This question as to the meaning of Gowrie’s emblem came rather early into the controversy. William Sanderson, in 1656, published Lives of Mary and of James VI; he says: ‘I have a manuscript which relates that, in Padua, the Earl of Gowrie, among other impressa (_sic_) in a fencing school, caused to be painted, for his devise, a hand and sword aiming at a crown.’ {250b} Mr. Scott, in 1818, replied that the device, with the Ruthven arms, ‘is engraven on a stone taken from Gowrie House in Perth, and preserved in the house of Freeland’ (a Ruthven house). ‘There is also, I have been told, a seal with the same engraving upon it, which probably had been used by the Earls of Gowrie and by their predecessors, the Lords of Ruthven.’ {251a} But we know of no such seal among Gowrie or Ruthven seals, nor do we know the date of the engraving on stone cited by Mr. Scott. In his opinion the armed man and crown might be an addition granted by James III to William, first Lord Ruthven, in 1487–88. Ruthven took the part of the unhappy King, who was mysteriously slain near Bannockburn. Mr. Scott then guesses that this addition of 1488 implied that the armed man pointed his sword at the crown, and exclaimed _Tibi Soli_, meaning ‘For Thee, O James III alone, _not_ for thy rebellious son,’ James IV. It may be so, but we have no evidence for the use of the emblem before 1597. Moreover, in Gowrie’s arms, in Workman’s MS., the sword is sheathed. Again, the emblem at Padua showed a ‘black-a-more,’ or negro, and Sir Robert Douglas could not but have recognised that the device was only part of the ancestral Ruthven arms, if that was the case. The ‘black-a-more’ was horrifying to Ottavio Baldi, as implying a dark intention. Here we leave the additional and certainly curious mystery of Gowrie’s claims, as ‘shadowed’ in his chosen emblem. I know not if it be germane to the matter to add that after Bothwell, in 1593, had seized James, by the aid of our Gowrie’s mother and sister, he uttered a singular hint to Toby Matthew, Dean of Durham. He intruded himself on the horrified Dean, hot from his successful raid, described with much humour the kidnapping of the untrussed monarch, and let it be understood that he was under the protection of Elizabeth, _that there was a secret candidate for James’s crown_, and that he expected to be himself Lieutenant of the realm of Scotland. Bothwell was closely _lié_ with Lady Gowrie (Dorothea Stewart), and our Gowrie presently joined him in a ‘band’ to serve Elizabeth and subdue James. {251b} APPENDIX B: THE CONTEMPORARY RUTHVEN VINDICATION (State Papers, Scotland (Elizabeth), vol. lxvi. No. 52) The verie maner of the Erll of Gowrie and his brother their death, quha war killit at Perth the fyft of August by the kingis servanttis his Matie being present.