We really must be consistent. Mr. Barbé, a recent Ruthven apologist, says that the theory of an accidental origin of ‘the struggle between James and Ruthven may possibly contain a fairly accurate conjecture.’ {94} But Mr. Barbé also argues that James had invented the pot of gold story before he left Falkland; that, if James was guilty, ‘the pretext had been framed’—the myth of the treasure had been concocted—‘long before their meeting in Falkland, and was held in readiness to use whenever circumstances required.’ If so, then there is no room at all for the opinion that the uproar in the turret was accidental, but Mr. Barbé’s meaning is that James thus forced a quarrel on Ruthven. For there was no captive with a pot of gold, nor can accident have caused the tragedy, if Ruthven lured James to Falkland with the false tale of the golden hoard. That tale, confided by James to Lennox on the ride to Perth, was either an invention of the King’s—in which case James is the crafty conspirator whom Mr. Bruce, in 1602, did not believe him to be (as shall be shown);—or it is true that Ruthven brought James to Perth by the feigned story—in which case Ruthven is a conspirator. I reject, for reasons already given, the suggestion that Lennox perjured himself, when he swore that James told him about Ruthven’s narrative as to the captive and his hoard. For these reasons alone, there is no room for the hypothesis of accident: either James or Ruthven was a deliberate traitor. If James invented the pot of gold, he is the plotter: if Ruthven did, Ruthven is guilty. There is no _via media_, no room for the theory of accident. The _via media_, the hypothesis of accident, was suggested by Sir William Bowes, who wrote out his theory, in a letter to Sir John Stanhope, from Bradley, on September 2, 1600. Bowes had been English ambassador in Scotland, probably with the usual commission to side with the King’s enemies, and especially (much as Elizabeth loathed her own Puritans) with the party of the Kirk. His coach had been used for the kidnapping of an English gentleman then with James, while the Governor of Berwick supplied a yacht, in case it seemed better to carry off the victim by sea (1599). Consequently Bowes was unpopular, and needed, and got, a guard of forty horsemen for his protection. He was no friend, as may be imagined, of the King.