James VI and the Gowrie Mystery Part 2

James declares in a later narrative printed and published about the end of August 1600, that the Master, when he first met him at Falkland, made a very low bow, which was not his habit. The Master then said (their conference, we saw, occupied a quarter of an hour) that, while walking alone on the previous evening, he had met a cloaked man carrying a great pot, full of gold in large coined pieces. Ruthven took the fellow secretly to Gowrie House, 'locked him _in a privy derned house_, and, after locking many doors on him, left him there and his pot with him.'

It might be argued that, as the man was said to be locked in a _house_, and as James was not taken out of Gowrie House to see him, James must have known that, when he went upstairs with the Master, he was not going to see the prisoner. The error here is that, in the language of the period, a _house_ often means a _room_, or chamber. It is so used by James elsewhere in this very narrative, and endless examples occur in the letters and books of the period.

Ruthven went on to explain, what greatly needed explanation, that he had left Perth so early in the morning that James might have the first knowledge of this secret treasure, concealed hitherto even from Gowrie.

James objected that he had no right to the gold, which was not treasure trove. Ruthven replied that, if the King would not take it, others would. James now began to suspect, very naturally, that the gold was foreign coin. Indeed, what else could it well be? Coin from France, Italy, or Spain, brought in often by political intriguers, was the least improbable sort of minted gold to be found in poor old Scotland. In the troubles of 15921596 the supplies of the Catholic rebels were in Spanish money, whereof some was likely enough to be buried by the owners. James, then, fancied that Jesuits or others had brought in gold for seditious purposes, 'as they have ofttimes done before.' Sceptics of the period asked how one pot of gold could cause a sedition. The question is puerile. There would be more gold where the potful came from, if Catholic intrigues were in the air. James then asked the Master 'what kind of coin it was.' 'They seemed to be foreign and uncouth' (unusual) 'strokes of coin,' said Ruthven, and the man, he added, was a stranger to him.

James therefore suspected that the man might be a disguised Scottish priest: the few of them then in Scotland always wore disguises, as they tell us in their reports to their superiors. {40} The King's inferences as to _popish_ plotters were thus inevitable, though he may have emphasised them in his narrative to conciliate the preachers. His horror of 'practising Papists,' at this date, was unfeigned. He said to the Master that he could send a servant with a warrant to Gowrie and the magistrates of Perth to take and examine the prisoner and his h.o.a.rd.

Contemporaries asked why he did not 'commit the credit of this matter to another.' James had antic.i.p.ated the objection. He _did_ propose this course, but Ruthven replied that, if others once touched the money, the King 'would get a very bad account made to him of that treasure.' He implored his Majesty to act as he advised, and not to forget him afterwards. This suggestion may seem mean in Ruthven, but the age was not disinterested, nor was Ruthven trying to persuade a high-souled man.

The King was puzzled and bored, 'the morning was fair, the game already found,' the monarch was a keen sportsman, so he said that he would think the thing over and answer at the end of the hunt.

Granting James's notorious love of disentangling a mystery, granting his love of money, and of hunting, I agree with Mr. Tytler in seeing nothing improbable in this narration. If the Master wanted to lure the King to Perth, I cannot conceive a better device than the tale which, according to the King, he told. The one improbable point, considering the morals of the country, was that Ruthven should come to James, in place of sharing the gold with his brother. But Ruthven, we shall see, had possibly good reasons, known to James, for conciliating the Royal favour, and for keeping his brother ignorant. Moreover, to seize the money would not have been a safe thing for Ruthven to do; the story would have leaked out, questions would have been asked. James had hit on the only plausible theory to account for a low fellow with a pot of gold; he _must_ be 'a practising Papist.' James could neither suppose, nor expect others to believe that he supposed, one pot of foreign gold enough 'to bribe the country into rebellion.' But the pot, and the prisoner, supplied a clue worth following. Probabilities strike different critics in different ways. Mr. Tytler thinks James's tale true, and that he acted in character. That is my opinion; his own the reader must form for himself.

Ruthven still protested. This hunt of gold was well worth a buck! The prisoner, he said, might attract attention by his cries, a very weak argument, but Ruthven was quite as likely to invent it on the spur of the moment, as James was to attribute it to him falsely, on cool reflection.

Finally, if James came at once, Gowrie would then be at the preaching (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays were preaching days), and the Royal proceedings with the captive would be undisturbed.

Now, on the hypothesis of intended kidnapping, this was a well-planned affair. If James accepted Ruthven's invitation, he, with three or four servants, would reach Gowrie House while the town of Perth was quiet.

Nothing would be easier than to seclude him, seize his person, and transport him to the seaside, either by Tay, or down the north bank of that river, or in disguise across Fife, to the Firth of Forth, in the retinue of Gowrie, before alarm was created at Falkland. Gowrie had given out (so his friends declared) that he was to go that night to Dirleton, his castle near North Berwick, {42} a strong hold, manned, and provisioned. Could he have carried the King in disguise across Fife to Elie, Dirleton was within a twelve miles sail, on summer seas. Had James's curiosity and avarice led him to ride away at once with Ruthven, and three or four servants, the plot might have succeeded. We must criticise the plot on these lines. Thus, if at all, had the Earl and his brother planned it. But Fate interfered, the unexpected occurred-_but the plot could not be dropped_. The story of the pot of gold could not be explained away. The King, with royal rudeness, did not even reply to the new argument of the Master. 'Without any further answering him,' his Majesty mounted, Ruthven staying still in the place where the King left him. At this moment Inchaffray, as we saw, met Ruthven, and invited him to breakfast, but he said that he was ordered to wait on the King.

At this point, James's narrative contains a circ.u.mstance which, confessedly, was not within his own experience. He did not know, he says, that the Master had any companion. But, from the evidence of another, he learned that the Master had a companion, indeed two companions. One was Andrew Ruthven, about whose presence n.o.body doubts.

The other, one Andrew Henderson, was not seen by James at this time.

However, the King says, on Henderson's own evidence, that the Master now sent him (about seven o'clock) to warn Gowrie that the King was to come.

Really it seems that Henderson was despatched rather later, during the first check in the run.

It was all-important to the King's case to prove that Henderson had been at Falkland, and had returned at once with a message to Gowrie, for this would demonstrate that, in appearing to be unprepared for the King's arrival (as he did), Gowrie was making a false pretence. It was also important to prove that the ride of Ruthven and Henderson to Falkland and back had been concealed, by them, from the people at Gowrie House. Now this _was_ proved. Craigengelt, Gowrie's steward, who was tortured, tried, convicted, and hanged, deponed that, going up the staircase, just after the King's arrival, he met the Master, booted, and asked 'where he had been.' 'An errand not far off,' said the Master, concealing his long ride to Falkland. {44a} Again, John Moncrieff, a gentleman who was with Gowrie, asked Henderson (who had returned to Perth much earlier than the King's arrival) where he had been, and he said 'that he had been two or three miles above the town.' {44b} Henderson himself later declared that Gowrie had told him to keep his ride to Falkland secret. {44c} The whole purpose of all this secrecy was to hide the fact that the Ruthvens had brought the King to Perth, and that Gowrie had early notice, by about 10 a.m., of James's approach, from Henderson. Therefore to make out that Henderson had been in Falkland, and had given Gowrie early notice of James's approach, though Gowrie for all that made no preparations to welcome James, was almost necessary for the Government. They specially questioned all witnesses on this point. Yet not one of their witnesses would swear to having seen Henderson at Falkland. This disposes of the theory of wholesale perjury.

The modern apologist for the Ruthvens, Mr. Louis Barbe, writes: 'We believe that Henderson perjured himself in swearing that he accompanied Alexander' (the Master) 'and Andrew Ruthven when . . . they rode to Falkland. We believe that Henderson perjured himself when he a.s.serted, on oath, that the Master sent him back to Perth with the intelligence of the King's coming.' {45}

On the other hand, George Hay, lay Prior of the famous Chartreux founded by James I in Perth, deponed that Henderson arrived long before Gowrie's dinner, and Peter Hay corroborated. But Hay averred that Gowrie asked Henderson 'who was at Falkland with the King?' It would not follow that Henderson had been at Falkland himself. John Moncrieff deponed that Gowrie said nothing of Henderson's message, but sat at dinner, feigning to have no knowledge of the King's approach, till the Master arrived, a few minutes before the King. Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie's tutor, deponed that Andrew Ruthven (the Master's other companion in the early ride to Falkland) told him that the Master had sent on Henderson with news of the King's coming. If Henderson had been at Falkland, he had some four hours' start of the King and his party, and must have arrived at Perth, and spoken to Gowrie, long before dinner, he himself says at 10 a.m.

Dinner was at noon, or, on this day, half an hour later. Yet Gowrie made no preparations for welcoming the King.

It is obvious that, though the Hays and Moncrieff both saw Henderson return, booted, from a ride somewhere or other, at an early hour, none of them could _prove_ that he had ridden to Falkland and back. There was, in fact, no evidence that Henderson had been at Falkland except his own, and that of the poor tortured tutor, Rhynd, to the effect that Andrew Ruthven had confessed as much to him. But presently we shall find that, while modern apologists for Gowrie deny that Henderson had been at Falkland, the contemporary Ruthven apologist insists that he had been there.

To return to James's own narrative, he a.s.serts Henderson's presence at Falkland, but not from his own knowledge. He did not see Henderson at Falkland. Ruthven, says James, sent Henderson to Gowrie just after the King mounted and followed the hounds. Here it must be noted that Henderson himself says that Ruthven did not actually despatch him till after he had some more words with the King. This is an instance of James's _insouciance_ as to harmonising his narrative with Henderson's, or causing Henderson to conform to his. 'Cooked' evidence, collusive evidence, would have avoided these discrepancies. James says that, musing over the story of the pot of gold, he sent one Naismith, a surgeon (he had been with James at least since 1592), to bring Ruthven to him, during a check, and told Ruthven that he would, after the hunt, come to Perth. James thought that this was _after_ the despatch of Henderson, but probably it was before, to judge by Henderson's account.

During this pause, the hounds having hit on the scent again, the King was left behind, but spurred on. At every check, the Master kept urging him to make haste, so James did not tarry to break up the deer, as usual.

The kill was but two bowshots from the stables, and the King did not wait for his sword, or his second horse, which had to gallop a mile before it reached him. Mar, Lennox, and others did wait for their second mounts, some rode back to Falkland for fresh horses, some dragged slowly along on tired steeds, and did not rejoin James till later.

Ruthven had tried, James says, to induce him to refuse the company of the courtiers. Three or four servants, he said, would be enough. The others 'might mar the whole purpose.' James was 'half angry,' he began to entertain odd surmises about Ruthven. One was 'it might be that the Earl his brother _had handled him so hardly_, that the young gentleman, being of a high spirit, had taken such displeasure, as he was become somewhat beside himself.' But why should Gowrie handle his brother hardly?

The answer is suggested by an unpublished contemporary ma.n.u.script, 'The True Discovery of the late Treason,' {48a} &c. 'Some offence had pa.s.sed betwixt the said Mr. Alexander Ruthven' (the Master) 'and his brother, for that the said Alexander, both of himself and by his Majesty's mediation, had craved of the Earl his brother the demission and release of the Abbey of Scone, which his Majesty had bestowed upon the said Earl during his life. . . . His suit had little success.' {48b}

If this be fact (and there is no obvious reason for its invention), James might have reason to suspect that Gowrie had 'handled his brother hardly:' Scone being a valuable estate, well worth keeping. To secure the King's favour as to Scone, Ruthven had a motive, as James would understand, for making him, and not Gowrie, acquainted with the secret of the treasure. Thus the unpublished ma.n.u.script casually explains the reason of the King's suspicion that the Earl might have 'handled the Master hardly.'

On some such surmise, James asked Lennox (who corroborates) whether he thought the Master quite 'settled in his wits.' Lennox knew nothing but good of him (as he said in his evidence), but Ruthven, observing their private talk, implored James to keep the secret, and come _alone_ with him-at first-to see the captive and the treasure. James felt more and more uneasy, but he had started, and rode on, while the Master now despatched Andrew Ruthven to warn Gowrie. Within a mile of Perth the Master spurred on his weary horse, and gave the news to Gowrie, who, despite the messages of Henderson and Andrew Ruthven, was at dinner, unprepared for the Royal arrival. However, Gowrie met James with sixty men (four, says the Ruthven apologist).

James's train then consisted of fifteen persons. Others must have dropped in later: they had no fresh mounts, but rested their horses, the King says, and let them graze by the way. They followed because, learning that James was going to Perth, they guessed that he intended to apprehend the Master of Oliphant, who had been misconducting himself in Angus. Thus the King accounts for the number of his train.

An hour pa.s.sed before dinner: James pressed for a view of the treasure, but the Master asked the King not to converse with him then, as the whole affair was to be kept secret from Gowrie. If the two brothers had been at odds about the lands of Scone, the Master's att.i.tude towards his brother might seem intelligible, a point never allowed for by critics unacquainted with the ma.n.u.script which we have cited. At last the King sat down to dinner, Gowrie in attendance, whispering to his servants, _and often going in and out of the chamber_. The Master, too, was seen on the stairs by Craigengelt.

If Gowrie's behaviour is correctly described, it might be attributed to anxiety about a Royal meal so hastily prepared. But if Gowrie had plenty of warning, from Henderson (as I do not doubt), that theory is not sufficient. If engaged in a conspiracy, Gowrie would have reason for anxiety. The circ.u.mstances, owing to the number of the royal retinue, were unfavourable, yet, as the story of the pot of gold had been told by Ruthven, the plot could not be abandoned. James even 'chaffed' Gowrie about being so pensive and _distrait_, and about his neglect of some little points of Scottish etiquette. Finally he sent Gowrie into the hall, with the grace-cup for the gentlemen, and then called the Master.

He sent Gowrie, apparently, that he might slip off with the Master, as that gentleman wished. 'His Majesty desired Mr. Alexander to bring Sir Thomas Erskine with him, who' (Ruthven) 'desiring the King to go forward with him, and promising that he should make any one or two follow him that he pleased to call for, desiring his Majesty to command _publicly_ that none should follow him.' This seems to mean, James and the Master were to cross the hall and go upstairs; James, or the Master for him, bidding no one follow (the Master, according to Balgonie, did say that the King would be alone), while, presently, the Master should return and privately beckon on one or two to join the King. The Master's excuse for all this was the keeping from Gowrie and others, for the moment, of the secret of the prisoner and the pot of gold.

Now, if we turn back to Sir Thomas Erskine's evidence, we find that, when he joined James in the chamber, after the slaying of the Master, he said 'I thought your Majesty would have concredited more to me, than to have commanded me to await your Majesty at the door, if you thought it not meet to have taken me with you.' The King replied, 'Alas, the traitor deceived me in that, as in all else, for I commanded him expressly to bring you to me, and he returned back, as I thought, to fetch you, but he did nothing but _steik_ [shut] the door.'

What can these words mean? They appear to me to imply that James sent the Master back, according to their arrangement, to bring Erskine, that the Master gave Erskine some invented message about waiting at some door, that he then shut a door between the King and his friends, but told the King that Erskine was to follow them. Erskine was, beyond doubt, in the street with the rest of the retinue, before the brawl in the turret reached its crisis, when Gowrie had twice insisted that James had ridden away.

In any case, to go on with James's tale, he went with Ruthven up a staircase (the great staircase), 'and through three or four rooms'-'three or four sundry _houses_'-'the Master ever locking behind him every door as he pa.s.sed, and so into a little study'-the turret. This is perplexing. We nowhere hear in the evidence of more than two doors, in the suite, which were locked. The staircase perhaps gave on the long gallery, with a door between them. The gallery gave on a chamber, which had a door (the door battered by Lennox and Mar), and the chamber gave on a turret, which had a door between it and the chamber.

We hear, in the evidence, of no other doors, or of no other locked doors.

However, in the Latin indictment of the Ruthvens, 'many doors' are insisted on. As all the evidence tells of opposition from only _one_ door-that between the gallery and the chamber of death-James's reason for talking of 'three or four doors' must be left to conjecture. 'The True Discourse' (MS.) gives but the gallery, chamber, and turret, but appears to allow for a door between stair and gallery, which the Master 'closed,'

while he 'made fast' the next door, that between gallery and chamber.

One Thomas Hamilton, {52a} who writes a long letter (MS.) to a lady unknown, also speaks of several doors, on the evidence of the King, and some of the Lords. This ma.n.u.script has been neglected by historians.

{52b}

Leaving this point, we ask why a man already suspicious, like James, let the Master lock any door behind him. We might reply that James had dined, and that 'wine and beer produce a careless state of mind,' as a writer on cricket long ago observed. We may also suppose that, till facts proved the locking of one door at least (for about that there is no doubt), James did not know that any door _was_ locked. On August 11 the Rev. Mr. Galloway, in a sermon preached before the King and the populace at the Cross of Edinburgh, says that the Master led the monarch upstairs, 'and through a _trans_' (a pa.s.sage), 'the door whereof, so soon as they had entered, _chekit to with ane lok_, then through a gallery, whose door also _chekit to_, through a chamber, and the door thereof _chekit to_, also,' and thence into the turret of which he 'also locked the door.'

{53}

Were the locks that 'chekit to' spring locks, and was James unaware that he was locked in? But Ramsay, before the affray, had wandered into 'a gallery, very fair,' and unless there were two galleries, he could not do this, if the gallery door was locked. Lennox and Mar and the rest speak of opposition from only one door.

While we cannot explain these things, _that_ door, at least, between the gallery and the gallery chamber, excluded James from most of his friends.

Can the reader believe that he purposely had that door locked, we know not how, or by whom, on the system of compelling Gowrie to 'come and be killed' by way of the narrow staircase? Could we see Gowrie House, and its 'secret ways,' as it then was, we might understand this problem of the locked doors. Contemporary criticism, as minutely recorded by Calderwood, found no fault with the number of locked doors, but only asked 'how could the King's fear but increase, perceiving Mr. Alexander'

(the Master) 'ever to lock the doors behind them?' If the doors closed with spring locks (of which the principle had long been understood and used), the King may not have been aware of the locking. The problem cannot be solved; we only disbelieve that the King himself had the door locked, to keep his friends out, and let Gowrie in.

NOTE.-_The Abbey of Scone_. On page 48 we have quoted the statement that James had bestowed on Gowrie the Abbey of Scone 'during his life.' This was done in 1580 (_Registrum Magni Sigilli_, vol. iii. No. 3011). On May 25, 1584, William Fullarton got this gift, the first Earl of Gowrie and his children being then forfeited. But on July 23, 1586, the Gowrie of the day was restored to all his lands, and the Earldom of Gowrie included the old church lands of Scone (_Reg. Mag. Sig._ iv. No. 695, No.

1044). How, then, did John, third Earl of Gowrie, hold only 'for his life' the Commendatorship of the Abbey of Scone, as is stated in S. P.

Scot. (Eliz.) vol. lxvi. No. 50?

IV. THE KING'S NARRATIVE-II. THE MAN IN THE TURRET

We left James entering the little 'round,' or 'study,' the turret chamber. Here, at last, he expected to find the captive and the pot of gold. And here the central mystery of his adventure began. His Majesty saw standing, 'with a very abased countenance, not a bondman but a freeman, with a dagger at his girdle.' Ruthven locked the door, put on his hat, drew the man's dagger, and held the point to the King's breast, '_avowing now that the King behoved to be at his will_, _and used as he list_; swearing many b.l.o.o.d.y oaths that if the King cried one word, or opened a window to look out, that dagger should go to his heart.'

If this tale is true, murder was not intended, unless James resisted: the King was only being _threatened_ into compliance with the Master's 'will.' Ruthven added that the King's conscience must now be burthened 'for murdering his father,' that is, for the execution of William, Earl of Gowrie, in 1584. His conviction was believed to have been procured in a dastardly manner, later to be explained.

James was unarmed, and obviously had no secret coat of mail, in which he could not have hunted all day, perhaps. Ruthven had his sword; as for the other man he stood 'trembling and quaking.' James now made to the Master the odd harangue reported even in Nicholson's version of the Falkland letter of the same day. As for Gowrie's execution, the King said, he had then been a minor (he was eighteen in 1584), and Gowrie was condemned 'by the ordinary course of law'-which his friends denied.

James had restored, he said, all the lands and dignities of the House, two of Ruthven's sisters were maids of honour. Ruthven had been educated by the revered Mr. Rollock, he ought to have learned better behaviour.

If the King died he would be avenged: Gowrie could not hope for the throne. The King solemnly promised forgiveness and silence, if Ruthven let him go.

Ruthven now uncovered his head, and protested that the King's life should be safe, if he made no noise or cry: in that case Ruthven would now bring Gowrie to him. 'Why?' asked James; 'you could gain little by keeping such a prisoner?' Ruthven said that he could not explain; Gowrie would tell him the rest. Turning to _the other man_, he said 'I make you the King's keeper till I come again, and see that you keep him upon your peril.' He then went out, and locked the door. The person who later averred that he had been the man in the turret, believed that Ruthven never went far from the door. James believed, indeed averred, that he ran downstairs, and consulted Gowrie.

If there was an armed man in the turret, he was either placed there by the King, to protect him while he summoned his minions by feigned cries of treason, or he was placed there by Gowrie to help the Master to seize the King. In the latter case, the Master's position was now desperate; in lieu of an ally he had procured a witness against himself. Great need had he to consult Gowrie, but though Gowrie certainly entered the house, went upstairs, and returned to Lennox with the a.s.surance that James had ridden away, it is improbable that he and his brother met at this moment.

James, however, avers that they met, Ruthven running rapidly downstairs, but this was mere inference on the King's part.

James occupied the time of Ruthven's absence in asking the man of the turret what he knew of the conspiracy. The man replied that he knew nothing, he had but recently been locked into the little chamber.

Indeed, while Ruthven was threatening, the man (says James) was trembling, and adjuring the Master not to harm the King. James, having sworn to Ruthven that he would not open the window himself, now, characteristically, asked the man to open the window 'on his right hand.'