A plot of this kind is, at least, not impossible, like the quite
incredible conspiracy attributed to James. The scheme was only one of
scores of the same sort, constantly devised at that time. The thing
next to impossible is that Henderson was left, as he declared, in the
turret, by Ruthven, without being tutored in his _rôle_. The King's
party did not believe that Henderson here told truth; he had accepted
the _rôle_, they said, but turned coward. This is the more likely as,
in December 1600, a gentleman named Robert Oliphant, a retainer of
Gowrie, fled from Edinburgh, where certain revelations blabbed by him
had come into publicity. He had said that, in Paris, early in 1600,
Gowrie moved him to take the part of the armed man in the turret; that
he had 'with good reason dissuaded him; that the Earl thereon left him
and dealt with Henderson in that matter; that Henderson undertook it
and yet fainted'--that is, turned craven. Though nine years later, in
England, the Privy Council acquitted Oliphant of concealing treason,
had he not escaped from Edinburgh in December 1600 the whole case
might have been made clear, for witnesses were then at hand.

We conclude that, as there certainly was a Ruthven plot, as the King
could not possibly have invented and carried out the affair, and that
as Gowrie, the leader of the Kirk party, was young, romantic, and
'Italianate,' he did plan a device of the regular and usual kind, but
was frustrated, and fell into the pit which he had digged. But the
Presbyterians would never believe that the young leader of the Kirk
party attempted what the leaders of the godly had often done, and far
more frequently had conspired to do, with the full approval of Cecil
and Elizabeth. The plot was an orthodox plot, but, to this day,
historians of Presbyterian and Liberal tendencies prefer to believe
that the King was the conspirator. The dead Ruthvens were long