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Updated: June 20, 2025
It is, of course, a forgery by Sprot, to enable Chirnside to terrorise his creditors, Logan’s executors. But, as it directly implicates Chirnside himself in the Gowrie conspiracy, probably he disliked it, and tore it up. Yet the artist could not part with his work; it still lies, now reconstructed, in the old folio sheet of paper.
But, in April 1608, Sprot has blabbed and is arrested. The forgeries are found among his papers, or given up by Chirnside. Sprot confesses to the plot, to Logan’s share of it, and to the authenticity of the letters and papers. He is then tortured, recants his confession, and avows the forgery of the papers. The Government is disappointed.
Among these minor forgeries, to be used in blackmailing operations, was a letter nominally from Logan to one Ninian or Ringan Chirnside. This man was a member of the family of Chirnside of Easter Chirnside; his own estate was Whitsumlaws. All these Chirnsides and Humes of Berwickshire were a turbulent and lawless gang, true borderers.
He had the gentlest of manners "the politest man in Melrose," the old shoemaker called him. My paternal grandfather was Dr. William Spence, of Melrose. His father was minister of the Established Church at Cockburn's Path, Berwickshire. His grandfather was a small landed proprietor, but he had to sell Spence's mains, and the name was changed to Chirnside.
If the reader is curious as to how the rescue was managed, it is enough to say that Logan was the cousin and intimate friend of Admiral Chirnside, that the Admiral was commanding a fleet engaged in naval manoeuvres around the North coast, that he had a flotilla of submarines, and that the point of ocean where the pirates met the Flora Macdonald was not far west of the Orkneys.
Three of Sprot’s other victims, Maul, Crockett, and William Galloway, were set free on their personal recognisances, but Mossman and Matthew Logan were kept in prison, and Chirnside was not out of danger of the law for several years, as we learn from the Privy Council Register. Nothing was ever proved against any of these men.
It is now six and twenty years since Diana paid the debt of nature, up to which period, and for a few years before, she rented a room in Chirnside. It was only a year or two before her death that I became acquainted with her; and I was then very young. But I never shall forget her kindness towards me.
His name is Ebenezer Erskine; he is the son of the minister of Chirnside. Like his father, he was born here at Dryburgh; and to-day the two are revisiting the neighborhood round which so many memories cluster. This morning the father, the Rev. Henry Erskine, has been catechizing a group of children at the kirk.
Cairns was soon to have further experience of anxiety in respect to the health of those who were near to him. Towards the close of the year in which his father died, his brother William, who had almost completed his apprenticeship to a mason at Chirnside, in Berwickshire, was seized with inflammation, and for some weeks hung between life and death.
For doos, there's the doocot; there will be poultry amang the tenants, though Luckie Chirnside says she has paid the kain twice ower. We'll mak shift, an it like your honour we'll mak shift; keep your heart abune, for the house sall haud its credit as lang as auld Caleb is to the fore."
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