said Mr. Robert, for ye might have had some secret cause.' 1

Strange ethics! 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. The King heard him gently, and with a constant countenance, which Mr. Robert admired.' But Mr. Robert would not preach his belief: would not apologise from the pulpit. 'I give it but a doubtsome trust,' he said.

Again, on June 24, 1602, James invited crossexamination. Bruce asked how he could possibly know the direction of his Majesty's intention when he ordered Ramsay to strike the Master. 'I will give you leave to pose me' (interrogate me), said James.2

'Had you a purpose to slay my Lord ? '—that is, Gowrie.

'As I shall answer to God, I knew not that my Lord was slain, till I saw him in his last agony, and was very sorry, yea, prayed in my heart for the

same.'

'What say ye then concerning Mr. Alexander?' 'I grant I was art and part in Mr. Alexander's slaughter, for it was in my own defence.'

1 Calderwood, vi. 147.

2 Ibid. vi. 156.

'Why brought you not him to justice, seeing you should have God before your eyes?'

'I had neither God nor the Devil, man, before my eyes, but my own defence.'

6

'Here the King began to fret,' and no wonder. He frankly said that he was one time minded to have spared Mr. Alexander, but being moved for the time, the motion' (passion) prevailed.' He swore, in answer to a question, that, in the morning, he loved the Master as his brother.' 6

Bruce was now convinced that James left Falkland innocent of evil purpose, but, as he was in a passion and revengeful, while struggling with the Master, he could not be innocent before God.'

Here we leave Mr. Bruce. He signed a declaration of belief in James's narrative; public apologies in the pulpit he would not make. He was banished to Inverness, and was often annoyed and put at,' James reckoning him a firebrand.

The result, on the showing of the severe and hostile Calderwood, is that, in Bruce's opinion, in June 1602, James was guiltless of a plot against the Ruthvens. The King's crime was, not that strangely complicated project of a double murder, to be inferred from the Ruthven apology, but words spoken in the heat of blood. Betrayed, captured, taunted, insulted, struggling with a subject whom he had treated kindly, James cried to Ramsay Strike low!' He knew not the nature and extent of the conspiracy against him, he knew not what knocking that was at

the door of the chamber, and he told Ramsay to strike; we have no assurance that the wounds were deadly.

This is how the matter now appeared to Mr. Bruce. The King swore very freely to the truth of his tale, and that influenced Bruce, but the King's candour as to what passed in his own mind, when he bade Ramsay strike Ruthven, is more convincing, to a modern critic, than his oaths. For some reason, Bruce's real point, that he was satisfied of the King's innocence of a plot, but not satisfied as regards his yielding to passion when attacked, is ignored by the advocates of the Ruthvens. Mr. Barbé observes: 'What slight success there ever was remained on Bruce's side, for, in one conference, he drew from the King the confession that he might have saved Ruthven's life, and brought him to justice.' That confession shows unexpected candour in James, but does not in the slightest degree implicate him in a conspiracy, and of a conspiracy even the rigid Bruce now acquitted the King. Mr. Pitcairn, at first a strong King's man, in an appendix to his third volume credits Bruce with the best of the argument. This he does, illogically, because the King never ceased to persecute Bruce, whom he thought a firebrand. However wicked this conduct of James may have been, it in no way affects the argument as to his guilt in the conspiracy. Of that Mr. Bruce acquitted the King. Calderwood's words (vi. 156) are Mr. Robert, by reason of his oaths, thought him innocent of any purpose that day in the

morning to slay them. Yet because he confessed he had not God or justice before his eyes, but was in a heat and mind to revenge, he could not be innocent before God, and had great cause to repent, and to crave mercy for Christ's sake.' The thing is perfectly clear. Bruce acquitted James of the infamous plot against the Ruthvens.' What, then, was the position of the Ruthvens, if the King was not the conspirator? Obviously they were guilty, whether James, at a given moment, was carried away by passion or not.

1 Mr. Bruce appears to have gone to France in 1599-1600, to call Gowrie home. In a brief account of his own life, dictated by himself at about the age of seventy (1624), he says, 'I was in France for the calling of the Master' (he clearly means Earl) of Gowrie' (Wodrow's 'Life of the Rev. Robert Bruce,' p. 10, 1843). Calderwood possessed, and Wodrow (circ. 1715) acquired, two Meditations' by Mr. Bruce of August 3, 4, 1600. Wodrow promises to print them, but does not, and when his book was edited in 1843, they could not be found. He says that Mr. Bruce appears to have been prepared, in Providence,' for his Gowrie troubles, judging (apparently) by these 'Meditations.' But Mr. Henry Paton has searched for and found the lost Meditations' in MS., which are mere spiritual outpourings. Wodrow's meaning is therefore obscure. Mr. Bruce had great celebrity as a prophet, but where Wodrow found rophecy in the Meditations' of August 3, 4, 1600, is not apparent (Wodrow's 'Bruce,' pp. 83, 84. Wodrow MSS., Advocates' Library, vol. xliv. No. 35).

111

X

POPULAR CRITICISM OF THE DAY

CALDERWOOD has preserved for us the objections taken by sceptics to the King's narrative. First, the improbability of a murderous conspiracy, by youths so full of promise and Presbyterianism as Gowrie and his brother. To Gowrie's previous performances we return later. The objection against a scheme of murder hardly applies to a plan for kidnapping a King who was severe against the Kirk.

The story of the pot of gold, and the King's desire to inspect it and the captive who bore it, personally, and the folly of thinking that one pot of gold could suffice to disturb the peace of the country, are next adversely criticised. We have already replied to the criticism (p. 40). The story was well adapted to entrap James VI.

The improbabilities of Ruthven's pleas for haste need not detain us: the King did not think them probable.

Next it was asked Why did James go alone upstairs with Ruthven ?'

He may have had wine enough to beget valour, or, as he said, he may have believed that he was 1 Calderwood, vi. 49, 66–76.