The Plot

...the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Mar, friends of James from his youth, and honourable men, were the chief nobles in the crowd; wherein were two or three of the loyal family of Erskine, cousins of Mar, and a Dr. Herries, remarkable for a club foot..

At the stables, hacks were discarded, hunters were led out, men were mounting, the King had his foot in the stirrup, when a young gentleman, the Master of Ruthven, rode swiftly up from the town of Falkland. He had trotted over, very early, from the town house, at Perth (some twelve or fourteen miles away), of his brother, the Earl of Gowrie. He was but nineteen years of age, tall, handsome, and brother of the Queen’s favourite maid of honour, Mrs. Beatrix Ruthven. That he was himself one of the Gentlemen of the Household has often been said, but we find no trace of money spent for him in the Royal accounts: in fact he had asked for the place, but had not yet obtained it. 2 However, if we may believe the Royal word (which is a matter of choice), James “loved the young Master like a brother.”
The Master approached the King, and entered into conversation with him. James’ account of what he had to say must be given later. For the present we may be content with the depositions on oath, which were made later, at a trial in November, by the attendants of the King and other witnesses. Among these was the Duke of Lennox, who swore to the following effect: They hunted their buck, and killed him. The King, in place of trotting back to lunch at the House of Falkland (to which the progress of the chase had led the sportsmen round in a circle), bade the Duke accompany him to Perth, some twelve miles away, “to speak with the Earl of Gowrie.” His Majesty then rode on. Lennox dispatched his groom for his sword, and for a fresh horse (another was sent after the King); he then mounted and followed. When he rejoined James, the King said “You cannot guess what errand I am riding for; I am going to get a treasure in Perth. The Master of Ruthven (Mr. Alexander Ruthven) has informed me that he has found a man with a pitcher full of gold coins of great sorts.” James also asked Lennox what he deemed of the Master, whose manner he reckoned very strange. “Nothing but an honest, discreet gentleman,” said the Duke. The King next gave details about the treasure, and Lennox said he thought the tale “unlikely” as it was, more or less. James then bade Lennox say nothing on the matter to Ruthven, who wanted it to be a secret. At about a mile from Perth, the Master galloped forward, to warn his brother, the Earl, who met the royal party, on foot, with some companions, near the town. This was about one o’clock in the afternoon.

The royal party, of thirteen nobles and gentlemen, then entered the Earl’s house. It faced the street, as the House of Falkland also does, and, at the back, had gardens running down to the Tay. 3 Into the palace the King was led by Gowrie: he was taken to the dining chamber on the left of the great hall; in the hall itself Lennox, Mar, and the rest of the retinue waited and wearied, for apparently no dinner had been provided, and even a drink for his thirsty Majesty was long in coming. Gowrie and the Master kept going in and out, servants were whispered to, and Sir Thomas Erskine sent a townsman to buy him a pair of green silk stockings in Perth. He wanted to dine comfortably. Leaving the King’s retinue in the hall, and the King in the dining chamber off the hall, we may note what, up to this point, the nobles and gentlemen of the suite had to say, at the trial in November, about the adventures of that August morning. Mar had not seen the Master at Falkland; after the kill Mar did not succeed in rejoining James till they were within two or three miles of Perth. Drummond of Inchaffray had nodded to the Master, at Falkland, before the Master met the King at the stables. He later saw the Master in conference for about a quarter of an hour with James, outside the stables. The Master then left the King: Inchaffray invited him to breakfast, but he declined, “as his Majesty had ordered him to wait upon him.” (According to other evidence he had already breakfasted at Falkland.) Inchaffray then breakfasted in Falkland town, and next rode along the highway towards his own house. On the road he overtook Lennox, Lindores, Urchill, Hamilton of Grange, Finlay Taylor, the King, and the Master, riding Perthwards. He joined them, and went with them into Gowrie House.

Nobody else, among the witnesses, did anything but agree with Lennox’s account up to this point. But four menials of James, for example, a cellarer and a porter, were at Gowrie House, in addition to the nobles and gentlemen who gave this evidence.

To return to Lennox’s tale: dinner was not ready for his hungry Majesty, as we have said, till an hour after his arrival; was not ready, indeed, till about two o’clock. He had obviously not been expected, or Gowrie did not wish it to be known that he was expected, and himself had dined before the King’s arrival, between twelve and one o’clock. A shoulder of mutton, a fowl, and a solitary grouse were all that the Earl’s caterer could procure, except cold meat: obviously a poor repast to set before a King. It is said that the Earl had meant to leave Perth in the afternoon. When James reached the stage of dessert, Gowrie, who had waited on him, entered the hall, and invited the suite to dine.

When they had nearly finished, Gowrie returned to them in the hall, and sent round a grace-cup, in which all pledged the King. Lennox then rose, to rejoin the King (who now passed, with the Master, across and out of the hall), but Gowrie said “His Majesty was gone upstairs quietly some quiet errand.” Gowrie then called for the key of the garden, on the banks of the Tay, and he, Lindores, the lame Dr. Herries, and others went into the garden, where, one of them tells us, they ate cherries. While they were thus engaged, Gowrie’s equerry, or master stabler, a Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, who had been long in France, and had returned with the Earl in April, appeared, crying, “The King has mounted, and is riding through the Inch,” that is, the Inch of Perth, where the famous clan battle of thirty men a side had been fought centuries ago. Gowrie shouted “Horses! Horses!” but Cranstoun said “Your horse is at Scone,” some two miles off, on the further side of the Tay. Why the Earl that day kept his horse so remote, in times when men of his rank seldom walked, we may conjecture later.

The Earl, however (says Lennox), affected not to hear Cranstoun, and still shouted “Horses!” He and Lennox then passed into the house, through to the front yard, or Close, and so to the outer gate, giving on the street. Here Lennox asked the porter, Christie, if the King had gone. The porter said he was certain that the King had not left the house. On this point Lindores, who had been with Gowrie and Lennox in the garden, and accompanied them to the gate, added (as indeed Lennox also did) that Gowrie now explained to the porter that James had departed by the back gate. “That cannot be, my Lord,” said the porter, “for I have the key of the back gate.” Andrew Ray, a bailie of Perth, who had been in the house, looking on, told the same tale, adding that Gowrie gave the porter the lie. The porter corroborated all this at the trial, and quoted his own speech about the key, as it was given by Lindores. He had the keys, and must know whether the King had ridden away or not.

In this odd uncertainty, Gowrie said to Lennox, “I am sure the King has gone; but stay, I shall go upstairs, and get your Lordship the very certainty.” Gowrie thereon went from the street door, through the court, and up the chief staircase of the house, whence he came down again at once, and anew affirmed to Lennox that “the King was forth at the back gate and away.” They all then went out of the front gate, and stood in the street there, talking, and wondering where they should seek for his Majesty.

Where was the King?

Here we note a circumstance truly surprising. It never occurred to the Earl of Gowrie, when dubiously told that the King had “loupen on” and ridden off to ask, Where is the King’s horse? If the Royal nag was in the Earl’s stable, then James had not departed. Again a thing more astonishing still it has never occurred to any of the unnumbered writers on the Gowrie conspiracy to ask, “How did the Earl, if guilty of falsehood as to the King’s departure, mean to get over the difficulty about the King’s horse?” If the horse was in the stable, then the King had not ridden away, as the Earl declared. Gowrie does not seem to have kidnapped the horse. We do not hear, from the King, or anyone, that the horse was missing when the Royal party at last rode home.

Where was the King?

Some time had elapsed since he passed silently from the chamber where he had lunched, through the hall, with the Master, and so upstairs, “going quietly a quiet errand,” Gowrie had explained to the men of the retinue. The gentlemen had then strolled in the garden, till Cranstoun came out to them with the news of the King’s departure. Young John Ramsay, one of James’ gentlemen, had met the Laird of Pittencrieff in the hall, and had asked where his Majesty was.

Both had gone upstairs, had examined the fair gallery filled with pictures collected by the late Earl, and had remained “a certain space” admiring it. They thence went into the front yard, the Close, where Cranstoun met them and told them that the King had gone. Instead of joining the gentlemen whom we left loitering and wondering outside the front gate, on the street, Ramsay ran to the stables for his horse, he said, and, as he waited at the stable door (being further from the main entrance than Lennox, Mar, and the rest), he heard James’ voice, “but understood not what he spake.”

The others, on the street, just outside the gate, being nearer the house than Ramsay, suddenly heard the King’s voice, and even his words. Lennox said to Mar, “The King calls, be he where he will.” They all glanced up at the house, and saw, says Lennox, “his Majesty looking out at the window, hatless, his face red, and a hand gripping his face and mouth.” The King called: “I am murdered. Treason! My Lord of Mar, help, help!” Mar corroborated: Inchaffray saw the King vanish from the window, “and in his judgment, his Majesty was pulled, perforce, in at the same window.” Bailie Ray of Perth saw the window pushed up, saw the King’s face appear, and heard his cries. Murray of Arbany, who had come to Perth from another quarter, heard the King. Murray seems to have been holding the King’s falcon on his wrist, in hall; he had later handed the bird to young Ramsay.

On beholding this vision of the King, hatless, red-faced, vociferous, and suddenly vanishing, most of his Lords and gentlemen, and Murray of Arbany, rushed through the gate, through the Close, into the main door of the house, up the broad staircase, through the long fair gallery, and there they were stopped by a locked door. They could not reach the King. Finding a ladder, they used it as a battering-ram, but it broke in their hands. They sent for hammers, and during some half an hour they thundered at the door, breaking a hole in a panel, but unable to gain admission.

Now these facts, as to the locked door, and the inability of most of the suite to reach the King, are denied by no author. They make it certain that, if James had contrived a plot against the two Ruthvens he had not taken his two nobles, Mar and Lennox, and these other gentlemen, and Murray of Arbany, into the scheme. He had not even arranged that another of his retinue should bring them from their futile hammer-work, to his assistance, by another way.

For there was another way. Young Ramsay was not with Lennox and the rest, when they saw and heard the flushed and excited King cry out of the window. Ramsay, he says, was further off than the rest; was at the stable door: he heard and recognized James’ voice, but saw nothing of him, and distinguished no words. He ran into the front yard, through the outer gate. Lennox and the rest had already vanished within the house. Ramsay noticed the narrow door in the wall of the house, giving on the quadrangle and nearer him than the main door of entrance, to reach which he must cross the quadrangle diagonally. He rushed into the narrow doorway, ran up a dark corkscrew staircase, found a door at the top, heard a struggling and din of men’s feet within, “dang open” the door, caught a glimpse of a man behind the King’s back, and saw James and the Master “wrestling together in each other’s arms.”

James had the Master’s head under his arm, the Master, “almost upon his knees,” had his hand on the King’s face and mouth. “Strike him low,” cried the King, “because he wears a secret mail doublet” such as men were wont to wear on a doubtful though apparently peaceful occasion, like a Warden’s Day on the Border. Ramsay threw down the King’s falcon, which he had taken from Murray and bore on his wrist, drew his dagger or couteau de chasse, and struck the Master on the face and neck. The King set his foot on the falcon’s leash, and so held it. Ramsay might have spared and seized the Master, instead of wounding him; James later admitted that, but “Man,” he said, “I had neither God nor the Devil before me, but my own defence.” Remember that hammers were thundering on a door hard by, and that neither James nor Ramsay knew who knocked so loud, enemies or friends.

The King then, says Ramsay, pushed the wounded Master down the steep narrow staircase up which the young man had run. The man of whom Ramsay had caught a glimpse, standing behind the King, had vanished like a wraith. Ramsay went to a window, looked out, and, seeing Sir Thomas Erskine, cried, “Come up to the top of the staircase.”

Where was Erskine, and what was he doing? He had not followed Lennox and Mar in their rush back into the house. On hearing James’ cries from the window, he and his brother had tried to seize Gowrie, who had been with the party of Lennox and Mar. If James was in peril, within Gowrie’s house, they argued, naturally, that Gowrie was responsible. Not drawing sword or dagger, indeed, they had none, the two Erskine brothers rushed on Gowrie, who was crying “What is the matter? I know nothing!”

They bore him, or nearly bore him, to the ground, but his retainers separated the stragglers, and one, a Ruthven, knocked Sir Thomas down with his fist. The Knight arose, and ran into the front court, where Dr. Herries asked him “what the matter meant.” At this moment Erskine heard Ramsay cry “Come up here,” from the top of the narrow dark staircase, he says, not from the window; Ramsay may have called from both. Erskine, who was accompanied by the lame Dr. Herries, and by a menial of his brother’s named Wilson, found the bleeding Master near the foot of the stair, and shouted, “This is the traitor, strike him.” The stricken lad fell, saying, “Alas, I had not the wit of it,” and the three entered the chamber where now were only the King and Ramsay. Words, not very intelligible as reported by Erskine (we consider them later), passed between him and the King. Though Erskine does not say so, they shut James up in the turret opening into the chamber where they were, and instantly Cranstoun, the Earl’s equerry, entered with a drawn sword, followed by Gowrie, with “two swords,” while some other persons followed Gowrie.

Where had Gowrie been since the two Erskines tried to seize him in the street, and were separated from him by a throng of his retainers? Why was Gowrie, whose honour was interested in the King’s safety, later in reaching the scene than Erskine, the limping Dr. Herries, and the serving man, Wilson? The reason appears to have been that, after the two Erskines were separated from Gowrie, Sir Thomas ran straight from the street, through the gateway, into the front court of the house, meeting, in the court, Dr. Herries, who was slow in his movements. But Gowrie, on the other hand, was detained by certain of Tullibardine’s servants, young Tullibardine being present. This, at least, was the story given under examination by Mr. Thomas Cranstoun, Gowrie’s master stable boy, while other witnesses mention that Gowrie became involved in a struggle, and went “back from” his house, further up or down the street.

Young Tullibardine, present at this fray, was the heir of Murray of Tullibardine, and ancestor, in the male line, of the present Duke of Atholl. He later married a niece of the Earl of Gowrie. His father being a man of forty in 1600, young Tullibardine must have been very young indeed. The Murrays were in Perth on the occasion of the marriage of one of their clan, an innkeeper.

Some of their party was in the street, and seeing an altercation in which two of the King’s gentlemen were prevented from seizing Gowrie, they made an ineffectual effort to capture the Earl. Gowrie ran from them along the street, and there “drew his two swords out of one scabbard,” says Cranstoun. The Earl had just arrived in Scotland from Italy, where he had acquired the then fashionable method of fencing with twin-swords, worn in a single scabbard.

Gowrie, then, had retreated from the Murrays to the house of one Macbreck, as Cranstoun and Macbreck himself declared. Cranstoun too drew his sword, and let his cloak fall, asking Gowrie “what the fray was.” The Earl said that “he would enter his own house, or die by the way.” Cranstoun said that he “would go foremost, but at whom should he strike, for he knew not who was the enemy?” He had only seen the Erskines collar Gowrie, then certain Murrays interfere, and he was entirely puzzled. Gowrie did not reply, and the pair advanced to the door of the house through a perplexed throng. A servant of Gowrie’s placed a steel cap on his head, and with some four or five of Gowrie’s friends (Hew Moncrieff, Alexander Ruthven, Harry Ruthven, and Patrick Eviot) the Earl and Cranstoun entered the front court.
Here Cranstoun saw the body of a man, whether dead or wounded he knew not, lying at “the old turnpike door,” the entry to the dark narrow staircase up which Ramsay had run to the King’s rescue. “Who lies there?” asked Cranstoun. Gowrie only replied, “Up the stair!” Cranstoun led the way, Gowrie came next; the other four must have followed, for several witnesses presently saw them come down again, wounded and bleeding. Cranstoun found Erskine, Ramsay, and Herries with drawn swords in the chamber. The King, then in the turret, he did not see. He taunted Herries; Ramsay and Gowrie crossed swords; Cranstoun dealt, he says, with Herries, Erskine, and perhaps Wilson. But, though Cranstoun “nowise knew who followed him,” the four men already named, two Ruthvens, a Moncrieff, and Eviot, were in the fray, though there was some uncertainty about Eviot. 4

The position of the King, at this moment, was unenviable. He was shut up in the little round turret room. On the other side of the door, in the chamber, swords were clashing, feet were stamping. James knew that he had four defenders, one of them a lame medical man; who or how many their opponents might be, he could not know. The air rang with the thunder of hammers on the door of the chamber where the fight raged; were they wielded by friends or enemies? From the turret window the King could hear the town bell ringing, and see the gathering of the burgesses of Perth, the friends of their Provost, Gowrie. We know that they could easily muster eight hundred armed men. Which side would they take? The Murrays, as we saw, had done nothing, except that some of them had crowded round Gowrie. Meanwhile there was clash of steel, stamping of feet, noise of hammers, while the King, in the turret, knew not how matters were going.

Cranstoun only saw his own part of the fight in the chamber. How Ramsay and Gowrie sped in their duel he knew not. Ramsay, he says, turned on him, and ran him through the body; Herries also struck him. Of Gowrie he saw nothing; he fled, when wounded, down the turret stair, his companions following or preceding him. Gowrie, in fact, had fallen, leaving Ramsay free to deal with Cranstoun. Writers of both parties declare that Ramsay had cried to Gowrie, “You have slain the King!” and that Gowrie dropped his points, and that Ramsay lunged and ran him through the body. Erskine says that he himself was wounded in the right hand by Cranstoun; Herries lost two fingers. When Ramsay ran Gowrie through, the Earl, says Erskine, fell into the arms of a man whom he himself knew not; Gowrie’s party retreated, but it seems they returned to the head of the narrow staircase, and renewed hostilities by pushing swords and halberds under the narrow staircase door. This appears from the evidence of Lennox.

After pounding at the door so long, Lennox’s party at last sent Robert Brown (a servant of James’, who had brought the hammers) round to discover another way of reaching the King. Brown, too, now went up the narrow staircase, and in the gallery chamber he found the King, with Herries, Erskine, Ramsay, Wilson, and the dead Earl. He reassured James; the hammerers were his friends. They handed, says Lennox, one of the hammers to the King’s party, through a shattered panel, “and they within broke the doors, and gave them entry.” At this time, halberds and swords were being struck, by Gowrie’s retainers, under the door, and through the sides of the door, of the chamber; this door apparently being that from the chamber to the narrow staircase. Murray of Arbany (who had come into the house at the end of dinner) was stricken through the leg by one of these weapons.

Deacon Rhynd of Perth saw Hew Moncrieff striking with “a Jeddart staff,” a kind of halberd. A voice, that of Alexander Ruthven (a cousin of the fallen Earl), cried “For God’s sake, my Lord, tell me how the Earl of Gowrie does.” “He is well. Go your way; you are a fool; you will get no thanks for this labour,” answered Lennox, and all was silent.

Alexander Ruthven and the rest retreated; Ruthven rushed to the town, rousing the people, and rifling shops in search of gunpowder. The King and the nobles knelt in prayer on the bloody floor of the chamber where the dead Gowrie lay. For some time the confused mob yelled outside, shaking their fists at the King’s party in the window: men and women crying “Come down, Green-coats, ye have committed murder! Bloody butchers!” Others cried “The King is shot!” The exits of the house were guarded by retainers of Gowrie Rentoul, Bissett, and others.

Mar and Lennox, from the window, explained to the mob that the King was well. James showed himself, the magistrates and nobles pacified the people, who, some armed, some unarmed, were all perplexed, whether they were anxious about the King or about their Provost, the Earl. From the evidence of scores of burghers, it appears that the tumult did not last long. One man was reaping in the Morton haugh. Hearing the town bell he hastened in, “when all the tumult was ceased,” and the magistrates, Ray and others, were sending the people to their houses, as also did young Tullibardine. A baker, hearing the bell, went to the town cross, and so to Gowrie’s house, where he met the stream of people coming away. Another baker was at work, and stayed with his loaves, otherwise he “would have lost his whole baking.”

The King represents that it was between seven and eight in the evening before matters were quiet enough for him to ride home to Falkland, owing to the tumult. The citizens doubtless minimized, and James probably exaggerated, the proportions and duration of the disturbance.

This version of that strange affair, the slaughter of the Ruthvens, is taken entirely from the lips of sworn witnesses. We still know no more than we did as to what passed between the moment when James and the Master, alone, left the dining chamber, and the moment when the King cried “Treason!” out of the turret window.

The problem is, had James lured the Master to Falkland for the purpose of accompanying him back to Perth, as if by the Master’s invitation, and of there craftily begetting a brawl, in which Gowrie and the Master should perish at the hands of Ramsay? Or had the Master, with or without his brother’s know ledge, lured James to Perth for some evil end? The question divided Scotland; France and England were skeptical as to the King’s innocence. Our best historians, like Mr. Hill Burton and Mr. Tytler, side with the King; others are dubious, or believe that James was the conspirator, and that the Ruthvens were innocent victims.

So far we have not gained any light on the occurrences of the mysterious interval between the moment when the King and Alexander Ruthven passed alone through the hall, after dinner, up the great staircase, and the moment when the King cried “Treason!” out of the turret window. In the nature of the case, the Master being forever silent, only James could give evidence on the events of this interval, James and one other man, of whose presence in the turret we have said little, as only one of the witnesses could swear to having seen a man there, none to having seen him escaping, or in the tumult. Now the word of James was not to be relied on, any more than that of the unequalled Elizabeth. If we take the King’s word in this case, it is from no prejudice in his favour, but merely because his narrative seems best to fit the facts as given on oath by men like Lennox, Mar, and other witnesses of all ranks. It also fits, with discrepancies to be noted, the testimony of the other man, the man who professed to have been with the Master and the King in the turret.

The evidence of that other man was also subject, for reasons which will appear presently, to the gravest suspicion. James, if himself guilty of the plot, had to invent a story to excuse himself; the other man had to adopt the version of the King, to save his own life from the gibbet. On the other hand, James, if innocent, could not easily have a credible story to tell. If the Master was sane, it was hardly credible that, as James averred, he should menace the King with murder, in his brother’s house, with no traceable preparations either for night or for armed resistance. In James’ narrative the Master is made at least to menace the King with death. However true the King’s story might be, his adversaries, the party of the Kirk and the preachers, would never accept it. In Lennox’s phrase they “liked it not, because it was not likely.” Emphatically it was not likely, but the contradictory story put forward by the Ruthven apologist, as we shall see, was not only improbable, but certainly false.

There was living at that time a certain Mr. David Calderwood, a young Presbyterian minister, aged twenty-five. He was an avid collector of rumour, of talk, and of actual documents, and his History of the Kirk of Scotland, composed at a much later date, is wonderfully copious and accurate. As it was impossible for King James to do anything at which Calderwood did not carp, assigning the worst imaginable motives in every case, we shall find in Calderwood the sum of contemporary hostile criticism of his Majesty’s narrative. But the criticism is negative. Calderwood’s critics only pick holes in the King’s narrative, but do not advance or report any other explanation of the events, any complete theory of the King’s plot from the Ruthven side. Any such story, any such hypothesis, must be to the full as improbable as the King’s narrative.

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