Alexander Ruthven, James started to hunt; but later in the
morning he called Ruthven to him and said he would ride to
Perth when the hunting was over. Ruthven then despatched a
servant, Henderson, by whom he had been accompanied from
Perth in the early morning, to tell Gowrie that the king was coming
to Gowrie House. This messenger gave the information to
Gowrie about ten o’clock in the morning. Meanwhile Alexander
Ruthven was urging the king to lose no time, requesting him
to keep the matter secret from his courtiers, and to bring to
Gowrie House as small a retinue as possible. James, with a
train of some fifteen persons, arrived at Gowrie House about
one o’clock, Alexander Ruthven having spurred forward for
a mile or so to announce the king’s approach. But notwithstanding
Henderson’s warning some three hours earlier, Gowrie had
made no preparations for the king’s entertainment, thus giving
the impression of having been taken by surprise. After a
meagre repast, for which he was kept waiting an hour, James,
forbidding his retainers to follow him, went with Alexander
Ruthven up the main staircase and passed through two chambers
and two doors, both of which Ruthven locked behind them,
into a turret-room at the angle of the house, with windows
looking on the courtyard and the street. Here James expected
to find the mysterious prisoner with the foreign gold. He found
instead an armed man, who, as appeared later, was none other
than Gowrie’s servant, Henderson. Alexander Ruthven immediately
put on his hat, and drawing Henderson’s dagger, presented
it to the king’s breast with threats of instant death if James
opened a window or called for help. An allusion by Ruthven
to the execution of his father, the 1st earl of Gowrie, drew
from James a reproof of Ruthven’s ingratitude for various
benefits conferred on his family. Ruthven then uncovered his
head, declaring that James’s life should be safe if he remained
quiet; then, committing the king to the custody of Henderson,
he left the turret—ostensibly to consult Gowrie—and locked the
door behind him. While Ruthven was absent the king questioned
Henderson, who professed ignorance of any plot and of the
purpose for which he had been placed in the turret; he also
at James’s request opened one of the windows, and was about
to open the other when Ruthven returned. Whether or not
Alexander had seen his brother is uncertain. But Gowrie had
meantime spread the report below that the king had taken horse
and had ridden away; and the royal retinue were seeking
their horses to follow him. Alexander, on re-entering the turret,
attempted to bind James’s hands; a struggle ensued, in the
course of which the king was seen at the window by some of his
followers below in the street, who also heard him cry “treason”
and call for help to the earl of Mar. Gowrie affected not to hear
these cries, but kept asking what was the matter. Lennox,
Mar and most of the other lords and gentlemen ran up the mainThe slaughter of
the Ruthvens.
staircase to the king’s help, but were stopped by the
locked door, which they spent some time in trying
to batter down. John Ramsay (afterwards earl of
Holdernesse), noticing a small dark stairway leading
directly to the inner chamber adjoining the turret, ran up it
and found the king struggling at grips with Ruthven. Drawing
his dagger, Ramsay wounded Ruthven, who was then pushed
down the stairway by the king. Sir Thomas Erskine, summoned
by Ramsay, now followed up the small stairs with Dr
Hugh Herries, and these two coming upon the wounded Ruthven
despatched him with their swords. Gowrie, entering the courtyard
with his stabler Thomas Cranstoun and seeing his brother’s
body, rushed up the staircase after Erskine and Herries, followed
by Cranstoun and others of his retainers; and in the melée
Gowrie was killed. Some commotion was caused in the town by
the noise of these proceedings; but it quickly subsided, though
the king did not deem it safe to return to Falkland for some
hours.
The tragedy caused intense excitement throughout Scotland, and the investigation of the circumstances was followed with much interest in England also, where all the details were reported to Elizabeth’s ministers. The preachers of the Kirk, whose influence in Scotland was too extensive for the king to neglect, were only with the greatest difficulty persuaded to accept James’s account of the occurrence, although he voluntarily submitted himself to cross-examination by one of their number. Their belief, and that of their partisans, influenced no doubt by political hostility to James, was that the king had invented the story of a conspiracy by Gowrie to cover his own design to extirpate the Ruthven family. James gave some colour to this belief, which has not been entirely abandoned, by the relentless severity with which he pursued the two younger, and unquestionably innocent, brothers of the earl. Great efforts were made by the government to prove the complicity of others in the plot. One noted and dissolute conspirator, Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig, was posthumously convicted of having been privy to the Gowrie conspiracy on the evidence of certain letters produced by a notary, George Sprot, who swore they had been written by Logan to Gowrie and others. These letters, which are still in existence, were in fact forged by Sprot in imitation of Logan’s handwriting; but the researches of Andrew Lang have shown cause for suspecting that the most The Sprot forgeries. important of them was either copied by Sprot from a genuine original by Logan, or that it embodied the substance of such a letter. If this be correct, it would appear that the conveyance of the king to Fast Castle, Logan’s impregnable fortress on the coast of Berwickshire, was part of the plot; and it supplies, at all events, an additional piece of evidence to prove the genuineness of the Gowrie conspiracy.
Gowrie’s two younger brothers, William and Patrick Ruthven, fled to England; and after the accession of James to the English throne William escaped abroad, but Patrick was taken and imprisoned for nineteen years in the Tower of London. Released in 1622, Patrick Ruthven resided first at Cambridge and afterwards in Somersetshire, being granted a small pension by the crown. He married Elizabeth Woodford, widow of the 1st Lord Gerrard, by whom he had two sons and a daughter, Mary; the latter entered the service of Queen Henrietta Maria, and married the famous painter van Dyck, who painted several portraits of her. Patrick died in poverty in a cell in the King’s Bench in 1652, being buried as “Lord Ruthven.” His son, Patrick, presented a petition to Oliver Cromwell in 1656, in which, after reciting that the parliament of Scotland in 1641 had restored his father to the barony of Ruthven, he prayed that his “extreme poverty” might be relieved by the bounty of the Protector.
See Andrew Lang, James VI. and the Gowrie Mystery (London, 1902), and the authorities there cited; Robert Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scotland (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1833); David Moysie, Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, 1577–1603 (Edinburgh, 1830); Louis A. Barbé, The Tragedy of Gowrie House (London, 1887); Andrew Bisset, Essays on Historical Truth (London, 1871); David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland (8 vols., Edinburgh, 1842–1849); P. F. Tytler, History of Scotland (9 vols., Edinburgh, 1828–1843); John Hill Burton, History of Scotland (7 vols., Edinburgh, 1867–1870). W. A. Craigie has edited as Skotlands Rimur some Icelandic ballads relating to the Gowrie conspiracy. He has also printed the Danish translation of the official account of the conspiracy, which was published at Copenhagen in 1601. (R. J. M.)
GOWRIE, a belt of fertile alluvial land (Scotice, “carse”)
of Perthshire, Scotland. Occupying the northern shore of the
Firth of Tay, it has a generally north-easterly trend and extends
from the eastern boundaries of Perth city to the confines of
Dundee. It measures 15 m. in length, its breadth from the river
towards the base of the Sidlaw Hills varying from 2 to 4 m.
Probably it is a raised beach, submerged until a comparatively
recent period. Although it contained much bog land and stagnant
water as late as the 18th century, it has since been drained and
cultivated, and is now one of the most productive tracts in
Perthshire. The district is noteworthy for the number of its
castles and mansions, almost wholly residential, among which
may be mentioned Kinfauns Castle, Inchyra House, Pitfour
Castle, Errol Park, Megginch Castle, dating from 1575; Fingask
Castle, Kinnaird Castle, erected in the 15th century and occupied
by James VI. in 1617; Rossie Priory, the seat of Lord Kinnaird;
and Huntly Castle, built by the 3rd earl of Kinghorne.
