XVI. WHAT IS LETTER IV?

The crucial question now arises, What is Letter IV ? If it be genuine (in substance), then, whatever the details of the Gowrie Conspiracy may have been, a conspiracy there was. This can only be denied by ignorance. If the enterprise fails, says the author of Letter IV, the plotters will lose their lives, their lands and houses will be ‘wrecked,’ their very names will be extirpated; and, in fact, James did threaten to extirpate the name of Ruthven. The letter deliberately means High Treason. The objection of Calderwood, and of all the Ruthven apologists, that Sprot confessed to having forged all the letters, we have shown to rest on lack of information. He said, at last, that he had forged many papers (some did not appear in Court in 1609), and that he forged three letters on the model of Letter IV. These three letters may either be I, III, and V; or III, V, and the torn letter. The case of Letter I is peculiar. Though it contains much that is in Letter IV, and might have been taken from it, the repetitions need not imply copying from Letter IV. Byron and others would say the same things, on the same day, to two page 233 or three correspondents. Letter IV is subsequent, as dated, to Letter I, and Logan might say to the Unknown, on July 18, what, after the announced interval of ten days, he said to Gowrie. Letter I contains this remark on the nature of the plot: ‘It is not far by’ (not unlike) ‘that form, with the like stratagem, whereof we had conference in Cap. h,’ which may be Capheaton, on the English side of the Border. Probably Logan often discussed ingenious ways of catching the King: new plots were hatched about once a month, as Cecil’s and the other correspondence of the age abundantly proves. The plot (the letter says) is like that in a Paduan story of a nobleman. The rest of the letter is identical with the matter of III, IV, and V. We cannot be sure whether Letter I is one of the three forged on IV or not.

One thing is certain, Letters III and V, to the Unknown, are modelled on IV, as is the torn letter. Sprot said this was the case, and every reader of III, V, and the torn letter (given above) must see that he tells the truth. These letters contain no invention at all, they merely repeat Letter IV. Any man who could invent IV had genius enough to alter his tunes in III, V. and the torn letter. But Sprot never deserts his model. This is an argument for the authenticity in substance of Letter IV. The other three contain nothing that is not in Letter IV, and everything that is in it, except what is personal to Gowrie, and would be inappropriate if addressed to the Unknown (I, III, V), or to Chirnside (torn letter).

There is (1) the mention of a Paduan adventure, the basis of the plot, a thing that Sprot is very unlikely to have invented. With all my admiration for Sprot, I do think that the Paduan touch is beyond him. This occurs in Letter IV, ‘the good sport that M.A., your lordship’s brother, told me of a nobleman in Padua. It is a parasteur’ (? à propos ) ‘to this purpose we have in hand.’ This appears in Letter I, ‘reckless toys of Padua,’ and in Letter V, ‘bid M. A. remember on the sport he told me of Padua.’

2. The constant applause of Bower. This is in Letter IV, and in I, III, V, and the torn letter.

3. Meeting with Alexander Ruthven. This is in IV, and in I and V.

4. The meeting at Fastcastle, which is to be quiet and well-provisioned. This is in IV, and in I, III, V.

5. Lord Home and Mr. Rhynd are to know nothing. This is in IV, and in I, and V, and the torn letter, utterly needless repetition.

6. The King’s hunting, the opportunity for the plot. This is in IV, and in I, but that is natural.

7. Directions as to returning the letters. These are in IV, in I, III, V, and the torn letter.

8. Injunctions of secrecy. These are in IV, and I, III, V, and in the torn letter.

9. Logan will be true, ‘although the scaffold were already set up.’ This is a phrase of Letter IV, and recurs in Letter III and in the torn letter.

10. Logan’s elevation of heart on receipt of Gowrie’s letter. This occurs in IV and in V.

Who can doubt that Letter IV is the source, followed servilely by the forger, of the torn letter and I (?), III, V? If Sprot could invent the substance of IV, why was he so chary of invention in all the other letters?

It is clear, moreover, that the Unknown himself is derived from a line in Letter IV: ‘I have already sent another letter to the gentleman your Lordship knows, as the bearer will inform you of his answer.’ The bearer is always Bower, so the ‘gentleman’ is to be conceived as in Gowrie’s neighbourhood, or on the route thither, as one bearer serves both for Gowrie and the gentleman. Therefore, before July 5, Sprot (who had no idea as to who the gentleman was) identified the ‘gentleman,’ the Unknown of I, III, V, with the laird of Kinfauns, near Perth, or with the Constable of Dundee; but he withdrew these imputations, craving the pardon of the accused.

Thus it stands to reason that I (?), III, V, and the torn letter are forged on the model of IV. Sprot introduces no novelties in I, III, V, or the torn epistle. He harps eternally on the strings of IV. The only variation is (V) the mention of ‘one other man with you,’ in the proposed sail to Fastcastle.

It is not easy for criticism to evade the conclusion that I (?), III, V, and the torn letter are, indeed, forgeries modelled on IV. And what is IV?

Is Letter IV in substance genuine? If not, why did Sprot keep it back till the rope was noosed for his neck? A guess at his possible reasons for so keeping it back (as the only real documentary evidence extant against the orphans of Logan) we have given, but this fails if Letter IV was a forgery: as in handwriting it was.

Then there are the contents of Letter IV. To myself, and to Mr. Anderson, it does not seem probable, it seems hardly credible, that Sprot could have invented the contents of Letter IV. If he did, his power of rendering character might have been envied by the author of the Waverley Novels. In IV Logan is painted, the ‘main loose man, but a good fellow,’ with a master hand. The thing is freely, largely, and spontaneously executed. What especially moves me to think IV no invention, is the reference to the Paduan incident or romance, ‘the good sport that Mr. Alexander told me of the nobleman of Padua, it is à propos to the purpose we have in hand.’ This is casually inserted in the last words of the postscript, not blazoned in the text, as in the forgeries confessedly modelled on this letter. The whole tone of the letter is in keeping with the alleged author’s temperament. It is respectful, but far from servile. Gowrie is a great Earl, but Logan is of an old and good name. There is the genial sensualism of the man, with his promise of wine and ‘a fine hattit kit’ (a kind of syllabub). There is the joyous forward glance at an anniversary dinner, with Bothwell, to which the King’s hunting of this year shall furnish the dainty cheer; ‘ hoc jocose !’ At this dinner Bothwell and Gowrie, old allies, are to meet at Logan’s board, which may suggest that Bothwell and Gowrie are still working together.

The contempt for Lord Home as a conspirator—‘in good faith he will never help his friend or harm his foe’—and the praises of Bower, are characteristic, and, here, are in place; elsewhere they are idle repetitions, mere copies. The apology for bad writing—Logan could not employ a secretary in this case—is natural: the two days writing agrees with Sprot’s evidence. (p. 221.)

Could Sprot have invented all this: and, in his confessed forgeries, failed to invent anything? Would not the fertility of his genius have hurried him into fresh developments, and characteristic details, appropriate to the imaginary correspondent whom he addresses? These considerations may seem a mere leaning on ‘internal evidence,’ and ‘literary instinct,’ broken reeds. But the case is buttressed by the long and, on any theory, purposeless retention of Letter IV, the secrecy concerning it, and the confession, so obviously true, that Letter IV is the source and model of the forgeries. These facts have hitherto been unknown to writers who believed the whole correspondence to be a forgery done for the Government.

Both Mr. Anderson (who has greatly aided me by his acuteness and learned experience of old MSS.) and myself disbelieve that Logan’s hand wrote Letter IV. The matter, the contents of Letter IV, may be Logan’s, but the existing document may be ‘a Sprot after Logan.’ Sprot may have reinserted the genuine Logan IV among Bower’s collection of papers, pretended to find it, and returned it to Logan, after copying it in Logan’s hand . Or he may have copied it in his ‘course hand’ (the copy in the Haddington MSS.), and later, in autumn 1606, after Logan’s death, have rewritten his copy in an imitation of Logan’s hand. The contents, Mr. Anderson believes, as I do, are, none the less, genuine Logan.

If readers accept these conclusions, there was a Gowrie conspiracy, and Logan was in it. ‘I trow your Lordship has a proof of my constancy already ere now,’ he says in Letter IV, and Gowrie may have had a proof, in his early conspiracies of 1593–1594, or in a testimonial to Logan from Bothwell, Gowrie’s old ally.

But, if readers do not accept our conclusions, they may still rest, perhaps, on the arguments adduced in the earlier chapters of this essay, to demonstrate that neither accident nor the machinations of the King, but an enterprise of their own, caused the Slaughter of the Ruthvens. The infamous conduct of the Privy Council in 1608–1609 does not prove that, in 1600, the King carried out a conspiracy in itself impossible.

I have found nothing tending to show that King James was ever made aware of Sprot’s confessions of forgery. It is true that Sir William Hart, the Lord Justice, went to Court after Sprot’s death, and, in September, the Scottish Privy Council asked James to send him home again. [239] But Hart need not have told all the truth to James.

There is a kind of rejoicing naïveté in all of James’s references to the Gowrie affair, which seems to me hardly consistent with his disbelief in his own prowess on that occasion. If one may conjecture, one would guess that the Privy Council and the four preachers managed to persuade themselves, Sprot being the liar whom we know, that he lied when he called his Logan papers forgeries. The real facts may have been concealed from the King. Mr. Gunton, the Librarian at Hatfield, informs me that, had he not seen Letter IV (which he is sure was written by Sprot), he does not think he should have suspected the genuineness of Letters II and III, after comparing them with the undoubted letters of Logan in the Cecil manuscripts. The Government and the four preachers, with such documents in their hands, documents still apt to delude, may easily have brought themselves to disbelieve Sprot’s assertion that they were all forgeries. Let us hope that they did!