who had many causes of offence against the King, could not resist the present opportunity of annoy ing him. Under the pretext of the obscurity and contradictions of the received account of the conspiracy, and declaring that their consciences would not permit them to mingle what might be false with the edicts of truth, they refused to do any more than thank heaven in general terms for the preservation of the King's life, James, who ob served with pain the bad example, they were thus setting to his subjects, and who could not but remember how unscrupulously they had often as sailed his own character and measures from the pulpit on the vaguest surmises, thought it allowable to take sharp measures with the recusants, and finally forced all except one to obey his behest, and even to preach the truth of the conspiracy at various places throughout the kingdom, besides their own proper churches. Such a proceeding may now be deemed odd, and even tyrannical on James's part; but the fashion of handling secular matters in the pulpit was introduced by the preachers themselves, and was quite a fashionable custom at the time. The solitary, sceptic thus left, was the famed Mr Robert Bruce. With him James condescended to have several personal interviews, in order to convince him of the reality of the attempt upon his life. Every act of .deference, however, to a man of this order, as it exalted his opinion of himself, was only calculated to make him the more unflinching. When James found all his kindness misspent upon the * proud puritan,' he deprived him of his benefice, and banished him from the kingdom. Strange to Bay, Bruce lived more than thirty years after in

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exile on this account, rather than make the proper acknowledgements to the King, although long before the expiry of that period he had ceased to entertain any doubts of the conspiracy. Historians are usually loud in applauding this adher ence to principle, as they call it but surely Bruce should not have doubted the King, after he had condescended to make personal assurance of the fact; nor was it right to abandon a sacred charge, in which he was acknowledged to be eminently useful, for a matter so very insignificant, and so personal to himself. The proper feeling regarding this case should be one rather of pity than admiration-pity for talents, piety, and good intentions, all sacrificed to the meanest emotions of our nature, the pride of singularity in trifles, and the vulgar pleasure of triumphing over a superior when accident has put it into our power.

It is now doing nothing but justice to the King, which was not done to him in his own time, to say, that his situation on the 5th of August 1600, was really one of extraordinary peril, and that his conduct throughout the whole of the trying scene, seems, from all the known circumstances, to have been alike honourable to him as a king "and as a man. From the issue of the conspiracy, so fatal to the conspirators, and to them only, we are apt to overlook his dangers altogether, and to say lightly that he was more frightened than hurt. But, though he happened to escape, we should recollect that, for several hours, his life was threatened by many varied dangers, which, but for his own discretion, and extraordinary good fortune, he could scarcely have evaded. In the first place, although Alexander Ruthven might only have de

signed to seize his person, it is evident that he was soon induced, by fear of discovery, to resolve upon the last extremity of violence-to bind, and then to murder his victim. Let the reader only pause a little to consider the King's circumstances when that young man burst into the closet a second time, and made his declaration that "there was no remeid ;" and he will scarcely fail to be struck by the peculiar horrors of the case. Let him conceive the desperate struggle which ensued a struggle between a youth of full growth and strength, and a man whose constitution was: originally the feeblest; let him consider the remote and lock-fast place-the weakness of the royal retinue, compared with that of the Ruthvens the utter isolation of the King, so to speak, amidst a wilderness of dangers; and he will find it difficult to withhold his sympathy from a fellowcreature under such an extraordinary trial. Be it recollected, that an unarmed man, exposed to one who is possessed of weapons, is apt to have very different feelings from one who is brought face to face in the usual way with a fair antagonist. No degree of what is called courage may avail in such a case. To part with life, moreover, in the heat of combat, is very different in anticipation from the idea of submitting in cold blood to the knife of the assassin. When all these things are considered, we are apt to allow not only the reality of the King's danger, which was so long denied by a party, but the great merit he had in preserv ing his presence of mind, and being able to exert himself for his own deliverance, under circumstances so apt to shake the nerves of even those who make heroism their boast and their profession.

VOL. I.

A question may still arise in reference to the moving principle of this singular conspiracy. But, further than what is suggested at the beginning of the present chapter, it is impossible, while possessed of the present limited evidence, to penetrate into the mystery. The sum of the whole is, that it was the rash and ill-provided undertaking. of two headstrong young men, in alliance with a more aged and vicious associate, having for its motives some vague desires of vengeance for real or fancied injuries, mingled strangely with some ambitious political views, which appear to have been: still more indefinite. If there is an unusual mystery in the case, it is to be attributed solely to the singularly small number of the conspirators, their having withheld their secret both from writing and from the ears of friends, and the circumstance of their having died without examination. Should. it still appear wonderful that the two brothers should have made such an attempt unassisted, let the cause of the wonder be sought in their peculiar character, as explained at the beginning of this chapter. It is surely much more likely, that two such adventurers as they, should form a wild and hopeless project for their own aggrandisement, than that the King, a man never characterized as sanguinary, and whose circumstances and prospects in life were the very best possible, should have thought of hazarding life, character, con. science, and all that he either possessed or expected, for the purpose of destroying two men against whom he had no imaginable cause of offence, and whose deaths, it cannot be made to appear, promised him the least advantage. Had there been no mystery in the Gowry Conspiracy, it

would have long ago been regarded as a simple and unimportant matter: had the brothers not been unfortunate, and the King unhurt, we believe that the guilt of the former would never have been doubted.

James's conduct in regard to those concerned or connected with the conspiracy, was such as might have been expected in that age from a monarch who had often been exposed to such attempts, and wished to prevent their recurrence. He caused three of Gowry's servants to be executed for drawing their swords against his attendants in the gallery-chamber, although it never could be made to appear that they foreknew the conspiracy, or acted from any other motives than the ordinary ideas of the time regarding the duty of a servant to a master. The estates and titles of the Earl he caused to be forfeited, all his near relations to be banished, his very name to be expunged from society; and the bodies of the two brothers, being dismembered, were dispersed for permanent exhibition on public places throughout the kingdom. So completely successful was his attempt to depress the family, that no male descendant is now known to exist. But, with the unpleasing details of judicial vengeance, we should also relate, that, out of the rents of the forfeited estates, the King granted the large sum of a thousand merks yearly to the poor, as a mark of his gratitude to the Almighty for his deliverance.

*

It was not till eight years after, when James was removed to London, that Logan's share in

Their heads remained on the western pinnacle of the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, till some time during the Civil War.