A fight began; Cranstoun was
wounded; he and his friends fled, leaving Gowrie, who had been run
through the body by Ramsay. All this while the other door of the long
Gallery Chamber was ringing under the hammer-strokes of Lennox and his
company, and the town bell was summoning the citizens. Erskine and
Ramsay now locked the door opening on the narrow stair, at which the
retainers of Gowrie struck with axes. The King's party, by means of a
hammer handed by their friends through a hole in the other door of the
gallery, forced the lock, and admitted Lennox, Mar, and the rest of
the King's retinue. They let James out of a small turret opening from
the Gallery Chamber, and, after some dealings with the angry mob and
the magistrates of Perth, they conveyed the King to Falkland after
nightfall.
The whole results were the death of Gowrie and of his brother, the
Master (his body it was that lay at the foot of the narrow staircase),
and a few wounds to Ramsay, Dr. Herries, and some of Gowrie's
retainers.
The death of the Master of Ruthven was explained thus:--When James
cried 'Treason!' young Ramsay, from the stable door, had heard his
voice, but not his words.
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