ABSTRACT
The frontispiece of this volume is by Dutch engraver and illustrator Jan Luyken. It is a lively late-seventeenth-century imagining of the highest point of the drama of the Gowrie Conspiracy, the strange series of events that took place at the town house of John, Earl of Gowrie, in Perth on 5 August 1600. This ‘conspiracy’ has been variously interpreted as the attempted kidnapping or assassination of the king by the earl and his brother Alexander, Master of Ruthven, or the planned murder of the Ruthven brothers by James, though historians remain at a loss to explain conclusively what happened on that day.1 John Ramsay, one of King James’ pages, is drawn stepping over the corpse of Alexander Ruthven, while running through the armoured and double-sword-wielding earl. Behind him, Thomas Erskine, a gentleman of the king’s bedchamber, fights one of Gowrie’s men. To the right, James stands unarmed, holding only his hunting horn, and looks on helplessly. Some of Gowrie’s men are portrayed in the act of fleeing, while a lone sparrow hawk flies free above.
