The Great Historic
Families of Scotland
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THE DOUGLASES.
INTRODUCTION.
page 45
While lying off Sluys, Douglas learned that Alphonso, the young King of Leon and
Castile, was carrying on hostilities with Osmyn, the Moorish King of Granada. As
this was reckoned a holy warfare Douglas resolved, before proceeding to
Jerusalem, in fulfilment of his own mission, to assist Alphonso in his contest
with the enemies of the Christian faith. He accordingly sailed to Spain, and
shortly after his arrival at Seville a battle was fought with the Moors near
Theba, on the frontiers of Andalusia. Douglas, to whom the command of the
vanguard was assigned, fought with his usual bravery and put the enemy to
flight; but he and his companions, pursuing the fugitives too eagerly, were
separated from the main body of the Spanish army. The Moors, perceiving the
small number of their pursuers, rallied and surrounded them. Douglas, [p.45] who
had only ten men with him, cut his way through the enemy, and might have made
good his retreat, had he not turned back to rescue Sir William St. Clair of
Roslin, whom he saw surrounded by the Moors and in great jeopardy. 'Yon worthy
knight will be slain,' he exclaimed, 'unless he have instant help.' And putting
spurs to his horse he galloped back to St. Clair's assistance. But, in
attempting to save his friend, he was surrounded and overwhelmed by the crowds
of the Moors, who were twenty to one. When he found himself inextricably
involved, he took from his neck the casket which contained the heart of Bruce,
and throwing it before him he exclaimed, 'Now pass thou onward as thou wert
wont, and Douglas will follow thee or die!' He then rushed forward to the place
where it fell, and was there slain, along with Sir William St. Clair and Sir
Robert and Sir Walter Logan. On the following day the
body of the hero of seventy battles was found on the field beside the casket,
and by his few surviving friends sorrowfully conveyed to Scotland and interred
in the sepulchre of his ancestors in St. Bride's Church at Douglas. The heart of
Bruce was buried by Randolph, Earl of Moray, in Melrose Abbey.
THE RUTHVENS OF GOWRIE.
INTRODUCTION.
page 171
But it was not until eight years after the death of Gowrie and his brother that
the most conclusive evidence of the truth of the conspiracy was brought to
light. A notary named Sprot, who resided in Eyemouth, a fishing village near St.
Abb's Head, hinted to several persons that he was acquainted with some secrets
respecting the Gowrie conspiracy. These intimations reached the ears of the
members of the Privy Council, who caused Sprot to be apprehended and examined by
torture. He made a full confession of all that he knew, and produced some
portions of a correspondence which Robert Logan, the
laird of Restalrig, had carried on with the two brothers. A certain Laird Bower,
a retainer of Logan's, had been entrusted with the
perilous task of carrying these letters, and as he was unable to read or write,
he had been obliged to obtain the assistance of Sprot to decipher the
instructions which were addressed to him by his master. The notary, fatally for
himself, had stolen some of these letters from among Bower's papers. The
documents were produced, and after a careful examination by the Privy Council,
declared to be in Logan's handwriting. The unfortunate
notary was condemned to be hanged for misprision or concealment of treason. He
adhered to his confession to the last, and after being thrown from the ladder he
thrice clapped his hands in confirmation of the truth of his confession. Logan
had died some years before this, but his bones were dug up and brought to the
bar of the Justiciary Court, where the dead man was put on his trial for
treason. He was found guilty, and by a sentence equally odious and illegal, his
lands were forfeited and his posterity declared infamous. The discovery of Logan's
letters was thought to have set this disputed question finally at rest; [p.171]
but Mr. Bisset professes to find in these documents the strongest corroboration
of his disbelief of the conspiracy. Some of his arguments are ingenious and not
wholly without weight, and if the letters had disappeared grave doubts might
have been entertained of their genuineness. But the originals have, fortunately,
been preserved and are deposited in the General Register Office, Edinburgh. It
is somewhat surprising to learn that Mr. Bisset, who has taken upon him so
confidently to pronounce these documents spurious, has never seen them, and has
contented himself with requesting a friend to examine them for the purpose of
ascertaining whether the paper on which they are written bears the watermark of
the year 1600. This friend of course informed him that there was no watermark of
any year on the paper. Mr. Bisset might and ought to have known, that it was not
until a century after the date of the Gowrie conspiracy that a watermark with a
year on it came into use. The genuineness of these letters was attested at the
time by several witnesses who were acquainted with Logan's
handwriting. They have repeatedly of late years been subjected to a searching
scrutiny by persons skilled in deciphering ancient papers, and have been
compared with undoubted specimens of Logan's
handwriting, and the result has been a unanimous and unhesitating decision in
favour of the genuineness of the letters.
page 172
Logan, the writer of these letters, was a gentleman of
ancient family, the uterine brother of Lord Home, but a reckless and
unprincipled villain, a scoffer at religion, and a person of openly profligate
life. He had recently come into the possession of Fast Castle, an ancient
possession of the Home family, which has been immortalised as the 'Wolf's Craig'
of Sir Walter Scott's 'Bride of Lammermoor.' 'Fast Castle was surprised and
taken, in 1410, by Patrick Dunbar, son of the Earl of March, when Thomas Holden
the governor was made prisoner. Patrick Hume of Fast Castle was one of the
negotiators of the truce made betwixt Henry VII. and James IV. Cuthbert Hume of
Fast Castle fought at Flodden under the standard of his chief, Lord Hume. In the
year 1570, this fortress, then belonging to Lord Hume, was attacked by two
thousand English, under Sir William Drury, Marischal of Berwick, to whom it
surrendered. A party of fourteen English was then left in garrison as a
sufficient force to keep it against all Scotland, the situation being so
strong.'— Cardonnel's Antiquities.
The Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., after her marriage by proxy at
Lamberton, and on her way to join her husband, James IV., lodged a night at Fast
Castle.* This fortalice is perched on the brink of a steep and almost
perpendicular rock, two hundred feet above the German Ocean, near the southern
entrance of the Firth of Forth. The rock [p.172] is nearly isolated, and is only
connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus. Logan
was under the belief that this castle contained a vast quantity of hidden
treasure, and a curious agreement is still extant between him and Napier of
Merchiston, in which that celebrated philosopher consents to make search, by
divination, on condition that he was to obtain one-half of all the treasure that
should be discovered, and to have his expenses paid whatever might be the
result. It was in all probability Logan's possession of
this almost unapproachable stronghold that induced the Earl of Gowrie to take
such a man into his confidence. His retainer and messenger, Laird Bower, was an
old Borderer, who was trained up under David Home of Manderston, commonly called
'Davie the Devil,' and was a greater villain even than his master, but he seems
to have been most faithful to his trust. In one of his letters to Gowrie Logan
says, 'Your lordship may confide more in this old man, the bearer thereof, my
man Laird Bower, more nor in my brother, for I lippen my life and all I have
else in his hands, and I trow he would not spare to ride to hell's yett (gate)
to pleasure me.'
THE CRICHTONS OF FRENDRAUGHT.
INTRODUCTION.
page 173
These remarkable letters throw a very distinct light on the character and object
of the plot for the seizure of the King. The conspirators consisted of the two
Ruthvens, Logan, and one other person styled right
honourable, still unknown, who appears to have been a person of rank, and was
probably connected with the royal household. The letters show that the
conspirators were determined to revenge the 'Machiavelian' massacre of their
dearest friends, and that they especially anticipated an ample revenge for the
death of Greysteil, as they termed the late Earl of Gowrie. At the same time
there can be no doubt that they were actuated by the promptings of ambition as
well as the desire of revenge. The Ruthvens possessed vast power in the country,
and as Mr. Burton remarks, 'seizing upon or kidnapping a king, had in that day
become almost a constitutional method of effecting a change of ministry in
Scotland.' The father of the two young men had in this very way obtained
possession for a time of the Government. Logan was to
be rewarded for his services by a gift of the rich and beautiful barony of
Dirleton, in East Lothian, which had come into the Gowrie family through the
marriage of the first Earl with the heiress of the Haliburtons. But the Ruthvens
flew at higher game, and aspired at supreme power in the kingdom, which would
over and above have enabled them to inflict condign punishment on those who had
been the instruments of [p.173] their father's fate. The project was skilfully
planned and narrowly missed being successful. James was induced to visit Gowrie
House accompanied by a slender train. The garden wall of the mansion was washed
by the rapid river Tay, and if the royal attendants had followed without
question the route which they were told the King had taken across the Inch,
there would have been nothing to prevent the two brothers from carrying James
bound and gagged to a boat, which would speedily have conveyed him down to the
German Ocean and along the coast to the lonely and almost inaccessible
stronghold of Fast Castle. This appears to have been the first object of the
conspirators; but how the King was to be treated on reaching that fortalice is
an absolute mystery, on which the letters of Logan cast
no light. James himself and many of his nobles had a strong suspicion that the
conspiracy which had so nearly proved successful had been secretly encouraged by
the English Queen, and it must be admitted that various circumstances occurred
at the time to strengthen such a suspicion, though the researches of historical
students have not yet discovered in the State Paper Office any documents
calculated to throw further light on this subject.
THE ERSKINES OF BUCHAN AND CARDROSS.
page 137
In 1789 Erskine delivered a speech on behalf of Stockdale, the publisher, who
was tried in the Court ofKing's Bench, on an information filed by the
Attorney-General, for publishing a pamphlet written by John Logan,
the poet, animadverting on the managers of the impeachment against Warren
Hastings. Lord Campbell says Erskine's speech in this case is the finest speech
ever delivered at the English Bar, and he won a verdict which for ever
established the freedom of the press in England. But, perhaps, the most
important service which Mr. Erskine rendered to the cause of constitutional
liberty was his successful defence, in conjunction with Mr. (afterwards Sir
Vicary) Gibbs, of Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, for high treason, in 1794.
The Government attempted, by their proceedings in these cases, to revive the
doctrine of constructive treason, against twelve persons who had belonged to
various societies having for their professed object the reform of the House of
Commons. Declining to be tried jointly, the Attorney-General, Sir John Scott,
afterwards Lord Eldon, selected Thomas Hardy, a shoemaker, as the one against
whom he could make the strongest case. He spoke nine hours in opening the case
for the prosecution, but his efforts to procure a conviction were signally
defeated, to his grievous mortification, by Erskine, who proved that the object
of these societies had been advocated by the Earl of Chatham, Mr. Burke, Mr.
Pitt himself, and the Duke of Richmond, at that time a [p.137] member of the
Government. The speech which he delivered in defence of Hardy was a masterpiece,
and well merited the eulogium which Horne Tooke wrote at the end of it, in a
copy of Hardy's trial, 'This speech will live for ever.' The Ministry, instead
of abandoning the prosecution of the others, against whom an indictment had been
brought, were so infatuated as to bring John Horne Tooke, the celebrated
philologist, and John Thelwall, successively to trial, but met with a still more
signal defeat; and all the other prisoners were acquitted without any evidence
being offered against them.
THE GORDONS OF METHLIC AND HADDO.
page 349
The accounts of the Earl, which are still preserved among the manuscripts in
Haddo House, throwinteresting light both on the Chancellor's personal habits and
on the manners of the times. His lordship had evidently been fond of such sports
as hunting, hawking, and horse-racing. There are frequent entries of payments
made to the men who brought hawks, for hoods and bells, and for a hawk glove,
and hawks' meat. A certain Patrick Logan receives £32
(Scots) for 'goeing north with hauks;' on one occasion, 'my Lord goeing to the
hauking,' receives £5 16s.; on another, £12 14s. At that time there were
horse-races at Leith, which continued to be kept up till a comparatively recent
period. They had evidently been patronised by the Chancellor, for in his
accounts there appear such items as these—'To my Lord goeing to Leith to his
race, £8 8s.;' 'for weighing the men att Leith that rade, £1 8s.;' 'to the man
that ran the night before the race, 18s.;' 'item, to the two grooms, drink money
art winning the race at Leith, £8 8s.;' 'item, to the Edinburgh officers with
the cup, £14;' 'item, to the Smith boy plaitt the running horse feet, 14s.'
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