Lang Andrew
James VI and the Gowrie Mystery
XIV. THE LAIRD AND THE NOTARY
We have now to track Sprot through the labyrinth of his confessions and evasions, as attested by the authentic reports of his private examinations between July 5 and the day of his death. It will be observed that, while insisting on his own guilt, and on that of Logan, he produced no documentary evidence, no genuine letter attributed by him to Logan, nothing but his own confessed forgeries, till the cord was almost round his neck – if he did then.
In his confessions he paints with sordid and squalid realism, the life of a debauched laird, tortured by terror, and rushing from his fears to forgetfulness in wine, travel, and pleasure; and to strange desperate dreams of flight. As a ‘human document’ the confessions of Sprot are unique, for that period.
On July 5, 1608, Sprot, in prison, wrote, in his own ordinary hand, the tale of how he knew of Logan’s guilt: the letter was conveyed to the Earl of Dunbar, who, with Dunfermline, governed Scotland, under the absent King. The prisoner gave many sources of his knowledge, but the real source, if any (Letter IV), he reserved till he was certain of death (August 10). Sprot ‘knew perfectly,’ he said, on July 5, that one letter from Gowrie and one from his brother, Alexander Ruthven, reached Logan, at Fastcastle and at Gunnisgreen, a house hard by Eyemouth, where Sprot was a notary, and held cottage land. 95 Bower carried Logan’s answers, and ‘long afterwards’ showed Sprot ‘the first of Gowrie’s letters’ (the harmless one about desiring an interview) and also a note of Logan’s to Bower himself, ‘which is amongst the rest of the letters produced.’ It is No. II, but in this confession of July 5, Sprot appears to say that Gowrie’s innocent letter to Logan, asking for an interview, was the source of his forgeries. ‘I framed them all to the true meaning and purpose of the letter that Bower let me see, to make the matter more clear by these arguments and circumstances, for the cause which I have already’ (before July 5) ‘shewn to the Lords’ – that is, for purposes of extorting money from Logan’s executors.
This statement was untrue. The brief letter to Logan from Gowrie was not the model of Sprot’s forgeries; as he later confessed he had another model, in a letter of Logan to Gowrie, which he held back till the last day of his life. But in this confession of July 5, Sprot admits that he saw, not only Gowrie’s letter to Logan of July 6 (?) 1600 (a letter never produced), but also a ‘direction’ or letter from Logan to his retainer, Bower, dated ‘The Canongate, July 18, 1600.’ This is our Letter II. Had it been genuine, then, taken with Gowrie’s letter to Logan, it must have aroused Sprot’s suspicions. But this Letter II, about which Sprot told discrepant tales, is certainly not genuine. It is dated, as we said, ‘The Canongate, July 18, 1600.’ Its purport is to inform Bower, then at Brockholes, near Eyemouth, that Logan had received a new letter from Gowrie, concerning certain proposals already made orally to him by the Master of Ruthven. Logan hoped to get the lands of Dirleton for his share in the enterprise. He ends ‘keep all things very secret, that my Lord, my brother’ (Lord Home) ‘get no knowledge of our purposes, for I’ (would) ‘rather be eirdit quick,’ that is, buried alive (p. 205).
Now we shall show, later, the source whence Sprot probably borrowed this phrase as to Lord Home, and being eirdit quick, which he has introduced into his forged letter. Moreover, the dates are impossible. The first of the five letters purports to be from Logan to an unnamed conspirator, addressed as ‘Right Honourable Sir.’ It is not certain whether this letter was in the hands of the prosecution before the day preceding Sprot’s execution, nor is it certain whether it is ever alluded to by Sprot under examination. But it is dated from Fastcastle on July 18, and tells the unknown conspirator that Logan has just heard from Gowrie. It follows that Logan had heard from Gowrie on July 18 at Fastcastle, that he thence rode to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh wrote his letter (II) to Bower, bidding Bower hasten to Edinburgh, to consult. This is absurd. Logan would have summoned Bower from Fastcastle, much nearer Bower’s home than Edinburgh. Again, in Letter I, Logan informs the unknown man that he is to answer Gowrie ‘within ten days at furthest.’ That being so, he does not need Bower in such a hurry, unless it be to carry the letter to the Unknown. But, in that case, he would have summoned Bower from Fastcastle, he would not have ridden to Edinburgh and summoned him thence. Once more, Sprot later confessed, as we shall see, that this letter to Bower was dictated to himself by Logan, and that the copy produced, apparently in Logan’s hand, was forged by him from the letter as dictated to him. He thus contradicted his earlier statement that Letter II was shown to him by Bower. He never says that he was in Edinburgh with Logan on July 18. Besides, it is not conceivable that, by dictating Letter II to Sprot, Logan would have voluntarily put himself in the power of the notary.
This is a fair example of Sprot’s apparently purposeless lying. His real interest throughout was to persuade the Government that he was giving them genuine Logan letters. This, however, he denied, with truth, yet he lied variously about the nature of his confessed forgeries.
Sprot was so false, that Government might conceive his very confession of having forged the letters to be untrue. The skill in handwriting of that age could not detect them for impostures; Government might deem that he had stolen genuine letters from Bower; letters which might legitimately be produced as evidence. Indeed this charitable view is perhaps confirmed by the extraordinary fact, to be later proved, that three Edinburgh ministers, Mr. Hall, Mr. Hewat, and Mr. Galloway, with Mr. Lumisden, minister of Duddingston, were present on occasions when Sprot confessed to having forged the letters. Yet these four preachers said nothing, as far as we hear, when the letters, confessedly forged, were produced as evidence, in 1609, to ruin Logan’s innocent child. Did the preachers think the letters genuine in spite of the confession that they were forged? We shall see later, in any case, that the contents of the three letters to the Unknown, and a torn letter, when compared with Letter IV, demonstrate that Sprot’s final confession to having forged them on the model of IV is true; indeed the fact ought to have been discovered, on internal evidence, even by critics unaware of his confessions.
We now pursue Sprot’s written deposition of July 5. He gives, as grounds of his knowledge of Logan’s guilt, certain conversations among Logan’s intimates, yeomen or ‘bonnet lairds,’ or servants, from which he inferred that Logan was engaged in treason. Again, just before Logan’s death in July 1606, he was delirious, and raved of forfeiture. But Logan had been engaged in various treasons, so his ravings need not refer to the Gowrie affair. He had been on Bothwell’s enterprises, and had privy dealings with ‘Percy,’ probably Thomas Percy, who, in 1602, secretly visited Hume of Manderston, a kinsman of Logan. That intrigue was certainly connected merely with James’s succession to the English crown. But one of Logan’s retainers, when this affair of Percy was spoken of among them, said, according to Sprot, that the Laird had been engaged in treason ‘nearer home.’
Sprot then writes that ‘about the time of the conspiracy,’ Logan, with Matthew Logan, rode to Dundee, where they enjoyed a three days’ drinking bout, and never had the Laird such a surfeit of wine. But this jaunt could not be part of the Gowrie plot, and probably occurred after its failure. Later, Sprot gave a different version of Logan’s conduct immediately before and after Gowrie’s death. Once more, after Logan’s death, one Wallace asked Sprot to be silent, if ever he had heard of ‘the Laird’s conspiracy.’ Sprot ended by confessing contritely that he had forged all the letters (except Letter IV) ‘to the true meaning and purpose of the letter that Bower let me see,’ a passage already quoted, and a falsehood.
What was the ‘cause’ for which Sprot forged? It was a purpose to blackmail, not Logan, but Logan’s heirs or executors, one of whom was Lord Home. If Sprot wanted to get anything out of them, he could terrify them by threatening to show the forged Logan letters, as genuine, to the Government, so securing the ruin of Logan’s heirs by forfeiture. He did not do this himself, but he gave forged letters, for money, to men who were in debt to the dead Logan’s estate, and who might use the letters to extort remission of what they owed.
On July 15, Sprot was examined before Dunfermline, Dunbar, Hart, the King’s Advocate (Sir Thomas Hamilton), and other gentlemen. He said that, about July 6, 1600, Logan received a letter from Gowrie, which, two days later, Bower showed to him at Fastcastle. This is the harmless Gowrie letter, which Sprot now quoted from memory, as it is printed in Hart’s official account.
Now begins a new puzzle, caused by Sprot’s dates. Of these we can only give a conjectural version, for the sake of argument. Logan received a letter from Gowrie about July 6, 1600. He returned a reply, by Bower, but when did Bower start with the reply? Let us say on July 9. Bower returned, says Sprot, ‘within five days,’ with ‘a new letter’ from Gowrie. That would bring us to July 14, but in Letters I and II, dated July 18, Logan is informing his unknown correspondent, and Bower, of the receipt of ‘a new letter’ from Gowrie. Why inform Bower of this, if Bower was the bearer of the new letter? But the ‘new letter’ mentioned in Letters I and II was brought by a retainer of Gowrie. In any case, supposing by way of conjecture that Bower returned from Gowrie about July 15, he spent the night, says Sprot, with Logan at Gunnisgreen, and next day (July 16) rode to Edinburgh with Bower, Boig of Lochend, and Matthew Logan. In Edinburgh he remained ‘a certain short space,’ say four days, which would bring us to July 20. Needless to say that this does not fit Letter II, Logan to Bower, July 18, and Letter I, Logan to the Unknown, Fastcastle, July 18.
After Logan’s return from Edinburgh (which, according to Sprot, seems to be of about July 20) Sprot heard Logan and Bower discuss some scheme by which Logan should get Gowrie’s estate of Dirleton, without payment. Bower said nothing could be done till Logan rode west himself. He discouraged the whole affair, but Logan said, in the hearing of several persons, that he would hazard his life with Gowrie. Lady Restalrig blamed Bower for making Logan try to sell the lands of Fastcastle (they were not sold till 1602), of which Bower protested his innocence. This was after Logan’s return from Edinburgh (say July 20; that is, say five days after Logan’s return, say July 25). Bower and Logan had a long conference in the open air. Sprot was lounging and spying about beside the river; a sea-fisher had taken a basket of blenneys, or ‘green-banes.’ Logan called to Sprot to bring him the fish, and they all supped. Before supper, however, Sprot walked about with Bower, and tried to ‘pump’ him as to what was going forward. Bower said that ‘the Laird should get Dirleton without either gold or silver, but he feared it should be as dear to him. They had another pie in hand than the selling of land.’ Bower then asked Sprot not to meddle, for he feared that ‘in a few days the Laird would be either landless or lifeless.’
Certainly this is a vivid description; Bower and Logan were sitting on a bench ‘at the byre end;’ Sprot, come on the chance of a supper, was peeping and watching; Peter Mason, the angler, at the river side, ‘near the stepping stones,’ had his basket of blenneys on his honest back, his rod or net in his hand; the Laird was calling for the fish, was taking a drink, and, we hope, offering a drink to Mason. Then followed the lounge and the talk with Bower before supper, all in the late afternoon of a July day, the yellow light sleeping on the northern sea below. Vivid this is, and plausible, but is it true?
We have reached the approximate date of July 25 (though, of course, after an interval of eight years, Sprot’s memory of dates must be vague). Next day (July 26) Logan, with Bower and others, rode to Nine Wells (where David Hume the philosopher was born), thence, the same night, back to Gunnisgreen, next night, July 27, to Fastcastle, and thence to Edinburgh. This brings us (allowing freely for error of memory) to about July 27, ‘the hinder end of July,’ says Sprot. If we make allowance for a vagueness of four or five days, this does not fit in badly. Logan’s letter to Gowrie (No. IV), which Sprot finally said that he used as a model for his forgeries, is dated ‘Gunnisgreen, July 29.’ ‘At the beginning of August,’ says Sprot (clearly there are four or five days lost in the reckoning), Logan and Bower, with Matthew Logan and Willie Crockett, rode to Edinburgh, ‘and there stayed three days, and the Laird, with Matthew Logan, came home, and Bower came to his own house of the Brockholes, where he stayed four days,’ and then was sent for by Logan, ‘and the Laird was very sad and sorry,’ obviously because of the failure of the plot on August 5.
How do these dates fit into the narrative? Logan was at Gunnisgreen (his letter (IV) proves it) on July 29. (Later we show another error of Sprot’s on this point.) He writes that he is sending Bower as bearer of his letter to Gowrie. If Bower left Edinburgh on July 30, he could deliver the letter to Gowrie, at Perth, on August 2, and be back in Edinburgh (whither Logan now went) on August 5, and Logan could leave Edinburgh on August 6, after hearing of the deaths of his fellow-conspirators. We must not press Sprot too hard as to dates so remote in time. We may grant that Bower, bearing Logan’s letter of July 29, rode with Logan and the others to Edinburgh; that at Edinburgh Logan awaited his return, with a reply; that he thence learned that August 5 was the day for the enterprise, and that, early on August 6, he heard of its failure, and rode sadly home: all this being granted for the sake of argument.
Had the news of August 6 been that the King had mysteriously disappeared, we may conceive that Logan would have hurried to Dirleton, met the Ruthvens there, with their prisoner, and sailed with them to Fastcastle. Or he might have made direct to Fastcastle, and welcomed them there. His reason for being at Restalrig or in the Canongate was to get the earliest news from Perth, brought across Fife, and from Bruntisland to Leith.
Whether correct or not, this scheme, allowing for lapse of memory as to dates, is feasible. Who can, remote from any documents, remember the dates of occurrences all through a month now distant by eight years? There were no daily newspapers, no ready means of ascertaining a date. Queen Mary’s accusers, in their chronological account of her movements about the time of Darnley’s death, are often out in their dates. In legal documents of the period the date of the day of the month of an event is often left blank. This occurs in the confirmation of Logan’s own will. ‘He died – July, 1606.’ When lawyers with plenty of leisure for inquiry were thus at a loss for dates of days of the month (having since the Reformation no Saints’ days to go by), Sprot, in prison, might easily go wrong in his chronology.
In any case, taking Letter IV provisionally as genuine in substance, we note that, on July 29, Logan did not yet know the date fixed for Gowrie’s enterprise. He suggested ‘the beginning of harvest,’ and, by August 5, harvest had begun. One of the Perth witnesses was reaping in the ‘Morton haugh,’ when he heard the town bell call the citizens to arms. But Gowrie must have acted in great haste, Logan not knowing, till, say, August 2 or 3, the date of a plot that exploded on August 5.
Gowrie may have thought, as Lord Maxwell said when arranging his escape from Edinburgh Castle, ‘Sic interprysis are nocht effectuat with deliberationis and advisments, bot with suddane resolutionis.’
It is very important, we must freely admit, as an argument against the theory of carrying James to Logan’s impregnable keep of Fastcastle, that only one question, in our papers, is asked as to the provisioning of Fastcastle, and that merely as to the supply of drink! Possibly this had been ascertained in Sprot’s earlier and unrecorded examinations (April 19-July 5). One poor hogshead of wine (a trifle to Logan) had been sent in that summer; so Matthew Logan deponed. As Logan had often used Fastcastle before, for treasonable purposes, he was not (it may be supposed) likely to leave it without provisions. Moreover these could be brought by sea, from Dirleton, where Carey (August 11) says that Gowrie had stored ‘all his provision.’ Moreover Government did not wish to prove intent to kidnap the King. That was commonly regarded as a harmless constitutional practice, not justifying the slaughter of the Ruthvens. From the first, Government insisted that murder was intended. In the Latin indictment of the dead Logan this is again dwelt on; Fastcastle is only to be the safe haven of the murderers. This is a misreading of Letter IV, where Fastcastle is merely spoken of as to be used for a meeting, and ‘the concluding of our plot.’
Thus it cannot be concealed that, on July 29 (granting Letter IV to have a basis), the plot, as far as Logan knew, was ‘in the air.’ If Fastcastle was to be used by the conspirators, it must have been taken in the rough, on the chance that it was provided, or that Gowrie could bring his own supplies from Dirleton by sea. This extreme vagueness undeniably throws great doubt on Logan’s part in the plot; Letter IV, if genuine, being the source of our perplexity. But, if it is not genuine, that is, in substance, there is only rumour, later to be discussed, to hint that Logan was in any way connected with Gowrie.
We left Bower and Logan conversing dolefully some days after the failure of the plot. At this point the perhaps insuperable difficulty arises, why did they not, as soon as they returned from Edinburgh, destroy every inch of paper connected with the conspiracy? One letter at least (Logan’s to Gowrie, July 29) was not burned, according to Sprot, but was later stolen by himself from Bower; though he reserved this confession to the last day of his life but two. We might have expected Logan to take the letter from Bower as soon as they met, and to burn or, for that matter, swallow it if no fire was convenient! Yet, according to Sprot, in his final confession, Logan let Bower keep the damning paper for months. If this be true, we can only say quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat. People do keep damning letters, constant experience proves the fact.
After Bower had met Logan in his melancholy mood, he rode away, and remained absent for four days, on what errand Sprot did not know, and during the next fortnight, while Scotland was ringing with the Gowrie tragedy, Sprot saw nothing of Logan.
Next, Logan went to church at Coldinghame, on a Sunday, and met Bower: next day they dined together at Gunnisgreen. Bower was gloomy. Logan said, ‘Be it as it will, I must take my fortune, and I will tell you, Laird Bower, the scaffold is the best death that a man can die.’ Logan, if he said this, must have been drunk; he very often was.
It was at this point, in answer to a question, that Sprot confessed that Logan’s letter to Bower (No. II) was a forgery by himself. The actual letter, Sprot said, was dictated by Logan to him, and he made a counterfeit copy in imitation of Logan’s handwriting. We have stated the difficulties involved in this obvious falsehood. Sprot was trying every ruse to conceal his alleged source and model, Letter IV.
Sprot was next asked about a certain memorandum by Logan directed to Bower and to one John Bell, in 1605. This document was actually found in Sprot’s ‘pocquet’ when he was arrested, and it contained certain very compromising items. Sprot replied that he forged the memorandum, in the autumn of 1606, when he forged the other letters. He copied most of it from an actual but innocent note of Logan’s on business matters, and added the compromising items out of his own invention. He made three copies of this forgery, one was produced; he gave another to a man named Heddilstane or Heddilshaw, a dweller in Berwick, in September 1607; the third, ‘in course hand,’ he gave to another client, ‘the goodman of Rentoun,’ Hume. One was to be used to terrorise Logan’s executors, to whom Heddilstane, but not Rentoun, was in debt. Sprot’s words are important. ‘He omitted nothing that was in the original’ (Logan’s memorandum on business matters), ‘but eikit’ (added) ‘two articles to his copy, the one concerning Ninian Chirnside’ (as to a dangerous plot-letter lost by Bower), ‘the other, where the Laird ordered Bower to tear his missive letters. He grants that he wrote another copy with his course hand, copied from his copy, and gave it to the goodman of Rentoun,’ while the copy given to Heddilstane ‘was of his counterfeited writing,’ an imitation of Logan’s hand.
Perhaps Sprot had two methods and scales of blackmail. For one, he invented damning facts, and wrote them out in imitation of Logan’s writing. The other species was cheaper: a copy in his ‘course hand’ of his more elaborate forgeries in Logan’s hand. Now the two copies of Letters I and IV, which, at the end of his life, as we shall see, Sprot attested by signed endorsements, were in his ‘course hand.’ He had them ready for customers, when he was arrested in April 1608, and they were doubtless found in his ‘kist’ on the day before his death, with the alleged original of Letter IV. Up to August 11, at a certain hour, Government had neither the alleged original, nor Sprot’s ‘course hand copy’ of Letter IV, otherwise he would not have needed to quote IV from memory, as he did on that occasion.
Among these minor forgeries, to be used in blackmailing operations, was a letter nominally from Logan to one Ninian or Ringan Chirnside. This man was a member of the family of Chirnside of Easter Chirnside; his own estate was Whitsumlaws. All these Chirnsides and Humes of Berwickshire were a turbulent and lawless gang, true borderers. Ninian is addressed, by Logan, as ‘brother;’ they were most intimate friends. It was Ninian who (as the endorsement shows) produced our Letter V, on April 19; he had purchased it, for the usual ends, from Sprot, being a great debtor (as Logan’s will proves) to his estate.
To track these men through the background of history is to have a notion of the Day of Judgment. Old forgotten iniquities and adventures leap to light. Chirnside, like Logan and the Douglases of Whittingham, and John Colville, and the Laird of Spot, had followed the fortunes of wild Frank Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, and nephew of the Bothwell of Queen Mary. Frank Bothwell was driven into his perilous courses by a charge of practising witchcraft against the King’s life. Absurd as this sounds, Bothwell had probably tried it for what it was worth. When he was ruined, pursued, driven, child of the Kirk as he seemed, into the Catholic faction, his old accomplice, Colville, took a solemn farewell of him. ‘By me your lordship was cleared of the odious imputation of witchcraft.. but God only knows how far I hazarded my conscience in making black white, and darkness light for your sake’ (September 12, 1594). 96
After Bothwell, when he trapped the King by aid of Lady Gowrie (July 1593), recovered power for a while, he defended himself on this charge of witchcraft. He had consulted and employed the wizard, Richard Graham, who now accused him of attempting the King’s life by sorcery. But he had only employed Graham to heal the Earl of Angus, himself dying of witchcraft. Bothwell was charged with employing a retainer, Ninian Chirnside, to arrange more than twenty-one meetings with the wizard Graham; the result being the procurement of a poison, ‘adder skins, toad skins, and the hippomanes in the brain of a young foal,’ to ooze the juices on the King, ‘a poison of such vehemency as should have presently cut him off.’ Isobel Gowdie, accused of witchcraft in 1622, confessed to having employed a similar charm. 97 All this Bothwell, instructed by Colville, denied, but admitted that he had sent Ninian Chirnside twice to the wizard, all in the interests of the dying Earl of Angus. 98
This Chirnside, then, was a borderer prone to desperate enterprises and darkling rides, and midnight meetings with the wizard Graham in lonely shepherds’ cottages, as was alleged. He could also sink to blackmailing the orphan child of his ‘brother,’ Logan of Restalrig.
To go on with Sprot’s confessions; he had forged, he said, receipts from Logan to the man named Edward or Ned Heddilstane for some of the money which Heddilstane owed him. For these forgeries his client paid him well, if not willingly. Sprot frequently blackmailed Ned, ‘whenever he want siller.’
It must be granted that Sprot was a liar so complex, and a forger so skilled (for the time, that is), that nothing which he said or produced can be reckoned, as such, as evidence. On the other hand, his power of describing or inventing scenes, real or fictitious, was of high artistic merit, so that he appears occasionally either to deviate into truth, or to have been a realistic novelist born centuries too early. Why then, it may be asked, do we doubt that Sprot may have forged, without a genuine model, Letter IV? The answer will appear in due time. Letter IV, as Sprot confessed, is certainly the model of all the letters which he forged, whether those produced or those suppressed. He was afraid to wander from his model, which he repeated in Letters I (?), III, V, and in the unproduced letters, including one which we have found in twelve torn fragments, with the signature missing.
