Andrew Lang

James VI and the Gowrie Mystery Andrew Lang

There are enigmas in the annals of most peoples; riddles put by the Sphinx of the Past tothe curious of the new generations. These questions do not greatly concern the scientifichistorian, who is busy with constitution-making, statistics, progress, degeneration, in shortwith human evolution. These high matters, these streams of tendency, form the staple ofhistory, but the problems of personal character and action still interest some inquiringminds. Among these enigmas nearly the most obscure, 'The Gowrie Conspiracy, ' is ourtopic. This affair is one of the haunting mysteries of the past, one of the problems that nobody hassolved. The events occurred in 1600, but the interest which they excited was so keen thatbelief in the guilt or innocence of the two noble brothers who perished in an Augustafternoon, was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants, thestrife of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since attracted the curious, as dothe enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true character of Richard III, the real face behind 'TheIron Mask, ' the identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence or guilt of Mary Stuart. In certain respects the Gowrie mystery is necessarily less attractive than that of 'the fairestand most pitiless Queen on earth.' There is no woman in the story. The world, of course, when the Ruthvens died, at once acted on the maxim, cherchez la femme. The woman in thecase, men said, was the beautiful Queen, Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI. That fair andfrivolous dame, 'very very woman, ' certainly did her best, by her behaviour, to encouragethe belief that she was the cause of these sorr