Andrew Lang - James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

Apart, Gowrie put some other questions to Henderson as to how the King received the Master. Henderson then went to his house; an hour later Gowrie bade him put on his secret coat of mail, and plate sleeves, as he had to arrest a Highlander. Henderson did as commanded; at twelve the steward told him to bring up dinner, as Craigengelt (the caterer) was ill. Dinner began at half-past twelve; at the second course the Master entered, Andrew Ruthven had arrived earlier. The company rose from table, and Henderson, who was not at the moment in the room, heard them moving, and thought that they were ‘going to make breeks for Maconilduy,’ that is, to catch the Highlander. Finding he was wrong, he threw his steel gauntlet into the pantry, and sent his boy to his house with his steel cap. He then followed Gowrie to meet the King, and, after he had fetched ‘a drink’ (which James says ‘was long in coming’), the Master bade him ask Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie’s old tutor, for the key of the gallery, which Rhynd brought to the Master. Gowrie then went up, and spoke with the Master, and, after some coming and going, Henderson was sent to the Master in the gallery. Thither Gowrie returned, and bade Henderson do whatever the Master commanded. (The King says that Gowrie came and went from the room, during his dinner.) The Master next bade Henderson enter the turret, and locked him in. He passed the time in terror and in prayer.

There follows the story of the entry of James and the Master, and Henderson now avers that he ‘threw’ the dagger out of the Master’s hand. He declares that the Master said that he wanted ‘a promise from the King,’ on what point Gowrie would explain. The rest is much as in the King’s account, but Henderson was ‘pressing to have opened the window,’ he says, when the Master entered for the second time, with the garter to bind the King’s hands. During the struggle Henderson removed the Master’s hand from the King’s mouth, and opened the window. The Master said to him, ‘Wilt thou not help? Woe betide thee, thou wilt make us all die.’ 31 31 Pitcairn, ii. 222, 223.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

Longmans, Green, & Co., 1871.

See The Mystery of Mary Stuart . Longmans, 1901.

Extracted from the Treasurer’s Accounts, July, August, 1600. MS.

The King’s Narrative, Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials of Scotland , ii. 210.

The King’s Narrative, ut supra . Treasurer’s Accounts, MS.

Lennox in Pitcairn, ii. 171–174.

The description is taken from diagrams in Pitcairn, derived from a local volume of Antiquarian Proceedings. See, too, The Muses’ Threnodie , by H. Adamson, 1638, with notes by James Cant (Perth, 1774), pp. 163, 164.

Pitcairn, ii. 199.

The evidence of these witnesses is in Pitcairn, ii. 171–191.

Cranstoun’s deposition in Pitcairn, ii. 156, 157. At Falkland August 6.

The adversaries of the King say that these men ran up, and were wounded, later , in another encounter. As to this we have no evidence, but we have evidence of their issuing, wounded, from the dark staircase at the moment when Cranstoun fled thence.

Quoted by Pitcairn, ii. 209. The Falkland letter, as we show later, was probably written by David Moysie, but must have been, more or less, ‘official.’ Cf. p. 100, infra .

Many of these may be read in Narratives of Scottish Catholics , by Father Forbes-Leith, S.J.

Carey to Cecil. Berwick, Border Calendar , vol. ii. p. 677, August 11, 1600.

Deposition of Craigengelt, a steward of Gowrie’s, Falkland, August 16, 1600. Pitcairn, ii. 157.

Pitcairn, ii. p. 185.

Pitcairn, ii. p. 179.

Barbé, p. 91.

State Papers, Scotland (Elizabeth), vol. lxvi. No. 50.

Mr. S. R. Gardiner alone remarks on this point, in a note to the first edition of his great History. See note to p. 54, infra .

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.

Pitcairn, ii. 197.

The Tragedy of Gowrie House , by Louis Barbé, 1887, p. 91.

Mr. Barbé, as we saw, thinks that Robertson perjured himself, when he swore to having seen Henderson steal out of the dark staircase and step over Ruthven’s body. On the other hand, Mr. Bisset thought that Robertson spoke truth on this occasion, but concealed the truth in his examination later, because his evidence implied that Henderson left the dark staircase, not when Ramsay attacked Ruthven, but later, when Ruthven had already been slain. Mr. Bisset’s theory was that Henderson had never been in the turret during the crisis, but had entered the dark staircase from a door of the dining-hall on the first floor. Such a door existed, according to Lord Hailes, but when he wrote (1757) no traces of this arrangement were extant. If such a door there was, Henderson may have slunk into the hall, out of the dark staircase, and slipped forth again, at the moment when Robertson, in his first deposition, swore to having seen him. But Murray of Arbany cannot well have been there at that moment, as he was with the party of Lennox and Mar, battering at the door of the gallery chamber. – Bisset, Essays in Historical Truth , pp. 228–237. Hailes, Annals . Third Edition, vol. iii. p. 369. Note (1819).

Privy Council Register , vi. 149, 150.

Pitcairn, ii. 250.

Mr. Panton, who, in 1812, published at Perth, and with Longmans, a defence of the Ruthvens, is very strong on the improbability that Henderson was at Falkland. Why were not the people to whose house in Falkland he went, called as witnesses? Indeed we do not know. But as Mr. Panton looked on the King’s witnesses as a gang of murderous perjurers, it is odd that he did not ask himself why they, and the King, did not perjure themselves on this point. ( A Dissertation on the Gowry Conspiracy , pp. 127–131.)