In January 1600, the year of the Gowrie plot, we find Sir John Cranstoun in trouble for harbouring an outlawed Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, who was, with
Douglas, the Laird of Spot, one of Bothwell’s allies in all his most desperate raids on the person of King James. In 1592, Mr. Thomas Cranstoun was forfeited, he was informed against for ‘new conspiracies against his Majesty’s life and estate,’ and, in January 1600, Sir John Cranstoun was sheltering this dangerous and desperate Bothwellian outlaw, as was his son-in law, Mr. William Cranstoun. [155a]
Now the Mr. Thomas Cranstoun who was hanged for his part in the Gowrie affair, was brother of Sir John Cranstoun of Cranstoun, the ally of that other Mr. Thomas Cranstoun who was so deep in Bothwell’s wild raids on the King’s person. In the spring of 1600 (as we have said, but must here repeat) there were reports that Bothwell had secretly returned to Scotland, and, on April 20, 1600, just before the date of Gowrie’s arrival in Edinburgh from London, Nicholson reports suspected plots of Archibald Douglas, of John Colville, a ruined Bothwellian, and a spy, and of the Laird of Spot. [155b] This Colville had recently hinted to Essex that he could do a serviceable enterprise. ‘As for the service I mean to do, if matters go to the worst, it shall be such, God willing—if I lose not my life in doing thereof—as no other can do with a million of gold, and yet I shall not exceed the bonds of humanity,’ that is, he will not murder the King. ‘But for conscience sake and worldly honesty, I must first be
absolved of my natural allegiance.’ (April 27, 1598; again, October 20, 1598.) [156]
The point for us to mark is that all these conspirators and violent men, Bothwell (in exile or secretly in Scotland), Colville (in 1600 an exile in Paris), the Laird of Spot, the Cranstouns, the infamous Archibald Douglas, with Richard Douglas his nephew, and Logan of Restalrig, were united, if not by real friendship, at least, as Thucydides says, by ‘partnership in desperate enterprises’ and by 1600 were active in a subterranean way. If it is fair to say, noscitur a sociis, ‘a man is known by the company he keeps,’ Logan of Restalrig bears the mark of the secret conspirator. He had relations with persons more distinguished than his Chirnsides and Whittingham Douglases, though they were of near kin to the Earl of Morton. His mother, a daughter of Lord Gray, married Lord Home, after the death of Logan’s father. The Laird of Restalrig was thus a half-brother of the new Lord Home, a Warden of the Border, and also was first cousin of the beautiful, accomplished, and infamous Master of Gray, the double spy of England and of Rome.
Logan, too, like the Master, had diplomatic ambitions. In 1586 (July 29) we find him corresponding with the infamous Archibald Douglas, one of Darnley’s murderers, whom James had sent, in the crisis of his mother’s fate, as his ambassador to Elizabeth. In 1586, Logan, with two other Logans, was on the
packed jury which acquitted Douglas of Darnley’s murder. Logan was a retainer of Bothwell, that meteor-like adventurer and king-catcher, and he asks Douglas to try to procure him employment (of course as a spy) from Walsingham, the English statesman. [157]
In October of the same year, we find the Master of Gray writing to Douglas, thus: ‘Of late I was forced, at Restalrig’s suit, to pawn some of my plate, and the best jewel I had, to get him money for his marriage’—his second marriage, apparently. By December 1586 we find Logan riding to London, as part of the suite of the Master of Gray, who was to plead with Elizabeth for Mary’s life. He was the Master’s most intimate confidant, and, as such, in February-March 1587, proposed to sell all his secrets to Walsingham! Nevertheless, when Gray was driven into exile, later in 1587, Logan was one of his ‘cautioners,’ or sureties. He had been of the party of Gowrie’s father, during that nobleman’s brief tenure of power in 1582, 1583, and, when Gowrie fell, Logan was ordered to hand his eyrie of Fastcastle over, at six hours’ notice, to the officers of the King. Through the stormy years of Bothwell’s repeated raids on James (1592–1594) Logan had been his partisan, and had been denounced a rebel. Later he appears in trouble for highway robbery committed by his retainers. Among the diversions of
this country gentleman was flat burglary. In December 1593, ‘when nichts are lang and mirk,’ the Laird helped himself to the plate-chest of William Nesbit of Newton. ‘Under silence of night he took spuilzie of certain gold and silver to the value of three thousand merks Scots.’ The executors of Nesbit did not bring their action till after Logan died, in July 1606, ‘in respect the said clandestine deed and fact came not to our knowledge, nor light as to who had committed the same,’ till just before the action was brought.