of his
device in a blackamore, yield to any intelligent and honest beholder?'
{247}

From Baldi's letter we learn that, in the device left by Gowrie at Padua,
the figure pointing a sword at the crown was a negro, thus varying from
the figure in Workman's MS., and that in the illuminated copy emblazoned
in 1597, and possessed in 1716 by Crawfurd. Next, we learn that Sir
Robert Douglas had heard talk of this emblem in Scotland, before he left
for Italy. Lastly, a _mot_ on the subject by the Earl himself was
reported, to the effect that the device set forth 'in a shadow,' what was
intended to be executed 'in very deed.'

Now how could Sir Robert Douglas, in Scotland, hear talk of what had been
done and said years ago by Gowrie in Padua? Sir Robert Douglas was
descended from Archibald Douglas of Glenbervie (_ob._ 1570), who was
ancestor of the Catholic Earl of Angus (_flor._ 1596). This Archibald of
Glenbervie had a son, Archibald, named in his father's testament, but
otherwise unknown. {248} Rather senior to Gowrie at the University of
Padua, and in the same faculty of law, was an Archibald Douglas. He may
have been a kinsman of Sir Robert Douglas, himself of the Glenbervie
family, and from him Sir Robert, while still in Scotland, may have heard
of Gowrie's device, left by him at Padua, and of his _mot_ about _in
umbra_ and _in facto_. But, even if these two Douglases were not akin,
or did not meet, still Keith, Lindsay, and Ker of Newbattle, all
contemporaries of Gowrie at Padua, might bring home the report of
Gowrie's enigmatic device, and of his _mot_ there-anent. Had the emblem
been part of the regular arms of Ruthven, Sir Robert Douglas, and every
Scot of quality, would have known all about it, and seen no mystery in
it.

It will scarcely be denied that the assumption by Gowrie of the figure in
his livery, pointing a sword at the crown, and exclaiming 'For Thee
Only,' does suggest that wildly ambitious notions were in the young man's
mind. What other sense can the emblem bear? How can such ideas be
explained?

In an anonymous and dateless MS. cited in 'The Life of John Earl of
Gowrie,' by the Rev. John Scott of Perth (1818), it is alleged that
Elizabeth, in April 1600, granted to Gowrie, then in London, the guard
and honours appropriate to a Prince of Wales. The same Mr. Scott
suggests a Royal pedigree for Gowrie. His mother, wife of William, first
Earl, was Dorothea Stewart, described in a list of Sc