Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/117

 completing the sum of thirty-eight thousand marks agreed on for the lands of Flemyng-town. There is also a grant to Alexander Home of Renton, the Earl of Dunbar's cousin-german, of certain leases and titles that had belonged to the late Robert Logan of Restalrig.

King James destroyed a good deal of documentary evidence relating to the deaths of Prince Henry and Sir Thomas Overbury, but the Gowrie business was a job too tough for him, even with the help of such faithful coadjutors as the Earl of Dunbar and Lord Balmerinoch, who were dangerous men to sell estates to in those days, when Scotland had the felicity to be ruled by the sixth James Stuart.

For the accomplishment of their own and their royal master's purpose this Prime Minister Dunbar, and this Secretary of State Balmerinoch, fixed upon a certain notary named George Sprot, This Sprot had the character of being very expert in imitating handwriting, and was made use of by the Earl of Dunbar, to be an agent in his scheme of making his Majesty's story of his adventures at Gowrie House "hang more handsomely together;" being partly