James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

Such being the relations (if we accept Letter IV as in substance genuine) between Gowrie, Home, and Logan, we can appreciate Sprot’s anecdote, now to be given, concerning Lady Home. Logan, according to Sprot, said to him, in Edinburgh, early in 1602, ‘Thou rememberest what my Lady Home said to me, when she would not suffer my lord to subscribe my contract for Fentoun, because I would not allow two thousand marks to be kept out of the security, and take her word for them? She said to me, which was a great knell to my heart, that since her coming to the town, she knew that I had been in some dealing with the Earl of Gowrie about Dirleton.’ Now Dirleton, according to Sprot, was to have been Logan’s payment from Gowrie, for his aid in the plot.

Logan then asked Sprot if he had blabbed to Lady Home, but Sprot replied that ‘he had never spoken to her Ladyship but that same day, although he had read the contract’ (as to Fentoun) ‘before him and her in the abbey,’ of Coldingham, probably. Logan then requested Sprot to keep out of Lady Home’s sight, lest she should ask questions, ‘for I had rather be eirdit quick than either my Lord or she knew anything of it.’

Now, in Letter II (July 18, 1600), from Logan to Bower, Logan, as we saw, is made to write, ‘See that my Lord, my brother, gets no knowledge of our purposes, for I (sic) rather be eirdit quik.’ The phrase recurs in another of the forged letters not produced in court.

It is thus a probable inference that Logan did use this expression to Sprot, in describing the conversation about Lady Home, and that Sprot inserted it into his forged Letter II (Logan to Bower). But, clever as Sprot was, he is scarcely likely to have invented the conversation of Logan with Lady Home, arising out of Logan’s attempt to do some business with Lord Home about Fentoun. A difficulty, raised by Lady Home, led up to the lady’s allusion to Dirleton, ‘which was a great knell to my heart,’ said Logan. This is one of the passages which indicate a basis of truth in the confessions of Sprot. Again, as Home and Gowrie were in Paris together, while Bothwell was in Brussels, in February 1600, and as Home certainly, and Gowrie conceivably, met Bothwell, it may well have been that Gowrie heard of Logan from Bothwell, the old ally of both, and marked him as a useful hand. Moreover, he could not but have heard of Logan’s qualities and his keep, Fastcastle, in the troubles and conspiracies of 1592–1594. After making these depositions, Sprot attested them, with phrases of awful solemnity, ‘were I presently within one hour to die.’ He especially insisted that he had written, to Logan’s dictation, the letter informing John Baillie of Littlegill that all Gowrie’s papers were burned. As we saw, in November 1609, the King deliberately cleared Baillie of all suspicion. There could be no evidence. Bower, the messenger, was dead.

Baillie was now called. He denied on oath that he had ever received the letter from Logan. He had never seen Gowrie, ‘except on the day he came first home, and rode up the street of Edinburgh.’ Confronted with Baillie, ‘Sprot abides by his deposition.’

Willie Crockett was then called. He had been at Logan’s ‘great Yule’ in Gunnisgreen, where Logan, according to Sprot, made the imprudent speeches. Crockett had also been at Dundee with Logan, he said, but it was in the summer of 1603. He did not hear Logan’s imprudent speech to Bower, at the Yule supper. As to the weeping of Lady Restalrig, he had often seen her weep, and heard her declare that Logan would ruin his family. He only remembered, as to the Yule supper, a quarrel between Logan and Willie Home.

This was the only examination at which Archbishop Spottiswoode attended. Neither he nor any of the Lords (as we have said already) signed the record, which is attested only by James Primrose, Clerk of Council, signing at the foot of each page. Had the Lords ‘quitted the diet’?

The next examination was held on July 22, Dunfermline, Dunbar, Sir Thomas Hamilton, the President of the Court of Session, and other officials, all laymen, being present. Sprot incidentally remarked that Logan visited London, in 1603, after King James ascended the English throne. Logan appears to have gone merely for pleasure; he had seen London before, in the winter of 1586. On his return he said that he would ‘never bestow a groat on such vanities’ as the celebration of the King’s holiday, August 5, the anniversary of the Gowrie tragedy; adding ‘when the King has cut off all the noblemen of the country he will live at ease.’ But many citizens disliked the 5th of August holiday as much as Logan did.

In the autumn of 1605, Logan again visited London. In Sprot’s account of his revels there, and his bad reception, we have either proof of Logan’s guilt, if the tale be true, or high testimony to Sprot’s powers as an artist in fiction. He says that Matthew Logan accompanied the Laird to town in September 1605, and in November was sent back with letters to Bower. Eight days later, Matthew took Sprot to Coldingham, to meet Bower, and get his answer to the letters. It was a Sunday; these devotees heard sermon, and then dined together at John Corsar’s. After dinner Bower took Sprot apart, and showed him two letters. Would Sprot read to him the first few words, that he might know which letter he had to answer? The first letter shown (so Sprot writes on the margin of his recorded deposition) referred to the money owed to Logan, by the Earl of Dunbar, for Gunnisgreen and the lands of Remington. Logan had expected to get the purchase money from Dunbar in London; he never got more than 18,000 out of 33,000 marks. Sprot wrote for Bower the answer to this business letter, and gave it to Matthew Logan to be sent to Logan in London. Matthew, being interrogated, denied that he sent any letter back to Logan, though he owned that Sprot wrote one; and he denied that Sprot and Bower had any conference at all on the occasion. But Sprot had asserted that the conference with Bower occurred after Matthew Logan left them at Corsar’s house, where they dined, as Matthew admitted, after sermon. Matthew denied too much.

A curious conference it was. Bower asked Sprot to read to him the other of Logan’s two letters, directed to himself. It ran, ‘Laird Bower, – I wot not what I should say or think of this world! It is very hard to trust in any man, for apparently there is no constancy or faithfulness. For since I cam here they whom I thought to have been my most entire friends have uttered to me most injurie, and have given me the defiance, and say I am not worthy to live, “and if the King heard what has moved you to put away all your lands, and debosch yourself, you would not make such merryness, and play the companion in London, as you do so near his Majestie.”’

Logan went on to express his fear that Bower’s rash speeches had roused these suspicions of ‘the auld misterie ye ken of.’ ‘God forgive you, but I have had no rest since these speeches were upcast to me.’ Bower was to take great care of this letter, ‘for it is within three letters enclosed,’ and is confided to Matthew Logan (who travelled by sea) as a trusty man.

Bower was much moved by this melancholy letter, and denied that he had been gossiping. He had twice, before Logan rode south, advised him to be very careful never even to mention the name of Gowrie.

Sprot said that he, too, was uneasy, for, if anything came out, he himself was in evil case. Logan visited France, as well as London, at this time; he returned home in the spring of 1606, but Bower expressed the belief that he would go on to Spain, ‘to meet Bothwell and Father Andrew Clerk, and if he come home it will be rather to die in his own country than for any pleasure he has to live.’ Bothwell and Father Andrew, of course, were both Catholic intriguers, among whom Bothwell reckoned Logan and Gowrie.

Now the letter to Bower here attributed to Logan, telling of the new ‘knell at his heart’ when he is rebuked and insulted as he plays the merry companion in London, and near the Court; his touching complaint of the falseness of the world (he himself being certainly the blackest of traitors), with the distress of Bower, do make up a very natural description. The ghost of his guilt haunts Logan, he cannot drown it in a red sea of burgundy: life has lost its flavour; if he returns, it will be with the true Scottish desire to die in his own country, though of his ancient family’s lands he has not kept an acre. Pleasant rich Restalrig, strong Fastcastle, jolly Gunnisgreen of the ‘great Yules,’ all are gone. Nothing is left.

Surely, if Sprot invented all this, he was a novelist born out of due time. Either he told truth, or, in fiction, he rivalled De Foe.

Matthew Logan, being called, contradicted Sprot, as we have already said. He himself had seen Bower when he brought him Logan’s letter from London, take his son, Valentine, apart, and knew that Valentine read a letter to him. ‘It was a meikle letter,’ Matthew said, and, if Sprot tell truth, it contained three enclosures. Bower may have stopped his son from reading the melancholy and compromising epistle, and kept it to be read by Sprot. Logan’s folly in writing at all was the madness that has ruined so many men and women.

Matthew could not remember having ridden to Edinburgh with Logan in July 1600, just before the Gowrie affair, as Sprot had declared that he did. We could scarcely expect him to remember that. He could remember nothing at all that was compromising, nothing of Logan’s rash speeches. As to the Yule feast at Gunnisgreen, he averred that Lady Restalrig only said, ‘The Devil delight in such a feast that makes discord, and makes the house ado’ – that is, gives trouble. Asked if wine and beer were stored in Fastcastle, in 1600, he said, as has already been stated, that a hogshead of wine was therein. He himself, he said, had been ‘in the west,’ at the time of the Gowrie tragedy, and first heard of it at Falkirk.

On August 6, Sprot was interrogated again. Only lay lords were present: there were no clergymen nor lawyers. He denied that he had received any promise of life or reward. He asked to be confronted with Matthew Logan, and reported a conversation between them, held when Lord Dunbar took possession of Gunnisgreen. Matthew then hoped to ride with the Laird to London (1605), but said, ‘Alas, Geordie Sprot, what shall we all do now, now nothing is left? I was aye feared for it, for I know the Laird has done some evil turn, and he will not bide in the country, and woe’s me therefor.’

Sprot asked what the ‘evil turn’ was. Matthew answered, ‘I know well enough, but, as the proverb goes, “what lies not in my way breaks not my shins.”’

Sprot added that, after Bower’s death (January 1606), Logan wrote to him from London, not having heard the news of his decease. Lady Restalrig opened the letter and wrote a postscript ‘Give this to Laird Bower, for I trow that he be ridden to Hell, as he ofttimes said to the Laird that he would do.’ In Letter IV. Logan tells Gowrie that he believes Bower ‘would ride to Hell’s gate to pleasure him.’

Sprot was now asked about two letters. One of these (Logan to Chirnside) is endorsed, ‘Production by Niniane Chirnesyde. XIII April 1608.’ Another is Letter V, endorsed ‘produced by Ninian Chirnside,’ a fact first noted by Mr. Anderson. Yet another is the letter in twelve torn pieces. Logan, in the first of these three letters, requests Chirnside to find a letter which Bower lost in Dunglas. The letter imperils Logan’s life and lands. The date is September 23, and purports, falsely, to be written before Logan goes to London (1605). Sprot explained that he forged the letters, that Chirnside might blackmail Logan’s executors, and make them forgive him the debts which (as Logan’s will proves) he owed to the estate.

Here we cite the letter of the twelve fragments. It is, of course, a forgery by Sprot, to enable Chirnside to terrorise his creditors, Logan’s executors. But, as it directly implicates Chirnside himself in the Gowrie conspiracy, probably he disliked it, and tore it up. Yet the artist could not part with his work; it still lies, now reconstructed, in the old folio sheet of paper. The reader will remark that, like Letters I (?), III, and V, this torn letter is a mere pastiche framed (as Sprot confessed) on ideas and expressions in Letter IV.

Letter found among the Haddington MSS. torn into thirteen pieces (one lost) —these have been placed in order, but at least one line of the piece is wanting.

Brother, according to my promise the last day ve met in the kannogate I have sent this berair to my lord vith my answer of all thingis, and, I pray you ryde vith him till his lordschip, and bevar that he speik vith na other person bot his lordschipis self and M.A. his lordschipis brother, and specially let nocht his lordschipis pedagog [Mr. Rhynd] ken ony thing of the matter, bot forder him hame agane, becawse the purpos is parilouse, as ye knaw the danger. And yit for my ain part I protest befoir God I sall keip trew condicion till his lordschip, and sall hasard albeit it var to the vary skafald, and bid his lordschip tak nane other opinion bot gude of the trustyness of this silly ald man [Bower] for I dar baldlie concredit my lyf and all other thing I have elliss in this varld onto his credit, and I trow he sall nocht frustrat my gude expectacion. Burn or send bak agane as I did vith you, so till meitting, and ever I rest, Yowre brother to power redy, Restalrige.

Beseik his lordschip bavar [beware] that my lord my brother [Lord Home] get na intelligense of thir towrnis as he lowfis all owr veillis, for be God he vill be our greittest enemy. 102

(A line or more wanting)

On the same day (August 6) Sprot withdrew a deposition (made before July 5) that the Unknown, for whom Letters I, III, V were meant, was the Laird of Kinfauns, Sir Harry Lindsay, who, in 1603, tried to shoot Patrick Eviot, one of the Gowrie fugitives. The Constable of Dundee (Sir James Scrymgeour) Sprot had also accused falsely. The Letters (I (?), III, V), he says, were ‘imagined by me.’

On August 8, three ministers, Patrick Galloway, John Hall, and Peter Hewatt, were present. The two former were now preachers of the courtly party, the third received a pension of 500 marks from the King, after the posthumous trial of Logan (1609), at which the five letters were produced, but this reward may have been a mere coincidence. The ministers Hall and Hewatt, in August 1600, had at first, as we saw, declined to accept James’s version of the affair at Gowrie House (pp. 99–103).

Sprot now confesses that he knows he is to die, deposes that no man has promised him life, and that he has stated nothing in hope of life. With tears he deplores that he has taken God’s name in vain, in swearing to the truth of his depositions before that of July 5. His last five depositions under examination are ‘true in all points and circumstances, and he will go to the death with the same.’

‘Further the said George Sprot remembers that in the summertide of 1601, the Laird of Restalrig had indented with the Lord Willoughby, then Governor of Berwick, concerning my Lord’s ship then built and lying at Berwick, whereof the Laird should have been equal partner with my Lord, and to take voyage with the said ship, either by the Laird himself, or some other person whom it pleased him to appoint.. to pass to the Indies, the Canarys, and through the Straits, for such conditions as were set down in the indenture betwixt my Lord and him, which was framed by Sir John Guevara,’ Willoughby’s cousin, the kidnapper of Ashfield in 1599.

Now this ship of Lord Willoughby’s, at all events, was a real ship; and here is a grain of fact in the narrative of Sprot. The ship was built by Lord Willoughby to protect English commerce from the piracies of the Dunkirkers. On March 28, 1601, he writes from Berwick to Cecil, ‘The respect of my country and the pity of those hurt by such’ (the Dunkirkers) ‘persuaded me to build a ship, and moves me now to offer to serve her Majesty at as reasonable a rate as any ship of 140 tons, with sixteen pieces of artillery, and 100 men can be maintained with… If this offer seem good to you and the Council, my ship shall presently be fitted, if not I purpose to dispose otherwise of her’ (to Logan), ‘being not able to maintain her.’ (‘Border Calendar,’ ii. 738). On April 19, Willoughby wrote that he had pursued, with his ship, a pirate which had carried an English prize into the Forth. But he cannot, unaided, maintain the ship, even for one summer. On June 14, Willoughby ‘took a great cold’ in his ship, lying at the haven mouth, awaiting a wind, and died suddenly. On July 20, Carey says that his body has been placed, with all honourable rites, on board his ship.

It appears, then, that Willoughby, unable to maintain his ship, and not subsidised by Government, in the summer of 1601 admitted Logan to a half of the venture, carrying great expenses. Logan settled the business at Robert Jackson’s house, in Bridge Street, Berwick, being accompanied by Sprot, Bower, and Matthew Logan. Matthew said privately to Sprot, ‘Wae’s me that ever I should see this day, that the Laird should grow a seaman! I wot not what it means, for it is for no good, and I fear this shall be one of the sorrowful blocks that ever the Laird made. It is true that I have oft thought that the Laird would pass away, for he is minded to sell all that he has, and would to God that he had never been born, what should he do with such conditions, to go or to send to the sea? He might have lived well enough at home. I find he has ever been carried’ (excited), ‘and his mind has ever been set on passing out of the country this year past,’ that is since the Gowrie affair.

Now all this tale has much vraisemblance. The facts about Logan’s adventure with Willoughby, stopped by Willoughby’s death, were easily verifiable. Logan, at his death, owned a ship, rated at 500 marks (so we read in his inventory), but this can hardly have been the ship of Willoughby. He was restless, excited, selling land to supply a maritime enterprise.

At this time Lady Restalrig was deeply distressed, she wished Logan at the Indies, if only he would first settle Flemington on herself. ‘If it be God’s will, I desire never to have a child to him,’ she said. ‘I have a guess what this mystery means, woe’s me for his motherless children,’ that is, children of former marriages. Later, Lady Restalrig had a daughter, Anna, by Logan.

Matthew Logan, as usual, denied every word attributed to him by Sprot, except regrets for his own condition. Matthew could do no less to save his own life.

On August 9, before other witnesses, and the Rev. Messrs. Galloway, Hall, and Hewatt, Sprot solemnly confessed to having forged the letters in Logan’s hand (then in possession of his examiners). On August 10, the same clergymen and many Lords, and Hart, being present, Sprot came to the point at last. Where, he was asked, after a prayer offered, at his request, by Mr. Galloway, was the letter of Logan to Gowrie, whereon, as model, the rest were forged? Now he had not previously mentioned, as far as the reports go, a letter of Logan to Gowrie, as the model of his forgeries. He had mentioned, as his model, the brief harmless letter of Gowrie to Logan. On August 9, he had been very solemnly told that he was to die, and that he would see the faces of the Lords of the Council no more. Probably, after they left him, he told, to a minister or a servant in the gaol, the fact that he had used, as his model, a letter from Logan to Gowrie. The result was that he did again see, on August 10, the Lords of the Council, who asked him ‘where the letter now was.’ This is Letter IV, the letter of Logan to Gowrie, of July 29, 1600. Sprot, in place of answering directly, cited from memory, and erroneously, the opening of the letter. He had read it, while it was still unfinished, in July 1600, at Fastcastle. Logan, who had been writing it, was called by Bower, went out, and thrust it between a bench and the wall: there Sprot found, read, and restored the unfinished epistle to its place. But the letter is dated ‘from Gunnisgreen,’ at the conclusion. Logan, according to Sprot, left Gunnisgreen one day at the end of July, 1600, or beginning of August, thence rode to Fastcastle, and thence, next day, to Edinburgh (p. 190).

Now Logan, in the letter (IV), says that he took two days to write it. One day would be at Fastcastle, when he was interrupted; the other, the day of dating, at Gunnisgreen. This, however, does not tally with Sprot’s account (p. 190) of Logan’s movements (Nine Wells, Gunnisgreen, Fastcastle, Edinburgh), if these are the days of writing Letter IV. Yet, if Sprot forged Letter IV, he knew where he dated it from; 103 if the Government had it forged, they knew, from Sprot’s confession, that it should have been dated from Fastcastle. Perhaps we should not bear too heavily on this point. A man may mention the wrong name by inadvertence, or the clerk, by inadvertence, may write the wrong name. Mr. Mark Napier in his essay on this matter twice or thrice prints ‘Logan’ for ‘Sprot,’ or ‘Sprot’ for ‘Logan.’ 104 ‘Fastcastle,’ in Sprot’s confession, may be a slip of tongue or pen for ‘Gunnisgreen,’ or he may have been confused among the movements to and from Gunnisgreen and Fastcastle. The present writer finds similar errors in the manuscript of this work.

Sprot next alleged that, three months after the Gowrie affair, Logan bade Bower hunt among his papers for this very letter. He had been at Berwick, with Lord Willoughby, and Bower told Sprot that he was ‘taking order’ with all who knew of his part in the Gowrie plot. Here is the old difficulty. Why was the letter kept for one moment after Bower brought it back? Why leave it with Bower for three months? At all events, as Bower could not read, Sprot helped him to look for the letter, found it, and kept it ‘till he framed three new letters upon it,’ after which he does not say what he did with it.

Here Sprot cited, from memory, but not accurately, more of Letter IV. The existence of such errors is not remarkable. Sprot again swore to the truth of all his depositions since July 5. But if this story is true, how can it be true that Logan was at ease in his mind, after burning the letter from Alexander Ruthven, and another from Father Andrew Clerk, Jesuit, as Sprot previously swore? There was still Letter IV, lost, unburned, a haunting fear. It may be suggested that Sprot only kept this letter ‘till’ he had made his forgeries on its model, and then, in a later search, pretended to find and returned it, having first copied it out in Logan’s hand; that copy being our Letter IV. Sprot first would make a copy, in his ordinary hand, of the letter, then restore the original, and, after Logan’s death, copy his copy, in imitation of Logan’s hand, and frame I, III, V, and the torn letter on his copy of IV. Finally, Sprot said that ‘he believes this letter is in his chest among his writings, because he left it there when he was taken by Watty Doig and deposes that it is closed and folded within a piece of paper.’ Sprot said this on August 10. On August 12 he was hanged. Now was this letter, on which he forged three others, found ‘in his kist,’ before his death? That it was so found, we have direct evidence, though not from the best of sources.

In the year 1713, an aged nobleman, Lord Cromarty, published a defence of the King’s conduct in the Gowrie affair. Lord Cromarty, in 1713, was aged eighty-three. Born about 1630, he remembered the beginnings of the Civil War, and says that the Covenanters, about 1640–1645, made great political capital out of King James’s alleged guilt in the slaughter of the Ruthvens. Later, Lord Cromarty occupied, in the Restoration, the highest judicial offices, and, as Clerk Registrar, had access to public documents. He was an old courtier, he may have been forgetful, he may have been unscrupulous, but, as to the letter in Sprot’s kist, he writes ‘the letter was found there by the Sheriff Depute, who was ordered by Sir William Hart, Lord Justice of Scotland, to seize the said chest, and make search for this letter, which he found, and delivered to the King’s Advocate, Sir Thomas Hamilton.’ 105

Now this Sir Thomas Hamilton was the ancestor of the Earl of Haddington, who inherits many of his papers. Among these we find a copy, in Sprot’s ‘course hand,’ or rapid current hand, of Letter IV, and another of Letter I, but no such copies of II, III. and V. Each of these is endorsed by James Primrose, Clerk of Council, is endorsed by Sprot, in faded ink, and is also endorsed in Sprot’s ordinary everyday hand, very firm and clear, thus: