In that letter (of Logan to Gowrie) he is made to speak of
their scheme as analogous to one contrived against 'a nobleman of
Padua,' where Gowrie had studied. This remark, in a postscript, can
hardly have been invented by the forger, Sprot, a low country
attorney, a creature of Logan's. All the other letters are mere
variations on the tune set by this piece.
A plot of this kind is, at least, not impossible, like the quite
incredible conspiracy attributed to James. The scheme was only one of
scores of the same sort, constantly devised at that time. The thing
next to impossible is that Henderson was left, as he declared, in the
turret, by Ruthven, without being tutored in his _role_. The King's
party did not believe that Henderson here told truth; he had accepted
the _role_, they said, but turned coward. This is the more likely as,
in December 1600, a gentleman named Robert Oliphant, a retainer of
Gowrie, fled from Edinburgh, where certain revelations blabbed by him
had come into publicity. He had said that, in Paris, early in 1600,
Gowrie moved him to take the part of the armed man in the turret; that
he had 'with good reason dissuaded him; that the Earl thereon left him
and dealt with Henderson in that matter; that Henderson undertook it
and yet fainted'--that is, turned craven.
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