
searching the house, is certainly the King's most striking and
inexplicable success.
The King has thus two strings to his nefarious bow. The first was that
Ruthven, by his orders, would bring Erskine and Lennox, and, just as
they appeared, James would goad Ruthven into a treasonable attitude,
whereon Lennox and Erskine would dirk him. The second plan, if this
failed (as it did, because Ruthven did not obey orders), was to
deceive Gowrie into bringing the retinue under the turret window, so
that the King could open the window and cry 'Treason!' as soon as he
heard their voices and footsteps below. This plan succeeds. James
yells out of the window. Not wanting many spectators, he has, somehow,
locked the door leading into the gallery, while giving Ramsay a hint
to wait outside of the house, within hearing, and to come up by the
back staircase, which was built in a conspicuous tower.
The rest is easy. Gowrie may bring up as many men as he pleases, but
Ramsay has had orders to horrify him by saying that the King is slain
(this was alleged), and then to run him through as he gives ground, or
drops his points; this after a decent form of resistance, in which
three of the King's four men are wounded.
'Master of the human heart,' like Lord Bateman, James knows that
Ruthven will not merely leave him, when goaded by insult, and that
Gowrie, hearing of his brother's death, will not simply stand in the
street and summon the citizens.
To secure a witness to the truth of his false version of the matter
James must have begun by artfully bribing Henderson, Gowrie's steward,
either simply to run away, and then come in later with corroboration,
or actually to be present in the turret, and then escape. Or perhaps
the King told his man-in-the-turret tale merely 'in the air;' and then
Henderson, having run away in causeless panic, later 'sees money in
it,' and appears, with a string of falsehoods. 'Chance loves Art,'
says Aristotle, and chance might well befriend an artist so capable
and conscientious as his Majesty. To be sure Mr. Hill Burton says 'the
theory that the whole was a plot of the Court to ruin the powerful
House of Gowrie must at once, after a calm weighing of the evidence,
be dismissed as beyond the range of sane conclusions. Those who formed
it had to put one of the very last men in the world to accept of such
a destiny into the position of an unarmed man who, without any
preparation, was to render himself into the hands of his armed
adversaries, and cause a succession of surprises and acts of violence,
which, by his own courage and dexterity, he would rule to a determined
and preconcerted plan.'[14]
[Footnote 14: Burton, _History of Scotland_, v. 336.]
If there was a royal plot, _without a plan_, then James merely
intended to raise a brawl and 'go it blind.' This, however, is almost
beyond the King's habitual and romantic recklessness. We must prefer
the theory of a subtly concerted and ably conducted plan, constructed
with alternatives, so that, if one string breaks, another will hold
fast. That plan, to the best of my poor powers, I have explained.
To drop the figure of irony, all this hypothesis is starkly
incredible. James was not a recklessly adventurous character to go
weaponless with Ruthven, who wore a sword, and provoke him into
insolence. If he had been ever so brave, the plot is of a complexity
quite impossible; no sane man, still less a timid man, could conceive
and execute a plot at the mercy of countless circumstances, not to be
foreseen. Suppose the Master slain, and Gowrie a free man in the
street. He had only to sound the tocsin, summon his devoted townsmen,
surround the house, and ask respectfully for explanations.
Take, on the other hand, the theory of Gowrie's guilt. Here the
motives for evil will on either side may be briefly stated. Since the
murder of Riccio (1566) the Ruthvens had been the foes of the Crown.
Gowrie's grandfather and father were leaders in the attack on Mary and
Riccio; Gowrie's father insulted Queen Mary, while caged in Loch Leven
Castle, by amorous advances--so she declares. In 1582 Gowrie's father
captured James and held him in degrading captivity. He escaped, and
was reconciled to his gaoler, who, in 1584, again conspired, and was
executed, while the Ruthven lands were forfeited. By a new revolution
(1585-1586) the Ruthvens were reinstated. In July 1593 Gowrie's
mother, by an artful ambuscade, enabled the Earl of Bothwell again to
kidnap the King. In 1594 our Gowrie, then a lad, joined Bothwell in
open rebellion. He was pardoned, and in August 1594 went abroad,
travelled as far as Rome, studied at Padua, and, summoned by the party
of the Kirk, came to England in March 1600. Here he was petted by
Elizabeth, then on almost warlike terms with James. For thirty years
every treason of the Ruthvens had been backed by Elizabeth; and Cecil,
ceaselessly and continuously, had abetted many attempts to kidnap
James. These plots were rife as late as April 1600. The object always
was to secure the dominance of the Kirk over the King, and Gowrie, as
the natural noble leader of the Kirk, was recalled to Scotland, in
1600, by the Rev. Mr. Bruce, the chief of the political preachers,
whom James had mastered in 1596-97. Gowrie, arriving, instantly headed
the Opposition, and, on June 21, 1600, successfully resisted the
King's request for supplies, rendered necessary by his hostile
relations with England. Gowrie then left the Court, and about July 20
went to hunt in Atholl; his mother (who had once already lured James
into a snare) residing at his Perth house. On August 1 Gowrie warned
his mother of his return, and she went to their strong castle of
Dirleton, near North Berwick and the sea, while Gowrie came to his
Perth house on August 3, it being understood that he was to ride to
Dirleton on August 5. Thither he had sent on most of his men and
provisions. On August 5, we know he went on a longer journey.
We have shown that a plot by James is incredible. There is no evidence
to prove a plot by Gowrie, beyond the whole nature of the events, and
the strange conduct of himself and his brother. But, if plot he did,
he merely carried out, in the interests of his English friends, the
traditional policy of his grandfather, his father, his mother, and his
ally, Bothwell, at this time an exile in Spain, maturing a conspiracy
in which he claimed Gowrie as one of his confederates. While the King
was a free man, Gowrie could not hope to raise the discontented
Barons, and emancipate the preachers--yet more bitterly
discontented--who had summoned him home. Let the King vanish, and the
coast was clear; the Kirk's party, the English party, would triumph.
The inference is that the King was to be made to disappear, and that
Gowrie undertook to do it. Two witnesses--Mr. Cowper, minister of
Perth, and Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie's old tutor--averred that he was wont to
speak of the need of extreme secrecy 'in the execution of a high and
dangerous purpose.' Such a purpose as the trapping of the King by a
secret and sudden onfall was the mere commonplace of Scottish
politics. Cecil's papers, at this period and later, are full of such
schemes, submitted by Scottish adventurers. That men so very young as
the two Ruthvens should plan such a device, romantic and perilous, is
no matter for marvel.
The plot itself must be judged by its original idea, namely, to lure
James to Perth, with only two or three servants, at an early hour in
the day. Matters fell out otherwise; but, had the King entered Gowrie
House early, and scantly attended, he might have been conveyed across
Fife, disguised, in the train of Gowrie as he went to Dirleton. Thence
he might be conveyed by sea to Fastcastle, the impregnable eyrie of
Gowrie's and Bothwell's old ally, the reckless intriguer, Logan of
Restalrig. The famous letters which Scott, Tytler, and Hill Burton
regarded as proof of that plot, I have shown, by comparison of
handwritings, to be all forged; but one of them, claimed by the forger
as his model for the rest, is, I think, a feigned copy of a genuine
original. In that letter (of Logan to Gowrie) he is made to speak of
their scheme as analogous to one contrived against 'a nobleman of
Padua,' where Gowrie had studied. This remark, in a postscript, can
hardly have been invented by the forger, Sprot, a low country
attorney, a creature of Logan's. All the other letters are mere
variations on the tune set by this piece.
A plot of this kind is, at least, not impossible, like the quite
incredible conspiracy attributed to James. The scheme was only one of
scores of the same sort, constantly devised at that time. The thing
next to impossible is that Henderson was left, as he declared, in the
turret, by Ruthven, without being tutored in his _rôle_. The King's
party did not believe that Henderson here told truth; he had accepted
the _rôle_, they said, but turned coward. This is the more likely as,
in December 1600, a gentleman named Robert Oliphant, a retainer of
Gowrie, fled from Edinburgh, where certain revelations blabbed by him
had come into publicity. He had said that, in Paris, early in 1600,
Gowrie moved him to take the part of the armed man in the turret; that
he had 'with good reason dissuaded him; that the Earl thereon left him
and dealt with Henderson in that matter; that Henderson undertook it
and yet fainted'--that is, turned craven. Though nine years later, in
England, the Privy Council acquitted Oliphant of concealing treason,
had he not escaped from Edinburgh in December 1600 the whole case
might have been made clear, for witnesses were then at hand.
We conclude that, as there certainly was a Ruthven plot, as the King
could not possibly have invented and carried out the affair, and that
as Gowrie, the leader of the Kirk party, was young, romantic, and
'Italianate,' he did plan a device of the regular and usual kind, but
was frustrated, and fell into the pit which he had digged. But the
Presbyterians would never believe that the young leader of the Kirk
party attempted what the leaders of the godly had often done, and far
more frequently had conspired to do, with the full approval of Cecil
and Elizabeth. The plot was an orthodox plot, but, to this day,
historians of Presbyterian and Liberal tendencies prefer to believe
that the King was the conspirator. The dead Ruthvens were long
lamented, and even in the nineteenth century the mothers, in
Perthshire, sang to their babes, 'Sleep ye, sleep ye, my bonny Earl o'
Gowrie.'[15]
[Footnote 15: The story, with many new documents, is discussed at
quite full length in the author's _King James and the Gowrie Mystery_,
Longmans, 1902.]
A lady has even written to inform me that she is the descendant of the
younger Ruthven, who escaped after being stabbed by Ramsay and
Erskine, fled to England, married, and had a family. I in vain replied
that young Ruthven's body was embalmed, exhibited in the Scottish
Parliament, and hacked to pieces, which were set on spikes in public
places, and that after these sufferings he was unlikely to marry. The
lady was not to be shaken in her belief.
In _The Athenæum_ for August 28, 1902, Mr. Edmund Gosse recognises
Ramsay the Ruthven slayer as author of a Century of English Sonnets
(1619), of which Lord Cobham possesses a copy apparently unique. The
book was published at Paris, by Réné Giffart. The Scottish name,
Gifford, was at that time spelled 'Giffart,' so the publisher was of
Scottish descent.
VIII
_THE STRANGE CASE OF DANIEL DUNGLAS HOME_
The case of Daniel Dunglas Home is said, in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, to present a curious and unsolved problem. It
really presents, I think, two problems equally unsolved, one
scientific, and the other social. How did Mr. Home, the son of a
Scottish mother in the lower middle class at highest, educated (as far
as he was educated at all) in a village of Connecticut, attain his
social position? I do not ask why he was 'taken up' by members of
noble English families: 'the caresses of the great' may be lavished on
athletes, and actors, and musicians, and Home's remarkable
performances were quite enough to make him welcome in country houses.
Moreover, he played the piano, the accordion, and other musical
instruments. For his mysterious 'gift' he might be invited to puzzle
and amuse royal people (not in England), and continental emperors, and
kings. But he did much more than what Houdin or Alexis, a conjuror and
a clairvoyant, could do. He successively married, with the permission
and good will of the Czar, two Russian ladies of noble birth, a feat
inexplicable when we think of the rules of the continental _noblesse_.
A duc, or a prince, or a marquis may marry the daughter of an American
citizen who has made a fortune in lard. But the daughters of the
Russian _noblesse_ do not marry poor American citizens with the good
will of the Czar. By his marriages Home far outwent such famous
charlatans as Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the mysterious Saint Germain the
deathless. Cagliostro and Saint Germain both came on the world with an
appearance of great wealth and display. The source of the opulence of
Saint Germain is as obscure as was the source of the sudden enrichment
of Beau Wilson, whom Law, the financier, killed in a duel. Cagliostro,
like Law, may have acquired his diamonds by gambling or swindling. But
neither these two men nor Mesmer, though much in the society of
princes, could have hoped, openly and with the approval of Louis XV.
or Louis XVI., to wed a noble lady. Yet Home did so twice, though he
had no wealth at all.
Cagliostro was a low-born Neapolitan ruffian. But he had a presence!
In the Memoirs of Madame d'Oberkirch she tells us how much she
disliked and distrusted Cagliostro, always avoiding him, and warning
Cardinal Rohan against him--in vain. But she admits that the man
dominated her, or would have dominated her, by something inexplicable
in his eyes, his bearing, and his unaccountable knowledge, as when he
publicly announced, on a certain day, the death of the great Empress,
Maria Theresa, of which the news did not arrive till five days later.
Now Home had none of this dominating personality. He has been
described to me, by a lady who knew him in his later years, when he
had ceased to work drawing-room miracles in society, as a gentle,
kindly, quiet person, with no obvious fault, unless a harmless and
childlike vanity be a fault. Thus he struck an observer not of his
intimate circle. He liked to give readings and recitations, and he
played the piano with a good deal of feeling. He was a fair linguist,
he had been a Catholic, he was of the middle order of intelligence, he
had no 'mission' except to prove that disembodied spirits exist, if
that were a legitimate inference from the marvels which attended him.
Mr. Robert Bell in _The Cornhill Magazine_, Vol. II., 1860, described
Home's miracles in an article called 'Stranger than Fiction.' His
account of the man's personality is exactly like what I have already
given. Home was 'a very mild specimen of familiar humanity.' His
health was bad. 'The expression of his face in repose' (he was only
twenty-seven) 'is that of physical suffering.... There is more
kindliness and gentleness than vigour in the character of his
features.... He is yet so young that the playfulness of boyhood has
not passed away, and he never seems so thoroughly at ease with himself
and others as when he is enjoying some light and temperate
amusement.'