James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

by Andrew Lang

Since this book was written, the author has had an opportunity to read an Apology for the Ruthvens by the late Andrew Bisset. This treatise is apt to escape observation: it is entitled ‘Sir Walter Scott,’ and occupies pp. 172–303 in ‘Essays on Historical Truth,’ long out of print. [0a] On many points Mr. Bisset agreed with Mr. Barbé in his ‘Tragedy of Gowrie House,’ and my replies to Mr. Barbé serve for his predecessor. But Mr. Bisset found no evidence that the King had formed a plot against Gowrie. By a modification of the contemporary conjecture of Sir William Bowes he suggested that a brawl between the King and the Master of Ruthven occurred in the turret, occasioned by an atrocious insult offered to the Master by the King. This hypothesis, for various reasons, does not deserve discussion. Mr. Bisset appeared to attribute the Sprot papers to the combined authorship of the King and Sir Thomas Hamilton: which our new materials disprove. A critic who, like Mr. Bisset, accused the King of poisoning Prince Henry, and many other persons, was not an unprejudiced historian.

CONTENTS

		page
Introduction		[vii]
I.	The Mystery and theEvidence	[1]
II.	The Slaughter of theRuthvens	[11]
III.	The King’s OwnNarrative	[35]
IV.	The King’sNarrative. II	[55]
V.	Henderson’s Narrative	[60]
VI.	The Strange Case of Mr. RobertOliphant	[71]
VII.	The Contemporary RuthvenVindication	[80]
VIII.	The Theory of an AccidentalBrawl	[94]
IX.	Contemporary ClericalCriticism	[99]
X.	Popular Criticism of theDay	[111]
XI.	The King and the Ruthvens	[118]
XII.	Logan of Restalrig	[148]
XIII.	The Secrets of Sprot	[168]
XIV.	The Laird and the Notary	[182]
XV.	The Final Confessions of theNotary	[201]
XVI.	What is Letter IV?	[232]
XVII.	Inferences as to the CasketLetters	[240]
APPENDICES
A.	The Frontispiece	[245]
B.	The Contemporary RuthvenVindication	[252]
C.	Five Letters forged by Sprot,as from Logan	[257]
Index		[265]

ILLUSTRATIONS

INCOLOURS
Gowrie’s Coat of Arms	Frontispiece
PHOTOGRAVURES
James VI. From the picture painted by Paul Van Somer (1621)now in the National Portrait Gallery	to face p. [4]
Queen Anne From a painting by Paul Van Somer in Queen Anne’sRoom, St. James’s Palace	[138]
OTHERILLUSTRATIONS
Falkland Palace From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons,Dundee	[33]
Dirleton Castle From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons,Dundee	[82]
Falkland Palace: the Courtyard From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons,Dundee	[116]
Restalrig house From a Photograph by W. J. Hay, Edinburgh	[150]
Restalrig Village From a Photograph by W. J. Hay, Edinburgh	[150]
Fastcastle (circ.1820) From a picture by the Rev. Mr. Thomson, ofDuddingston, in the possession of Mrs.Blackwood-Porter	[154]
Fastcastle From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons,Dundee	to face p. [176]
Fastcastle From a Photograph by J. Valentine & Sons,Dundee
Handwriting of Logan(January 1585–6)	[196]
Hand of Logan as forged bySprot (second page of Letter IV)	[202]
Handwriting of Sprot(July 5, 1608)	[210]
PLANS
Situation and Topography of GowrieHouse	[15]
Interior of Gowrie House	[16]
The Gallery Chamber and theTurret, Gowrie House	[59]

I. THE MYSTERY AND THE EVIDENCE

There are enigmas in the annals of most peoples; riddles put by the Sphinx of the Past to the curious of the new generations. These questions do not greatly concern the scientific historian, who is busy with constitution-making, statistics, progress, degeneration, in short with human evolution. These high matters, these streams of tendency, form the staple of history, but the problems of personal character and action still interest some inquiring minds. Among these enigmas nearly the most obscure, ‘The Gowrie Conspiracy,’ is our topic.

This affair is one of the haunting mysteries of the past, one of the problems that nobody has solved. The events occurred in 1600, but the interest which they excited was so keen that belief in the guilt or innocence of the two noble brothers who perished in an August afternoon, was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants, the strife

of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since attracted the curious, as do the enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true character of Richard III, the real face behind ‘The Iron Mask,’ the identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence or guilt of Mary Stuart.

In certain respects the Gowrie mystery is necessarily less attractive than that of ‘the fairest and most pitiless Queen on earth.’ There is no woman in the story. The world, of course, when the Ruthvens died, at once acted on the maxim, cherchez la femme. The woman in the case, men said, was the beautiful Queen, Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI. That fair and frivolous dame, ‘very very woman,’ certainly did her best, by her behaviour, to encourage the belief that she was the cause of these sorrows. Even so, when the Bonny Earl Moray—the tallest and most beautiful man in Scotland—died like a lion dragged down by wolves, the people sang: