Sir Thomas’s collection consists of summonses, or drafts of summonses, for treason, against the dead Logan (1609). There is also a holograph letter of confession (July 5, 1608) from Sprot to the Earl of Dunbar. There are the records of the private examinations of Sprot (July 5-August 11, 1600) and of other persons whom he more or less implicated. There are copies by Sprot, in his ‘course,’ that is, current, handwriting, of two of the five letters in Logan’s hand (or in an imitation of it). These are letters I and IV, produced at the posthumous trial of Logan in June 1609. Finally, there are letters in Logan’s hand (or in an imitation of it), addressed to James Bower and to one Ninian Chirnside, with allusions to the plot, and there is a long memorandum of matters of business, also containing hints about the conspiracy, in Logan’s hand, or in an imitation thereof, addressed to John Bell, and James Bower.
Of these compromising papers, one, a letter to Chirnside, was found by the Rev. Mr. Anderson (in 1902) torn into thirteen pieces (whereof one is missing), wrapped up in a sheet of foolscap of the period. Mr. Anderson has placed the pieces together, and
copied the letter. Of all these documents, only five letters (those published by Mr. Pitcairn) were ‘libelled,’ or founded on, and produced by the Government in the posthumous trial of Logan (1609). Not one was produced before the jury who tried Sprot on August 12, 1608. He was condemned, we said, merely on his own confession. In his ‘dittay,’ or impeachment, and in the official account of the affair, published in 1608, were cited fragments of two letters quoted from memory by Sprot under private examination. These quotations from memory differ, we saw, in many places from any of the five letters produced in the trial of 1609, a fact which has aroused natural suspicions. This is the true explanation of the discrepancies between the plot letter cited in Sprot’s impeachment, and in the Government pamphlet on his case; and the similar, though not identical, letter produced in 1609. The indictment and the tract published by Government contain merely Sprot’s recollections of the epistle from Logan to Gowrie. The letter (IV) produced in 1609 is the genuine letter of Logan, or so Sprot seems, falsely, to swear. This document did not come into the hands of Government till after the Indictment, containing Sprot’s quotation of the letter from memory, was written, or, if it did, was kept back.
All this has presently to be proved in detail.
As the Government (a fact unknown to our historians) possessed all the alleged Logan letters
and papers before Sprot was hanged, and as, at his trial, they concealed this circumstance even from Archbishop Spottiswoode (who was present at Sprot’s public trial by jury), a great deal of perplexity has been caused, and many ingenious but erroneous conjectures have been invented. The Indictment or ‘dittay’ against Sprot, on August 12, 1608, is a public document, but not an honest one. It contains the following among other averments. We are told that Sprot, in July 1600, at Fastcastle, saw and read the beginning of a letter from Logan to Gowrie (Letter IV). Logan therein expresses delight at receiving a letter of Gowrie’s: he is anxious to avenge ‘the Macchiavelian massacre of our dearest friends’ (the Earl decapitated in 1584). He advises Gowrie to be circumspect, ‘and be earnest with your brother, that he be not rash in any speeches touching the purpose of Padua.’
This letter, as thus cited, is not among the five later produced in 1609; it is a blurred reminiscence of parts of two of them. The reason of these discrepancies is that the letter is quoted in the Indictment, not from the document itself (which apparently reach the prosecution after the Indictment was framed), but from a version given from memory by Sprot, in one of his private examinations. Next, Sprot is told in his Indictment that, some time later, Logan asked Bower to find this letter, which Gowrie, for the sake of secrecy, had returned to Bower to be delivered to Logan. We know that this was the
practice of intriguers. After the December riot at Edinburgh in 1596, the Rev. Robert Bruce, writing to ask Lord Hamilton to head the party of the Kirk, is said to request him to return his own letter by the bearer. Gowrie and Logan practised the same method. The indictment goes on to say that Bower, being unable to read, asked Sprot to search for Logan’s letter to Gowrie, among his papers, that Sprot found it, ‘abstracted’ it (stole it), retained it, and ‘read it divers times,’ a false quotation of the MS. confession. Sprot really said that he kept the stolen letter (IV) ‘till’ he had framed on it, as a model, three forged letters. It contained a long passage of which the ‘substance’ is quoted. This passage as printed in Sprot’s Indictment is not to be found textually, in any of the five letters later produced. It is, we repeat, merely the version given from memory, by Sprot, at one of his last private examinations, before the letter itself came into the hands of Government. In either form, the letter meant high treason.
Such is the evidence of the Indictment against Sprot, of August 12, 1608. In the light of Sprot’s real confessions, hitherto lying in the Haddington muniment room, we know the Indictment to be a false and garbled document. Next, on the part of Government, we have always had a published statement by Sir William Hart, the King’s Justice, with an introduction by Dr. George Abbot, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in Edinburgh, and present when Sprot was hanged. This tract was