coast was clear; the Kirk's party, the English party, would triumph.

The inference is that the King was to be made to disappear, and that
Gowrie undertook to do it. Two witnesses--Mr. Cowper, minister of
Perth, and Mr. Rhynd, Gowrie's old tutor--averred that he was wont to
speak of the need of extreme secrecy 'in the execution of a high and
dangerous purpose.' Such a purpose as the trapping of the King by a
secret and sudden onfall was the mere commonplace of Scottish
politics. Cecil's papers, at this period and later, are full of such
schemes, submitted by Scottish adventurers. That men so very young as
the two Ruthvens should plan such a device, romantic and perilous, is
no matter for marvel.

The plot itself must be judged by its original idea, namely, to lure
James to Perth, with only two or three servants, at an early hour in
the day. Matters fell out otherwise; but, had the King entered Gowrie
House early, and scantly attended, he might have been conveyed across
Fife, disguised, in the train of Gowrie as he went to Dirleton. Thence
he might be conveyed by sea to Fastcastle, the impregnable eyrie of
Gowrie's and Bothwell's old ally, the reckless intriguer, Logan of
Restalrig. The famous letters which Scott, Tytler, and Hill Burton
regarded as proof of that plot, I have shown, by comparison of
handwritings, to be all forged; but one of them, claimed by the forger
as his model for the rest, is, I think, a feigned copy of a genuine
original. In that letter (of Logan to Gowrie) he is made to speak of
their scheme as analogous to one contrived against 'a nobleman of
Padua,' where Gowrie had studied. This remark, in a postscript, can
hardly have been invented by the forger, Sprot, a low country
attorney, a creature of Logan's. All the other letters are mere
variations on the tune set by this piece.