published by Bradewood, London, in 1608, and is reprinted by Pitcairn.
After a verbose, pious, and pedantic diatribe, Abbot comes to the point. Sprot was arrested in April 1608, first on the strength ‘of some words that fell from himself,’ and, next, ‘of some papers found upon him.’ What papers? They are never mentioned in the Indictment of Sprot. They are never alluded to in the sequel of Abbot’s pamphlet, containing the official account, by Sir William Hart, of Sprot’s Trial and Examinations. In mentioning ‘some papers found upon’ Sprot, Dr. Abbot ‘let the cat out of the bag,’ but writers like Mr. Napier, and other sceptics of his way of thinking, deny that any of the compromising letters were found at all.
No letters, we say, are mentioned by Sir William Hart, in Abbot’s tract (1608), as having been produced. Archbishop Spottiswoode, who was present at Sprot’s public trial (August 12, 1608), thought the man one of those insane self-accusers who are common enough, and observes that he did not ‘show the letter’—that of Logan to Gowrie (IV). This remark of Spottiswoode, an Archbishop, a converted Presbyterian, a courtier, and an advocate for the King, has been a source of joy to all Ruthven apologists. ‘Spottiswoode saw though the farce,’ they say; ‘there was no letter at all, and, courtier and recreant as he was, Spottiswoode had the honesty to say so in his History.’
To this there used to be no reply. But now we know the actual and discreditable truth. The Government
was, in fact, engaged in a shameful scheme to which Archbishops were better not admitted. They meant to use this letter (IV) on a later occasion, but they also meant to use some of the other letters which Sprot (unknown to Spottiswoode) had confessed to be forgeries. The archiepiscopal conscience might revolt at such an infamy, Spottiswoode might tell the King, so the Scottish Government did not then allow the Archbishop, or the public, to know that they had any Logan letters. No letter at all came into open and public Court in 1608. Hart cites a short one, from Gowrie to Logan. Gowrie hopes to see Logan, or, at least, to send a trusty messenger, ‘anent the purpose you know. But rather would I wish yourself to come, not only for that errand, but for some other thing that I have to advise with you.’ There is no date of place or day. This letter, harmless enough, was never produced in Court, and Mr. Barbé supposes that it was a concoction of Hart’s. This is an unlucky conjecture. The Haddington MSS. prove that Sprot really recited Gowrie’s letter, or professed to do so, from memory, in one of his private examinations. The prosecution never pretended to possess or produce Gowrie’s letter.
Next, Hart cites, as Logan’s answer to Gowrie’s first letter (which it was not), the passages already quoted by the prosecution in Sprot’s Indictment, passages out of a letter of Logan’s given by Sprot from memory only. Hart goes on to describe, as if on Sprot’s testimony, certain movements of the
Laird’s after he received Gowrie’s reply to his own answer to Gowrie. Logan’s letter (as given in 1609) is dated July 29, and it is argued that his movements, after receiving Gowrie’s reply, are inconsistent with any share in the plot which failed on August 5. Even if it were so, the fact is unimportant, for Sprot was really speaking of movements at a date much earlier than July 29; he later gave a separate account of what Logan was doing at the time of the outbreak of the plot, an account not quoted by Hart, who fraudulently or accidentally confused the dates. And next we find it as good as explicitly stated, by Hart, that this letter of Logan’s to Gowrie was never produced in open Court. ‘Being demanded where this above written letter, written by Restalrig to the Earl of Gowrie, which was returned again by James Bower, is now? Deponeth . . . that he (Sprot) left the above written letter in his chest, among his writings, when he was taken and brought away, and that it is closed and folded within a piece of paper,’ so Hart declares in Abbot’s tract. He falsified the real facts. He could not give the question as originally put to Sprot, for that involved the publication of the fact that all the letters but one were forged. The question in the authentic private report ran thus: ‘Demanded where is that letter which Restalrig wrote to the Earl of Gowrie, whereupon the said George Sprot wrote and forged the missives produced?’ (August 10).
The real letter of Logan to Gowrie, the only
genuine letter (if in any sense genuine), had not on August 10 been produced. The others were in the hands of the Government. Hart, in his tract, veils these circumstances. The Government meant to put the letters to their own uses, on a later occasion, at the trial of the dead Logan.
Meanwhile we must keep one fact steadily in mind. When Sprot confessed to having forged treasonable letters in Logan’s handwriting (as Calderwood correctly reports that he did confess), he did not include among them Letter IV (Logan to Gowrie July 29, 1600). That letter was never heard of by Sprot’s examiners till August 10, and never came into the hands of his examiners till late on August 11, or early on August 12, the day when Sprot was hanged. Spottiswoode was never made aware that the letter had been produced. Why Sprot reserved this piece of evidence so long, why, under the shadow of the gibbet, he at last produced it, we shall later attempt to explain, though with but little confidence in any explanation.