have spared Mr. Alexander, but being moved for the
time, the motion' (passion) 'prevailed.' He swore, in answer to a
question, that, in the morning, he loved the Master 'as his brother.'

Bruce was now convinced that James left Falkland innocent of evil
purpose, but, as he was in a passion and revengeful, while struggling
with the Master, 'he could not be innocent before God.'

Here we leave Mr. Bruce. He signed a declaration of belief in James's
narrative; public apologies in the pulpit he would not make. He was
banished to Inverness, and was often annoyed and 'put at,' James
reckoning him a firebrand.

The result, on the showing of the severe and hostile Calderwood, is that,
in Bruce's opinion, in June 1602, James was guiltless of a plot against
the Ruthvens. The King's crime was, not that strangely complicated
project of a double murder, to be inferred from the Ruthven apology, but
words spoken in the heat of blood. Betrayed, captured, taunted,
insulted, struggling with a subject whom he had treated kindly, James
cried to Ramsay 'Strike low!' He knew not the nature and extent of the
conspiracy against him, he knew not what knocking that was at the door of
the chamber, and he told Ramsay to strike; we have no assurance that the
wounds were deadly.

This is how the matter now appeared to Mr. Bruce. The King swore very
freely to the truth of his tale, and that influenced Bruce, but the
King's candour as to what passed in his own mind, when he bade Ramsay
strike Ruthven, is more convincing, to a modern critic, than his oaths.
For some reason, Bruce's real point, that he was satisfied of the King's
innocence of a plot, but not satisfied as regards his yielding to passion
when attacked, is ignored by the advocates of the Ruthvens. Mr. Barbe
observes: 'What slight success there ever was remained on Bruce's side,
for, in one conference, he drew from the King the confession that he
might have saved Ruthven's life, and brought him to justice.' That
confession shows unexpected candour in James, but does not in the
slightest degree implicate him in a conspiracy, and of a conspiracy even
the rigid Bruce now acquitted the King. Mr. Pitcairn, at first a strong
King's man, in an appendix to his third volume credits Bruce with the
best of the argument. This he does, illogically, because the King never
ceased to persecute Bruce, whom he thought a firebrand. However wicked
this conduct of James may have been, it in no wa