sperate;
in lieu of an ally he had procured a witness against himself. Great need
had he to consult Gowrie, but though Gowrie certainly entered the house,
went upstairs, and returned to Lennox with the assurance that James had
ridden away, it is improbable that he and his brother met at this moment.
James, however, avers that they met, Ruthven running rapidly downstairs,
but this was mere inference on the King's part.

James occupied the time of Ruthven's absence in asking the man of the
turret what he knew of the conspiracy. The man replied that he knew
nothing, he had but recently been locked into the little chamber.
Indeed, while Ruthven was threatening, the man (says James) was
trembling, and adjuring the Master not to harm the King. James, having
sworn to Ruthven that he would not open the window himself, now,
characteristically, asked the man to open the window 'on his right hand.'
If the King had his back to the turret door, the window on his right
opened on the courtyard, the window on his left opened on the street.
The man readily opened the window, says the King, and the person claiming
to be the man deponed later that he first opened what the King declared
to be the wrong window, but, before he could open the other, in came the
Master, who, 'casting his hands abroad in desperate manner, said "he
could not mend it, his Majesty behoved to die."' Instead of stabbing
James, however, he tried to bind the Royal hands with a garter, 'swearing
he behoved to be bound.' (A garter was later picked up on the floor by
one of the witnesses, Graham of Balgonie, and secured by Sir Thomas
Erskine. {58})

A struggle then began, James keeping the Master's right hand off his
sword-hilt; the Master trying to silence James with his left hand. James
dragged the Master to the window, which the other man had opened. (In
the Latin indictment of the dead Ruthvens, James opens the window
himself.) The turret man said, in one of two depositions, that he
stretched across the wrestlers, and opened the window. The retinue and
Gowrie were passing, as we know, or loitering below; Gowrie affected not
to hear the cries of treason; Lennox, Mar, and the rest rushed up the
great staircase. Meanwhile, struggling with the Master, James had
brought him out of the turret into the chamber, so he says, though, more
probably, the Master brought _him_. They were now near the door of the
chamber that gave on the narrow staircase, and James was