besides the shortness of the way, the surety of the passage being clear of all sands, forelands, or such like dangers; the harbours in these parts so sure, and no foreign fleets resorting upon these seas."

Shortly after the marriage ceremony, James proceeded with his bride to pay a visit to the court of Denmark, where he remained during the winter, and did not return to his dominions till May 20, 1590.* During his stay in Denmark, he constantly attended the courts of law, with the object of obtaining an insight into the legislature of that country; he afterwards, according to Daines Barrington, added to the Scottish law three statutes for the punishment of criminals, which he had borrowed from the Danish Code.† The day following the arrival of the royal party in Edinburgh, the Council met for the purpose of fixing a day for the queen's coronation. There happened to be no bishop in Edinburgh at the time, and the clergyman, whom James had honoured by selecting him to perform the office, positively refused to officiate, unless the cercmony of unction, which he asserted to be papistical and of Jewish origin, were omitted. James was obstinate on the subject, and so was the clergyman, who, moreover, was supported in his opposition by the principal puritan ministers. The consequence was, that a very learned discussion was carried on between James and the church, in which, as regarded controversial skill and theological knowledge, the king certainly proved his superiority. It was only, however, by threatening that he would wait the arrival of a bishop, that a divine, Andrew Melvil, rather than that the ceremony should be Episcopalian, consented to perform it as the king wished. The court put forth its rude splendour on this occasion. There was a succession of banquets and masks; and the rejoicings lasted for two months.

CHAPTER III.

The Gowrie conspiracy, by which we are to understand the real or pretended attempt on the life of James, by the Earl of Gowrie and his brother, Alexander Ruthven, is too memorable and too mysterious an event to be passed over in silence. We must recollect, that it has not to this day been clearly ascertained, whether there were really a treasonable intention on the part of Gowrie, or whether the plot were not altogether a specious contrivance of the king, in order to get rid of a dangerous subject.

per

The suspected conspirators were the sons of that Earl of Gowrie who had been executed some years previously for seizing James's son at Ruthven. Soon after his father's death, the young earl had permission to travel abroad, and it is said that, at Padua, he adopted an heraldic device on which were a hand and a

sword aiming at a crown. There is another story, that, when at Orleans, a fortune-teller predicted to him that he should become melancholy from the effect of love, that he should be possessed of great power, and that he should die by the sword. On his way home he paid a visit to the court of Elizabeth, on which occasion he is said to have fixed his affections on the unfor

tunate Arabella Stuart.

James, who had previously restored him to

*Sanderson, p. 253. D'Israeli's Enquiry into the Literary and Political 216. p.

Character of James I.

his father's honours and estates, received him with much kindness on his return; his brother Alexander he made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and on his sister he conferred one of the principal posts about the queen.* The character of the earl, at this period, appears to have been drawn according to the political prejudices of the different writers. By one party he is described as proud, insolent, and ambitious; by the other, as amiable, kind-hearted, and strictly disposed to the duties of religion. At the time of the plot, he had only just completed his twenty-first year, while his brother was but nineteen.

Previous to fixing a crime on a suspected person, the first step is to investigate the motive which he might have had in view. In the present instance, two inducements have been mentioned the desire to revenge the death of a father, and the hope of supplanting James on the throne. The first of these suppositions clearly loses its weight from the fact, that the earl was put to death during the minority of the king, who could therefore have had no voice on the occasion. With regard to the second deduction, it appears, to say the least, extremely improbable, that so very young a man, without any adequate force, without the remotest probability of ultimate success, should have been rash enough to embark in so hazardous an enterprise. The circumstances, as regards the supposed attempt on James's person, are commonly related as follows:

The king was residing at Falkland for the purpose of indulging in his favourite sport of hunting, and on the morning of 5th August, 1600, was sallying forth with his hounds, when Alexander Ruthven, looking pale and agitated, rode up to his majesty, with the information that a person, supposed to be a Jesuit, and having a large amount of foreign gold about him, had been intercepted by his brother, Lord Gowrie. To this intelligence he added a request, that the king would ride to his brother's residence at Perth, by which means he expressed his belief that some important secrets might be extracted from the suspected person. From what we know of James's character, this part of the story certainly carries with it an air of truth. an investigation was exactly suitable to the king's tastes, for he peculiarly prided himself on his talent for cross-examination and power of eliciting the truth; besides, the thoughts of the gold was probably not without its consideration. He accordingly expressed his intention of honouring Gowrie with his presence at dinner.

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are here to answer for his death." James, greatly alarmed, insisted that, being a minor at the time, he was entirely innocent of the execu tion of the late earl, and used every argument and entreaty to avert the threatened danger. Ruthven's compassion was so far moved, as to undertake, on condition that the king should remain quiet, to endeavour to soften his brother. However, he soon returned, and informed James that there was no remedy, and that he must make up his mind to die; at the same time for cibly laying his hands upon the king, and endeavouring to bind his hands with a garter-s remarkable expedient, when we consider that pistol or a dagger (if Ruthven had, indeed, any intention on the king's life) would have been much more effective. Besides, according to James's own account of the transaction, which he afterwards published, it appears that during Ruthven's temporary absence, the man in armour not only expressed his intention not to injure the king, but asserted with an oath that he would sooner die first. For what reason, therefore, this person was placed there, or why he did not assist James to escape, or why he did not interfere when he beheld his sovereign struggling in the gripe of Ruthven, appears not only unaccountable, but has occasionally induced a disbelief of the whole affair.

The

The king, according to his own narrative, managed during the struggle to drag his adversary towards a window which looked into the street, and perceiving the Earl of Mar below, called out to him lustily for assistance. earl, followed by a considerable number of persons, rushed up the staircase, and finding the door fastened within, burst it open.* Previously, however, to the arrival of the earl on the spot, John Ramsey,† a page, happening to come up a back staircase, through which the assassins meant to have escaped, discovered the king struggling with Ruthven. James instantly called to him to strike his antagonist, desiring him to thrust low, for he wore a coat of mail. His words were, "Fy! strik him laich, becaus

After continuing the sport for a short time, and having killed a buck, James, accompanied by the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Mar, rode to the residence of the Gowries. No sooner had he finished his repast, and the attendant noble. men had been seated for a similar purpose, than that now was the most favourable moment for Alexander Ruthven approached him; intimating followed Ruthven to an upper room, on entering examining the stranger. The king rose and which the latter closed the door, and James sudpresence of a person denly found himself in the in complete armour. His natural inquiry was whether this was the person he had come to "No," said Ruthven, (at the same time snatching a dagger from the girdle of the man in armour,) "you have been brought hither for another purpose; you killed my father, and

examine?

173.

For this service, Ramsey was created Viscount England in 1620, was raised to be Baron of Kingston and Earl of Holderness. The elevation was attended by a particular proviso, that on the 5th of August, the day on which he had delivered his sovereign, he and his heirs should for ever carry the sword of state before the king, in commemoration of

Hadington, and, having accompanied the king to

ment.

Soon after this, the Earl of Gowrie, who really seems to have been completely ignorant of what was going forward, rushed into the apart ment in which James had been placed by Sir Thomas Erskine, accompanied by three or four of his retainers, and having a sword in each hand. He made a most gallant attack, or rather defence, and was on the point of routing his opponents, when one of them cried out that the king was killed. Gowrie, in natural astonishment, dropped the points of his swords to the ground, when Ramsey, the page, seized the opportunity, and ran his rapier through the earl's heart.t

Thomas Cranstoun, George Craigengelt, and John Baron, retainers of Gowrie's, were executed for having connived at this conspiracy; they all declared with their dying breath that they were ignorant of any treasonable intent, and that they had only drawn their swords in defence of the earl, their master. "I have been taken," said Cranstoun, "for a traitor, but I thank God I am not one. I was stabbed through with a sword at this last tumult, and now I am to be hanged." Andrew Henderson, another follower of that unfortunate nobleman, deposed, on the other hand, that he was the person in armour already mentioned; though it seems that the king had been previously well acquainted with Henderson's person; and yet, notwithstanding a protracted conversation, had hitherto entertained not the least suspicion of his identity. The evidence, indeed, of Henderson is so full of contradictions, as to render the fact of his being the person extremely improbable. It appears far more likely that he volunteered the testimony which he gave, in order to save his life; if, indeed, he had not been tampered with by the court, who were naturally anxious to corroborate the king's statement, on which hitherto had alone rested the suspicions of Gowrie's guilt. Besides, James describes the man in armour as "a black, grim man," while Henderson is stated by his cotemporaries to have been a person of "low stature, ruddy complexion, and brown bearded." In addition to these inconsistencies is the fact,

The further we investigate this complicated affair, the greater difficulties we meet with at every step. On the one hand, it appears highly improbable that James should have entered into such a plot against his own subjects-that he should have allowed the earl and his brother to return from abroad, and have loaded them with favours, when all the time he fully intended their destruction-that he should have been guilty of the solemn mockery of appointing an annual day of thanksgiving for a deliverance which was merely ideal ;t and, what is perhaps the most weighty argument, that so notorious a coward should have voluntarily implicated himself in so perilous an adventure.

On the other hand, the arguments in favour of the Gowries' innocence are still more staggering. Besides the absence of a sufficient motive, it was proved that the only weapon found on Alexander Ruthven after his death, was a sword rusted in its sheath and undrawn; and he was, besides, a mere boy at the time. The earl and his brother were both slain on the spot, instead of being taken prisoners, which might easily have been effected. The king, without any apparent motive, had assembled an unusual force of armed men at the time, and as many as five hundred gentlemen are said to have composed his suite in the neighbourhood. The reality of the conspiracy was not only generally canvassed at the period, but appears to have been commonly disbelieved. The ministers of the church in Edinburgh positively refused to return thanks for the king's delivery, and preferred encountering his utmost vengeance to implicating themselves in what they conscientiously believed to be an infamous and mountebank cheat. The Bishop of Ross alone had complaisance enough to address the people at the Market Cross, at Edinburgh; but even he contented himself with a narrative relation of what was supposed to have taken place. For many years afterwards, Gowrie was spoken of in Perth and its neighbourhood as an innocent and injured person, and James's conduct invariably mentioned with abhorrence.

It has been asserted that a criminal intercourse had been carried on between the queen and Alexander Ruthven, and that the king's jealous sensibility induced him to adopt this means of revenge: this supposition, however, can be mentioned as little more than a surmise.

An attempt has been made to prove that the Earl of Gowrie was not only nearly allied, but, after James, was actually the next heir to the Eng

* See Life and Death of John Earl of Gowrie, p. 324. It is there affirmed, on the authority of an Edinburgh MS., that at the very time when Gowrie was killed, Henderson was seen walking on the Tay Bridge of Perth; and again, "That he was the man said to be in armour, was known to be a falsehood, for he was seen that day coming from Scoon to Perth, on foot; and having heard that the king was in Gowrie's house, and the gate shut, walked on the bridge till all was over."

lish crown; and, strange as it may appear, notwithstanding the proverbial industry and perseverance of the genealogists, this important doubt has never been cleared up. The supposition of Gowrie's affinity to the throne rests as follows: At the death of Elizabeth, the crown would naturally revert to the descendants of Henry the Seventh; Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of that monarch, and grandmother of James the First, after the death of her husband, James the Fourth of Scotland, had married Henry Stuart, Lord Ruthven; who again married Lady Janet Stewart, daughter of the Earl of Athol. Lord Gowrie's mother was certainly granddaughter of Lord Ruthven, but whether descended from his first wife, the queen dowager, or from Lady Janet Stewart, remains yet to be proved: if from the former, after the failure of issue from James the First, the earl was certainly the natural successor to the throne; if from the latter, though in some degree it allied him to the royal family, it placed his hopes of succession at a very considerable distance.

Ingenious as are the attempts to prove this relationship on the part of the Gowries, and some of the arguments are staggering, we must ever bear in mind the important fact, that not a single contemporary historian has alluded to the subject; and we can hardly believe that, had such claims really existed, we should have been left so entirely in the dark. There are innumerable instances which clearly demonstrate that both Elizabeth and James regarded Lady Arabella Stuart as the subject most nearly allied to the throne. "Quiet as that young creature looks," said Queen Elizabeth to the French ambassadress," she may one day sit on this throne!" Now, if the Earl of Gowrie were really the grandson of Queen Margaret, the claims of Arabella Stuart as great granddaughter are thrown altogether in the background. Supposing, however, as a matter of argument, that Gowrie really stood in the position in which it has been attempted to place him, the fact, however satisfactorily proved, would throw but little additional light on the identity of the guilty party. The same inducement which might have led Gowrie to get rid of James, in order to his own succession, might have actuated James in getting rid of Gowrie; for James was undoubtedly as jealous of his successor, or of any person who might interfere with his rights, as was Elizabeth herself; a fact sufficiently proved by his treatment of Arabella Stuart. It is improbable, also, that the proximity of the Gowries to the blood royal should have been an inducement with James; for, after the death of the earl and his brother, there remained two younger brothers, William and Patrick, who naturally inherited the claims of their elder brother. James, whatever was the motive, certainly persecuted that gallant and unhappy family to the last: William died in exile, and Patrick remained a prisoner in the Tower of London till liberated at

the accession of Charles the First. The boon of freedom would have been valueless without the means of subsistence, and Charles considerately settled a small pension on the victim of his father's gross injustice. During his incarceration, Patrick Ruthven had occupied his time and attention in literary and scientific pursuits. When the royal bounty, the last of the Ruthvens apthe troubles of the revolution deprived him of pears to have wandered an impoverished scholar in the streets of London; if he had not actually to struggle with the horrors of starvation.

It is but fair on the part of James to record the following anecdote:-Mr. William Cowper, the minister of Perth, informed Archbishop Spotswood, that, visiting the Earl of Gowrie some days previous to the supposed conspiracy, he found him intent on a book entitled, "Conspiracies against Princes."* The earl remarked that former plotters had invariably failed in their object through mismanagement, and that entire secresy was the only basis of success.

To enable the crown to confiscate the estates of the deceased earl, it was necessary that there should be a legal inquiry into the proofs of his guilt. This ceremony may be rather called a trial of the dead, for, in accordance with an ancient custom, the massacred remains of the brothers were deposited in court during the process of investigation. The parliament decreed that their names, dignities, and memories should be blotted from the books of the nobility; that their property should be at the disposal of the king; that they should be hung, drawn, and quartered at the cross of Edinburgh; and that the several portions of their bodies should be affixed to the most public buildings of the principal towns in the kingdom. The sentence was fulfilled almost to the letter; their heads were placed on the Tolbooth at Edinburgh, and their legs and arms on the gates of Perth.

Such are the circumstances connected with the famous Gowrie conspiracy. It must be admitted that the generality of our historians have decided in favour of James; indeed, the curious evidence recently brought forward by Pitcairn, in the Criminal Trials, is supposed by many to have set the question at rest. Whatever, therefore, is now adduced, has been intended rather to display the merits of a perplexing controversy, than as throwing any additional light on a subject which has been so often and so ably discussed.

CHAPTER IV.

The crown of England, at the death of Elizabeth, was transferred tranquilly and undisputedly to the brows of her successor. The deceased queen, as is well known, partly, perhaps, from superstitious, and partly from political motives, had ever shrunk from naming the person whom she wished to succeed her, and had invariably met any importunities on the subject with the utmost indignation. In the last moments of her glorious career, while in extreme sickness of mind and body, the lord admiral, the lord keeper, and Secretary Cecil, for the last time intruded upon her the hateful subject. The queen, says Camden,† replied faintly, that as she held a regal sceptre, so she desired no other than a royal successor. When Cecil requested her to explain herself more fully: I would, she added, have a king to succeed me, and who should that be but my nearest kinsman the King of Scots? Such is Camden's account, from which our principal historians appear to have borrowed their relation of this important passage.‡ There is, however, another writer,

* De Conjurationibus adversus Principes. † Camden, History of Queen Elizabeth, in Kennett, vol. ii. p. 653.

Rapin, vol. ii. p. 155; Echard, vol. i. p. 902; Hume, vol. v. p. 385. Sanderson, who may almost be considered as a contemporary, gives a similar account (p. 261.) This historian, however, notwithstanding his constant professions to have been behind the scenes, is well known to have been a mere

66

Robert Carey, afterwards Earl of Monmouth, who was constantly in the queen's sick chamber, who relates the story in a somewhat different manner. Elizabeth, he says distinctly, was speechless at the time; adding, that, when the name of the King of Scotland was mentioned to her, she put her hand to her head, by which they all knew that he was the man she desired should reign after her."* The council, and especially Cecil, were naturally anxious, in order to the quiet establishment of James, that they should be enabled to add the authority of the queen's express wishes to the claims of hereditary descent; we can therefore readily imagine that any circumstance, however slight, would have been brought to bear on the occasion. It is just as probable that the movement of the queen's hand should have been caused by a pain in her head, as that it should have been intended to denote the disposition of a kingdom. No sooner was the breath departed from the queen's body, than Sir Robert Carey,† who had been anxiously hovering about the death-bed of his kinswoman and benefactress, set off, with the lamentations of her women still ringing in his ears, to announce the important tidings to James: an act quite as indelicate as it was unauthorised. It appears, by Carey's own statement, that he must have ridden the distance between London and Edinburgh (about 400 miles) within the space of sixty hours, notwithstanding he received a dangerous fall from his horse, which retarded him on the road.‡

James received the news of his accession with proper decency. Rapin states, on the indifferent authority of a French historian,§ that he could not forbear lifting up his eyes to heaven, as if to thank God for the boon which he had so long and anxiously expected. Carey, on his part, mentions nothing of this discomposure, slight as it was, in the manner of James. The king had just gone to bed when he arrived, and therefore received him in his bed-chamber. "I kneeled by him," adds this true courtier, "and saluted him by his title of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland. He gave me his hand to kiss, and bade me welcome. After he had long discoursed of the manner of the queen's sickness, and of her death, he asked me what letters I had from

borrower from other writers. See Oldey's Life of Raleigh, p. 163; and Kennett's History, vol. i. p. 662.

* Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, p. 140. Fourth son of Henry, first Lord Hunsdon, creat ed by James I. 5th February, 1625, Baron Carey and Earl of Monmouth. Horace Walpole has given him a place among the Noble Authors, observing, that "he was a near relation to Queen Elizabeth, but appears to have owed his preferment to the despatch he used in informing her successor of her death." He was indeed a true courtier. His memoirs were first

published by John, Earl of Cork and Orrery, in 1759. He died at an advanced age in 1639. Walpole's Works; Burke's Extinct Peerage; Memoirs

of Himself.

Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, p. 149. More than one instance might be mentioned of our ancestors having performed considerable distances in an incredibly short space of time. On the 17th of July, 1620, one Bernard Calvert, of Andover, rode from St. George's Church, Southwark, to Dover, crossed the channel in an open boat to Calais, and from thence returned to St. George's Church in the same day; having performed the whole distance between three o'clock in the morning and eight in the afternoon. Medulla Hist. Anglicanæ, p. 185; Stow,

the council? I told him none; and acquainted him how narrowly I escaped from them. And yet I had brought him a blue ring from a fair lady, that I hoped would give him assurance of the truth that I had reported. He took it and looked upon it, and said, 'It is enough; I know by this you are a true messenger.'

Birch has thrown a partial light over the his tory of the blue ring."Lady Elizabeth Spelman," he says, "used to relate, that the Lady Scroope, who waited upon the queen in her last moments, as soon as her majesty expired, threw this ring out of the window to her brother, which appears to have been a token agreed upon be tween her and the King of Scots as the notice of the queen's death." A window was recently pointed out on Richmond Green, the site of the old palace, from which legend reported that the ring had been thrown.

Nothing could exceed the joy of the Scots, when the tardy accession of James to the throne of England was at length announced. The protracted reign of Elizabeth had been universally regarded as a national calamity; and we are even assured that a belief existed among the lower classes in Scotland, that the Queen of England had been long since dead, and that the English had been in the habit of substituting a series of old women in her room. Weldon says that the wisest heads in Scotland could scarcely be induced to believe, that as long as there was an "old wife" in England, their king would be called on to succeed.

The person selected by James to communicate his intended proceedings to the English council was Sir Roger Aston, who is reported to have served the king for many years as his barber, though he eventually rose to be a gentleman of the bed-chamber and master of the wardrobe. He seems to have been a plain and straight-forward man, and quite as overjoyed as his master at entering upon the splendours and luxuries for which they had so long waited. This rough Scotsman being admitted into the council-chamber, the lords received him with much courtesy, and asked him how he did? "Even, my lords," he replied, "like a poor man wandering about forty years in a wilderness and barren soil, and now arrived at the land of promise."§ Such was the general feeling of the Scottish nation. Shortly before James's departure from Edinburgh, happening to attend divine worship at St. Giles's church, the preacher thought proper to remind him of God's mercies, exhorting him to be duly grateful for the favour which had been shown him, and not to forget his countrymen! The king actually rose from his seat, and,“ promising to have a care of them and their good, gave them a most loving and kind farewell."||

The progress of James, from his old to his new capital, was every where attended with a magnificence to which he had scarcely been accustomed in his own impoverished realm. The

* Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, p. 151. View of the Negotiations between England, France, and Brussels.

He was natural son of John Aston, second son of Richard Aston, of Aston, in Cheshire; and though born an Englishman, had been brought up in Scotland. He had occasionally been employed to carry letters between James and Elizabeth. Sir Roger died 23d May, 1612, having accumulated a large fortune at court. Athenæ Oxon. vol. i. col. 173. § Weldon, p. 6. Spotswood, p. 476.

¶ See Nichols's Progresses and Processions of King James I., vol. i. p. 53.