Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/113

 Spottiswood distincly confirms what has been stated from the records, that no letter was produced at Sprot's trial. In his History, after saying that Sprot had deponed—

"'That he knew Robert Logan of Restalrig, who was dead two years before, to have been privy to Gowrie's conspiracy, and that he understood so much by a letter [not letters] that fell in his hand, written by Restalrig to Gowrie, bearing that he would take part with him in the revenge of his father's death, and that his best course should be to bring the King by sea to Fast Castle, where he might be safely kept till advertisement came from those with whom the Earl kept intelligence,'—"

He adds the following sentence:—

"'It seemed a very fiction, and to be a mere conceit of the man's own brain; for neither did he show the letter, nor could any wise man think that Gowrie, who went about that treason so secretly, would have communicated the matter with such a man as this Restalrig was known to be.'"

King James was a tough morsel for courtly writers such as Archbishop Spottiswood and Sir Walter Scott. Spottiswood settles the matter by