James VI and the Gowrie Mystery Part 8

What was to happen next? Who can guess at the plot of such a plotter?

It is perhaps least improbable that the King was to be conveyed secretly, by sea or across Fife, to Dirleton in the first place. Gowrie may have had an understanding with Guevara at Berwick. James himself told Nicholson that a large English s.h.i.+p had hovered off the coast, refusing communication with the sh.o.r.e. Bothwell, again, now desperate, may have lately been nearer home than was known; finally, Fastcastle, the isolated eyrie on its perpendicular rock above the Northern Sea, may have been at Gowrie's disposal. I am disinclined to conjecture, being only certain that a young man with Gowrie's past-'Italianate,' and of dubious religion-was more apt to form a wild and daring plot than was his canny senior, the King of Scots. But that a plot of some kind Gowrie had laid, I am convinced by his secrecy, and by his falsehoods as to the King's departure. Among the traps for the King contrived by Bothwell and Colville, and reported by Colville to his English paymasters, were schemes quite as wild as that which Gowrie probably entertained. The King once in the pious hands of so G.o.dly a man as Gowrie, the party of the Kirk, or the party of the Church, would have come in and made themselves useful. {147}

XII. LOGAN OF RESTALRIG

We now arrive at an extraordinary sequel of the Gowrie mystery: a sequel in which some critics have seen final and doc.u.mentary proof of the guilt of the Ruthvens. Others have remarked only a squalid intrigue, whereby James's ministers threw additional disgrace on their master. That they succeeded in disgracing themselves, we shall make only too apparent, but if the evidence which they handled proves nothing against the Ruthvens, it does not on that account invalidate the inferences which we have drawn as to their conspiracy. We come to the story of the Laird and the country writer.

That we may know the Laird better, a brief description of his home may be introduced. Within a mile and a half of the east end of Princes Street, Edinburgh, lies, on the left of the railway to the south, a squalid suburb. You drive or walk on a dirty road, north-eastwards, through unambitious shops, factories, tall chimneys, flaming advertis.e.m.e.nts, and houses for artisans. The road climbs a hill, and you begin to find, on each side of you, walls of ancient construction, and traces of great old doorways, now condemned. On the left are ploughed fields, and even clumps of trees with blackened trunks. Grimy are the stacks of corn in the farmyard to the left, at the crest of the hill. On the right, a gateway gives on a short avenue which leads to a substantial modern house. Having reached this point in my pilgrimage, I met a gentleman who occupies the house, and asked if I might be permitted to view the site.

The other, with much courtesy, took me up to the house, of which only the portion in view from the road was modern. Facing the west all was of the old Scottish chateau style, with gables, narrow windows, and a strange bulky chimney on the north, bulging out of the wall. The west side of the house stood on the very brink of a steep precipice, beneath which lay what is now but a large deep waterhole, but, at the period of the Gowrie conspiracy, was a loch fringed with water weeds, and a haunt of wild fowl. By this loch, Restalrig Loch, the witch more than three centuries ago met the ghost of Tam Reid, who fell in Pinkie fight, and by the ghost was initiated into the magic which brought her to the stake.

I scrambled over a low wall with a deep drop, and descended the cliff so as to get a view of the ancient chateau that faces the setting sun.

Beyond the loch was a muddy field, then rows on rows of ugly advertis.e.m.e.nts, then lines of 'smoky dwarf houses,' and, above these, clear against a sky of March was the leonine profile of Arthur's Seat.

Steam rose and trailed from the shrieking southward trains between the loch and the mountain, old and new were oddly met, for the chateau was the home of an ancient race, the Logans of Restalrig, ancestors of that last Laird with whom our story has to do. Their rich lands stretched far and wide; their huge dovecot stands, st.u.r.dy as a little pyramid, in a field to the north, towards the firth. They had privileges over Leith Harbour which must have been very valuable: they were of Royal descent, through a marriage of a Logan with a daughter of Robert II. But their glory was in their ancestor, Sir Robert Logan, who fell where the good Lord James of Douglas died, charging the Saracens on a field of Spain, and following the heart of Bruce. So Barbour sings, and to be named by Barbour, for a deed and a death so chivalrous, is honour enough.

[Picture: Restalrig House]

[Picture: Restalrig Village]

The Logans flourished in their eyrie above the Loch of Restalrig, and intermarried with the best houses, Sinclairs, Ogilvys, Homes, and Ramsays of Dalhousie. It may be that some of them sleep under the muddy floor of St. Triduana's Chapel, in the village of Restalrig, at the foot of the hill on the eastern side of their old chateau. This village, surrounded by factories, is apparently just what it used to be in the days of James VI. The low thick-walled houses with fore-stairs, retain their ancient, high-pitched, red-tiled roofs, with dormer windows, and turn their tall narrow gables to the irregular street. 'A mile frae Embro town,' you find yourself going back three hundred years in time. On the right hand of the road, walking eastward, what looks like a huge green mound is visible above a high ancient wall. This is all that is left of St.

Triduana's Chapel, and she was a saint who came from Achaia with St.

Regulus, the mythical founder of St. Andrews. She died at Restalrig on October 8, 510, and may have converted the Celts, who then dwelt in a crannog in the loch; at all events we hear that, in a very dry summer, the timbers of a crannog were found in the sandy deposit of the lake margin. The chapel (or chapter-house?), very dirty and disgracefully neglected, has probably a crypt under it, and certainly possesses a beautiful groined roof, springing from a single short pillar in the centre. The windows are blocked up with stones, the exterior is a mere mound of gra.s.s like a sepulchral tumulus. On the floor lies, broken, the gravestone of a Lady Restalrig who died in 1526. Outside is a patched-up church; the General a.s.sembly of 1560 decreed that the church should be destroyed as 'a monument of idolatry' (it was a collegiate church, with a dean, and prebendaries), and in 1571 the wrought stones were used to build a new gate inside the Netherbow Port. The whole edifice was not destroyed, but was patched up, in 1836, into a Presbyterian place of wors.h.i.+p. This old village and kirk made up 'Restalrig Town,' a place occupied by the English during the siege of Leith in 1560. So much of history may be found in this odd corner, where the s.e.xton of the kirk speaks to the visitor about 'the Great Logan,' meaning that Laird who now comes into the sequel of the Gowrie mystery.

For some thirty years before the date of which we are speaking, a Robert Logan had been laird of Restalrig, and of the estate of Flemington, in Berwicks.h.i.+re, where his residence was the house of Gunnisgreen, near Eyemouth, on the Berwicks.h.i.+re coast. He must have been a young boy when, in 1560, the English forces besieging Leith (then held by the French for Mary of Guise) pitched their camp at Restalrig.

In 1573, Kirkcaldy of Grange and Maitland of Lethington gallantly held the last strength of the captive Mary Stuart, the Castle of Edinburgh.

The fortress was to fall under the guns of the English allies of that Earl of Gowrie (then Lord Ruthven), who was the father of the Gowrie of our mystery.

On April 17, 1573, a compact was made between Lord Ruthven and Drury, the English general. One provision was (the rest do not here concern us) that Alexander, Lord Home; Lethington; and Robert Logan of Restalrig, if captured, 'shall be reserved to be justified by the laws of Scotland,'

which means, hanged by the neck. But neither on that nor on any other occasion was our Logan hanged. {152} He somehow escaped death and forfeiture, when Kirkcaldy was gibbeted after the fall of the castle. In 1577, we find him, with Lord Lindsay and Mowbray of Barnbogle (now Dalmeny) surety for Queen Mary's half-brother, the Lord Robert Stewart, who vainly warned Darnley to escape from Kirk o' Field. Lord Robert was then confined by the Regent Morton in Linlithgow, and Logan with the rest was surety in 10,000_l._ that he would not attempt to escape. Later, Logan was again surety that Lord Robert would return after visiting his dominions, the Orkney Islands. {153}

Logan, though something of a pirate, was clearly a man of substance and of a good house, which he strengthened by alliances. One of his wives, Elizabeth Macgill, was the daughter of the Laird of Cranstoun Riddell, and one of her family was a member of the Privy Council. From Elizabeth Logan was divorced; she was, apparently, the mother of his eldest son, Robert. By the marriage of an ancestor of Logan's with an heiress of the family of Hume, he acquired the fortress and lands of Fastcastle, near St. Abbs, on the Berwicks.h.i.+re coast. The castle, now in ruins, is the model of Wolfscrag in 'The Bride of Lammermoor.' Standing on the actual verge of a perpendicular cliff above the sea, whence it is said to have been approached by a staircase cut in the living rock, it was all but inaccessible, and was strongly fortified. Though commanded by the still higher cliff to the south, under which it nestled on its narrow plateau of rock, Fastcastle was then practically impregnable, and twenty men could have held it against all Scotland. Around it was, and is, a roadless waste of bent and dune, from which it was severed by a narrow rib of rock jutting seawards, the ridge being cut by a cavity which was spanned by a drawbridge. Master of this inaccessible eyrie, Logan was most serviceable to the plotters of these troubled times.

His religion was doubtful, his phraseology could glide into Presbyterian cant, but we know that he indifferently lent the shelter of his fastness to the Protestant firebrand, wild Frank Stewart, Earl of Bothwell (who, like Carey writing from Berwick to Cecil, reckons Logan among Catholics), or to George Ker, the Catholic intriguer with Spain. Logan loved a plot for its own sake, as well as for chances of booty and promotion. He was a hard drinker, and a.s.sociate of rough yeomen and lairds like Ninian Chirnside of Whitsumlaws (Bothwell's emissary to the wizard, Richard Graham), yet a man of ancient family and high connections. He seems to have been intimate with the family of Sir John Cranstoun of Cranstoun.

On one occasion he informs Archibald Douglas, the detested and infamous murderer and deeply dyed traitor, that 'John of Cranstoun is the one man now that bears you best good will.' (January 1587?)

[Picture: Fastcastle (circ. 1820)]

In January 1600, the year of the Gowrie plot, we find Sir John Cranstoun in trouble for harbouring an outlawed Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, who was, with Douglas, the Laird of Spot, one of Bothwell's allies in all his most desperate raids on the person of King James. In 1592, Mr. Thomas Cranstoun was forfeited, he was informed against for 'new conspiracies against his Majesty's life and estate,' and, in January 1600, Sir John Cranstoun was sheltering this dangerous and desperate Bothwellian outlaw, as was his son-in law, Mr. William Cranstoun. {155a}

Now the Mr. Thomas Cranstoun who was hanged for his part in the Gowrie affair, was brother of Sir John Cranstoun of Cranstoun, the ally of that other Mr. Thomas Cranstoun who was so deep in Bothwell's wild raids on the King's person. In the spring of 1600 (as we have said, but must here repeat) there were reports that Bothwell had secretly returned to Scotland, and, on April 20, 1600, just before the date of Gowrie's arrival in Edinburgh from London, Nicholson reports suspected plots of Archibald Douglas, of John Colville, a ruined Bothwellian, and a spy, and of the Laird of Spot. {155b} This Colville had recently hinted to Ess.e.x that he could do a serviceable enterprise. 'As for the service I mean to do, if matters go to the worst, it shall be such, G.o.d willing-if I lose not my life in doing thereof-as no other can do with a million of gold, and yet I shall not exceed the bonds of humanity,' that is, he will not _murder_ the King. 'But for conscience sake and worldly honesty, I must first be absolved of my natural allegiance.' (April 27, 1598; again, October 20, 1598.) {156}

The point for us to mark is that all these conspirators and violent men, Bothwell (in exile or secretly in Scotland), Colville (in 1600 an exile in Paris), the Laird of Spot, the Cranstouns, the infamous Archibald Douglas, with Richard Douglas his nephew, and Logan of Restalrig, were united, if not by real friends.h.i.+p, at least, as Thucydides says, by 'partners.h.i.+p in desperate enterprises' and by 1600 were active in a subterranean way. If it is fair to say, _noscitur a sociis_, 'a man is known by the company he keeps,' Logan of Restalrig bears the mark of the secret conspirator. He had relations with persons more distinguished than his Chirnsides and Whittingham Douglases, though they were of near kin to the Earl of Morton. His mother, a daughter of Lord Gray, married Lord Home, after the death of Logan's father. The Laird of Restalrig was thus a half-brother of the new Lord Home, a Warden of the Border, and also was first cousin of the beautiful, accomplished, and infamous Master of Gray, the double spy of England and of Rome.

Logan, too, like the Master, had diplomatic ambitions. In 1586 (July 29) we find him corresponding with the infamous Archibald Douglas, one of Darnley's murderers, whom James had sent, in the crisis of his mother's fate, as his amba.s.sador to Elizabeth. In 1586, Logan, with two other Logans, was on the packed jury which acquitted Douglas of Darnley's murder. Logan was a retainer of Bothwell, that meteor-like adventurer and king-catcher, and he asks Douglas to try to procure him employment (of course as a spy) from Walsingham, the English statesman. {157}

In October of the same year, we find the Master of Gray writing to Douglas, thus: 'Of late I was forced, at Restalrig's suit, to p.a.w.n some of my plate, and the best jewel I had, to get him money for his marriage'-his second marriage, apparently. By December 1586 we find Logan riding to London, as part of the suite of the Master of Gray, who was to plead with Elizabeth for Mary's life. He was the Master's most intimate confidant, and, as such, in February-March 1587, proposed to sell all his secrets to Walsingham! Nevertheless, when Gray was driven into exile, later in 1587, Logan was one of his 'cautioners,' or sureties. He had been of the party of Gowrie's father, during that n.o.bleman's brief tenure of power in 1582, 1583, and, when Gowrie fell, Logan was ordered to hand his eyrie of Fastcastle over, at six hours'

notice, to the officers of the King. Through the stormy years of Bothwell's repeated raids on James (15921594) Logan had been his partisan, and had been denounced a rebel. Later he appears in trouble for highway robbery committed by his retainers. Among the diversions of this country gentleman was flat burglary. In December 1593, 'when nichts are lang and mirk,' the Laird helped himself to the plate-chest of William Nesbit of Newton. 'Under silence of night he took spuilzie of certain gold and silver to the value of three thousand merks Scots.' The executors of Nesbit did not bring their action till after Logan died, in July 1606, 'in respect the said clandestine deed and fact came not to our knowledge, nor light as to who had committed the same,' till just before the action was brought.

In 1599, when conspiracies were in the air, Logan was bound over not to put Fastcastle in the hands of his Majesty's enemies and rebels. {158}

This brief sketch of a turbulent life is derived from Logan's own letters to Archibald Douglas, now among the Cecil Papers at Hatfield; from the 'Papers relating to the Master of Gray,' in which we find Logan, under a cypher name, betraying the Master, his cousin and ally, and from the Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, in which all that dead world, from the King to the crofter, may be traced, often in circ.u.mstances peculiarly private.

At that time, civil processes of 'horning,' 'putting to the horn,' or outlawry, were the common resort of creditors against procrastinating debtors. Many of the most respectable persons, gentlemen and ladies, appear in these suits; Robert Abercromby sues a lady of rank for 150_l._ Scots. He is the burgess of Edinburgh, the King's saddler, who, as the Master of Ruthven told Craigengelt, had brought the King from Falkland to Perth, 'to take order for his debt.' Now the singular thing is that we never find Logan of Restalrig recorded as under 'horning' for debt, whereas, considering his character, we might expect him never to be free from 'the horn.' On the other hand, we know him to have been a lender, not a borrower. He was _sui profusus_. On January 1, 1599, Cecil had been making inquiries as to Logan, from Lord Willoughby commanding at Berwick. Cecil always had his eyes on Border Scots, likely to be useful in troubling King James. Willoughby replies, 'There is sutch a laird of Lesterigge as you write of, a vain lose man, a greate favourer of thefes reputed, yet a man of a good clan, as they here tearme it, and a gud felow.' {159}

Such was Logan of Restalrig, 'Old Rugged and Dangerous.' In 1601, May 30, we find him appearing as surety for Philip Mowbray, one of the Mowbrays of Barnbogle, whose sister stood by Queen Mary at the scaffold, and whose brother Francis was with the bold Buccleuch, when he swam 'that wan water' of Esk, and rescued Kinmont Willie from Carlisle Castle. This Francis Mowbray and his brother Philip were (16011603) mixed up with Cecil in some inscrutable spy-work, and intrigues for the murder of King James. The Mowbrays were old friends of Logan: they had been engaged in privateering enterprises together, but could produce no letters of marque! In 1603, Francis Mowbray, abandoned and extradited by Cecil, was killed in an attempt to escape from Edinburgh Castle. He had been accused, by an Italian fencing-master, of a conspiracy to kill James.

Cecil had, of course, by this time made peace and alliance with James, who was on the point of ascending the English throne, and he gave up Francis. Mowbray challenged the Italian fencing-master to judicial combat; the Italian came down to fight him, the lists were actually pitched at Holyrood, when (January 31, 1603) Francis preferred to try the chance of flight; the rope of knotted sheet to which he trusted broke, and he was dashed to pieces on the Castle rocks. {160a}

Since 1592, Mowbray had been corresponding with Logan's friend, Archibald Douglas, and offering his services to Cecil. To Cecil, in September 1600, he was again applying, regarding Elizabeth as his debtor. In 1600, he was in touch with Henry Locke, who had been Cecil's go-between in his darkest intrigues against James, and his agent with Bothwell, Atholl, and the Gowrie slain on August 5, 1600. But, in the autumn of 1602, Cecil had become the secret ally of James, and gave up poor Francis, a broken tool of his and of Elizabeth's. {160b}

We have now learned a good deal about Logan's habitual a.s.sociates, and we have merely glanced at a few of the numberless plots against James which were encouraged by the English Government. If James was nervously apprehensive of treason, he had good cause. But of Logan at the moment of the Gowrie Plot, we know nothing from public doc.u.ments. We do know, however, on evidence which has previously been in part unpublished, in part un.o.bserved, that from August 1600 onwards, Logan was oddly excited and restless. Though not in debt-or at least though no record of his 'horning' exists-he took to selling his lands, Restalrig, Flemington, Gunnisgreen, Fastcastle. {161} After 1600 he sold them all; he wallowed in drink; he made his wife wretched; with his eldest son he was on ill terms; he wandered to London, and to France in 1605, and he returned to die (of plague, it seems) in the Canongate, a landless but a monied man, in July 1606.

Why did Logan sell all his lands, investing in s.h.i.+pping property? The natural inference, at the time, was that he had been engaged in 'some ill turn,' some mysterious conspiracy, and people probably (certainly, if we believe the evidence to follow) thought that he had been an accomplice in the Gowrie affair.

He died, and his children by his first wives dissociated themselves from his executors.h.i.+p. The bulk of it was the unpaid part of the purchase money for his lands, sold by him to Balmerino, and Dunbar, James's trusted ministers, who owed some 33,000 marks to the estate.

Logan had a 'doer,' or law agent, a country writer, or notary, named Sprot, who dwelt at Eyemouth, a hungry creature, who did not even own a horse. When Logan rode to Edinburgh, Sprot walked thither to join him.

Yet the two were boon companions; Sprot was always loitering and watching at Gunnisgreen, always a guest at the great Christmas festivals, given by the Laird to his rough neighbours. The death of Logan was a disaster to Sprot, and to all the parasites of the Laird.

Logan died, we saw, in July 1606. In April, 1608, Sprot was arrested by a legal official, named Watty Doig. He had been blabbing in his cups, it is said, about the Gowrie affair; certainly most compromising doc.u.ments, apparently in Logan's hand, and with his signature, were found on Sprot's person. They still bear the worn softened look of papers carried for long in the pockets. {162} Sprot was examined, and confessed that he knew beforehand of the Gowrie conspiracy, and that the doc.u.ments in his possession were written by Logan to Gowrie and other plotters. He was tortured and in part recanted; Logan, he said, had _not_ written the guilty letters: he himself had forged them. This was all before July 5, 1608, while Mr. Robert Oliphant lay in prison, in London, on the same charge of guilty foreknowledge. Early in July 1608, the Earl of Dunbar came from London to Edinburgh, to deal with the affairs of the Kirk. He took Sprot out of his dungeon, gave him a more wholesome chamber, secluded him from gentlemen who came and threatened him (or so he said) if he made revelations, and Dunbar provided him with medical attendance.

The wounds inflicted in 'the boot' were healed.

For six weeks Sprot was frequently examined, before members of the Privy Council and others, without torture. What he said the public did not know, nor, till now, have historians been better informed. Throughout, after July 5, 1608, he persisted in declaring Logan's complicity in the Gowrie conspiracy, and his own foreknowledge. He was tried, solely on the evidence of guilty foreknowledge alleged in his own confessions, and of extracts, _given by him from memory only_, of a letter from Gowrie to Logan (_not_ one of those which he claimed to have forged), and another of Logan to Gowrie, both of July 1600. On August 12, Sprot was hanged at Edinburgh. He repeated his confession of guilt from every corner of the scaffold. He uttered a long religious speech of contrition. Once, he said, he had been nearly drowned: but G.o.d preserved him for this great day of confession and repentance. But 'no unbeliever in the guilt of Gowrie,' says Calderwood, 'was one whit the more convinced.' Of course not, nor would the death of Henderson-which they clamoured for-have convinced them. They said, falsely, that Sprot was really condemned as a forger, and, having to die, took oath to his guilt in the Gowrie conspiracy, in consideration of promises of help to his wife and family.

{164}

Nearly a year later, in June 1609, the exhumed remains of Logan were brought into court (a regular practice in the case of dead traitors), and were tried for treason. Five letters by Logan, of July 1600, were now produced. Three were from Logan to conspirators unnamed and unknown.

One was to a retainer and messenger of his, Laird Bower, who had died in January 1606. These letters were declared, by several honourable witnesses, to be in Logan's very unusual handwriting and orthography: they were compared with many genuine letters of his, and no difference was found. The Parliamentary Committee, 'The Lords of the Articles,'

previously sceptical, were convinced by the five letters, the evidence to handwriting, the energy of the Earl of Dunbar, and the eloquence of the King's Advocate. Logan's children were all forfeited, and Dunbar saved the money which he owed to Logan's estate. This trial is not alluded to, either by Calderwood or Archbishop Spottiswoode, in their histories. The five letters produced in the trial of Logan exist, and have been accepted as authentic by Mr. Tytler and Mr. Hill Burton, but not by writers who favour the Ruthvens. We print all five letters in Appendix C.

Meanwhile what had Sprot really said, under private examination, between July 5 and August 12, 1608, when he was executed?

This question is to be answered, from the hitherto unpublished records, in the following chapters. But, in common charity, the reader must be warned that the exposition is inevitably puzzling and complex. Sprot, under examination, lied often, lied variously, and, perhaps, lied to the last. Moreover much, indeed everything, depends here on exact dates, and Sprot's are loose, as was natural in the circ.u.mstances, the events of which he spoke being so remote in time.

Consequently the results of criticism of his confession may here be stated with brevity. The persevering student, the reader interested in odd pictures of domestic life, and in strange human characters may read on at his own peril. But the actual grains of fact, extracted from tons of falsehood, may be set down in very few words.

The genuine and hitherto unknown confessions of Sprot add no absolute certainty as to the existence of a Gowrie conspiracy. His words, when uncorroborated, can have no weight with a jury. He confessed that _all_ the alleged Logan papers which, up to two days before his death, were in possession of the Privy Council, were forgeries by himself. But, on August 10, he announced that he had possessed one _genuine_ letter of Logan to Gowrie (dated July 29, 1600). That letter (our Letter IV) or a forged copy was then found in his repositories. Expert evidence, however, decides that this doc.u.ment, like all the others, is in a specious imitation of Logan's hand, but that it has other characteristics of Sprot's own hand, and was penned by Sprot himself. Why he kept it back so long, why he declared that it alone was genuine, we do not know.

That it _is_ genuine, _in substance_, and was copied by Sprot from a real letter of Logan's in an imitation of Logan's hand, and that, if so, it proves Logan's accession to the conspiracy, is my own private opinion.

But that opinion is based on mere literary considerations, on what is called 'internal evidence,' and is, therefore, purely a matter of subjective impression, like one's idea of the possible share of Shakespeare in a play mainly by Fletcher or another. Evidence of this kind is not historical evidence. It follows that the whole affair of Sprot, and of the alleged Logan letters, adds nothing certain to the reasons for believing that there was a Gowrie conspiracy. As far as Sprot and his doc.u.ments are concerned, we know that all, as they stand, are pure fict.i.tious counterfeits by that unhappy man, while, as to whether one letter (IV) and perhaps another (I) are genuine _in substance_, every reader must form his own opinion, on literary grounds, and no opinion is of much value. Such is a brief summary of the facts.

But the tenacious inquirer who can follow us through the tangled mazes of Sprot's private confessions, will perhaps agree with me that they contain distinguishable grains of fact, raising a strong surmise that Logan was really involved with Gowrie in a plot. Yet this, again, is a subjective impression, which may vary with each reader.

XIII. THE SECRETS OF SPROT