James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

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Lang Andrew. James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

I. THE MYSTERY AND THE EVIDENCE

II. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE RUTHVENS

III. THE KING’S OWN NARRATIVE

IV. THE KING’S NARRATIVE – II. THE MAN IN THE TURRET

V. HENDERSON’S NARRATIVE

VI. THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. ROBERT OLIPHANT

VII. THE CONTEMPORARY RUTHVEN VINDICATION

VIII. THE THEORY OF AN ACCIDENTAL BRAWL

IX. CONTEMPORARY CLERICAL CRITICISM

X. POPULAR CRITICISM OF THE DAY

XI. THE KING AND THE RUTHVENS

XII. LOGAN OF RESTALRIG

XIII. THE SECRETS OF SPROT

XIV. THE LAIRD AND THE NOTARY

XV. THE FINAL CONFESSIONS OF THE NOTARY

XVI. WHAT IS LETTER IV?

XVII. INFERENCES AS TO THE CASKET LETTERS

APPENDICES

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There are enigmas in the annals of most peoples; riddles put by the Sphinx of the Past to the curious of the new generations. These questions do not greatly concern the scientific historian, who is busy with constitution-making, statistics, progress, degeneration, in short with human evolution. These high matters, these streams of tendency, form the staple of history, but the problems of personal character and action still interest some inquiring minds. Among these enigmas nearly the most obscure, ‘The Gowrie Conspiracy,’ is our topic.

This affair is one of the haunting mysteries of the past, one of the problems that nobody has solved. The events occurred in 1600, but the interest which they excited was so keen that belief in the guilt or innocence of the two noble brothers who perished in an August afternoon, was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants, the strife of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since attracted the curious, as do the enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true character of Richard III, the real face behind ‘The Iron Mask,’ the identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence or guilt of Mary Stuart.

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We return to the question, ‘Where was the King?’

Some time had elapsed since he passed silently from the chamber where he had lunched, through the hall, with the Master, and so upstairs, ‘going quietly a quiet errand,’ Gowrie had explained to the men of the retinue. The gentlemen had then strolled in the garden, till Cranstoun came out to them with the news of the King’s departure. Young John Ramsay, one of James’s gentlemen, had met the Laird of Pittencrieff in the hall, and had asked where his Majesty was. Both had gone upstairs, had examined the fair gallery filled with pictures collected by the late Earl, and had remained ‘a certain space’ admiring it. They thence went into the front yard, the Close, where Cranstoun met them and told them that the King had gone. Instead of joining the gentlemen whom we left loitering and wondering outside the front gate, on the street, Ramsay ran to the stables for his horse, he said, and, as he waited at the stable door (being further from the main entrance than Lennox, Mar, and the rest), he heard James’s voice, ‘but understood not what he spake.’ 9

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