ld rely on. But,
among competing improbabilities, the story which was written on the night
of August 5, and to which he adhered under Bruce's cross-examination, is
infinitely the least improbable. The Master of Gray, an abominable
character, not in Scotland when the events occurred, reported, _not_ from
Scotland, that Lennox had said that, if put on his oath, 'he could not
say whether the practice proceeded from Gowrie or the King.' (Sept 30,
1600)

[Picture: Falkland Palace]

The Master of Gray wrote from Chillingham, on the English side of the
Border, where he was playing the spy for Cecil. Often he played the
double spy, for England and for Rome. Lennox may well have been puzzled,
he may have said so, but the report rests on the evidence of one who did
not hear his words, who wished to flatter the scepticism of James's
English enemies, and whose character (though on one point he is unjustly
accused) reeks with infamy.

That of James does not precisely 'smell sweet and blossom in the dust.'
But if the question arises, whether a man of James's position, age, and
temperament, or whether a young man, with the antecedents which we are
about to describe, was the more likely to embark on a complicated and
dangerous plot--in James's case involving two murders at inestimable
personal risk--it is not unnatural to think that the young man is the
more likely to 'have the wyte of it.'

XI. THE KING AND THE RUTHVENS

Having criticised the contemporary criticism of the Gowrie affair, we
must look back, and examine the nature of Gowrie's ancestral and personal
relations with James before the day of calamity. There were grounds
enough for hatred between the King and the Earl, whether such hatred
existed or not, in a kind of hereditary feud, and in political
differences. As against James's grandmother, Mary of Guise, the
grandfather of Gowrie, Lord Ruthven, had early joined the Reformers, who
opposed her in arms. Later, in 1566, it was Gowrie's grandfather who
took the leading part in the murder of Riccio. He fled to England, and
there died soon after his exploit, beholding, it was said, a vision of
angels. His son, Gowrie's father (also one of the Riccio murderers),
when Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven (June 1567) was in charge of her,
but was removed, 'as he began to show great favour to her, and gave her
intelligence.' {118} Mary herself, through the narrative of Nau, her
secretar