In fact, Logan did sell, not only Fastcastle, but Flemington and Restalrig. We know how the Scot then clung to his acres. Why did Logan sell all? It does not appear, as we have shown, that he was in debt. If he had been, his creditors would have had him ‘put to the horn,’ proclaimed a recalcitrant debtor, and the record thereof would be found in the Privy Council Register. But there is no such matter. Sprot supposed that Logan wished to turn his estates into money, to be ready for flight, if the truth ever came out. The haste to sell all his lands is certainly a suspicious point against Logan. He kept on giving Sprot money (hush money, and for forgeries to defraud others, sometimes) and taking Sprot’s oath of secrecy.
A remarkable anecdote follows; remarkable on this account. In the letter (II) which Logan is said by Sprot to have written to Bower (July 18, 1600) occurs the phrase, ‘Keep all things very secret, that my lord my brother get no knowledge of our purposes, for I rather be eirdit quik’—would rather be buried alive (p. 184). This ‘my lord my brother’ is obviously meant for Alexander, sixth Lord Home, whose father, the fifth lord, had married Agnes, sister of Patrick, sixth Lord Gray, and widow of Sir Robert Logan of
Restalrig. By Sir Robert, Lady Restalrig had a son, the Logan of this affair; and, when, after Sir Robert’s death, she married the fifth Lord Home, she had to him a son, Alexander, sixth Lord Home. Our Logan and the sixth Lord Home were, therefore, brothers uterine. [206a]
Now, if we accept as genuine (in substance) the one letter which Sprot declared to be really written by Logan (No. IV), Gowrie was anxious that Home, a person of great importance, Warden on the Border, should be initiated into the conspiracy. As Gowrie had been absent from Scotland, between August 1594 (when he, as a lad, was in league with the wild king-catcher, Francis Stewart of Bothwell), and May 1600, we ask, what did Gowrie know of Home, and why did he think him an useful recruit? The answer is that (as we showed in another connection, p. 130) Gowrie was in Paris in February-April 1600, that Home was also in Paris at the same time (arriving in Scotland, at his house of Douglas, April 18, 1600), and that Home did not go to Court, on his return, owing to the King’s displeasure because of his ‘trysting with Bothwell’ in Brussels. [206b]
Here then we have, in March 1600, Gowrie and Home, in Paris, and Bothwell, the King-catcher, meeting Home in Brussels. Therefore, when Letter IV represents Gowrie as anxious to bring Home,
who had been consulting Bothwell, into his plot, nothing can be more natural. Gowrie himself conceivably met his old rebellious ally, Bothwell; he was certain to meet Home in Paris, and Home, owning Douglas Castle and Home Castle near the Border, would have been a most serviceable assistant. It must also be remembered that Home was, at heart, a Catholic, a recent and reluctant Protestant convert, ‘compelled to come in,’ by the Kirk. Bothwell was a Catholic; Gowrie, he declared, was another; Logan was a trafficker with Jesuits, and an ‘idolater’ in the matter of ‘keeping great Yules.’ Logan, however, if Letter IV is genuine, in substance, wrote that he ‘utterly dissented’ from Gowrie’s opinion. He would not try his brother’s, Home’s, mind in the matter, or ‘consent that he ever should be counsellor thereto, for, in good faith, he will never help his friend, nor harm his foe.’
Such being the relations (if we accept Letter IV as in substance genuine) between Gowrie, Home, and Logan, we can appreciate Sprot’s anecdote, now to be given, concerning Lady Home. Logan, according to Sprot, said to him, in Edinburgh, early in 1602, ‘Thou rememberest what my Lady Home said to me, when she would not suffer my lord to subscribe my contract for Fentoun, because I would not allow two thousand marks to be kept out of the security, and take her word for them? She said to me, which was a great knell to my heart, that since her coming to the town, she knew that I had been in some dealing with
the Earl of Gowrie about Dirleton.’ Now Dirleton, according to Sprot, was to have been Logan’s payment from Gowrie, for his aid in the plot.
Logan then asked Sprot if he had blabbed to Lady Home, but Sprot replied that ‘he had never spoken to her Ladyship but that same day, although he had read the contract’ (as to Fentoun) ‘before him and her in the abbey,’ of Coldingham, probably. Logan then requested Sprot to keep out of Lady Home’s sight, lest she should ask questions, ‘for I had rather be eirdit quick than either my Lord or she knew anything of it.’
Now, in Letter II (July 18, 1600), from Logan to Bower, Logan, as we saw, is made to write, ‘See that my Lord, my brother, gets no knowledge of our purposes, for I (sic) rather be eirdit quik.’ The phrase recurs in another of the forged letters not produced in court.