Bower left Logan, to look for these letters at his own house at Brockholes, and Logan passed a night of sleepless anxiety. One of the mysteries of the case is that Logan entrusted Bower, who could not read, with all his papers. If one of them was needed, Bower had to employ a person who could read to find it: probably he used, as a rule, the help of his better educated son, Valentine. After Logan’s restless night, Bower returned with the two letters, Ruthven’s and Clerk’s, which Logan ‘burned in the fire.’
(Let it be remembered that Sprot has not yet introduced Letter IV into his depositions, though that was by far the most important.)
After burning Clerk’s and Ruthven’s letters, Logan dictated to Sprot a letter to John Baillie of Littlegill, informing him of the fact. Bower rode off with the letter, and Logan bade Sprot be silent about all these things, for he had learned, from Bower, that Sprot knew a good deal. Here the amateur of the art of fiction asks, why did Sprot drag in Mr. John Baillie of Littlegill? If Logan, as Sprot swore, informed Baillie about the burned letters, then Baillie had a guilty knowledge of the conspiracy. Poor Baillie was instantly ‘put in ward’
under the charge of the Earl of Dunfermline. But, on the day after Sprot was hanged, namely on August 13, Baillie was set free, on bail of 10,000 marks to appear before the Privy Council if called upon. Three of Sprot’s other victims, Maul, Crockett, and William Galloway, were set free on their personal recognisances, but Mossman and Matthew Logan were kept in prison, and Chirnside was not out of danger of the law for several years, as we learn from the Privy Council Register. Nothing was ever proved against any of these men. After the posthumous trial of Logan (June 1609) the King bade the Council discharge John Baillie from his bail, ‘as we rest now fully persuaded that there was no just cause of imputation against the said John.’ So the Register of the Privy Council informs us. [203] Thus, if Sprot told the truth about all these men, no corroborative facts were discovered, while the only proofs of his charges against Logan were the papers which, with one exception, he confessed to be forgeries, executed by himself, for purposes of extortion.
To go on with his confessions: The Christmas of 1602 arrived, and ‘The Laird keepit ane great Yule at Gunnisgreen.’ On the third day of the feast, Logan openly said to Bower, at table, ‘I shall sleep better this night than that night when I sent you for the letters’ (in November), ‘for now I am sure that none of these matters will ever come to
further light, if you be true.’ Bower answered, ‘I protest before God I shall be counted the most damnable traitor in the world, if any man on earth know, for I have buried them.’
After supper, Bower and Logan called Sprot out on to the open hill-side. Logan said that Bower confessed to having shown Sprot a letter of Gowrie’s. What, he asked, did Sprot think of the matter? Sprot, with protestations of loyalty, said that he thought that Logan had been in the Gowrie conspiracy. Logan then asked for an oath of secrecy, promising ‘to be the best sight you ever saw,’ and taking out 12l. (Scots) bade Sprot buy corn for his children. Asked who were present at the scene of the supper, Sprot named eight yeomen. ‘The lady’ (Lady Restalrig) ‘was also present at table that night, and at her rising she said, “The Devil delight in such a feast, that will make all the children weep hereafter,” and this she spoke, as she went past the end of the table. And, after entering the other chamber, she wept a while, ‘and we saw her going up and down the chamber weeping.’
A fortnight later, Lady Restalrig blamed Bower for the selling of Fastcastle. Bower appealed to Logan; it was Logan’s fault, not his. ‘One of two things,’ said Bower, ‘must make you sell your lands; either you think your children are bastards, or you have planned some treason.’ The children were not those of Lady Restalrig, but by former marriages. Logan replied, ‘If I had all the land between the
Orient and the Occident, I would sell the same, and, if I could not get money for it, I would give it to good fellows.’ On another occasion Logan said to Bower, ‘I am for no land, I told you before and will tell you again. You have not learned the art of memory.’