ge.

The King knew Henderson (so the anonymous Goodman of Pitmillie said), but
did not recognise the man in the turret. It was reported that Patrick
Galloway, the king's chaplain, induced Henderson to pretend to be the man
in the turret.

As to the good man of Pitmillie, Calderwood did not even know his name.
This is mere gossip.

Again, Calderwood, who offers these criticisms, does not ask why, of all
concerned, Henderson was the only man that fled who had not been seen in
connection with the fray and the tumult. If he was not the man of the
turret, and if Andrew Ruthven, who also had ridden to Falkland, did not
abscond, why did Henderson?

As to the man in the turret, if not a retainer of Ruthven, he was a
minion of James, or there was no man at all. If there was no man at all,
could James be so absurd as to invent him, on the off chance that
somebody, anybody, would turn up, and claim to have been the man? That
is, frankly, incredible. But if James managed to insert a man into the
turret, he was not so silly as not to have his man ready to produce in
evidence. Yet Henderson could not be produced, he had fled, and
certainly had not come in by August 12, when he was proclaimed.

That James had introduced and suborned Henderson and that Henderson fled
to give tone and colour to his narrative, is not among the most probable
of conjectures. I do not find that this desperate hypothesis was put
forward at the time. It could not be, for apologists averred (1) that
Henderson was eating an egg in the kitchen: (2) that he was waiting on
the gentlemen in the hall, at the moment when, by the desperate
hypothesis, he was, by some machination of James, in the turret: (3)
there is a third myth, a Perth tradition, that Henderson had been at
Scone all day, and first heard the tragic news, when all was over, as, on
his return, he crossed the bridge over Tay. As it is incredible that
there was no man in the turret at all, and that James took the outside
chance that somebody, anybody, would claim to be the man; the assailants
of the King must offer a working hypothesis of this important actor in
the drama. My own fancy can suggest none. Was he in four places at
once, in the kitchen, in the hall, on the bridge, and in the turret? If
he was in the kitchen, in the hall, or on the bridge, why did he
instantly abscond? If _James_ put him in the turret, why did he fly?

The King's word, I repeat, was the word that no man cou