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Though not in debt—or at least though no record of his ‘horning’ exists—he took to selling his lands, Restalrig, Flemington, Gunnisgreen, Fastcastle. Why did Logan sell all his lands, investing in shipping property? He died, and his children by his first wives dissociated themselves from his executorship.
Logan, who had been writing it, was called by Bower, went out, and thrust it between a bench and the wall: there Sprot found, read, and restored the unfinished epistle to its place. But the letter is dated ‘from Gunnisgreen,’ at the conclusion. One day would be at Fastcastle, when he was interrupted; the other, the day of dating, at Gunnisgreen.
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.
Yet the two were boon companions; Sprot was always loitering and watching at Gunnisgreen, always a guest at the great Christmas festivals, given by the Laird to his rough neighbours. The death of Logan was a disaster to Sprot, and to all the parasites of the Laird. Logan died, we saw, in July 1606. In April, 1608, Sprot was arrested by a legal official, named Watty Doig.
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 , but said, ‘Alas, Geordie Sprot, what shall we all do now, now nothing is left?
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.
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.
For some thirty years before the date of which we are speaking, a Robert Logan had been laird of Restalrig, and of the estate of Flemington, in Berwickshire, where his residence was the house of Gunnisgreen, near Eyemouth, on the Berwickshire coast. In 1573, Kirkcaldy of Grange and Maitland of Lethington gallantly held the last strength of the captive Mary Stuart, the Castle of Edinburgh.
Mark Napier in his essay on this matter twice or thrice prints ‘Logan’ for ‘Sprot,’ or ‘Sprot’ for ‘Logan.’ ‘Fastcastle,’ in Sprot’s confession, may be a slip of tongue or pen for ‘Gunnisgreen,’ or he may have been confused among the movements to and from Gunnisgreen and Fastcastle. The present writer finds similar errors in the manuscript of this work.
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. This statement was untrue.
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