 CHAPTER VI. THE MISTERY OF CASPAR HOUSER. THE CHILD OF EUROPE. THE STORY OF CASPAR HOUSER. A boy, apparently idiotic, who appeared as if from the clouds in Nuremberg, 1828, divided Germany into hostile parties and caused legal proceedings as late as 1883. Whence this lad came, and what his previous adventures had been, has never been ascertained. His death by a dagger wound in 1833, whether inflicted by his own hand or that of another, deepened the mystery. According to one view, the boy was only a waif and an impostor who had strayed from some peasant home where nobody desired his return. According to the other theory, he was the crown prince of Baden, stolen as an infant in the interests of a junior branch of the house, reduced to imbecility by systematic ill treatment, turned loose on the world at the age of 16, and finally murdered, lest his secret origin might be discovered. I state first the theory of the second party in the dispute, which believed that Caspar was some great one. I employ language as romantic as my vocabulary affords. Darkness in Karlsruhe, tis the high noon of night, October 15, 1812, hark to the tread of the twelve hours as they pass on the palace clock and join their comrades that have been. The vast corridors are still, in the shadows lurk two burly minions of ambitious crime, Burkhart and Sauerbeck. Is that a white moving shadow which approaches through the gloom? There arises a shriek, a heavy body falls, tis a lackey who has seen and recognized the white lady of the Grand Ducal House that walks before the deaths of princes. Burkhart and Sauerbeck spurn the inanimate body of the menial witness. The white figure, bearing in her arms a sleeping child, glides to the tapestryed wall and vanishes through it into the chamber of the crown prince, a babe of fourteen days. She returns, carrying another unconscious infant form. She places it in the hands of the ruffian Sauerbeck. She disappears. The miscreant speeds with the child through a post turn into the park. You hear the trample of four horses, and the roll of the carriage on the road. Next day there is silence in the palace, broken but by the shrieks of a bereaved, though royal, or at least Grand Ducal, mother. Her babe lies a corpse. The crown prince has died in the night. The path to the throne lies open to the offspring of the Countess von Hochberg, Morganatic wife of the reigning prince, Carl Friedrich, and the mother of the children of Ludwig Wilhelm August, his youngest son. Sixteen years fleet by, years rich in royal crimes. Tis four of a golden wit Monday afternoon in Old Nuremberg, May 26, 1828. The town lies empty, dusty, silent. Her merry people are rejoicing in the green wood and among the suburban beer gardens. One man alone, a shoemaker, stands by the door of his house in the Unschlitt Place. Around him lie the vacant streets of the sleeping city. His eyes rest on the form, risen as it were, out of the earth, or fallen from the skies, of a boy, strangely clad, speechless, incapable either of standing erect or of moving his limbs. That boy is the royal infant, placed of yore by the white shadow in the hands of the cloaked Ruffian. Thus does the crown prince of Baden return from the darkness to the daylight. He names himself Casparhauser. He is to die by the dagger of a cruel courtier, or of a hireling English earl. Thus briefly, and I trust impressively, have I sketched the history of Casparhauser, the child of Europe, as it was presented by various foreign pamphleteers, and in 1892 by Miss Elizabeth E. Evans. But, as for the authentic records on which the partisans of Casparhauser based their version, they are anonymous, unauthenticated, discredited by the results of a libel action in 1883, and, in short, are worthless and impudent rubbish. On all sides, indeed, the evidence as to Casparhauser is in bewildering confusion. In 1832, four years after his appearance, a book about him was published by Paul John Anselm von Feuerbach. The man was mortal, had been a professor, and, though a legal reformer and a learned jurist, was a nervous invalid when he wrote, and he soon after died of paralysis, or poison, according to Casparites. He was approaching a period of life in which British judges write books to prove that Bacon was Shakespeare, and his arguments were like theirs. His Casparhauser is composed in a violently injudicial style. To seek the giant perpetrator of such a crime, as the injustice to Caspar, it would be necessary to be in possession of Joshua's ram's horns, or at least of Oberon's horn, in order, for some time at least, to suspend the activity of the powerful enchanted colossi that guard the golden gates of certain castles, that is, of the palace at Carl's room. Such early Nuremberg records of Caspar's first exploits as existed were ignored by Feuerbach, who told Lord Stanhope that any reader of these would conceive Caspar to be an imposter, they ought to be burned. The records, which were read and in part published by the young Meyer, son of one of Caspar's tutors, and by President Carl Schmaus, have disappeared, and in 1883 Schmaus could only attest the general accuracy of Meyer's excerpts from the town's manuscripts. Taking Feuerbach's romantic narrative of 1832, we find him avering that about 4.30 p.m. on Whitmonday, May 26, 1828, a citizen, unnamed, was loitering at his door in the Unschlitt-plus Nuremberg, intending to sally out by the new gate when he saw a young peasant standing in an attitude suggestive of intoxication and apparently suffering from locomotor ataxia unable to govern fully the movements of his legs. The citizen went to the boy who showed him a letter directed to the captain of a cavalry regiment. The gallant captain lived near the new gate, 654 paces from the citizen's house, and thither the young peasant walked with the citizen. So he could govern fully the movements of his legs. At the house, the captain being out, the boy said, I would be a horseman as my father was. Also, don't know. Later he was taken to the prison, up a steep hill, and the ascent to his room was one of over 90 steps. Thus he could certainly walk, and when he spoke of himself he said, I, like other people. Later he took to speaking of himself as Kaspar, in the manner of small children and some hysterical patients under hypnotism. But this was an afterthought, for Kaspar's line came to be that he had only learned a few words, like a parrot, words which he used to express all senses indifferently. His eyesight, when he first appeared, seems to have been normal. At the prison he wrote his own name as Kaspar Hauser, and covered a sheet of paper with writing. Later he could see best in the dark. So says Feuerbach in 1832. What he does not say is whence he got his information as to Kaspar's earliest exploits. Now our earliest evidence on oath before a magistrate is dated November 4, 1829. Feuerbach's anonymous citizen then swore that on May 26, 1828 he saw Kaspar not making paralyzed efforts to walk, but trudging down a hilly street, shouting high, or any loud cry, and presently asking with tolerable distinctness, Newgate Street? He took the boy that way, and the boy gave him the letter for the captain. Weichmann said that they had better ask for him at the Newgate guardhouse, and the boy said, Guardhouse? Guardhouse? Newgate no doubt just built? He said he came from Rattusban, and was in Nuremberg for the first time, but clearly did not understand what Weichmann meant when he inquired as to the chances of war breaking out. In May 1834 Weichmann repeated his evidence as to Kaspar's power of talking and walking, and was corroborated by one Jacob Beck, not heard of in 1829. On December 20, 1829, Merck, the captain's servant, spoke to Kaspar's fatigue. He reeled as he walked, and would answer no questions. In 1834 Merck expanded and said, We had a long chat. Kaspar averred that he could read and write, and had crossed the frontier daily on his way to school. He did not know where he came from. Certainly Merck in 1834 remembered much more than in 1829. Whether he suppressed facts in 1829, or in 1834 invented fables, we do not know. The cavalry captain, November 2, 1829, remembered several intelligent remarks made by Kaspar. His dress was new and clean, denied by Feuerbach. He was tired and foot sore. The evidence of the police, taken in 1834, was remote in time, but went to prove that Kaspar's eyesight and power of writing were normal. Feuerbach absolutely discredits all the sworn evidence of 1829 without giving his own sources. The early evidence shows that Kaspar could both walk and talk, and see normally, by artificial and natural light, all of which is absolutely inconsistent with Kaspar's later account of himself. The personal property of Kaspar was a horn rosary, and several Catholic tracts with prayers to the guardian angel, and so forth. Feuerbach holds that these were furnished by devout villains, a very sound Protestant was Feuerbach, and that Kaspar was ignorant of the being of a deity, at least of a Protestant deity. The letter carried by the boy said that the writer first took charge of him as an infant in 1812, and had never let him take a single step out of my house. I have already taught him to read and write, and he writes my handwriting exactly as I do. In the same hand was a letter in Latin characters purporting to come from Kaspar's mother, a poor girl, as the author of the German letter was a poor day laborer. Humbug, as I take Kaspar to have been, I'm not sure that he wrote these pieces. If not, somebody else was in the affair, somebody who wanted to get rid of Kaspar. As that youth was a useless, false, convulsionary and hysterical patient, no one was likely to want to keep him, if he could do better. No specified reward was offered at the time for information about Kaspar. No portrait of him was then published and circulated. The burgamaster Binder had a portrait and a facsimile of Kaspar's signature engraved, but Feuerbach would not allow them to be circulated, heaven knows why. How Kaspar fell, as it were, from the clouds and unseen into the middle of Nuremberg, even on a holiday when almost everyone was out of town, is certainly a puzzle. The earliest witnesses took him for a journeyman tailor lad, he was about sixteen, and perhaps nobody paid any attention to a dusty traveling tradesman or groom out of place. Feuerbach, who did not see Kaspar till July, says that his feet were covered with blisters. The jailer says that they were merely swollen by the tightness of his boots. Once in prison, Kaspar, who asked to be taken home, adopted the role of a semi-unconscious animal, playing with toy horses, blind though he saw, yet not long after he wrote a minute account of all that he had then observed. He could only eat bread and water, meat made him shudder. And Lord Stanhope says that this peculiarity did occur in the cases of some peasant soldiers. He had no sense of hearing, which means, perhaps, that he did not think of pretending to be amazed by the sound of church bells till he had been in prison for some days. Till then he had been deaf to their noise. This is Feuerbach's story, but we shall see that it is contradicted by Kaspar himself in writing. Thus the alleged facts may be explained without recourse even to a theory of intermittent deafness. Kaspar was no more deaf than blind. He was all there, and though ten days after his arrival he denied that he had ever seen Viceman, in ten days more his memory for faces was deemed extraordinary, and he minutely described all that on May 26 and later he had observed. Kaspar was taught to write by the jailer's little boy, though he could write when he came, in the same hand as the author of his mysterious letter. Though he had but half a dozen words on May 26, according to Feuerbach, by July 7 he had furnished Binder with his history. Pretty quick work! Later in 1828 he was able to write that history himself. In 1829 he completed a work of autobiography. Kaspar wrote that till the age of sixteen he was kept in a prison, perhaps six or seven feet long, four broad and five high. There were two small windows with closed black wooden shutters. He lay on straw, lived on bread and water, and played with toy horses and blue and red ribbons. That he could see colours in total darkness is a proof of his inconsistent fables, or of his hyperesthesia, abnormal acuteness of the senses. The man who kept him was not less hyper aesthetic, for he taught Kaspar to write in the dark. He never heard any noise, but a verse that in prison he was alarmed by the town clock striking on the first morning. The Feuerbach says that he did not hear the bells for several days. Such is Kaspar's written account, 1829. The published account of July 1828, derived from the expressions of a half-dumb animal as Feuerbach puts it, is much more prolix and minute in detail. The animal said that he had sat on the ground and never seen daylight till he came to Nuremberg. He used to be hokest with water of an evil taste and wake in a clean shirt. The man once hit him and hurt him for making too much noise. The man taught him his letters and the Arabic numerals. Later he gave him instructions in the art of standing. Next he took him out and taught him about nine words. He was made by the man to walk he knew not how far or how long, the man leading him. Nobody saw this extraordinary pair on the march. Feuerbach, who maintains that Kaspar's feet were covered with cruel blisters from walking, also supposes that, perhaps for the greater part of the way, he was carried in a carriage or wagon. Whence then the cruel blisters caused by walking? There is medical evidence that his legs were distorted by confinement, but the medical post-mortem evidence says that this was not the case. He told Binder that his windows were shuttered. He told Hiltel, the jailer, that from his windows he saw a pile of wood and above it the top of a tree. Obviously Kaspar's legends about himself, whether spoken in June 1828 or written in February 1829, are absurdly false. He was for three weeks in the tower and was daily visited by the curious. Yet in these three weeks the half-conscious animal learned to read tolerably well, to count, to write figures. That he could do when he arrived, Feuerbach says. He made progress in writing a good hand and learned a simple tune on the harpsichord. Pretty well for a half-unconscious animal. In July 1828, after being adopted by the excited town of Nuremberg, he was sent to be educated by and live with a schoolmaster named Daumer and was studied by Feuerbach. They found in Kaspar a splendid example of the sensitive and a noble proof of the powers of animal magnetism. In Germany at this time much was talked and written about some nambulism, the hypnotic state, and about a kind of animal magnetism which in accordance with Mesmer's theory was supposed to pass between stars, metals, magnets, and human beings. The effects produced on the patient by the hypnotist, now ascribed to suggestion, were attributed to a magnetic efflux and Reichenbach's subjects saw strange currents flowing from metals and magnets. His experiments have never perhaps been successfully repeated, though hysterical persons have pretended to feel the traditional effects even when non-magnetic objects were pointed at them. Now Kaspar was really a sensitive, or feigned to be one, with hysterical cunning. Anything unusual would throw him into convulsions, or reduce him to unconsciousness. He was addicted to the tears of sensibility. Years later Meyer read to him an account of the Noakian deluge and he wept bitterly. Meyer thought this rather too much, the deluge being so remote an event, and after that, though Meyer read pathetic things in his best manner, Kaspar remained unmoved. He wrote a long account of his remarkable magnetic sensations during and before the first thunderstorm after his arrival at Nuremberg. Yet before his appearance there he must have heard plenty of thunderstorms, though he pretended that this was his first. The sight of the moon produced in him emotions of horror. He had visions, like the Reverend Anselborn, later to be described, of a beautiful male figure in a white garment who gave him a garland. He was taken to a somnambulist and felt magnetic pulls and pushes and a strong current of air. Indeed the tutor, Daumer, shared these sensations, obviously by virtue of suggestion. They are out of fashion, the doctrine of animal magnetism being as good as exploded, and nobody feels pushed or pulled or blown upon when he consults Mrs. Piper or any other medium. From a letter of Feuerbach of September 20, 1828, we learn that Kaspar, without being an albino, can see as well in utter darkness as in daylight. Perhaps the man who taught Kaspar to write, in the dark, was an albino. Kaspar never saw his face. Kaspar's powers of vision abated as he took to beef, but he remained hyper-aesthetic and could see better in a bad light than Daumer or Feuerbach. Some dousers we know can detect subterranean water by the sensations of their hands without using a twig or divining rod, and others can spot gold hidden under the carpet with the twig. Kaspar, merely with the bare hand, detected, without touching it, a needle under a tablecloth. He gradually lost these gifts and the theory seems to have been that they were the result of his imprisonment in the dark and a proof of it. The one thing certain is that Kaspar had the sensitive or mediumistic temperament, which usually, though not always, is accompanied by hysteria, while hysteria means cunning and fraud, whether conscious or not so conscious. Meanwhile, the boy was in the hands of men, credulous, curious, and, in the case of Daumer, capable of odd sensations induced by suggestion. From such a boy, in such company, the truth could not be expected. Above all, if, like some other persons of his class, he was subject to dissociation and obliviousness as to his own past. Rather curiously, we find in Feuerbach's own published collection of trials the case of a boy, Sorgal, who had paroxysms of second consciousness, of which he was ignorant upon returning to his ordinary state of consciousness. We also have the famous case of the atheistic carpenter, Anselborn, who was struck deaf, dumb and blind and miraculously healed in a dissenting chapel to the great comfort of a large and warm congregation. Mr. Born then became a preacher, but later forgot who he was, strolled to a distant part of the states, called himself Brown, set up a notions store and, one day, awoke among his notions to the consciousness that he was born not Brown, a preacher not a dealer in cheap futilities. Born was examined under hypnotism by Professor William James and others. Many such instances of ambulatory automatism are given. In my view, Caspar was, to put it mildly, an ambulatory automatist who had strayed away, like the Reverend Mr. Born, from some place where nobody desired his return. Rather, his lifelong absence was an object of hope. The longer Caspar lived, the more frequently was he detected in every sort of imposter that could make him notorious or enable him to shirk work. Caspar had for months been the pet mystery of Nuremberg. People were sure that, like the mysterious prisoner of Pinyarol, Les Exiles, and the ill Saint Marguerite, 1669 to 1703, Caspar was some great one kept out of his own. Now, the prisoner of Pinyarol was really a valet, and Caspar was a peasant. Some thought him a son of Napoleon. Others averred, as we saw, that he was the infant son of the Grand Duke Carl of Baden, born in 1812, who had not died within a fortnight of his birth, but been spirited away by a lady disguised as the spectral White Lady of Baden, an aristocratic banshee. The subtle conspirators had bred the Grand Duke Caspar in a dark den, the theory ran, hoping that he would prove, by virtue of such education, an acceptable recruit for the Bavarian cavalry, and that no questions would be asked. Unluckily, questions were now being asked, for a boy who could only occasionally see and hear was not, though he could smell a cemetery at a distance of five hundred yards, a useful man on a patrol. At least the military authorities thought not. Had they known that Caspar could see in the dark, they might have kept him as a guide in night attacks, but they did not know. The promising young Hussar, he rode well but clumsily, was thus left in the hands of civilians. The Grand Ducal secret might be discovered, so an assassin was sent to take off the young Prince. The wonder was not unnaturally expressed that Caspar had not smelled out the villain, especially as he was probably the educational albino who taught him to write in the dark. On hearing of this later, Caspar told Lord Stanhope that he had smelled the man. However, he did not mention this at the time. To make a long story short, on October 17, 1829, Caspar did not come to midday eating, but was found weltering in his gore in the cellar of Daumer's house. Being offered refreshment in a cup, he bit out a piece of the porcelain and swallowed it. He had an inconsiderable wound on the forehead. To that extent, the assassin had affected his purpose. Feuerbach thinks that the murderer had made a shot at Caspar's throat with a razor, that Caspar ducked cleverly and got it on the brow, and that the assassin believed his crime to be consummated and fled after uttering words in which Caspar recognized the voice of his tutor, the possible albino. No albino or other suspicious character was observed. Herr Daumer, before this cruel outrage, had remarked in Caspar a highly regrettable tendency to dissimulation and untruthfulness, and, just before the attack, had told the pupil that he was a humbug. Lord Stanhope quoted a paper of Daumer's in the Universal Gazette of February 6, 1834, in which he says that lying and deceit were become to Caspar a second nature. When did they begin to become a second nature? In any case, Daumer clove to the romantic theory of Caspar's origin. Caspar left Daumer's house and stayed with various good people, being accompanied by a policeman in his walks. He was sent to school, and Feuerbach bitterly complains that he was compelled to study the Latin grammar, and finally even Caesar's commentaries. Like other boys, Caspar protested that he did not see the use of Latin, and indeed many of our modern authors too obviously share Caspar's indifference to the dead languages. He laughed in 1831, says Feuerbach, at the popish superstition of his early attendance. We only hear of one, and about his theological predilections we learn nothing. And he also laughed at ghosts. In his new homes Caspar lied terribly, was angry when detected, and wounded himself, he said accidentally, with a pistol, after being reproached for shirking the commentaries of Julius Caesar, and for mendacity. He was very vain, very agreeable as long as no one found fault with him, very lazy, and very sentimental. In May 1831, Lord Standhope, who since the attack on Caspar in 1829 had been curious about him, came to Nuremberg and took up the hero with fantastic fondness. Though he recognized Caspar's mythopeic tendencies, he believed him to be the victim of some nefarious criminals, and offered a reward of 500 florins anonymously for information. It was never claimed. Already had arisen a new theory, that Caspar was the son of a Hungarian magnate. Later, Lord Standhope averred on oath that inquiries made in Hungary proved Caspar to be an imposter. In 1830, a man named Muller, who had been a Protestant preacher and was now a Catholic priest, denounced a preacher named Worth and a Miss Dalbon, a governess, as kidnappers of Caspar from the family of a countess living near Pest. Muller was exposed, his motives were revealed, and the newspapers told the story. Caspar was therefore tried with Hungarian words and seemed to recognize some, especially Pushanbja, Presberg. He thought that someone had said that his father was at Presberg, and thither Lord Standhope sent him with Lieutenant Hickl. This was in 1831, but Caspar recognized nothing. His companions, however, found that he pretended to be asleep in the carriage to hear what was said about him. They ceased to speak of him, and Caspar ceased to slumber. A later expedition into Hungary by Hickl, in February 1832, on the strength of more Hungarian excitement on Caspar's part, discovered that there was nothing to discover, and shook the credulity of Lord Standhope. He could not believe Caspar's narrative, but still hoped that he had been terrorized into falsehood. He could not believe both that the albino had never spoken to Caspar in his prison, and also that the man always taught me to do what I was told. To Lord Standhope, Caspar averred that the man with whom he had always lived said nothing to him till he was on his journey. Yet during his imprisonment the man had taught him, he declared, the phrases which, by his account, were all the words that he knew when he arrived at Nuremberg. For these and other obvious reasons, Lord Standhope, though he had relieved Nuremberg of Caspar, November 1831, and made ample provision for him, was deeply skeptical about his narrative. The town of Nuremberg had already tried to shift the load of Caspar onto the shoulders of the Bavarian government. Lord Standhope did not adopt him, but undertook to pay for his maintenance, and left him, in January 1832, under the charge of a Dr. Meyer at Ansbach. He had a curator and a guardian, and escaped from the commentaries of Julius Caesar into the genial society of Feuerbach. That jurist died in May 1833, poisoned, say, the Casparites. A new guardian was appointed, and Caspar lived with Dr. Meyer. Finding him incurably untruthful, the doctor ceased to provoke him by comments on his inaccuracies, and Caspar got a small, clerically place. With this he was much dissatisfied, for he, like Feuerbach, had expected Lord Standhope to take him to England. Feuerbach, in the dedication to Lord Standhope of his book, 1832, writes, Beyond the sea in fair old England, you have prepared for him a secure retreat, until the rising son of truth shall have dispersed the darkness which still hangs over his mysterious fate. If Lord Standhope ever made this promise, his growing skepticism about Caspar prevented him from fulfilling it. On December 9, 1833, Meyer was much provoked by Caspar's inveterate falseness, and said that he did not know how to face Lord Standhope, who was expected to visit Ansbach at Christmas. For some weeks Caspar had been sulky, and there had been questions about a journal which he was supposed to keep, but would not show. He was now especially resentful. On two earlier occasions, after a scene with his tutor, Caspar had been injured, once by the assassin who cut his forehead, once by a pistol accident. On December 14 he rushed into Dr. Meyer's room, pointed to his side, and led Meyer to a place distant about five hundred yards from his house. So agitated was he that Meyer would go no further, especially as Caspar would answer no questions. On their return Caspar said, went court garden, man had a knife, gave a bag, struck, I ran as I could, bag must lie there. Caspar was found to have a narrow wound, two inches and a half under the center of the left breast. Clearly caused by a very sharp, double edged weapon. In three or four days he died, the heart had been injured. He was able to depose but not on oath, that on the morning of the 14th, a man in a blouse, who had addressed him some days earlier, brought him a verbal message from the court gardener, asking him to come and view some clay from a newly bored well, where in fact no work was being done at this time. He found no one at the well, and went to the monument of the rather forgotten poet, Uz. Here a man came forward, gave him a bag, stabbed him, and fled. Of the man he gave discrepant descriptions, he became incoherent and died. There was snow lying when Caspar was stabbed, but there were no foot marks near the well, and elsewhere only one man's track was in the Hofgarten. Was that track Caspar's? We are not told. No knife was found. Caspar was left-handed, and Dr. Horlacher declared that the blow must have been dealt by a left-handed man. Lord Stanhope suggested that Caspar himself had inflicted the wound by pressure, and that, after he had squeezed the point of the knife through his wadded coat, it had penetrated much deeper than he had intended. A very probable hypothesis. As for the bag which the assassin gave him, it was found, and Dr. Meyer said that it was very like a bag which he had seen in Caspar's possession. It contained a note, folded, said Madame Meyer, as Caspar folded his own notes. The writing was in pencil, in Spiegelschrift, that is, it had to be read in a mirror. Caspar, on his deathbed, kept muttering incoherences about what is written with lead no one can read. The note contained vague phrases about coming from the Bavarian frontier. After Caspar's death, the question of murder or suicide agitated Germany and gave birth to a long succession of pamphlets. A wild woman, Countess Albersdorf, née Lady Graham, says Miss Evans, who later calls her Lady Caroline Albersdorf, saw visions, dreamed dreams, and published nonsense. Other pamphlets came out, directed against the House of Baden. In 1870, an anonymous French pamphleteer offered the Baden romance, as from the papers of a major von Hennenhofer, the villain-in-chief of the White Lady plot. Lord Stanhope was named as the ringleader in the attacks on Caspar, both at Nuremberg and Ansbach. In 1883 all the fables were revived in a pamphlet produced at Ratisban, a mere hash of the libels of 1834, 1839, 1840, and 1870. Dr. Meyer was especially attacked. His sons defended his reputation by an action for libel on the dead, an action which German law permits. There was no defense, and the publisher was fined and ordered to destroy all the copies. In 1892 the libels were repeated by Baron Alexander von Arten. Two documents of a palpably fraudulent character were added. The rest was the old stuff. The reader may find it in Miss Evans' Casparhauser, 1892. For example, Daumer knew a great deal. He even, in 1833, received an anonymous letter from Ansbach, containing the following statement. Lord Daniel Alban Dirtil, advocate of the Royal Court in London, said to me, I am firmly convinced that Casparhauser was murdered. It was all done by bribery. Stanhope has no money and lives by this affair. Daumer and Miss Evans appear to have seen nothing odd in relying on an anonymous letter about Lord Daniel Alban Dirtil. Lord Stanhope, says Miss Evans, was known to have subsisted principally upon the sale of his German hymnbook and other devotional works for which he was a coal porter. Weary of piety, Lord Stanhope became a hired assassin. Perhaps this nonsense still has its believers, seduced by Lady Caroline Albersdorf, nay Lady Graham, by Lord Daniel Alban Dirtil, and by the spirit of Caspar himself, who, summoned by Daniel Dunglas Holm, at a séance with the Empress Eugénie, apparently, announced himself as Prince of Baden. No authority for this interesting ghost of one who disbelieved in ghosts is given. It is quite possible that Casparhauser no more knew who he was than the valet of 1669 to 1703 knew why he was a prisoner. No more than Mr. Brown, when a dealer in notions, knew that he was Mr. Bourne, a dissenting preacher. Nothing is certain except that Caspar was a hysterical humbug whom people of sense suspected from the first and whom believers in animal magnetism and homeopathy accepted as some great one, educated by his royal enemies in total darkness, to fit him for the military profession. It is difficult, of course, to account for the impossibility of finding whence Caspar had come to Nuremberg, but in 1887 it proved just as impossible to discover wither the reverend Ansel Bourne had gone. Mr. Bourne's lot was cast not in the sleepy royalist Bavaria of 1828, but in the midst of the admired hustle of the great western republic. He was one of the most remarkable men in the country, not a yokel of 16. He was last seen at his nephew's store, 121 Broad Street, Providence, Rhode Island, on January 17. On January 20 the hue and cry arose in the able and energetic press of his state. Mr. Bourne as a travelling evangelist was widely known, but after a fortnight unaccounted for, he arrived as A. J. Brown at Norristown, Pennsylvania, sold notions there, and held forth with acceptance at religious meetings. On March 14 he awoke, still undiscovered, and wondered where he was. He remembered nothing since January 17, so he wired to Providence, Rhode Island for information. He had a whole fortnight to account for between his departure from Providence, Rhode Island and his arrival at Norristown, Pennsylvania. Nobody could help him. He had apparently walked invisible, like Caspar on his way to Nuremberg. He was hypnotized by Professor William James and brought into his Brown condition, but could give practically no verifiable account of Brown's behavior in that missing fortnight. He said that he went from Providence to Pawtucket and was for some days at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he really seems to have been. As to the rest, back of that, it was mixed up. We do not hear that Caspar was ever hypnotized and questioned, but probably he also would have been mixed up, like Mr. Bourne. The fable about a Prince of Bodden had not a single shred of evidence in its favor. It is true that the Grand Duchess was too ill to be permitted to see her dead baby in 1812, but the baby's father, grandmother and aunt, with the ten court physicians, the nurses and others, must have seen it in death. And it is too absurd to suppose on no authority that they were all parties to the White Lady's plot. We might as well believe, as Miss Evans seems to do, on the authority of an unnamed Paris newspaper that a Latin letter, complaining of imprisonment, was picked up in the Rhine, signed S. Howe's Sprouseo, that the words ought to be read, Horace Sprouca, and that they are an anagram of Caspar Hauser. This occurred in 1816, when Caspar, being about four years of age, could not write Latin. No one in the secret could have hoped that the royal infant and captive would be recognized under the name of Sprouseo or even of Sprouca. Abject credulity, love of mystery, love of scandal and political passions produced the ludicrous mass of fables to which, as late as 1893, the Duchess of Cleveland thought it advisable to reply. In England it is quite safe to accuse a dead man of murder, or of what you please, as far as the Duchess understood the law of libel. So she had no legal remedy. Chapter 7 The Gallery Conspiracy The singular events, called The Gallery Conspiracy, or The Slaying of the Rothvins, fell out on evidence which nobody disputes in the following manner. On August 5, 1600, the king, James VI, was leaving the stables at the house of Falkland to hunt a buck, when the master of Rothven wrote up and had an interview with the monarch. This occurred about 7 o'clock in the morning. The master was a youth of 19, he was residing with his brother, the Earl of Gallery, aged 22, at the family townhouse in Perth, some 12 or 14 miles from Falkland. The interview being ended, the king followed the hounds, and the chase, long and sore, ended in a kill at about 11 o'clock near Falkland. Thence the king and the master, with some 15 of the royal retinue, including the Duke of Lennox and the Earl of Mar, rode without any delay to Perth. Others of the king's company followed, the whole number may have been at most 25. On their arrival at Perth it appeared that they had not been expected. The Earl had dined at noon, the royal dinner was delayed till 2 o'clock, and after the scanty meal the king and the master went upstairs alone, while the Earl of Gallery took Lennox and others into his garden, bordering on the tey, at the back of the house. While they loitered there eating cherries, a retainer of gallery, Thomas Cranston, brother of Sir John of that ilk, brought a report that the king had already mounted and ridden off through the inch of Perth. Gallery called for horses, but Cranston told him that his horses were at Skone, across the tey, two miles off. The gentleman then went to the street door of the house where the porter said that the king had not ridden away. Gallery gave him the lie, re-entered the house, went upstairs, and returning, assured Lennox that James had certainly departed. All this is proved on oath by Lennox, Mar, Lindores, and many other witnesses. While the company stood in doubt, outside the gate, a turret window above them opened, and the king looked forth, much agitated, shouting, treason, and crying for help to Mar. With Lennox and most of the others, Mar ran to the rescue up the main staircase of the house, where they were stopped by a locked door which they could not break open. Gallery had not gone with his guests to aid the king. He was standing in the street asking, what is the matter? I know nothing. When two of the king's household, Thomas and James Erskine, tried to seize him, the treason be perpetrated under Gallery's own roof. His friends drove the Erskins off, and some of the merries of Tullibargin, who were attending a wedding in Perth, surrounded him. Gallery retreated, drew a pair of twin swords, and accompanied by Cranston and others, made his way into the quadrangle of his house. At the foot of a small, dark staircase, they saw the body of a man lying, wounded, or dead. Cranston now rushed up the dark stairs, followed by Gallery, two Ruthfins, Hugh Moncrief, Patrick Avoid, and perhaps others. At the head of the narrow spiral stair, they found, in a room called the Gallery Chamber, Sir Thomas Erskine, a lame Dr. Harrys, a young gentleman of the royal household named John Ramsey, and Wilson, a servant with drawn swords. A fight began, Cranston was wounded, he and his friends fled, leaving Galway, who had been run through the body by Ramsey. 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 Ramsey now locked the door, opening on the narrow stair, at which the retainers of Gallery 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 result were the death of Galway and his brother, the master, his body, it was, that lay at the foot of the narrow staircase, and a few wounds to Ramsey, Dr. Harrys, and some of Galway's retainers. The death of the master of Ruthfinn was explained thus. When James cried treason, young Ramsey, from the stable door had heard his voice, but not his words. He had sped into the quadrangle, charged up the narrow stairs, found a door behind which was the sound of a struggle, dang in the door, and saw the King wrestling with the master. Behind them stood a man, the center of the mystery, of whom he took no notice. He drew his winger, slashed the master in the face and throat, and pushed him downstairs. Ramsey then called from the window to Sir Thomas Erskine, who, with Harrys and Wilson, ran to his assistants, slew the wounded master, and shut up James, who had no weapon, in the turret. Then came the struggle in which Galway died. No more was seen of the mysterious man in the turret, except by a townsman who later withdrew his evidence. Such was the whole affair, as witnessed by the King's men, the retainers of Galway, and some citizens of Perth. Not a vestige of plot or plan by Galway and his party was discoverable. His friends maintained that he had meant, on that day, to leave Perth for Lothian, that is, for his castle at Durlton, near North Berwick, whither he had sent most of his men and provisions. James had summoned the master to meet him at Falkland, they said, and Galway had never expected the return of the master with the King. James's own version was given in a public letter of the Night of the Events, which we only know through the report of Nicholson, the English resident at Holyrood, August 6th, and Nicholson only repeated what Elphinstone, the secretary, told him of the contents of the letter, written to the King's dictation at Falkland by David Moisey, a notary. At the end of August, James printed and circulated a full narrative, practically identical with Nicholson's report of Elphinstone's report of the contents of the Falkland letter of August 5th. The King's narrative is universally accepted on all hands, till we come to the point where he converses with Alexander Ruthven at Falkland before the Buckhead began. There was such an interview, lasting for about a quarter of an hour, but James alone knew its nature. He says that, after an unusually low obeisance, Ruthven told him the following tale. Walking alone on the previous evening in the fields near Perth, he had met a base-like fellow, unknown to him, with a cloak cast about his mouth, a common precaution to avoid recognition. As to who he was and what his errand, in so solitary a part being far from all aways, the fellow was taken aback. Ruthven seized him, and under his arm found a great wide pot, all full of coined gold and great pieces. Ruthven, keeping the secret to himself, took the man to Perth, and brought him in a privy-durned house, that is, a room. At 4 a.m. he himself left Perth to tell the King, urging him to take order in the matter at once, as not even Lord Gowrie knew of it. When James said that it was no business of his, the gold not being treasure trove, Ruthven called him overscrupulous, adding that his brother, Gowrie, and other great men might interfere. James then, suspecting that the gold might be foreign, brought in by Jesuits for the use of Catholic intrigers, asked what the coins and their bearer were like. Ruthven replied that the bearer seemed to be a Scots fellow, hitherto unknown to him, and that the gold was apparently of foreign mintage. Hereon James felt sure that the gold was foreign, and the bearer a disguise Scots priest. He therefore proposed to send back with Ruthven a retainer of his own, with a warrant to Gowrie, then provost of Perth, and the Baileys, to take over the man and the money. Ruthven replied that if they did the money would be ill-recked, and begged the king to write over at once, be the first seer, and reward him at his own honorable discretion. The oddity of the tale, and the strages of Ruthven's manner amazed James, who replied that he would give an answer when the hunt was over. Ruthven said the man might make a noise and discover the whole affair, causing the treasure to be meddled with. He himself would be missed by Gowrie, whereas if James came at once, Gowrie and the townsfolk would be at the sermon. James made no answer but followed the hounds. Silly brooded over the story, sent for Ruthven, and said that the hunt once ended he would accompany him to Perth. Here James adds that, though he himself knew not that any man was with Ruthven, he had two companies, one of whom, Andrew Henderson, he now dispatched to Gowrie, bidding him prepare dinner for the king. This is not part of James's direct evidence. He was unknowing and unsuspecting that any man living had come with Ruthven. Throughout the chase, Ruthven was ever near the king, always urging him to hasten the end of the hunting. The buck was slain close to the stables, and Ruthven would not allow James to wait for a second horse. That was sent after him. So the king did not even tarry to brittle the buck, and merely told the Duke of Lenox, Mar, and others that he was riding to Perth to speak with Gowrie and would return before evening. Some of the court went to Falkland for fresh horses. Others followed slowly with weary steeds. They followed, undesired by him, because a report rose that the king had some purpose to apprehend the oppressive master of Oliphant. Ruthven implored James not to bring Lenox and Mar, but only three or four servants, to which the king answered half angrily. This odd conduct roused suspicion in James. He had been well acquainted with Ruthven, who was suing for the place of a gentleman of the bed-chamber, or cubicular. The farthest that the king's suspicion could reach to was that it might be that the Earl, his brother, had handled him so hardly that the young gentleman, being of a high spirit, had taken such displeasure as he was beside himself. Hence his curious, agitated, and demuty behavior. James, as they rode, consulted Lenox, whose first wife had been a sister of Gowrie. Lenox had never seen anything of mental unsettlement in the young Ruthven, but James bade the Duke accompany him into that house, room, where the gold in the bearer of it lay. Lenox thought the story of the gold unlikely. Ruthven, seeing them in talk, urged that James should be secret, and bring nobody with him to the first inspection of the treasure. The king thus rode forward between trust and distrust. About two miles from Perth, Ruthven sent on his other companion, Andrew Ruthven, to Gowrie. When within a mile of Perth, Ruthven himself rode forward in advance. Gowrie was at dinner having taken no notice of the two earlier messengers. Gowrie, with fifty or sixty men, met James at the end of the inch. The royal retinue was then of fifteen persons with swords alone and no daggers or wingers. Dinner did not appear till an hour had gone by, say two p.m. James whispered to Ruthven that he had better see the treasure at once. Ruthven bade him wait, and not arouse Gowrie's suspicions by whispering, rounding. James therefore directed his conversation to Gowrie, getting from him but half-word to end imperfect sentences. When dinner came Gowrie stood pensively by the king's table, often whispering to the servants and off times went in and out, as he also did before dinner. The sweets stood about, as was custom, till James had nearly dined, when Gowrie took them to their dinner separately in the hall. He sat not down with them as the common manor is, but again stood silent beside the king who bantered him in a homely manner. James having sat long enough, Ruthven whispered that he wished to be so James sends Gowrie into the hall to offer a kind of grace cup to the sweet, as was usual, this by Ruthven's desire. James then rose to follow Ruthven, asking him to bring Sir Thomas Erskine with him. Ruthven requested James to command publicly that none should follow at once, promising that he should make any one or two followed that he pleased to call for. The king then, expecting attendants who never came because Ruthven never summoned them, walked alone Ruthven across the end of the hall of a staircase and threw three or four chambers, Ruthven ever locking behind him every door as he passed. We do not know whether James observed the locking of the doors or inferred it from the later discovery that one door was locked. Then Ruthven showed a more smiling countenance than he had all the day before, ever saying that he had him sure and safe enough kept. At last they reached a little study, the turret chamber, where James found not a bondman but a freedman with a dagger at his girdle and a very abased countenance. Ruthven locked the turret door, put his hat on his head, drew the man's dagger, pointed it at the king's breast, avowing now that the king behoved to be in his will and used as he list, threatening murder if James cried out or opened the window. He also reminded the king of the death of the late gallery, his father, executed for treason in 1584. Meanwhile the other man stood trembling and quaking. James made a long harangue on many points, promising pardon and silence if Ruthven at once let him go. Ruthven then uncovered and promised that James's life should be safe if he kept quiet. The rest, gallery would explain. Then bidding the other man word the king, he went out, locking the door behind him. He had first made James swear not to open the window. In his brief absence, James learned from the armed man that he had but recently been locked up in the turret, he knew not why. James bade him open the window on his right hand, the man did as he was commanded. Here the king's narrative reverts to matter not within his own observation, the events which occurred downstairs during his own absence. His narrative is amply confirmed on oath by many nobles and gentlemen. He says, here we repeat what we began by stating, that during his own absence as his train was rising from dinner one of the Earl's servants, Cranston, came hastily in, assuring the Earl of the king had got to horse away through the Inge, Isle of Perth. The Earl reported this to the nobles and all rushed to the gate. The porter assured them that the king had not departed. Gallery gave the porter the lie, but turning to Lennox and Marr said that he would get sure information. He then ran back across the court and upstairs and returned, running, with the news that the king was gone long since by the back gate and unless they hasted would not be overtaken. The nobles, going towards the sabers necessarily passed under the window of the turret on the first floor where James was imprisoned. Ruthven, by this time, had returned thither, casting his hands abroad in a desperate manner as a man lost. Then, saying there was no help for it, the king must die, he tried to bind the royal hands with his garter. In the struggle James drew Ruthven towards the window, already open. At this nick of time when the king's friends were standing in the street below, gallery with them, James holding out the right side of his head and his right elbow shouted for help. Gallery stood, ever asking what it meant, but Lennox, Marr and the others, as we saw, instantly ran in and up the chief's staircase to find the king. Meanwhile, James in his agony pushed Ruthven out of the turret, the said Mr. Alexander's head under his arms and himself on his knees, towards the chamber door which opened on the dark staircase. James was trying to get hold of Ruthven's sword and draw it, the other fellow doing nothing but standing the king's back and trembling all the time. At this moment a young gentleman of the royal household, John Ramsay, entered from the dark back staircase and struck Ruthven with his dagger, the other fellow withdrew. James then pushed Ruthven down the back stairs where he was slain by Sir Thomas Erskine and Dr. Harries, who were coming up by that way. The rest with the death of gallery followed, a tumult of the townsmen lasting for two or three hours delayed the return of James to Falkland. When the king's published narrative, it tallies closely with the letter written by Nicholson, the English agent, to Cecil on August 6th. James had thus his version from which he never varied, ready on the evening of the fatal day of August 5th. From his narrative only one inference can be drawn. Gowery and his brother had tried to lure James almost unattended to their house. In the turret they had an armed man who would assist the master to seize the king. Events frustrated the conspiracy. The armed man turned coward and Gowery proclaimed the king's departure falsely to make his suite follow back to Falkland and so leave the king in the hands of his captors. The plot once arranged could not be abandoned because the plotters had no prisoner with their pot of gold to produce so their intended treason would have been manifest. How far is James's tale corroborated? At the posthumous trial of the Ruthvins in November, witnesses like Lennox swore to his quarter of an hour of talk with Ruthven at Falkland to hunt. The early arrival of Andrew Henderson at Gowery's house about half past ten is proved by two gentlemen named Hay and one named Moncrief who were then with Gowery on business to which he at once refused to attend further in the case of the Hayes. Henderson's presence with Ruthven at Falkland is also confirmed by a manuscript vindication of the Ruthvins issued at the time. None of the king's party saw him and their refusal to swear that they did see him shows their honesty, the point of view. Thus the circumstance that Gowery ordered no dinner for the king despite Henderson's early arrival with the news of his coming shows that Gowery meant to affect being taken by surprise. Again the flight of Henderson on the very night of August 5th proves that he was implicated. Why else should a man fly who had not been seen by anyone except a Perth witness who withdrew his evidence in connection with the fatal events? No other man fled except some of Gowery's retainers who took open part in the fighting. James's opinion that Ruthven was deranged in consequence of harsh treatment by his brother Gowery is explained by a dispute between the brothers about the possession of the church lands of Skone which Gowery held and Ruthven desired, the king siding with Ruthven. This is quite casually mentioned in a contemporary manuscript. Again Lennox on oath averred that as they wrote to Perth James told him the story of the lure, the pot of gold. Lennox was a man of honor and he had married Gowery's sister. Ruthven on his return to Gowery's house told a retainer Kregengilt that he had been on an errand not far off and accounted for the king's arrival by saying that he was brought by the royal saddler to exact payment of a debt to the man. Now James had just given Gowery a year's immunity from pursuit of creditors and there is no trace of the saddler's presence. Clearly Ruthven lied to Kregengilt he had been at Falkland not on an errand not far off. That Cranston Gowery's man brought the news or rumor of the king's departure was admitted by himself. That Gowery went into the house to verify the fact insisted that it was true, gave the lie to the porter who denied it and tried to make the king's party take horse and follow was provided by Lennox, Lindorez, Rey, a magistrate of Perth, the porter himself and others on oath. That the king was locked in by a door which could not be burst open is a matter of undisputed certainty. All these are facts that when a ding and down to be disputed they were disputed however when Henderson, Gowery's factor or steward and a town counselor of Perth came out of hiding between August 11th and August 20th told his story and confessed to having been the man in the turret. He said that on the night of August 4th, Gowery bade him ride very early next day with the master of Ruthven to Falkland and return with any message that Ruthven might send. He did return, when the Hayes in Monkreef saw him, with news that the king was coming. An hour later, Gowery bade him put on a shirt of male and plate sleeves as he meant to arrest a Highlander in the shoe gate. Later the king arriving, Henderson was sent to Ruthven in the gallery and told to do whatever he was bidden. Ruthven then locked him up in the turrets giving no explanation. Presently the king was brought into the turret and Henderson pretends that to a faint extent he hampered the violence of Ruthven. During the struggle between Ramsay and Ruthven he slunk downstairs went home and fled that night. It was denied that Henderson had been at Falkland at all. Nobody swore to his presence there yet it is admitted by the contemporary apologist who accuses the king of having organized a hulk conspiracy against the Ruthven's. It was said that nobody saw Henderson slink away out of the narrow stair, though the quadrangle was crowded. One Robertson, however, a notary of Perth, gave evidence September 23 that he did see Henderson creep out of the narrow staircase and step over the master's dead body. Robertson spoke to him but he may say, if Robertson perjured himself on September 23 he withdrew his evidence or rather he omitted it at the trial in November. His life would not have been worth living in Perth where the people were partisans of the Ruthven's if he had adhered to his first statement. In the absence of other testimony many fables were circulated as to Henderson's absence from Perth all through the day and on the other hand as to his presence in the kitchen during the crisis. He was last seen for certain in the house just before the king's dinner and then by his account was locked up in the turret by the master. Probably Robertson's first story was true. Other witnesses to shield their neighbors denied having seen retainers of galleries who most assuredly were present at the brawls in the quadrangle. It was never explained why Henderson fled at once if he was not the man in the turret. I therefore conceive that as he certainly was at Falkland and certainly returned early his story is true in the main. Given all this only one of two theories is possible. The affair was not incidental. James did not fall into a panic and bellow treason out of the window merely because he found himself alone in a turret. And why in a secluded turret with the master? To that theory the locked door of the gallery is a conclusive reply. Somebody locked it for some reason. Therefore either the Ruthven's plotted against the king or the king plotted against the Ruthven's. Both parties had good grounds for hatred as we shall show. That is, Gowery and James had motives for quarrel. But with the young master, whose cause as regards to the lands of scone, the king espoused he had no reason for anger. If James was guilty how did he manage his intrigue? With motives for hating Gowery let us say the king lays his plot. He chooses for it a day when he knows that the Murray's of Tulliborin will be in Perth at the wedding of one of the clan. They will defend the king for the townsfolk, clients of their provost, Gowery. James next invites Ruthven to Falkland. This was asserted by Ruthven's defenders. He arrives at the strangely early hour of 6.30 a.m. James has already invented the story of the pot of gold to be confided to Lennox as proof that Ruthven is bringing him to Perth. That he has not invited Ruthven. Next, by secretly spreading a rumor that he means to apprehend the master of Oliphant James secures a large train of retainers. Let us say 25 men without firearms while he escapes the suspicion that would be aroused if he ordered them to accompany him. James is determined to sacrifice Ruthven with whom he had no quarrel whatever, merely as bait to draw Gowery into a trap. Having put Lennox off with a false reason for his accompanying Ruthven alone in the house of Gowery, James privately arranges that Ruthven shall quietly summon him, or Erskine, to follow upstairs, meaning to go Ruthven into a reasonable attitude just as they appear on the scene. He calculates that Lennox, Erskine, or both will then stab Ruthven without asking questions and that Gowery will rush up to avenge his brother and be slain. But here his majesty's deeply considered plot on a superficial view breaks down, since Ruthven, for reasons best known to himself, summons neither Lennox nor Erskine. James, observing this circumstance rapidly and cleverly remodels his plot and does not begin to provoke the brawl till being, heaven knows why, in the turret. He hears his train talking outside in the street, yet Ruthven provided for their presence there by ordering a servant of his own to spread the false rumor of his departure, which Cranston innocently brought. Why did the king do this, as his original idea involved no need of such a strategium? He had also somehow persuaded Gowery to credit the rumor in the face of the porter's denial of its possibility and to persist in it after making no very serious attempt to ascertain its truth. To succeed in making Gowery do this in place of thoroughly searching the house for his most striking and inexplicable success. The king has thus two strings to his nefarious bow. The first was that Ruthven by his orders would bring Erskine and Lennox and just as they appeared James would go Ruthven into a treasonable attitude whereon Lennox and Erskine would dirk him. The second plan, if this failed as it did because Ruthven did not obey orders was to deceive Gowery into bringing the retinue under the turret window so that the king could open the window and cry treason as he heard their voices and footsteps below. This plan succeeds. James yells out of the window not wanting many spectators he has somehow locked the door leading into the gallery while giving Ramsay a hint to wait outside of the house within hearing and to come up by the back staircase which was built in a conspicuous tower. The rest is easy. Gowery may bring up as many men as he pleases but Ramsay has had orders to horrify him by saying that the king is slain this was alleged to have run him through as he gives ground or drops his points this after a decent form of resistance in which three of the king's four men are wounded. Master of the human heart like Lord Bateman James knows that Ruthven will not merely leave him when goaded by insult and that Gowery hearing of his brother's death will not simply stand in the street and summon the citizens. To secure a witness to the truth of his false version of the matter James must have begun by artfully bribing Henderson either simply to run away and then come in later with corroboration or actually to be present in the turret and then escape. Perhaps the king told this man in the turret tale merely in the air and Henderson having run away in causeless panic later sees money in it and appears with a string of falsehoods. Chance loves art and Chance might well be friend and artist so capable and conscientious as his majesty. To be sure Mr. Hill Burton says the theory that the whole was a plot of the court to ruin the powerful house of Gowery must at once after a calm weighing of the evidence be dismissed as beyond the range of sane conclusions. Those who formed it had to put one of the very last men in the world to accept of such a destiny into the position of an armed man who without any preparation was to render himself into the hands of his armed adversaries and cause a succession of surprises and acts of violence which by his own courage and dexterity he would rule to a determined pre-concerted plan. If there was a royal plot without a plan then James merely intended to raise a brawl and go it blind. This however is almost beyond the king's habitual and romantic recklessness. We must prefer the theory of a subtly concerted and ably conducted plan constructed with alternatives so that if one string breaks another will hold fast. That plan to the best of my poor powers I have explained. To drop the figure of irony is starkly incredible. James was not a recklessly adventurous character to go weaponless with Ruthven who wore a sword and provoke him into insolence. If he had been ever so brave the plot is of a complexity quite impossible. No sane man, still as a timid man could conceive an executed plot at the mercy of countless circumstances not to be foreseen. Suppose the master slain and gallery of free man in the street. He had only to sound the toxin and asked respectfully for explanations. Take on the other hand the theory of gallery's guilt. Here the motives for evil will on either side may be briefly stated. Since the matter of Richio, 1566 the Ruthven's had been the foes of the crown. Gallery's grandfather and father were leaders in the attack on Mary and Richio. Gallery's father insulted Queen Mary while caged in lock 11 castle by Amherst advances so she declares. In 1582 Gallery's father captured James and held him in degrading captivity. He escaped and was reconciled to his jailer who in 1584 again conspired and was executed while the Ruthven lands were forfeited. By a new revolution 1585 to 1586 the Ruthven's were reinstated. In July 1593 Gallery's mother by an artful ambuscade enabled the Earl of Bothwell again to kidnap the king. In 1594 our gallery then a lad joined Bothwell in open rebellion. He was pardoned and in August 1594 went abroad traveled as far as Rome studied at Padua and summoned by the party of the Kirk came to England in March 1600. Here he was petted by Elizabeth then on almost warlike terms with James. For 30 years every treason of the Ruthven's had been backed by Elizabeth and Cecil, ceaselessly and continuously had abetted many attempts to kidnap James. The routes were rife as late as April 1600. The object always was to secure the dominance of the Kirk over the king and gallery as the natural noble leader of the Kirk was recalled to Scotland in 1600 by the reverend Mr. Bruce the chief of the political preachers whom James had mastered in 1596 to 97. Gallery arriving instantly headed the opposition and on June 21st 1600 successfully resisted the king's request for supplies rendered necessary for hostile relations with England. Gallery then left the court and about July 20th went to hunt in Athol his mother who had once already lured James into a snare residing at his Perth house. On August 1st gallery warned his mother of his return and she went to their strong castle of Durleton near North Berwick and the sea while gallery came to his Perth house on August 3rd it being understood that he was to ride to Durleton on August 5th. On August 5th we know he went on a longer journey. We have shown that a plot by James is incredible there is no evidence to prove a plot by gallery behind the whole nature of the events and the strange conduct of himself and his brother but if plot he did he merely carried out in the interest of his English friends the traditional policy of his grandfather his father his mother and his ally Bothwell at this time and exile in Spain maturing a conspiracy in which he claimed gallery as one of his confederates. While the king was a free man gallery could not hope to raise the discontented barons and emancipate the preachers yet more bitterly discontented who had summoned him home. Let the king vanish and the coast was clear the Kirk's party the English party would triumph. The inference is that the king was to be made to disappear and that gallery undertook to do it. Two witnesses Mr. Cowper, minister of Perth and Mr. Reind gallery's old tutor avert that he was wanted to speak to the need of extreme secrecy in the execution of a high and dangerous purpose such a purpose as the trapping of the king by a secret and sudden onfall was the mere commonplace of Scottish politics Cecil's papers at this period and later are full of such schemes submitted by Scottish adventurers that men so very young as the two Ruthvins should plan a device romantic and perilous is no matter for Marvel. The plot itself must be judged by its original idea namely to lure James to Perth with only two or three servants at an early hour in the day. Matters fell out otherwise but had the king entered gallery house early and scantily attended he might have been conveyed across Fife disguised in the train of gallery as he went to Durleton. Thence he might be conveyed by sea to fast castle the impregnable eerie of gallery's and Bothwell's old ally the reckless and trigger Logan of Rustle Rig. The famous letters which Scott, Titler and Hill Burton regarded as proof of that plot I've shown by comparison handwriting to be all foraged but one of them claimed by the forger as his model for the rest is I think a feigned copy of a genuine original. In that letter of Logan to gallery he is made to speak of their scheme as analogous to one contrived against a nobleman of Padua where gallery had studied. This remark in a post-crypt can hardly have been invented by the forger Sprott a low country attorney and 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 quite like the incredible conspiracy attributed to James. The scheme was only one of scores of the same sort constantly devised at the time. The thing next to impossible is that Henderson was laughed 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. They said but turned coward. This is the more likely as in December 1600 a gentleman named Robert Oliphant as retainer of gallery fled from Edinburgh where certain revelations blabbed by him had come into publicity. He had said that in Paris early in 1600 gallery 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 why he turned craven. 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 gallery the leader of the Kirk party was young romantic and Italianate. He did plan a device of the regular mind, 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 at Presbyterian and Liberal tendencies preferred to believe that the King was the conspirator. The dead Ruthvins were long lamented and even in the 19th century others in Perthshire sang to their babes Sleepy, sleepy, my Bonnie Earl a gallery. A lady has even written to inform me that she is the descendant of the younger Ruthven, who escaped after being stabbed by Ramsay and Erskine, fled to England, married and had a family. I in vain replied that young Ruthven's body was embalmed, exhibited in the Scottish Parliament and hacked to pieces which were set on spikes in public places, and that after these sufferings he was unlikely to marry. The lady was not to be shaken in her belief. In the Athenaeum for August 28, 1902 Mr. Edmund Gossi recognizes Ramsay the Ruthven Slayer as author of A Century of English Sonnets 1619, of which Lord Cobham possesses a copy apparently unique. The book was published at Paris by Rene Giffard. The Scottish name Gifford was at the time spelled Giffard, so the publisher was of Scottish descent. End of chapter 7