Next, Hart cites, as Logan’s answer to Gowrie’s first letter (which it was not), the passages already quoted by the prosecution in Sprot’s Indictment, passages out of a letter of Logan’s given by Sprot from memory only. Hart goes on to describe, as if on Sprot’s testimony, certain movements of the Laird’s after he received Gowrie’s reply to his own answer to Gowrie. Logan’s letter (as given in 1609) is dated July 29, and it is argued that his movements, after receiving Gowrie’s reply, are inconsistent with any share in the plot which failed on August 5. Even if it were so, the fact is unimportant, for Sprot was really speaking of movements at a date much earlier than July 29; he later gave a separate account of what Logan was doing at the time of the outbreak of the plot, an account not quoted by Hart, who fraudulently or accidentally confused the dates. And next we find it as good as explicitly stated, by Hart, that this letter of Logan’s to Gowrie was never produced in open Court. ‘Being demanded where this above written letter, written by Restalrig to the Earl of Gowrie, which was returned again by James Bower, is now? Deponeth . . . that he (Sprot) left the above written letter in his chest, among his writings, when he was taken and brought away, and that it is closed and folded within a piece of paper,’ so Hart declares in Abbot’s tract. He falsified the real facts. He could not give the question as originally put to Sprot, for that involved the publication of the fact that all the letters but one were forged. The question in the authentic private report ran thus: ‘Demanded where is that letter which Restalrig wrote to the Earl of Gowrie, whereupon the said George Sprot wrote and forged the missives produced?’ (August 10).
The real letter of Logan to Gowrie, the only genuine letter (if in any sense genuine), had not on August 10 been produced. The others were in the hands of the Government. Hart, in his tract, veils these circumstances. The Government meant to put the letters to their own uses, on a later occasion, at the trial of the dead Logan.
Meanwhile we must keep one fact steadily in mind. When Sprot confessed to having forged treasonable letters in Logan’s handwriting (as Calderwood correctly reports that he did confess), he did not include among them Letter IV (Logan to Gowrie July 29, 1600). That letter was never heard of by Sprot’s examiners till August 10, and never came into the hands of his examiners till late on August 11, or early on August 12, the day when Sprot was hanged. Spottiswoode was never made aware that the letter had been produced. Why Sprot reserved this piece of evidence so long, why, under the shadow of the gibbet, he at last produced it, we shall later attempt to explain, though with but little confidence in any explanation.
Meanwhile, at Sprot’s public trial in 1608, the Government were the conspirators. They burked the fact that they possessed plot-letters alleged to be by Logan. They burked the fact that Sprot confessed all these, with one or, perhaps, two exceptions, to be forgeries by himself. What they quoted, as letters of Logan and Gowrie, were merely descriptions of such letters given by Sprot from memory of their contents.
We have now to track Sprot through the labyrinth of his confessions and evasions, as attested by the authentic reports of his private examinations between July 5 and the day of his death. It will be observed that, while insisting on his own guilt, and on that of Logan, he produced no documentary evidence, no genuine letter attributed by him to Logan, nothing but his own confessed forgeries, till the cord was almost round his neck—if he did then.
In his confessions he paints with sordid and squalid realism, the life of a debauched laird, tortured by terror, and rushing from his fears to forgetfulness in wine, travel, and pleasure; and to strange desperate dreams of flight. As a ‘human document’ the confessions of Sprot are unique, for that period.
On July 5, 1608, Sprot, in prison, wrote, in his own ordinary hand, the tale of how he knew of Logan’s guilt: the letter was conveyed to the Earl of Dunbar, who, with Dunfermline, governed Scotland, under the absent King. The prisoner gave many sources of his knowledge, but the real source, if any (Letter IV), he reserved till he was certain of death (August 10). Sprot ‘knew perfectly,’ he said, on July 5, that one letter from Gowrie and one from his brother, Alexander Ruthven, reached Logan, at Fastcastle and at Gunnisgreen, a house hard by Eyemouth, where Sprot was a notary, and held cottage land. [183] Bower carried Logan’s answers, and ‘long afterwards’ showed Sprot ‘the first of Gowrie’s letters’ (the harmless one about desiring an interview) and also a note of Logan’s to Bower himself, ‘which is amongst the rest of the letters produced.’ It is No. II, but in this confession of July 5, Sprot appears to say that Gowrie’s innocent letter to Logan, asking for an interview, was the source of his forgeries. ‘I framed them all to the true meaning and purpose of the letter that Bower let me see, to make the matter more clear by these arguments and circumstances, for the cause which I have already’ (before July 5) ‘shewn to the Lords’—that is, for purposes of extorting money from Logan’s executors.
This statement was untrue. The brief letter to Logan from Gowrie was not the model of Sprot’s forgeries; as he later confessed he had another model, in a letter of Logan to Gowrie, which he held back till the last day of his life. But in this confession of July 5, Sprot admits that he saw, not only Gowrie’s letter to Logan of July 6 (?) 1600 (a letter never produced), but also a ‘direction’ or letter from Logan to his retainer, Bower, dated ‘The Canongate, July 18, 1600.’ This is our Letter II. Had it been genuine, then, taken with Gowrie’s letter to Logan, it must have aroused Sprot’s suspicions. But this Letter II, about which Sprot told discrepant tales, is certainly not genuine. It is dated, as we said, ‘The Canongate, July 18, 1600.’ Its purport is to inform Bower, then at Brockholes, near Eyemouth, that Logan had received a new letter from Gowrie, concerning certain proposals already made orally to him by the Master of Ruthven. Logan hoped to get the lands of Dirleton for his share in the enterprise. He ends ‘keep all things very secret, that my Lord, my brother’ (Lord Home) ‘get no knowledge of our purposes, for I’ (would) ‘rather be eirdit quick,’ that is, buried alive (p. 205).
Now we shall show, later, the source whence Sprot probably borrowed this phrase as to Lord Home, and being eirdit quick, which he has introduced into his forged letter. Moreover, the dates are impossible. The first of the five letters purports to be from Logan to an unnamed conspirator, addressed as ‘Right Honourable Sir.’ It is not certain whether this letter was in the hands of the prosecution before the day preceding Sprot’s execution, nor is it certain whether it is ever alluded to by Sprot under examination. But it is dated from Fastcastle on July 18, and tells the unknown conspirator that Logan has just heard from Gowrie. It follows that Logan had heard from Gowrie on July 18 at Fastcastle, that he thence rode to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh wrote his letter (II) to Bower, bidding Bower hasten to Edinburgh, to consult. This is absurd. Logan would have summoned Bower from Fastcastle, much nearer Bower’s home than Edinburgh. Again, in Letter I, Logan informs the unknown man that he is to answer Gowrie ‘within ten days at furthest.’ That being so, he does not need Bower in such a hurry, unless it be to carry the letter to the Unknown. But, in that case, he would have summoned Bower from Fastcastle, he would not have ridden to Edinburgh and summoned him thence. Once more, Sprot later confessed, as we shall see, that this letter to Bower was dictated to himself by Logan, and that the copy produced, apparently in Logan’s hand, was forged by him from the letter as dictated to him. He thus contradicted his earlier statement that Letter II was shown to him by Bower. He never says that he was in Edinburgh with Logan on July 18. Besides, it is not conceivable that, by dictating Letter II to Sprot, Logan would have voluntarily put himself in the power of the notary.
This is a fair example of Sprot’s apparently purposeless lying. His real interest throughout was to persuade the Government that he was giving them genuine Logan letters. This, however, he denied, with truth, yet he lied variously about the nature of his confessed forgeries.
Sprot was so false, that Government might conceive his very confession of having forged the letters to be untrue. The skill in handwriting of that age could not detect them for impostures; Government might deem that he had stolen genuine letters from Bower; letters which might legitimately be produced as evidence. Indeed this charitable view is perhaps confirmed by the extraordinary fact, to be later proved, that three Edinburgh ministers, Mr. Hall, Mr. Hewat, and Mr. Galloway, with Mr. Lumisden, minister of Duddingston, were present on occasions when Sprot confessed to having forged the letters. Yet these four preachers said nothing, as far as we hear, when the letters, confessedly forged, were produced as evidence, in 1609, to ruin Logan’s innocent child. Did the preachers think the letters genuine in spite of the confession that they were forged? We shall see later, in any case, that the contents of the three letters to the Unknown, and a torn letter, when compared with Letter IV, demonstrate that Sprot’s final confession to having forged them on the model of IV is true; indeed the fact ought to have been discovered, on internal evidence, even by critics unaware of his confessions.
We now pursue Sprot’s written deposition of July 5. He gives, as grounds of his knowledge of Logan’s guilt, certain conversations among Logan’s intimates, yeomen or ‘bonnet lairds,’ or servants, from which he inferred that Logan was engaged in treason. Again, just before Logan’s death in July 1606, he was delirious, and raved of forfeiture. But Logan had been engaged in various treasons, so his ravings need not refer to the Gowrie affair. He had been on Bothwell’s enterprises, and had privy dealings with ‘Percy,’ probably Thomas Percy, who, in 1602, secretly visited Hume of Manderston, a kinsman of Logan. That intrigue was certainly connected merely with James’s succession to the English crown. But one of Logan’s retainers, when this affair of Percy was spoken of among them, said, according to Sprot, that the Laird had been engaged in treason ‘nearer home.’
Sprot then writes that ‘about the time of the conspiracy,’ Logan, with Matthew Logan, rode to Dundee, where they enjoyed a three days’ drinking bout, and never had the Laird such a surfeit of wine. But this jaunt could not be part of the Gowrie plot, and probably occurred after its failure. Later, Sprot gave a different version of Logan’s conduct immediately before and after Gowrie’s death. Once more, after Logan’s death, one Wallace asked Sprot to be silent, if ever he had heard of ‘the Laird’s conspiracy.’ Sprot ended by confessing contritely that he had forged all the letters (except Letter IV) ‘to the true meaning and purpose of the letter that Bower let me see,’ a passage already quoted, and a falsehood.
What was the ‘cause’ for which Sprot forged? It was a purpose to blackmail, not Logan, but Logan’s heirs or executors, one of whom was Lord Home. If Sprot wanted to get anything out of them, he could terrify them by threatening to show the forged Logan letters, as genuine, to the Government, so securing the ruin of Logan’s heirs by forfeiture. He did not do this himself, but he gave forged letters, for money, to men who were in debt to the dead Logan’s estate, and who might use the letters to extort remission of what they owed.
On July 15, Sprot was examined before Dunfermline, Dunbar, Hart, the King’s Advocate (Sir Thomas Hamilton), and other gentlemen. He said that, about July 6, 1600, Logan received a letter from Gowrie, which, two days later, Bower showed to him at Fastcastle. This is the harmless Gowrie letter, which Sprot now quoted from memory, as it is printed in Hart’s official account.
Now begins a new puzzle, caused by Sprot’s dates. Of these we can only give a conjectural version, for the sake of argument. Logan received a letter from Gowrie about July 6, 1600. He returned a reply, by Bower, but when did Bower start with the reply? Let us say on July 9. Bower returned, says Sprot, ‘within five days,’ with ‘a new letter’ from Gowrie. That would bring us to July 14, but in Letters I and II, dated July 18, Logan is informing his unknown correspondent, and Bower, of the receipt of ‘a new letter’ from Gowrie. Why inform Bower of this, if Bower was the bearer of the new letter? But the ‘new letter’ mentioned in Letters I and II was brought by a retainer of Gowrie. In any case, supposing by way of conjecture that Bower returned from Gowrie about July 15, he spent the night, says Sprot, with Logan at Gunnisgreen, and next day (July 16) rode to Edinburgh with Bower, Boig of Lochend, and Matthew Logan. In Edinburgh he remained ‘a certain short space,’ say four days, which would bring us to July 20. Needless to say that this does not fit Letter II, Logan to Bower, July 18, and Letter I, Logan to the Unknown, Fastcastle, July 18.
After Logan’s return from Edinburgh (which, according to Sprot, seems to be of about July 20) Sprot heard Logan and Bower discuss some scheme by which Logan should get Gowrie’s estate of Dirleton, without payment. Bower said nothing could be done till Logan rode west himself. He discouraged the whole affair, but Logan said, in the hearing of several persons, that he would hazard his life with Gowrie. Lady Restalrig blamed Bower for making Logan try to sell the lands of Fastcastle (they were not sold till 1602), of which Bower protested his innocence. This was after Logan’s return from Edinburgh (say July 20; that is, say five days after Logan’s return, say July 25). Bower and Logan had a long conference in the open air. Sprot was lounging and spying about beside the river; a sea-fisher had taken a basket of blenneys, or ‘green-banes.’ Logan called to Sprot to bring him the fish, and they all supped. Before supper, however, Sprot walked about with Bower, and tried to ‘pump’ him as to what was going forward. Bower said that ‘the Laird should get Dirleton without either gold or silver, but he feared it should be as dear to him. They had another pie in hand than the selling of land.’ Bower then asked Sprot not to meddle, for he feared that ‘in a few days the Laird would be either landless or lifeless.’
Certainly this is a vivid description; Bower and Logan were sitting on a bench ‘at the byre end;’ Sprot, come on the chance of a supper, was peeping and watching; Peter Mason, the angler, at the river side, ‘near the stepping stones,’ had his basket of blenneys on his honest back, his rod or net in his hand; the Laird was calling for the fish, was taking a drink, and, we hope, offering a drink to Mason. Then followed the lounge and the talk with Bower before supper, all in the late afternoon of a July day, the yellow light sleeping on the northern sea below. Vivid this is, and plausible, but is it true?
We have reached the approximate date of July 25 (though, of course, after an interval of eight years, Sprot’s memory of dates must be vague). Next day (July 26) Logan, with Bower and others, rode to Nine Wells (where David Hume the philosopher was born), thence, the same night, back to Gunnisgreen, next night, July 27, to Fastcastle, and thence to Edinburgh. This brings us (allowing freely for error of memory) to about July 27, ‘the hinder end of July,’ says Sprot. If we make allowance for a vagueness of four or five days, this does not fit in badly. Logan’s letter to Gowrie (No. IV), which Sprot finally said that he used as a model for his forgeries, is dated ‘Gunnisgreen, July 29.’ ‘At the beginning of August,’ says Sprot (clearly there are four or five days lost in the reckoning), Logan and Bower, with Matthew Logan and Willie Crockett, rode to Edinburgh, ‘and there stayed three days, and the Laird, with Matthew Logan, came home, and Bower came to his own house of the Brockholes, where he stayed four days,’ and then was sent for by Logan, ‘and the Laird was very sad and sorry,’ obviously because of the failure of the plot on August 5.
How do these dates fit into the narrative? Logan was at Gunnisgreen (his letter (IV) proves it) on July 29. (Later we show another error of Sprot’s on this point.) He writes that he is sending Bower as bearer of his letter to Gowrie. If Bower left Edinburgh on July 30, he could deliver the letter to Gowrie, at Perth, on August 2, and be back in Edinburgh (whither Logan now went) on August 5, and Logan could leave Edinburgh on August 6, after hearing of the deaths of his fellow-conspirators. We must not press Sprot too hard as to dates so remote in time. We may grant that Bower, bearing Logan’s letter of July 29, rode with Logan and the others to Edinburgh; that at Edinburgh Logan awaited his return, with a reply; that he thence learned that August 5 was the day for the enterprise, and that, early on August 6, he heard of its failure, and rode sadly home: all this being granted for the sake of argument.
Had the news of August 6 been that the King had mysteriously disappeared, we may conceive that Logan would have hurried to Dirleton, met the Ruthvens there, with their prisoner, and sailed with them to Fastcastle. Or he might have made direct to Fastcastle, and welcomed them there. His reason for being at Restalrig or in the Canongate was to get the earliest news from Perth, brought across Fife, and from Bruntisland to Leith.
Whether correct or not, this scheme, allowing for lapse of memory as to dates, is feasible. Who can, remote from any documents, remember the dates of occurrences all through a month now distant by eight years? There were no daily newspapers, no ready means of ascertaining a date. Queen Mary’s accusers, in their chronological account of her movements about the time of Darnley’s death, are often out in their dates. In legal documents of the period the date of the day of the month of an event is often left blank. This occurs in the confirmation of Logan’s own will. ‘He died --- July, 1606.’ When lawyers with plenty of leisure for inquiry were thus at a loss for dates of days of the month (having since the Reformation no Saints’ days to go by), Sprot, in prison, might easily go wrong in his chronology.
In any case, taking Letter IV provisionally as genuine in substance, we note that, on July 29, Logan did not yet know the date fixed for Gowrie’s enterprise. He suggested ‘the beginning of harvest,’ and, by August 5, harvest had begun. One of the Perth witnesses was reaping in the ‘Morton haugh,’ when he heard the town bell call the citizens to arms. But Gowrie must have acted in great haste, Logan not knowing, till, say, August 2 or 3, the date of a plot that exploded on August 5.
Gowrie may have thought, as Lord Maxwell said when arranging his escape from Edinburgh Castle, ‘Sic interprysis are nocht effectuat with deliberationis and advisments, bot with suddane resolutionis.’
It is very important, we must freely admit, as an argument against the theory of carrying James to Logan’s impregnable keep of Fastcastle, that only one question, in our papers, is asked as to the provisioning of Fastcastle, and that merely as to the supply of drink! Possibly this had been ascertained in Sprot’s earlier and unrecorded examinations (April 19-July 5). One poor hogshead of wine (a trifle to Logan) had been sent in that summer; so Matthew Logan deponed. As Logan had often used Fastcastle before, for treasonable purposes, he was not (it may be supposed) likely to leave it without provisions. Moreover these could be brought by sea, from Dirleton, where Carey (August 11) says that Gowrie had stored ‘all his provision.’ Moreover Government did not wish to prove intent to kidnap the King. That was commonly regarded as a harmless constitutional practice, not justifying the slaughter of the Ruthvens. From the first, Government insisted that murder was intended. In the Latin indictment of the dead Logan this is again dwelt on; Fastcastle is only to be the safe haven of the murderers. This is a misreading of Letter IV, where Fastcastle is merely spoken of as to be used for a meeting, and ‘the concluding of our plot.’
Thus it cannot be concealed that, on July 29 (granting Letter IV to have a basis), the plot, as far as Logan knew, was ‘in the air.’ If Fastcastle was to be used by the conspirators, it must have been taken in the rough, on the chance that it was provided, or that Gowrie could bring his own supplies from Dirleton by sea. This extreme vagueness undeniably throws great doubt on Logan’s part in the plot; Letter IV, if genuine, being the source of our perplexity. But, if it is not genuine, that is, in substance, there is only rumour, later to be discussed, to hint that Logan was in any way connected with Gowrie.
We left Bower and Logan conversing dolefully some days after the failure of the plot. At this point the perhaps insuperable difficulty arises, why did they not, as soon as they returned from Edinburgh, destroy every inch of paper connected with the conspiracy? One letter at least (Logan’s to Gowrie, July 29) was not burned, according to Sprot, but was later stolen by himself from Bower; though he reserved this confession to the last day of his life but two. We might have expected Logan to take the letter from Bower as soon as they met, and to burn or, for that matter, swallow it if no fire was convenient! Yet, according to Sprot, in his final confession, Logan let Bower keep the damning paper for months. If this be true, we can only say quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat. People do keep damning letters, constant experience proves the fact.
After Bower had met Logan in his melancholy mood, he rode away, and remained absent for four days, on what errand Sprot did not know, and during the next fortnight, while Scotland was ringing with the Gowrie tragedy, Sprot saw nothing of Logan.
Next, Logan went to church at Coldinghame, on a Sunday, and met Bower: next day they dined together at Gunnisgreen. Bower was gloomy. Logan said, ‘Be it as it will, I must take my fortune, and I will tell you, Laird Bower, the scaffold is the best death that a man can die.’ Logan, if he said this, must have been drunk; he very often was.
It was at this point, in answer to a question, that Sprot confessed that Logan’s letter to Bower (No. II) was a forgery by himself. The actual letter, Sprot said, was dictated by Logan to him, and he made a counterfeit copy in imitation of Logan’s handwriting. We have stated the difficulties involved in this obvious falsehood. Sprot was trying every ruse to conceal his alleged source and model, Letter IV.
Sprot was next asked about a certain memorandum by Logan directed to Bower and to one John Bell, in 1605. This document was actually found in Sprot’s ‘pocquet’ when he was arrested, and it contained certain very compromising items. Sprot replied that he forged the memorandum, in the autumn of 1606, when he forged the other letters. He copied most of it from an actual but innocent note of Logan’s on business matters, and added the compromising items out of his own invention. He made three copies of this forgery, one was produced; he gave another to a man named Heddilstane or Heddilshaw, a dweller in Berwick, in September 1607; the third, ‘in course hand,’ he gave to another client, ‘the goodman of Rentoun,’ Hume. One was to be used to terrorise Logan’s executors, to whom Heddilstane, but not Rentoun, was in debt. Sprot’s words are important. ‘He omitted nothing that was in the original’ (Logan’s memorandum on business matters), ‘but eikit’ (added) ‘two articles to his copy, the one concerning Ninian Chirnside’ (as to a dangerous plot-letter lost by Bower), ‘the other, where the Laird ordered Bower to tear his missive letters. He grants that he wrote another copy with his course hand, copied from his copy, and gave it to the goodman of Rentoun,’ while the copy given to Heddilstane ‘was of his counterfeited writing,’ an imitation of Logan’s hand.
Handwriting of Logan (January 1585–6)
Perhaps Sprot had two methods and scales of blackmail. For one, he invented damning facts, and wrote them out in imitation of Logan’s writing. The other species was cheaper: a copy in his ‘course hand’ of his more elaborate forgeries in Logan’s hand. Now the two copies of Letters I and IV, which, at the end of his life, as we shall see, Sprot attested by signed endorsements, were in his ‘course hand.’ He had them ready for customers, when he was arrested in April 1608, and they were doubtless found in his ‘kist’ on the day before his death, with the alleged original of Letter IV. Up to August 11, at a certain hour, Government had neither the alleged original, nor Sprot’s ‘course hand copy’ of Letter IV, otherwise he would not have needed to quote IV from memory, as he did on that occasion.
Among these minor forgeries, to be used in blackmailing operations, was a letter nominally from Logan to one Ninian or Ringan Chirnside. This man was a member of the family of Chirnside of Easter Chirnside; his own estate was Whitsumlaws. All these Chirnsides and Humes of Berwickshire were a turbulent and lawless gang, true borderers. Ninian is addressed, by Logan, as ‘brother;’ they were most intimate friends. It was Ninian who (as the endorsement shows) produced our Letter V, on April 19; he had purchased it, for the usual ends, from Sprot, being a great debtor (as Logan’s will proves) to his estate.
To track these men through the background of history is to have a notion of the Day of Judgment. Old forgotten iniquities and adventures leap to light. Chirnside, like Logan and the Douglases of Whittingham, and John Colville, and the Laird of Spot, had followed the fortunes of wild Frank Stewart, Earl of Bothwell, and nephew of the Bothwell of Queen Mary. Frank Bothwell was driven into his perilous courses by a charge of practising witchcraft against the King’s life. Absurd as this sounds, Bothwell had probably tried it for what it was worth. When he was ruined, pursued, driven, child of the Kirk as he seemed, into the Catholic faction, his old accomplice, Colville, took a solemn farewell of him. ‘By me your lordship was cleared of the odious imputation of witchcraft . . . but God only knows how far I hazarded my conscience in making black white, and darkness light for your sake’ (September 12, 1594). [198]
After Bothwell, when he trapped the King by aid of Lady Gowrie (July 1593), recovered power for a while, he defended himself on this charge of witchcraft. He had consulted and employed the wizard, Richard Graham, who now accused him of attempting the King’s life by sorcery. But he had only employed Graham to heal the Earl of Angus, himself dying of witchcraft. Bothwell was charged with employing a retainer, Ninian Chirnside, to arrange more than twenty-one meetings with the wizard Graham; the result being the procurement of a poison, ‘adder skins, toad skins, and the hippomanes in the brain of a young foal,’ to ooze the juices on the King, ‘a poison of such vehemency as should have presently cut him off.’ Isobel Gowdie, accused of witchcraft in 1622, confessed to having employed a similar charm. [199a] All this Bothwell, instructed by Colville, denied, but admitted that he had sent Ninian Chirnside twice to the wizard, all in the interests of the dying Earl of Angus. [199b]
This Chirnside, then, was a borderer prone to desperate enterprises and darkling rides, and midnight meetings with the wizard Graham in lonely shepherds’ cottages, as was alleged. He could also sink to blackmailing the orphan child of his ‘brother,’ Logan of Restalrig.
To go on with Sprot’s confessions; he had forged, he said, receipts from Logan to the man named Edward or Ned Heddilstane for some of the money which Heddilstane owed him. For these forgeries his client paid him well, if not willingly. Sprot frequently blackmailed Ned, ‘whenever he want siller.’
It must be granted that Sprot was a liar so complex, and a forger so skilled (for the time, that is), that nothing which he said or produced can be reckoned, as such, as evidence. On the other hand, his power of describing or inventing scenes, real or fictitious, was of high artistic merit, so that he appears occasionally either to deviate into truth, or to have been a realistic novelist born centuries too early. Why then, it may be asked, do we doubt that Sprot may have forged, without a genuine model, Letter IV? The answer will appear in due time. Letter IV, as Sprot confessed, is certainly the model of all the letters which he forged, whether those produced or those suppressed. He was afraid to wander from his model, which he repeated in Letters I (?), III, V, and in the unproduced letters, including one which we have found in twelve torn fragments, with the signature missing.
On July 16, Sprot was again examined. Spottiswoode, Archbishop of Glasgow, the historian, was present, on this occasion only, with Dunfermline, Dunbar, Sir Thomas Hamilton, Hart, and other nobles and officials. None of them signs the record, which, in this case only, is merely attested by the signature of Primrose, the Clerk of Council, one of Lord Rosebery’s family. In this session Sprot said nothing about forging the letters. The Archbishop was not to know.
Asked if he had any more reminiscences, Sprot said that, in November 1602, Fastcastle having been sold, Logan asked Bower ‘for God’s sake’ to bring him any of the letters about the Gowrie affair which he might have in keeping. Bower said that he had no dangerous papers except one letter from Alexander Ruthven, and another from ‘Mr. Andro Clerk.’ This Clerk was a Jesuit, who chiefly dealt between Spain and the Scotch Catholics. He was involved in the affair called ‘The Spanish Blanks’ (1593), and visited the rebel Catholic peers of the North, Angus, Errol, and Huntly. [202] Logan, like Bothwell, was ready to intrigue either with the Kirk or the Jesuits, and he seems to have had some personal acquaintance with Father Andrew.
Bower left Logan, to look for these letters at his own house at Brockholes, and Logan passed a night of sleepless anxiety. One of the mysteries of the case is that Logan entrusted Bower, who could not read, with all his papers. If one of them was needed, Bower had to employ a person who could read to find it: probably he used, as a rule, the help of his better educated son, Valentine. After Logan’s restless night, Bower returned with the two letters, Ruthven’s and Clerk’s, which Logan ‘burned in the fire.’
(Let it be remembered that Sprot has not yet introduced Letter IV into his depositions, though that was by far the most important.)
Hand of Logan as forged by Sprot
After burning Clerk’s and Ruthven’s letters, Logan dictated to Sprot a letter to John Baillie of Littlegill, informing him of the fact. Bower rode off with the letter, and Logan bade Sprot be silent about all these things, for he had learned, from Bower, that Sprot knew a good deal. Here the amateur of the art of fiction asks, why did Sprot drag in Mr. John Baillie of Littlegill? If Logan, as Sprot swore, informed Baillie about the burned letters, then Baillie had a guilty knowledge of the conspiracy. Poor Baillie was instantly ‘put in ward’ under the charge of the Earl of Dunfermline. But, on the day after Sprot was hanged, namely on August 13, Baillie was set free, on bail of 10,000 marks to appear before the Privy Council if called upon. Three of Sprot’s other victims, Maul, Crockett, and William Galloway, were set free on their personal recognisances, but Mossman and Matthew Logan were kept in prison, and Chirnside was not out of danger of the law for several years, as we learn from the Privy Council Register. Nothing was ever proved against any of these men. After the posthumous trial of Logan (June 1609) the King bade the Council discharge John Baillie from his bail, ‘as we rest now fully persuaded that there was no just cause of imputation against the said John.’ So the Register of the Privy Council informs us. [203] Thus, if Sprot told the truth about all these men, no corroborative facts were discovered, while the only proofs of his charges against Logan were the papers which, with one exception, he confessed to be forgeries, executed by himself, for purposes of extortion.
To go on with his confessions: The Christmas of 1602 arrived, and ‘The Laird keepit ane great Yule at Gunnisgreen.’ On the third day of the feast, Logan openly said to Bower, at table, ‘I shall sleep better this night than that night when I sent you for the letters’ (in November), ‘for now I am sure that none of these matters will ever come to further light, if you be true.’ Bower answered, ‘I protest before God I shall be counted the most damnable traitor in the world, if any man on earth know, for I have buried them.’
After supper, Bower and Logan called Sprot out on to the open hill-side. Logan said that Bower confessed to having shown Sprot a letter of Gowrie’s. What, he asked, did Sprot think of the matter? Sprot, with protestations of loyalty, said that he thought that Logan had been in the Gowrie conspiracy. Logan then asked for an oath of secrecy, promising ‘to be the best sight you ever saw,’ and taking out 12l. (Scots) bade Sprot buy corn for his children. Asked who were present at the scene of the supper, Sprot named eight yeomen. ‘The lady’ (Lady Restalrig) ‘was also present at table that night, and at her rising she said, “The Devil delight in such a feast, that will make all the children weep hereafter,” and this she spoke, as she went past the end of the table. And, after entering the other chamber, she wept a while, ‘and we saw her going up and down the chamber weeping.’
A fortnight later, Lady Restalrig blamed Bower for the selling of Fastcastle. Bower appealed to Logan; it was Logan’s fault, not his. ‘One of two things,’ said Bower, ‘must make you sell your lands; either you think your children are bastards, or you have planned some treason.’ The children were not those of Lady Restalrig, but by former marriages. Logan replied, ‘If I had all the land between the Orient and the Occident, I would sell the same, and, if I could not get money for it, I would give it to good fellows.’ On another occasion Logan said to Bower, ‘I am for no land, I told you before and will tell you again. You have not learned the art of memory.’
In fact, Logan did sell, not only Fastcastle, but Flemington and Restalrig. We know how the Scot then clung to his acres. Why did Logan sell all? It does not appear, as we have shown, that he was in debt. If he had been, his creditors would have had him ‘put to the horn,’ proclaimed a recalcitrant debtor, and the record thereof would be found in the Privy Council Register. But there is no such matter. Sprot supposed that Logan wished to turn his estates into money, to be ready for flight, if the truth ever came out. The haste to sell all his lands is certainly a suspicious point against Logan. He kept on giving Sprot money (hush money, and for forgeries to defraud others, sometimes) and taking Sprot’s oath of secrecy.
A remarkable anecdote follows; remarkable on this account. In the letter (II) which Logan is said by Sprot to have written to Bower (July 18, 1600) occurs the phrase, ‘Keep all things very secret, that my lord my brother get no knowledge of our purposes, for I rather be eirdit quik’—would rather be buried alive (p. 184). This ‘my lord my brother’ is obviously meant for Alexander, sixth Lord Home, whose father, the fifth lord, had married Agnes, sister of Patrick, sixth Lord Gray, and widow of Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig. By Sir Robert, Lady Restalrig had a son, the Logan of this affair; and, when, after Sir Robert’s death, she married the fifth Lord Home, she had to him a son, Alexander, sixth Lord Home. Our Logan and the sixth Lord Home were, therefore, brothers uterine. [206a]
Now, if we accept as genuine (in substance) the one letter which Sprot declared to be really written by Logan (No. IV), Gowrie was anxious that Home, a person of great importance, Warden on the Border, should be initiated into the conspiracy. As Gowrie had been absent from Scotland, between August 1594 (when he, as a lad, was in league with the wild king-catcher, Francis Stewart of Bothwell), and May 1600, we ask, what did Gowrie know of Home, and why did he think him an useful recruit? The answer is that (as we showed in another connection, p. 130) Gowrie was in Paris in February-April 1600, that Home was also in Paris at the same time (arriving in Scotland, at his house of Douglas, April 18, 1600), and that Home did not go to Court, on his return, owing to the King’s displeasure because of his ‘trysting with Bothwell’ in Brussels. [206b]
Here then we have, in March 1600, Gowrie and Home, in Paris, and Bothwell, the King-catcher, meeting Home in Brussels. Therefore, when Letter IV represents Gowrie as anxious to bring Home, who had been consulting Bothwell, into his plot, nothing can be more natural. Gowrie himself conceivably met his old rebellious ally, Bothwell; he was certain to meet Home in Paris, and Home, owning Douglas Castle and Home Castle near the Border, would have been a most serviceable assistant. It must also be remembered that Home was, at heart, a Catholic, a recent and reluctant Protestant convert, ‘compelled to come in,’ by the Kirk. Bothwell was a Catholic; Gowrie, he declared, was another; Logan was a trafficker with Jesuits, and an ‘idolater’ in the matter of ‘keeping great Yules.’ Logan, however, if Letter IV is genuine, in substance, wrote that he ‘utterly dissented’ from Gowrie’s opinion. He would not try his brother’s, Home’s, mind in the matter, or ‘consent that he ever should be counsellor thereto, for, in good faith, he will never help his friend, nor harm his foe.’
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. [217]
(A line or more wanting)