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The wretched Sprot had robbed the orphans on a small scale, but he would not, by producing the genuine Logan letter, enable the Lords to ruin them utterly. Bad as he was, the Laird had been kind to Sprot. Therefore he kept back, and by many a lie concealed, his real pieces of evidence, Letter IV, and I, if I is genuine. So far he acted on a remnant of natural conscience.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
In the light of Sprot’s real confessions, hitherto lying in the Haddington muniment room, we know the Indictment to be a false and garbled document. Next, on the part of Government, we have always had a published statement by Sir William Hart, the King’s Justice, with an introduction by Dr. George Abbot, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in Edinburgh, and present when Sprot was hanged.
This letter, harmless enough, was never produced in Court, and Mr. Barbé supposes that it was a concoction of Hart’s. This is an unlucky conjecture. The Haddington MSS. prove that Sprot really recited Gowrie’s letter, or professed to do so, from memory, in one of his private examinations. The prosecution never pretended to possess or produce Gowrie’s letter.
He must have been engaged in the Gowrie mystery. It occurs to Sprot that there is money in all this, and, having lost Logan’s business, the hungry Sprot needs money. He therefore makes a pact with some of Logan’s debtors. He, for pay, will clear them of their debts to Logan’s executors, whom he will enable them to blackmail.
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