James VI and the Gowrie Mystery

ary, motiveless, and inexplicable do the circumstances appear. If we try the theory that the King wove a plot, we are met by the fact that his plot could not have succeeded without the voluntary and vehement collaboration of one of his victims, a thing that no man could have reckoned on. If we adopt the idea that the victims had laid a trap for the King, we have only a vague surmise as to its aim, purpose, and method. The later light which seemed to fall on the affair, as we shall see, only darkens what was already obscure. The inconceivable iniquity of the Government, at a later date, reflects such discredit on all concerned on their side, that we might naturally, though illogically, be inclined to believe that, from the first, the King was the conspirator. But that, we shall find, was almost, or quite, a physical impossibility.

Despite these embroilments, I am, in this case, able to reach a conclusion satisfactory to myself, a thing which, in the affair of the Casket Letters and Queen Mary,