Consequently the results of criticism of his confession may here be stated with brevity. The persevering student, the reader interested in odd
pictures of domestic life, and in strange human characters may read on at his own peril. But the actual grains of fact, extracted from tons of falsehood, may be set down in very few words.
The genuine and hitherto unknown confessions of Sprot add no absolute certainty as to the existence of a Gowrie conspiracy. His words, when uncorroborated, can have no weight with a jury. He confessed that all the alleged Logan papers which, up to two days before his death, were in possession of the Privy Council, were forgeries by himself. But, on August 10, he announced that he had possessed one genuine letter of Logan to Gowrie (dated July 29, 1600). That letter (our Letter IV) or a forged copy was then found in his repositories. Expert evidence, however, decides that this document, like all the others, is in a specious imitation of Logan’s hand, but that it has other characteristics of Sprot’s own hand, and was penned by Sprot himself. Why he kept it back so long, why he declared that it alone was genuine, we do not know. That it is genuine, in substance, and was copied by Sprot from a real letter of Logan’s in an imitation of Logan’s hand, and that, if so, it proves Logan’s accession to the conspiracy, is my own private opinion. But that opinion is based on mere literary considerations, on what is called ‘internal evidence,’ and is, therefore, purely a matter of subjective impression, like one’s idea of the possible share of Shakespeare in a play mainly by Fletcher or another. Evidence of
this kind is not historical evidence. It follows that the whole affair of Sprot, and of the alleged Logan letters, adds nothing certain to the reasons for believing that there was a Gowrie conspiracy. As far as Sprot and his documents are concerned, we know that all, as they stand, are pure fictitious counterfeits by that unhappy man, while, as to whether one letter (IV) and perhaps another (I) are genuine in substance, every reader must form his own opinion, on literary grounds, and no opinion is of much value. Such is a brief summary of the facts. But the tenacious inquirer who can follow us through the tangled mazes of Sprot’s private confessions, will perhaps agree with me that they contain distinguishable grains of fact, raising a strong surmise that Logan was really involved with Gowrie in a plot. Yet this, again, is a subjective impression, which may vary with each reader.
XIII. THE SECRETS OF SPROT
The final and deepest mystery of the mysterious Gowrie affair rises, like a mist from a marsh, out of these facts concerning Sprot. When he was convicted, and hanged, persisting in his confessions, on August 12, 1608, no letters by Gowrie, or any other conspirator, were produced in Court. Extracts, however, of a letter from Gowrie to Logan, and of one from Logan to Gowrie, were quoted in Sprot’s formal Indictment. They were also quoted in an official publication, an account of Sprot’s case, prepared by Sir William Hart, the Chief Justice, and issued in 1608. Both these documents (to which we return) are given by Mr. Pitcairn, in the second volume of his ‘Criminal Trials.’ But later, when the dead Logan was tried in 1609, five of his alleged plot letters (never publicly mentioned in Sprot’s trial) were produced by the prosecution, and not one of these was identical with the letter of Logan cited in the Indictment of Sprot, and in the official account of his trial. There were strong resemblances between Logan’s letter, quoted but not produced, in 1608, and a letter of Logan’s produced,
and attested to be in his handwriting, in 1609. But there were also remarkable variations.
Of these undeniable facts most modern historians who were convinced of the guilt of the Ruthvens take no notice; though the inexplicable discrepancies between the Logan letters quoted in 1608, and the letters produced as his in 1609, had always been matters of comment and criticism.
As to the letters of 1609, Mr. Tytler wrote, ‘their import cannot be mistaken; their authenticity has never been questioned; they still exist . . . ’ Now assuredly the letters exist. The five alleged originals were found by Mr. Pitcairn, among the Warrants of Parliament, in the General Register House, in Edinburgh, and were published by him, but without their endorsements, in his ‘Criminal Trials’ in Scotland. (1832). [169] Copies of the letters are also ‘bookit,’ or engrossed, in the Records of Parliament. These ‘bookit’ transcripts were made carelessly, and the old copyist was puzzled by the handwriting and orthography of the alleged originals before him. The controversy about the genuineness of the five letters took new shapes after Mr. Pitcairn discovered those apparently in Logan’s hand, and printed them in 1832. Mr. Hill Burton accepts them with no hint of doubt, and if Mr. Tytler was the most learned and impartial, Mr. Hill Burton was the most sceptical of our historians. Yet on this point of authenticity these historians were too hasty. The authenticity of the
letters (except one, No. IV) was denied by the very man, Sprot, in whose possession most of them were originally found. [170] The evidence of his denial has been extant ever since Calderwood wrote, who tells us, clearly on the authority of an older and anonymous History in MS. (now in the Advocates’ Library), that Sprot, when first taken (April 13–19, 1608), accused Logan of writing the letters, but withdrew the charge under torture, and finally, when kindly treated by Lord Dunbar, and healed of his wounds, declared that he himself had forged all the Logan letters (save one). Yet Logan was, to Sprot’s certain knowledge (so Sprot persistently declared), involved in the Gowrie conspiracy.