rran. They advised him to write to the
King confessing that he had been in several conspiracies against his
person which he could reveal in a private interview. 'I should confess
an untruth,' said Gowrie, 'and frame my own indictment.'

The letter, the others urged, being general, would move the King's
curiosity: he would grant an interview, at which Gowrie might say that
the letter was only an expedient to procure a chance of stating his own
case.

Gowrie, naturally, rejected so perilous a practice.

'You _must_ confess the foreknowledge of these things,' said Arran, 'or
you must die.'

Gowrie replied that, if assured of his life, he would take the advice.
Arran gave his word of honour that Gowrie should be safe. He wrote the
letter, he received no answer, but was sent to Stirling. He was tried,
nothing was proved against him, and Arran produced his letter before the
Court. Gowrie was called, confessed to his handwriting, and told the
tale of Arran's treachery, which he repeated to the people from the
scaffold.

This is, briefly, the statement of a newsletter to England, written, as
usual, against the Government, and in the Protestant interest. {121a} A
manuscript in the British Museum gives a somewhat different version.
{121b} One charge against Gowrie, we learn, was that of treasonable
intercommuning with Hume of Godscroft, an envoy of the Earl of Angus,
who, before Gowrie's arrest, was arranging a conspiracy. This charge was
perfectly true. Godscroft, in his History of the Douglases (ii.
317-318), describes the circumstances, and mentions the very gallery
whose door resisted Lennox and Mar on August 5, 1600. Godscroft rode
from the Earl of Angus to Gowrie in his house at Perth. 'Looking very
pitifully upon his gallery, where we were walking at that time, which he
had but newly built and decored with pictures, he brake out into these
words, having first fetched a deep sigh. "_Cousin_" says he, "_is there
no remedy_? _Et impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit_? _Barbarus
has segetes_?" Whereupon Godscroft was persuaded of his sincerity, and
at his return persuaded the Earl of Angus thereof also.' So the plot
went on, Gowrie pretending that he meant to leave the country, says his
accomplice, Godscroft, while both the Court and the conspirators were
uncertain as to his trimming intentions. He trimmed too long; he was
taken, the plot exploded and failed. Gowrie was thus within the danger
of t