At this time Lady Restalrig was deeply distressed, she wished Logan at the Indies, if only he would first settle Flemington on herself. ‘If it be God’s will, I desire never to have a child to him,’ she said. ‘I have a guess what this mystery means, woe’s me for his motherless children,’ that is, children of former marriages. Later, Lady Restalrig had a daughter, Anna, by Logan.
Matthew Logan, as usual, denied every word attributed to him by Sprot, except regrets for his own condition. Matthew could do no less to save his own life.
On August 9, before other witnesses, and the Rev. Messrs. Galloway, Hall, and Hewatt, Sprot solemnly confessed to having forged the letters in Logan’s hand (then in possession of his examiners). On August 10, the same clergymen and many Lords, and Hart, being present, Sprot came to the point at last. Where, he was asked, after a prayer offered, at his request, by Mr. Galloway, was the letter of Logan to Gowrie, whereon, as model, the rest were forged? Now he had not previously mentioned, as far as the reports go, a letter of Logan to Gowrie, as the model of his forgeries. He had mentioned, as his model, the brief harmless letter of Gowrie to Logan. On
August 9, he had been very solemnly told that he was to die, and that he would see the faces of the Lords of the Council no more. Probably, after they left him, he told, to a minister or a servant in the gaol, the fact that he had used, as his model, a letter from Logan to Gowrie. The result was that he did again see, on August 10, the Lords of the Council, who asked him ‘where the letter now was.’ This is Letter IV, the letter of Logan to Gowrie, of July 29, 1600. Sprot, in place of answering directly, cited from memory, and erroneously, the opening of the letter. He had read it, while it was still unfinished, in July 1600, at Fastcastle. Logan, who had been writing it, was called by Bower, went out, and thrust it between a bench and the wall: there Sprot found, read, and restored the unfinished epistle to its place. But the letter is dated ‘from Gunnisgreen,’ at the conclusion. Logan, according to Sprot, left Gunnisgreen one day at the end of July, 1600, or beginning of August, thence rode to Fastcastle, and thence, next day, to Edinburgh (p. 190).
Now Logan, in the letter (IV), says that he took two days to write it. One day would be at Fastcastle, when he was interrupted; the other, the day of dating, at Gunnisgreen. This, however, does not tally with Sprot’s account (p. 190) of Logan’s movements (Nine Wells, Gunnisgreen, Fastcastle, Edinburgh), if these are the days of writing Letter IV. Yet, if Sprot forged Letter IV, he knew where he dated it from; [221]
if the Government had it forged, they knew, from Sprot’s confession, that it should have been dated from Fastcastle. Perhaps we should not bear too heavily on this point. A man may mention the wrong name by inadvertence, or the clerk, by inadvertence, may write the wrong name. Mr. Mark Napier in his essay on this matter twice or thrice prints ‘Logan’ for ‘Sprot,’ or ‘Sprot’ for ‘Logan.’ [222] ‘Fastcastle,’ in Sprot’s confession, may be a slip of tongue or pen for ‘Gunnisgreen,’ or he may have been confused among the movements to and from Gunnisgreen and Fastcastle. The present writer finds similar errors in the manuscript of this work.
Sprot next alleged that, three months after the Gowrie affair, Logan bade Bower hunt among his papers for this very letter. He had been at Berwick, with Lord Willoughby, and Bower told Sprot that he was ‘taking order’ with all who knew of his part in the Gowrie plot. Here is the old difficulty. Why was the letter kept for one moment after Bower brought it back? Why leave it with Bower for three months? At all events, as Bower could not read, Sprot helped him to look for the letter, found it, and kept it ‘till he framed three new letters upon it,’ after which he does not say what he did with it.
Here Sprot cited, from memory, but not accurately, more of Letter IV. The existence of such errors is not remarkable. Sprot again swore to the
truth of all his depositions since July 5. But if this story is true, how can it be true that Logan was at ease in his mind, after burning the letter from Alexander Ruthven, and another from Father Andrew Clerk, Jesuit, as Sprot previously swore? There was still Letter IV, lost, unburned, a haunting fear. It may be suggested that Sprot only kept this letter ‘till’ he had made his forgeries on its model, and then, in a later search, pretended to find and returned it, having first copied it out in Logan’s hand; that copy being our Letter IV. Sprot first would make a copy, in his ordinary hand, of the letter, then restore the original, and, after Logan’s death, copy his copy, in imitation of Logan’s hand, and frame I, III, V, and the torn letter on his copy of IV. Finally, Sprot said that ‘he believes this letter is in his chest among his writings, because he left it there when he was taken by Watty Doig and deposes that it is closed and folded within a piece of paper.’ Sprot said this on August 10. On August 12 he was hanged. Now was this letter, on which he forged three others, found ‘in his kist,’ before his death? That it was so found, we have direct evidence, though not from the best of sources.
In the year 1713, an aged nobleman, Lord Cromarty, published a defence of the King’s conduct in the Gowrie affair. Lord Cromarty, in 1713, was aged eighty-three. Born about 1630, he remembered the beginnings of the Civil War, and says that the Covenanters, about 1640–1645, made great