ottish nobles (1592)
as 'sister of umquhile Lord Methven.' Now Henry Stewart, Lord Methven
('Lord Muffin,' as Henry VIII used to call him), was the third husband of
the sister of Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor, wife, first of James IV, then
of the Earl of Angus (by whom she had Margaret, Countess of Lennox, and
grandmother of James VI), then of Lord Methven. Now if Margaret Tudor
had issue by Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, and if that issue was Dorothea,
mother of John, third Earl of Gowrie, or was Dorothea's father or mother,
that Earl was Elizabeth's cousin. Now Burnet, touching on the Gowrie
mystery, says that his own father had 'taken great pains to inquire into
that matter, and did always believe it was a real conspiracy. . . . Upon
the King's death, Gowrie stood next to the succession of the crown of
England,' namely, as descended from Margaret Tudor by Henry (Burnet says
'Francis'!), Lord Methven. Margaret and Methven, says Burnet, had a son,
'made Lord Methven by James V. In the patent he is called _frater noster
uterinus_'--'Our brother uterine.' '_He_ had only a daughter, who was
mother or grandmother to the Earl of Gowrie, so that by this he might be
glad to put the King out of the way, that so he might stand next to the
succession of the crown of England.' {249} If this were true, the
meaning of Gowrie's device would be flagrantly conspicuous. But where is
that patent of James V? Burnet conceivably speaks of it on the
information of his father, who 'took great pains to inquire into the
particulars of that matter,' so that he could tell his son, 'one thing
which none of the historians have taken any notice of,' namely, our
Gowrie's Tudor descent, and his claims (failing James _and his issue_) to
the crown of England. Now Burnet's father was almost a contemporary of
the Gowrie affair. Of the preachers of that period, the King's enemies,
Burnet's father knew Mr. Davidson (_ob._ 1603) and Mr. Robert Bruce, and
had listened to their prophecies. 'He told me,' says Burnet, 'of many of
their predictions that he himself heard them throw out, which had no
effect.' Davidson was an old man in 1600; Bruce, for his disbelief in
James's account of the conspiracy, was suspended in that year, though he
lived till 1631, and, doubtless, prophesied in select circles. Mr. Bruce
long lay concealed in the house of Burnet's great-grandmother, daughter
of Sir John Arnot, a witness in the trial of Logan of Restalrig. Thus
Bur