eal
creed, Bothwell must have known the truth, through Home, a reluctant
convert to Presbyterianism, who went from Paris to Brussels to meet
Bothwell, leaving Gowrie in Paris, just before Home and Gowrie openly,
and, as it was said, Bothwell secretly, returned to Scotland in April
1600. Was the Gowrie conspiracy a Bothwellian plot? {129a}

We know little more about Gowrie, after his letters of 1595, till, on
August 18, 1599, Colville reports to Cecil that the party of the Kirk
(who were now without a leader among the greater nobles) intend to summon
home the Earl. {129b} He is said to have stayed for three months at
Geneva with Beza, the famous reformer, who was devoted to him. He was in
Paris, in February and March 1600. The English ambassador, Neville,
recommended Gowrie to Cecil, as 'a man of whom there may be exceeding
good use made.' Elizabeth and Cecil were then on the worst terms with
James. At Paris, Gowrie would meet Lord Home, who, as we have said and
shall prove in a later connection, had an interview with the exiled
Bothwell, still wandering, plotting and threatening descents on Scotland
(p. 206).

On April 3, Gowrie was in London. {130a} He was very well received; 'a
cabinet of plate,' it is said, was given to him by Elizabeth; what else
passed we do not know. In May Gowrie returned to Scotland, and rode into
Edinburgh among a cavalcade of his friends. According to Sir John Carey,
writing to Cecil, from Berwick, on May 29, James displayed jealousy of
Gowrie, 'giving him many jests and pretty taunts,' on his reception by
Elizabeth, and 'marvelling that the ministers met him not.' {130b}
Calderwood adds a rumour that James, talking of Gowrie's entry to
Edinburgh, said, 'there were more with his father when he went to the
scaffold.' Again, as the Earl leaned on the King's chair at breakfast,
James talked of dogs and hawks, and made an allusion to the death of
Riccio, in which Gowrie's father and grandfather took part.

These are rumours; it is certain that the King (June 20) gave Gowrie a
year's respite from pursuit of his creditors, to whom he was in debt for
moneys owed to him by the Crown, expenditure by the late Earl of Gowrie
when in power (1583). {131a} It is also certain that Gowrie opposed the
King's demands for money, in a convention of June 21. {131b} But so did
Lord President Fyvie, who never ceased to be James's trusted minister,
and later, Chancellor, under the title of Earl of Dunfe