The crucial question now arises, _What is Letter IV_? If it be genuine (in substance), then, whatever the details of the Gowrie Conspiracy may have been, a conspiracy there was. This can only be denied by ignorance. If the enterprise fails, says the author of Letter IV, the plotters will lose their lives, their lands and houses will be ‘wrecked,’ their very names will be extirpated; and, in fact, James did threaten to extirpate the name of Ruthven. The letter deliberately means High Treason. The objection of Calderwood, and of all the Ruthven apologists, that Sprot confessed to having forged _all_ the letters, we have shown to rest on lack of information. He said, at last, that he had forged many papers (some did not appear in Court in 1609), and that he forged _three_ letters on the model of Letter IV. These three letters may either be I, III, and V; or III, V, and the torn letter. The case of Letter I is peculiar. Though it contains much that is in Letter IV, and might have been taken from it, the repetitions need not imply copying from Letter IV. Byron and others would say the same things, on the same day, to two or three correspondents. Letter IV is subsequent, as dated, to Letter I, and Logan might say to the Unknown, on July 18, what, after the announced interval of ten days, he said to Gowrie. Letter I contains this remark on the nature of the plot: ‘It is not far by’ (not unlike) ‘that form, with the like stratagem, whereof we had conference in Cap. h,’ which may be Capheaton, on the English side of the Border. Probably Logan often discussed ingenious ways of catching the King: new plots were hatched about once a month, as Cecil’s and the other correspondence of the age abundantly proves. The plot (the letter says) is like that in a Paduan story of a nobleman. The rest of the letter is identical with the matter of III, IV, and V. We cannot be sure whether Letter I is one of the three forged on IV or not. One thing is certain, Letters III and V, to the Unknown, _are_ modelled on IV, as is the torn letter. Sprot said this was the case, and every reader of III, V, and the torn letter (given above) must see that he tells the truth. These letters contain no invention at all, they merely repeat Letter IV. Any man who could invent IV had genius enough to alter his tunes in III, V. and the torn letter. But Sprot never deserts his model. This is an argument for the authenticity in substance of Letter IV. The other three contain nothing that is not in Letter IV, and everything that is in it, except what is personal to Gowrie, and would be inappropriate if addressed to the Unknown (I, III, V), or to Chirnside (torn letter).