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Updated: June 17, 2025
It was also important to prove that the ride of Ruthven and Henderson to Falkland and back had been concealed, by them, from the people at Gowrie House. Now this was proved. Therefore to make out that Henderson had been in Falkland, and had given Gowrie early notice of James’s approach, though Gowrie for all that made no preparations to welcome James, was almost necessary for the Government.
Erskine was, beyond doubt, in the street with the rest of the retinue, before the brawl in the turret reached its crisis, when Gowrie had twice insisted that James had ridden away. This is perplexing. We nowhere hear in the evidence of more than two doors, in the suite, which were locked. The staircase perhaps gave on the long gallery, with a door between them.
Cranstoun too drew his sword, and let his cloak fall, asking Gowrie ‘what the fray was.’ The Earl said that ‘he would enter his own house, or die by the way.’ Cranstoun said that he would go foremost, ‘but at whom should he strike, for he knew not who was the enemy?’ He had only seen the Erskines collar Gowrie, then certain Murrays interfere, and he was entirely puzzled.
We know nothing as to the success of Lady Gowrie’s petition, but we have seen that her daughters married very well. I presume that Gowrie, not his mother, had previously paid interest on the debts, ‘he had already paid many sums of money.’ James had already restored to Gowrie the valuable lands of Scone.
Hill Burton says 'the theory that the whole was a plot of the Court to ruin the powerful House of Gowrie must at once, after a calm weighing of the evidence, be dismissed as beyond the range of sane conclusions.
He had not followed Lennox and Mar in their rush back into the house. On hearing James’s cries from the window, he and his brother had tried to seize Gowrie, who had been with the party of Lennox and Mar. If James was in peril, within Gowrie’s house, they argued, naturally, that Gowrie was responsible.
On one side was a beautiful Queen mated with James VI, a pedant and a clown. On the other side were, first the Bonny Earl, then the Earl of Gowrie, both young, brave, handsome, both suddenly slain by the King’s friends: none knew why.
On the morning of the fatal August 5, Gowrie went to sermon. What else he did, we learn from John Moncrieff, who was the Earl’s cautioner, or guarantee, for a large sum due by him to one Robert Jolly. He was also brother of Hew Moncrieff, who fled after having been with Gowrie in arms, against Herries, Ramsay, and Erskine.
On August 5, in his own house at Perth, where James, summoned thither by Gowrie's younger brother, had dined with him, Gowrie and his brother were slain by John Ramsay, a page to the king. This affair was mysterious. The preachers, and especially Bruce, refused to accept James's own account of the events, at first, and this was not surprising.
Gowrie retreated, drew a pair of 'twin swords, and, accompanied by Cranstoun and others, made his way into the quadrangle of his house. At the foot of a small dark staircase they saw the body of a man lying wounded or dead. Cranstoun now rushed up the dark stairs, followed by Gowrie, two Ruthvens, Hew Moncrieff, Patrick Eviot, and perhaps others.
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