ories easily show how James trapped the
Master. He had only to lure him into a room, and cry 'Treason.' Then,
even if untutored in his part, some hot-headed young man like Ramsay
would stab Ruthven. But to deal with Gowrie was a more difficult task.
He would be out in the open, surrounded by men like Lennox and Mar, great
nobles, and his near kinsmen. They would attest the innocence of the
Earl. They must therefore be separated from him, lured away to attack
the locked door, while Gowrie would stand in the street asking 'What is
the matter?' though James had told him, and detained by the Murrays till
they saw fit to let him and Cranstoun go within the gate, alone. Then,
knowing the topography, Gowrie and Cranstoun would necessarily make for
the murder-chamber, by the dark stair, and perish. The Royal wit never
conceived a subtler plot, it is much cleverer than that invented by Mr.
G. P. R. James, in his novel, 'Gowrie.' Nothing is wrong with the system
of the apologist, except that the facts are false, and the idea a trifle
too subtle, while, instead of boldly saying that the King had the gallery
chamber locked against his friends, the apologist never hints at that
circumstance.

We have to help the contemporary vindicator out, by adding the detail of
the locked door (which he did not see how to account for and therefore
omitted), and by explaining that the King had it locked himself, that
Lennox, Mar, and the rest might not know the real state of the case, and
that Gowrie might be trapped through taking the other way, by the narrow
staircase.

An author so conspicuously mendacious as he who wrote the Apology for
English consumption is unworthy of belief on any point. It does not
follow that Henderson was really at Falkland because the apologist says
that he was. But it would appear that this vindicator could not well
deny the circumstance, and that, to work it conveniently into his fable,
he had to omit the King's hunting, and to contradict the Hays and
Moncrieff by making Henderson arrive at Perth after twelve instead of
about ten o'clock.

The value of the Apology, so long overlooked, is to show how very poor a
case was the best that the vindicator of the Ruthvens was able to
produce. But no doubt it was good enough for people who wished to
believe. {93}

VIII. THE THEORY OF AN ACCIDENTAL BRAWL

So far, the King's narrative is least out of keeping with probability.

But had James been insul