Though nine years later, in
England, the Privy Council acquitted Oliphant of concealing treason,
had he not escaped from Edinburgh in December 1600 the whole case
might have been made clear, for witnesses were then at hand.
We conclude that, as there certainly was a Ruthven plot, as the King
could not possibly have invented and carried out the affair, and that
as Gowrie, the leader of the Kirk party, was young, romantic, and
'Italianate,' he did plan a device of the regular and usual kind, but
was frustrated, and fell into the pit which he had digged. But the
Presbyterians would never believe that the young leader of the Kirk
party attempted what the leaders of the godly had often done, and far
more frequently had conspired to do, with the full approval of Cecil
and Elizabeth. The plot was an orthodox plot, but, to this day,
historians of Presbyterian and Liberal tendencies prefer to believe
that the King was the conspirator. The dead Ruthvens were long
lamented, and even in the nineteenth century the mothers, in
Perthshire, sang to their babes, 'Sleep ye, sleep ye, my bonny Earl o'
Gowrie.'[15]
[Footnote 15: The story, with many new documents, is discussed at
quite full length in the author's _King James and the Gowrie Mystery_,
Longmans, 1902.
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