Lang Andrew
James VI and the Gowrie Mystery
IX. CONTEMPORARY CLERICAL CRITICISM
The most resolute sceptics as to the guilt of the Ruthvens were the Edinburgh preachers. They were in constant opposition to the King, and the young Gowrie was their favourite nobleman. As to what occurred when the news of the tragedy reached Edinburgh, early on July 6, we have the narrative of Mr. Robert Bruce, then the leader of the Presbyterians. His own version is printed in the first volume of the Bannatyne Club Miscellany, and is embodied, with modifications, and without acknowledgment (as references to such sources were usually omitted at that period), in Calderwood’s History.
It is thus better to follow Mr. Bruce’s own account, as far as it goes.
The preachers heard the ‘bruit,’ or rumour of the tragedy, by nine o’clock on the morning of August 6. By ten o’clock arrived a letter from James to the Privy Council: the preachers were called first ‘before the Council of the town,’ and the King’s epistle was read to them. ‘It bore that his Majesty was delivered out of a peril, and therefore that we should be commanded to go to our Kirks, convene our people, ring bells, and give God praises.’ While the preachers were answering, the Privy Council sent for the Provost and some of the Town Council.
The preachers then went to deliberate in the East Kirk, and decided ‘that we could not enter into the particular defence of’ (the existence of?) ‘the treason, seeing that the King was silent of the treason in his own letter, and the reports of courtiers varied among themselves.’
This is not easily intelligible. The letter from Falkland of which Nicholson gives an account on August 6, was exceedingly ‘particular as to the treason.’ It is my impression, based mainly on the Burgh Records quoted by Pitcairn, that the letter with full particulars cited by Nicholson, was written, more or less officially, by the notary, David Moysie, who was at Falkland, and that the King’s letter was brief, only requiring thanksgiving to be offered. Yet Nicholson says that the letter with details (written by the King he seems to think), was meant for the preachers as well as for the Privy Council (cf. p. 38, note).
The preachers, in any case, were now brought before the Privy Council and desired, by Montrose, the Chancellor, to go to church, and thank God for the King’s ‘miraculous delivery from that vile treason.’ They replied that ‘they could not be certain of the treason,’ but would speak of delivery ‘from a great danger.’ Or they would wait, and, when quite sure of the treason, would blaze it abroad.
‘They’ (the Council) ‘said it should be sufficient to read his Majesty’s letter.’
This appears to mean that the preachers would content the Lords by merely reading James’s letter aloud to the public.
‘We answered that we could not read his letter’ (aloud to the people?) ‘and doubt of the truth of it. It would be better to say generally, “if the report be true.”’
The preachers would have contented the Lords by merely reading James’s letter aloud to their congregations. But this they declined to do; they wished, in the pulpit, to evade the Royal letter, and merely to talk, conditionally, of the possible truth of the report, or ‘bruit.’ This appears to have been a verbal narrative brought by Graham of Balgonie, which seemed to vary from the long letter probably penned by Moysie. At this moment the Rev. David Lindsay, who had been at Falkland, and had heard James’s story from his own mouth, arrived. He, therefore, was sent to tell the tale publicly, at the Cross. The Council reported to James that the six Edinburgh preachers ‘would in no ways praise God for his delivery.’ In fact, they would only do so in general terms.
On August 12, James took the preachers to task. Bruce explained that they could thank, and on Sunday had thanked God for the King’s delivery, but could go no further into detail, ‘in respect we had no certainty.’ ‘Had you not my letter?’ asked the King. Bruce replied that the letter spoke only ‘of a danger in general.’ Yet the letter reported by Nicholson was ‘full and particular,’ but that letter the preachers seem to have regarded as unofficial. ‘Could not my Council inform you of the particulars?’ asked the King. The President (Fyvie, later Chancellor Dunfermline) said that they had assured the preachers of the certainty of the treason. On this Bruce replied that they had only a report, brought orally by Balgonie, and a letter by Moysie, an Edinburgh notary then at Falkland, and that these testimonies ‘fought so together that no man could have any certainty.’ The Secretary (Elphinstone, later Lord Balmerino) denied the discrepancies.
James now asked what was the preachers’ present opinion? They had heard the King himself, the Council, and Mar. Bruce replied that, as a minister, he was not fully persuaded. Four of the preachers adhered to their scepticism. Two, Hewat and Robertson, now professed conviction. The other four were forbidden to preach, under pain of death, and forbidden to come within ten miles of Edinburgh. They offered terms, but these were refused. The reason of James’s ferocity was that the devout regarded the preachers as the mouthpieces of God, and so, if they doubted his word, the King’s character would, to the godly, seem no better than that of a mendacious murderer.
From a modern point of view, the ministers, if doubtful, had a perfect right to be silent, and one of them, Hall, justly objected that he ought to wait for the verdict in the civil trial of the dead Ruthvens. We shall meet this Hall, and Hewatt (one of the two ministers who professed belief), in very strange circumstances later (p. 217). Here it is enough to have explained the King’s motives for severity.
In September the recalcitrants came before the King at Stirling. All professed to be convinced (one, after inquiries in Fife), except Bruce. We learn what happened next from a letter of his to his wife. He had heard from one who had been at Craigengelt’s execution (August 23), that Craigengelt had then confessed that Henderson had told him how he was placed by Gowrie in the turret. 48 Bruce had sent to verify this. Moreover he would believe, if Henderson were hanged, and adhered to his deposition to the last: a pretty experiment! The Comptroller asked, ‘Will you believe a condemned man better than the King and Council?’ Mr. Bruce admitted that such was his theory of the Grammar of Assent. ‘If Henderson die penitently I will trust him.’ Later, as we shall see, this pleasing experiment was tried in another case, but, though the witness died penitently, and clinging to his final deposition, not one of the godly sceptics was convinced.
‘But Henderson saved the King’s life,’ replied the Comptroller to Mr. Bruce.
‘As to that I cannot tell,’ said Mr. Bruce, and added that, if Henderson took the dagger from Ruthven, he deserved to die for not sheathing it in Ruthven’s breast.
Henderson later, we know, withdrew his talk of his seizure of the dagger, which James had never admitted. James now said that he knew not what became of the dagger.
‘Suppose,’ said the Comptroller, ‘Henderson goes back from that deposition?’
‘Then his testimony is the worse,’ said Mr. Bruce.
‘Then it were better to keep him alive,’ said the Comptroller; but Mr. Bruce insisted that Henderson would serve James best by dying penitently. James said that Bruce made him out a murderer. ‘If I would have taken their lives, I had causes enough’ (his meaning is unknown), ‘I need not have hazarded myself so.’ By the ‘causes,’ can James have meant Gowrie’s attempts to entangle him in negotiations with the Pope? 49 These were alleged by Mr. Galloway, in a sermon preached on August 11, in the open air, before the King and the populace of Edinburgh (see infra, p. 128).
Mar wondered that Bruce would not trust men who (like himself) heard the King cry, and saw the hand at his throat. Mr. Bruce said that Mar might believe, ‘as he were there to hear and see.’
He was left to inform himself, but Calderwood says, that the story about Craigengelt’s dying confession was untrue. Bruce had frankly given the lie to the King and Mar, though he remarked that he had never heard Mar and Lennox tell the tale ‘out of their own mouths.’ Mar later (September 24) most solemnly assured Mr. Bruce by letter, that the treason, ‘in respect of that I saw,’ was a certain fact. This he professed ‘before God in heaven.’ Meanwhile Mr. Hall was restored to his Edinburgh pulpit, and Mr. Bruce, after a visit to Restalrig, a place close to Edinburgh and Leith, went into banishment. 50 If he stayed with the Laird of Restalrig, he had, as will presently appear, a strange choice in friends (pp. 148–167).
A later letter of Bruce’s now takes up the tale. In 1601, Bruce was in London, when Mar was there as James’s envoy. They met, and Bruce said he was content to abide by the verdict in the Gowrie trial of November 1600. What he boggled at, henceforward, was a public apology for his disbelief, an acceptance, from the pulpit, of the King’s veracity, as to the events. In London, Bruce had found that the Puritans, as to the guilt of Essex (which was flagrant), were in the same position as himself, regarding the guilt of Gowrie. 51 But they bowed to the law, and so would he – ‘for the present.’
The Puritans in England would not preach that they were persuaded of the guilt of Essex, nor would Bruce preach his persuasion of the guilt of Gowrie, ‘from my knowledge and from my persuasion.’ He assured Mar ‘that it was not possible for any man to be fully persuaded, or to take on their conscience, but so many as saw and heard.’ However Bruce is self-contradictory. He would be persuaded, if Henderson swung for it, adhering to his statement. Such were Mr. Brace’s theories of evidence. He added that he was not fully persuaded that there was any hell to go to, yet probably he scrupled not to preach ‘tidings of damnation.’ He wanted to be more certain of Gowrie’s guilt, than he was that there is hell-fire. ‘Spiteful taunts’ followed, Mar’s repartee to the argument about hell being obvious. Bruce must have asserted the existence of hell, from the pulpit: though not ‘fully persuaded’ of hell. So why not assert the King’s innocence?
Bruce returned later to Scotland, and met the King in April 1602. Now, he said, according to Calderwood, that he was ‘resolved,’ that is, convinced. What convinced him? Mar’s oath. ‘How could he swear?’ asked James; ‘he neither saw nor heard’ – that is, what passed between James, the man in the turret, and the Master. ‘I cannot tell you how he could swear, but indeed he swore very deeply,’ said Bruce, and reported the oath, which must have been a fine example. James took Bruce’s preference of Mar’s oath to his own word very calmly. Bruce was troubled about the exact state of affairs between James and the Master. ‘Doubt ye of that?’ said the King, ‘then ye could not but count me a murderer.’ ‘It followeth not, if it please you, Sir,’ said Mr. Robert, ‘for ye might have had some secret cause.’ 52
Strange ethics! A man may slay another, without incurring the guilt of murder, if he has ‘a secret cause.’ Bruce probably referred to the tattle about a love intrigue between Gowrie, or Ruthven, and the King’s wife. Even now, James kept his temper. He offered his whole story to Bruce for cross-examination. ‘Mr. Robert uttered his doubt where he found occasion. The King heard him gently, and with a constant countenance, which Mr. Robert admired.’ But Mr. Robert would not preach his belief: would not apologise from the pulpit. ‘I give it but a doubtsome trust,’ he said.
Again, on June 24, 1602, James invited cross-examination. Bruce asked how he could possibly know the direction of his Majesty’s intention when he ordered Ramsay to strike the Master. ‘I will give you leave to pose me’ (interrogate me), said James. 53
‘Had you a purpose to slay my Lord?’ – that is, Gowrie.
‘As I shall answer to God, I knew not that my Lord was slain, till I saw him in his last agony, and was very sorry, yea, prayed in my heart for the same.’
‘What say ye then concerning Mr. Alexander?’
‘I grant I was art and part in Mr. Alexander’s slaughter, for it was in my own defence.’
‘Why brought you not him to justice, seeing you should have God before your eyes?’
‘I had neither God nor the Devil, man, before my eyes, but my own defence.’
‘Here the King began to fret,’ and no wonder. He frankly said that ‘he was one time minded to have spared Mr. Alexander, but being moved for the time, the motion’ (passion) ‘prevailed.’ He swore, in answer to a question, that, in the morning, he loved the Master ‘as his brother.’
Bruce was now convinced that James left Falkland innocent of evil purpose, but, as he was in a passion and revengeful, while struggling with the Master, ‘he could not be innocent before God.’
Here we leave Mr. Bruce. He signed a declaration of belief in James’s narrative; public apologies in the pulpit he would not make. He was banished to Inverness, and was often annoyed and ‘put at,’ James reckoning him a firebrand.
The result, on the showing of the severe and hostile Calderwood, is that, in Bruce’s opinion, in June 1602, James was guiltless of a plot against the Ruthvens. The King’s crime was, not that strangely complicated project of a double murder, to be inferred from the Ruthven apology, but words spoken in the heat of blood. Betrayed, captured, taunted, insulted, struggling with a subject whom he had treated kindly, James cried to Ramsay ‘Strike low!’ He knew not the nature and extent of the conspiracy against him, he knew not what knocking that was at the door of the chamber, and he told Ramsay to strike; we have no assurance that the wounds were deadly.
This is how the matter now appeared to Mr. Bruce. The King swore very freely to the truth of his tale, and that influenced Bruce, but the King’s candour as to what passed in his own mind, when he bade Ramsay strike Ruthven, is more convincing, to a modern critic, than his oaths. For some reason, Bruce’s real point, that he was satisfied of the King’s innocence of a plot, but not satisfied as regards his yielding to passion when attacked, is ignored by the advocates of the Ruthvens. Mr. Barbé observes: ‘What slight success there ever was remained on Bruce’s side, for, in one conference, he drew from the King the confession that he might have saved Ruthven’s life, and brought him to justice.’ That confession shows unexpected candour in James, but does not in the slightest degree implicate him in a conspiracy, and of a conspiracy even the rigid Bruce now acquitted the King. Mr. Pitcairn, at first a strong King’s man, in an appendix to his third volume credits Bruce with the best of the argument. This he does, illogically, because the King never ceased to persecute Bruce, whom he thought a firebrand. However wicked this conduct of James may have been, it in no way affects the argument as to his guilt in the conspiracy. Of that Mr. Bruce acquitted the King. Calderwood’s words (vi. 156) are ‘Mr. Robert, by reason of his oaths, thought him innocent of any purpose that day in the morning to slay them. Yet because he confessed he had not God or justice before his eyes, but was in a heat and mind to revenge, he could not be innocent before God, and had great cause to repent, and to crave mercy for Christ’s sake.’ The thing is perfectly clear. Bruce acquitted James of the infamous plot against the Ruthvens. 54 What, then, was the position of the Ruthvens, if the King was not the conspirator? Obviously they were guilty, whether James, at a given moment, was carried away by passion or not.
X. POPULAR CRITICISM OF THE DAY
Calderwood has preserved for us the objections taken by sceptics to the King’s narrative. 55 First, the improbability of a murderous conspiracy, by youths so full of promise and Presbyterianism as Gowrie and his brother. To Gowrie’s previous performances we return later. The objection against a scheme of murder hardly applies to a plan for kidnapping a King who was severe against the Kirk.
The story of the pot of gold, and the King’s desire to inspect it and the captive who bore it, personally, and the folly of thinking that one pot of gold could suffice to disturb the peace of the country, are next adversely criticised. We have already replied to the criticism (p. 40). The story was well adapted to entrap James VI.
The improbabilities of Ruthven’s pleas for haste need not detain us: the King did not think them probable.
Next it was asked ‘Why did James go alone upstairs with Ruthven?’
He may have had wine enough to beget valour, or, as he said, he may have believed that he was being followed by Erskine. The two reasons may well have combined.
‘Why did not Gowrie provide better cheer, if forewarned?’ (by Henderson?) it was asked.
To give the impression, we reply, that he was taken by surprise, and that the King came uninvited and unexpected.
‘Why did Ruthven aim a dagger at James, and then hold parley?’
Because he wanted to frighten the King into being ‘at his will.’
‘How could Ruthven trust the King, with the armed man alone in the turret?’
What else could he do? He locked them in, and was, through the failure of the man, in a quandary which made clear reflection necessary – and impossible.
‘It was strange that the man had not been trained in his task.’
If Oliphant is correctly reported, he had been trained, but ‘fainted.’
‘Why bind the King with a garter?’
In helpless pursuit of the forlorn idea of capturing him.
‘Why execute the enterprise when the courtiers were passing the window?’
Ruthven could not have known that they were coming at that moment; it was Gowrie’s ill-timed falsehoods, to the effect that the King had ridden away, which brought them there. Gowrie had not allowed for Henderson’s failure.
‘How could the King struggle successfully with the stalwart Master?’
He fought for his life, and Ruthven probably even then did not wish to injure him bodily.
‘Why was not the Master made prisoner?’
James answered this question when ‘posed’ by Mr. Bruce. His blood was up, and he said ‘Strike!’
‘The Earl likewise might, after he was stricken, have been preserved alive.’
Perhaps – by miracle; he died instantly.
The discrepancies as to the dagger and the opening of the window we have already treated, also the locking and unlocking, or leaving unlocked, of the chamber door, giving on the dark staircase, after Ruthven’s last hurried entrance (p. 69).
There follow arguments, to be later considered, about the relations between James and the Earl previous to the tragedy, and a statement, with no authority cited, that James had written to Gowrie’s uncle, to meet him at Perth on August 5, implying that James had made up his mind to be there, and did not go on Ruthven’s sudden invitation.
‘The Earl and Cranstoun were alone with the four in the fatal chamber. The others who were wounded there went up after Gowrie’s death.’
It may be so, but the bulk of the evidence is on the other side.
‘It is reported’ that Henderson was eating an egg in the kitchen, and went into the town when the fray arose.
It is also denied, on oath, by Gowrie’s cook, who added that he was ‘content to be hanged,’ if it could be proved. 56
The Ruthven apologist (MS.) says that Henderson was waiting on the Lords who dined in the hall, and was there when the King’s servant brought the news that the King had ridden away.
‘The Master’s sword, after his death, was found rusted tight in his scabbard.’
The Master must have been a very untidy gallant. No authority is cited for the story.
The Murrays (who were well rewarded) were in Perth, ‘whether of set purpose let the reader judge.’
By all means let the reader judge.
The King knew Henderson (so the anonymous Goodman of Pitmillie said), but did not recognise the man in the turret. It was reported that Patrick Galloway, the king’s chaplain, induced Henderson to pretend to be the man in the turret.
As to the good man of Pitmillie, Calderwood did not even know his name. This is mere gossip.
Again, Calderwood, who offers these criticisms, does not ask why, of all concerned, Henderson was the only man that fled who had not been seen in connection with the fray and the tumult. If he was not the man of the turret, and if Andrew Ruthven, who also had ridden to Falkland, did not abscond, why did Henderson?
As to the man in the turret, if not a retainer of Ruthven, he was a minion of James, or there was no man at all. If there was no man at all, could James be so absurd as to invent him, on the off chance that somebody, anybody, would turn up, and claim to have been the man? That is, frankly, incredible. But if James managed to insert a man into the turret, he was not so silly as not to have his man ready to produce in evidence. Yet Henderson could not be produced, he had fled, and certainly had not come in by August 12, when he was proclaimed.
That James had introduced and suborned Henderson and that Henderson fled to give tone and colour to his narrative, is not among the most probable of conjectures. I do not find that this desperate hypothesis was put forward at the time. It could not be, for apologists averred (1) that Henderson was eating an egg in the kitchen: (2) that he was waiting on the gentlemen in the hall, at the moment when, by the desperate hypothesis, he was, by some machination of James, in the turret: (3) there is a third myth, a Perth tradition, that Henderson had been at Scone all day, and first heard the tragic news, when all was over, as, on his return, he crossed the bridge over Tay. As it is incredible that there was no man in the turret at all, and that James took the outside chance that somebody, anybody, would claim to be the man; the assailants of the King must offer a working hypothesis of this important actor in the drama. My own fancy can suggest none. Was he in four places at once, in the kitchen, in the hall, on the bridge, and in the turret? If he was in the kitchen, in the hall, or on the bridge, why did he instantly abscond? If James put him in the turret, why did he fly?
The King’s word, I repeat, was the word that no man could rely on. But, among competing improbabilities, the story which was written on the night of August 5, and to which he adhered under Bruce’s cross-examination, is infinitely the least improbable. The Master of Gray, an abominable character, not in Scotland when the events occurred, reported, not from Scotland, that Lennox had said that, if put on his oath, ‘he could not say whether the practice proceeded from Gowrie or the King.’ (Sept 30, 1600)
The Master of Gray wrote from Chillingham, on the English side of the Border, where he was playing the spy for Cecil. Often he played the double spy, for England and for Rome. Lennox may well have been puzzled, he may have said so, but the report rests on the evidence of one who did not hear his words, who wished to flatter the scepticism of James’s English enemies, and whose character (though on one point he is unjustly accused) reeks with infamy.
That of James does not precisely ‘smell sweet and blossom in the dust.’ But if the question arises, whether a man of James’s position, age, and temperament, or whether a young man, with the antecedents which we are about to describe, was the more likely to embark on a complicated and dangerous plot – in James’s case involving two murders at inestimable personal risk – it is not unnatural to think that the young man is the more likely to ‘have the wyte of it.’
