James VI and the Gowrie Mystery Part 5

'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sured 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 G.o.d, and so, if _they_ doubted his word, the King's character would, to the G.o.dly, 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 circ.u.mstances 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. {103} 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 a.s.sent. '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 G.o.dly 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? {104} 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 a.s.sured Mr. Bruce by letter, that the treason, 'in respect of that I saw,' was a certain fact. This he professed 'before G.o.d 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. {105a} If he stayed with the Laird of Restalrig, he had, as will presently appear, a strange choice in friends (pp. 148167).

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 Ess.e.x (which was flagrant), were in the same position as himself, regarding the guilt of Gowrie. {105b} 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 Ess.e.x, nor would Bruce preach his persuasion of the guilt of Gowrie, 'from my knowledge and from my persuasion.' He a.s.sured 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 h.e.l.l to go to, yet probably he scrupled not to preach 'tidings of d.a.m.nation.' He wanted to be more certain of Gowrie's guilt, than he was that there is h.e.l.l-fire. 'Spiteful taunts' followed, Mar's repartee to the argument about h.e.l.l being obvious. Bruce must have a.s.serted the existence of h.e.l.l, from the pulpit: though not 'fully persuaded' of h.e.l.l. So why not a.s.sert 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 pa.s.sed 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_.' {107a}

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. {107b}

'Had you a purpose to slay my Lord?'-that is, Gowrie.

'As I shall answer to G.o.d, 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 G.o.d before your eyes?'

'I had neither G.o.d 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' (pa.s.sion) '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 pa.s.sion and revengeful, while struggling with the Master, 'he could not be innocent before G.o.d.'

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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion when attacked, is ignored by the advocates of the Ruthvens. Mr. Barbe 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 G.o.d or justice before his eyes, but was in a heat and mind to revenge, he could not be innocent before G.o.d, 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. {110} 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 pa.s.sion or not.

X. POPULAR CRITICISM OF THE DAY

Calderwood has preserved for us the objections taken by sceptics to the King's narrative. {111} 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.