Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
In the turret they had an armed man, who would assist the Master to seize the King. Events frustrated the conspiracy; James was well attended; the armed man turned coward, and Gowrie proclaimed the King's departure falsely to make his suite follow back to Falkland, and so leave the King in the hands of his captors.
In April 1594, Gowrie, Bothwell, and Atholl had addressed the Kirk, asking her to favour and direct their enterprise. Bothwell made an armed demonstration and failed; Gowrie then went abroad, to Padua and Rome, and, apparently in 1600, Mr Bruce sailed to France, "for the calling," he says, "of the Master of Gowrie" he clearly means "the Earl of Gowrie." The Earl came, wove his plot, and perished.
James VI. conspired against Gowrie, or Gowrie conspired against James VI., and so on. There is reason and human nature at the back of these puzzles. But at the back of the Campden mystery there is not a glimmer of reason or of sane human nature, except on one hypothesis, which I shall offer. The occurrences are, to all appearance, motiveless as the events in a feverish dream.
Arran and Sir Robert Melville, it is said, visited him in prison, and advised him to make his peace with James. How was that to be done? Gowrie entreated for the kind offices of Melville and Arran.
At eighteen he could bring the most powerful of the Protestant nobles, the Earl of Gowrie, to the block. A year later indeed the lords were back again; for the Armada was at hand, and Elizabeth distrusted the young king, who was intriguing at Paris and Madrid.
The letter, the others urged, being general, would move the King’s curiosity: he would grant an interview, at which Gowrie might say that the letter was only an expedient to procure a chance of stating his own case. Gowrie, naturally, rejected so perilous a practice. ‘You must confess the foreknowledge of these things,’ said Arran, ‘or you must die.’
Romance relates that they were the Casket Letters, entrusted by Gowrie to a friend. It is equally probable that he yielded them to the King, when he procured his remission for the Raid of Ruthven. In any case, they are lost. Consequently we cannot compare the Casket Letters with genuine letters by Mary.
Now this news would bring, not only Gowrie, but all the Royal retinue, to his Majesty’s assistance. But, as not knowing the topography of the house, the retinue, James must have calculated, will run up the main stairs, to rescue the King. Gowrie, however, has to be admitted, and killed, and Gowrie, knowing the house, will come, the King calculates, by the dark stair, and the unlocked door.
A man may slay another, without incurring the guilt of murder, if he has ‘a secret cause.’ Bruce probably referred to the tattle about a love intrigue between Gowrie, or Ruthven, and the King’s wife. Even now, James kept his temper. He offered his whole story to Bruce for cross-examination. ‘Mr. Robert uttered his doubt where he found occasion.
Rather senior to Gowrie at the University of Padua, and in the same faculty of law, was an Archibald Douglas. He may have been a kinsman of Sir Robert Douglas, himself of the Glenbervie family, and from him Sir Robert, while still in Scotland, may have heard of Gowrie’s device, left by him at Padua, and of his mot about in umbra and in facto.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking