James VI and the Gowrie Mystery. Lang Andrew
in the evidence, of no other doors, or of no other locked doors. However, in the Latin indictment of the Ruthvens, ‘many doors’ are insisted on. As all the evidence tells of opposition from only one door – that between the gallery and the chamber of death – James’s reason for talking of ‘three or four doors’ must be left to conjecture. ‘The True Discourse’ (MS.) gives but the gallery, chamber, and turret, but appears to allow for a door between stair and gallery, which the Master ‘closed,’ while he ‘made fast’ the next door, that between gallery and chamber. One Thomas Hamilton, 21 who writes a long letter (MS.) to a lady unknown, also speaks of several doors, on the evidence of the King, and some of the Lords. This manuscript has been neglected by historians. 22
Leaving this point, we ask why a man already suspicious, like James, let the Master lock any door behind him. We might reply that James had dined, and that ‘wine and beer produce a careless state of mind,’ as a writer on cricket long ago observed. We may also suppose that, till facts proved the locking of one door at least (for about that there is no doubt), James did not know that any door was locked. On August 11 the Rev. Mr. Galloway, in a sermon preached before the King and the populace at the Cross of Edinburgh, says that the Master led the monarch upstairs, ‘and through a trans’ (a passage), ‘the door whereof, so soon as they had entered, chekit to with ane lok, then through a gallery, whose door also chekit to, through a chamber, and the door thereof chekit to, also,’ and thence into the turret of which he ‘also locked the door.’ 23
Were the locks that ‘chekit to’ spring locks, and was James unaware that he was locked in? But Ramsay, before the affray, had wandered into ‘a gallery, very fair,’ and unless there were two galleries, he could not do this, if the gallery door was locked. Lennox and Mar and the rest speak of opposition from only one door.
While we cannot explain these things, that door, at least, between the gallery and the gallery chamber, excluded James from most of his friends. Can the reader believe that he purposely had that door locked, we know not how, or by whom, on the system of compelling Gowrie to ‘come and be killed’ by way of the narrow staircase? Could we see Gowrie House, and its ‘secret ways,’ as it then was, we might understand this problem of the locked doors. Contemporary criticism, as minutely recorded by Calderwood, found no fault with the number of locked doors, but only asked ‘how could the King’s fear but increase, perceiving Mr. Alexander’ (the Master) ‘ever to lock the doors behind them?’ If the doors closed with spring locks (of which the principle had long been understood and used), the King may not have been aware of the locking. The problem cannot be solved; we only disbelieve that the King himself had the door locked, to keep his friends out, and let Gowrie in.
Note. – The Abbey of Scone. On page 48 we have quoted the statement that James had bestowed on Gowrie the Abbey of Scone ‘during his life.’ This was done in 1580 (Registrum Magni Sigilli, vol. iii. No. 3011). On May 25, 1584, William Fullarton got this gift, the first Earl of Gowrie and his children being then forfeited. But on July 23, 1586, the Gowrie of the day was restored to all his lands, and the Earldom of Gowrie included the old church lands of Scone (Reg. Mag. Sig. iv. No. 695, No. 1044). How, then, did John, third Earl of Gowrie, hold only ‘for his life’ the Commendatorship of the Abbey of Scone, as is stated in S. P. Scot. (Eliz.) vol. lxvi. No. 50?
IV. THE KING’S NARRATIVE – II. THE MAN IN THE TURRET
We left James entering the little ‘round,’ or ‘study,’ the turret chamber. Here, at last, he expected to find the captive and the pot of gold. And here the central mystery of his adventure began. His Majesty saw standing, ‘with a very abased countenance, not a bondman but a freeman, with a dagger at his girdle.’ Ruthven locked the door, put on his hat, drew the man’s dagger, and held the point to the King’s breast, ‘avowing now that the King behoved to be at his will, and used as he list; swearing many bloody oaths that if the King cried one word, or opened a window to look out, that dagger should go to his heart.’
If this tale is true, murder was not intended, unless James resisted: the King was only being threatened into compliance with the Master’s ‘will.’ Ruthven added that the King’s conscience must now be burthened ‘for murdering his father,’ that is, for the execution of William, Earl of Gowrie, in 1584. His conviction was believed to have been procured in a dastardly manner, later to be explained.
James was unarmed, and obviously had no secret coat of mail, in which he could not have hunted all day, perhaps. Ruthven had his sword; as for the other man he stood ‘trembling and quaking.’ James now made to the Master the odd harangue reported even in Nicholson’s version of the Falkland letter of the same day. As for Gowrie’s execution, the King said, he had then been a minor (he was eighteen in 1584), and Gowrie was condemned ‘by the ordinary course of law’ – which his friends denied. James had restored, he said, all the lands and dignities of the House, two of Ruthven’s sisters were maids of honour. Ruthven had been educated by the revered Mr. Rollock, he ought to have learned better behaviour. If the King died he would be avenged: Gowrie could not hope for the throne. The King solemnly promised forgiveness and silence, if Ruthven let him go.
Ruthven now uncovered his head, and protested that the King’s life should be safe, if he made no noise or cry: in that case Ruthven would now bring Gowrie to him. ‘Why?’ asked James; ‘you could gain little by keeping such a prisoner?’ Ruthven said that he could not explain; Gowrie would tell him the rest. Turning to the other man, he said ‘I make you the King’s keeper till I come again, and see that you keep him upon your peril.’ He then went out, and locked the door. The person who later averred that he had been the man in the turret, believed that Ruthven never went far from the door. James believed, indeed averred, that he ran downstairs, and consulted Gowrie.
If there was an armed man in the turret, he was either placed there by the King, to protect him while he summoned his minions by feigned cries of treason, or he was placed there by Gowrie to help the Master to seize the King. In the latter case, the Master’s position was now desperate; in lieu of an ally he had procured a witness against himself. Great need had he to consult Gowrie, but though Gowrie certainly entered the house, went upstairs, and returned to Lennox with the assurance that James had ridden away, it is improbable that he and his brother met at this moment. James, however, avers that they met, Ruthven running rapidly downstairs, but this was mere inference on the King’s part.
James occupied the time of Ruthven’s absence in asking the man of the turret what he knew of the conspiracy. The man replied that he knew nothing, he had but recently been locked into the little chamber. Indeed, while Ruthven was threatening, the man (says James) was trembling, and adjuring the Master not to harm the King. James, having sworn to Ruthven that he would not open the window himself, now, characteristically, asked the man to open the window ‘on his right hand.’ If the King had his back to the turret door, the window on his right opened on the courtyard, the window on his left opened on the street. The man readily opened the window, says the King, and the person claiming to be the man deponed later that he first opened what the King declared to be the wrong window, but, before he could open the other, in came the Master, who, ‘casting his hands abroad in desperate manner, said “he could not mend it, his Majesty behoved to die.”’ Instead of stabbing James, however, he tried to bind the Royal hands with a garter, ‘swearing he behoved to be bound.’ (A garter was later picked up on the floor by one of the witnesses, Graham of Balgonie, and secured by Sir Thomas Erskine. 24)
V. HENDERSON’S NARRATIVE
The man in the turret had vanished like a ghost. Henderson, on the day after the tragedy, was also not to be found. Like certain Ruthvens, Hew Moncrieff, Eviot, and others, who had fought in the death-chamber, or been distinguished in the later riot, Henderson had fled. He was, though a retainer of Gowrie, a member of the Town Council of Perth, and ‘chamberlain,’ or ‘factor,’ of the lands of Scone, then held by Gowrie from the King. To find any one who had seen him during the tumult was difficult or impossible. William Robertson, a notary of Perth, examined
Apparently not Sir Thomas Hamilton, the King’s Advocate.
State Papers, Scotland (Elizabeth), vol. lxvi. No. 51.
Pitcairn, vol. ii. p. 249.
Mr. Scott suggested that a piece of string was found by Balgonie. The words of Balgonie are ‘ane gartane’ – a garter. He never mentions string.