To what precise end they had plotted to seize the King’s person, what they meant to do with him when they had got him, must remain matter of conjecture. But that they intended to seize him, I have no doubt at all. These pages, on so old and vexed a problem, would not have been written, had I not been fortunate enough to obtain many unpublished manuscript materials. Some of these at least clear up the secondary enigma of the sequel of the problem of 1600. Different readers will probably draw different conclusions from some of the other documents, but perhaps nobody will doubt that they throw strange new lights on Scottish manners and morals. The scheme adopted here is somewhat like that of Mr. Browning’s poem, ‘The Ring and the Book.’ The personages tell their own stories of the same set of events, in which they were more or less intimately concerned. This inevitably entails some repetition, but I am unable to find any plan less open to objection. It must, of course, be kept in mind that all the evidence is of a suspicious nature. The King, if he were the conspirator, or even if innocent, had to clear himself; and, frankly, his Majesty’s word was not to be relied upon. However, he alone was cross-examined, by an acute and hostile catechist, and that upon oath, though not in a court of justice. The evidence of his retinue, and of some other persons present, was also taken on oath, three months after the events, before a Parliamentary Committee, ‘The Lords of the Articles.’ We shall see that, nine years later, a similar Committee was deceived shamelessly by the King’s Government, he himself being absent in England. But the nature of the evidence, in the second case, was entirely different: it did not rest on the sworn testimony of a number of nobles, gentlemen, and citizens, but on a question of handwriting, _comparatio literarum_, as in the case of the Casket Letters. That the witnesses in 1600 did not perjure themselves, in the trial which followed on the slaughter of the Ruthvens, is what I have to argue. Next, we have the evidence, taken under torture, of three of the slain Earl’s retainers, three weeks after the events. No such testimony is now reckoned of value, but it will be shown that the statements made by the tortured men only compromise the Earl and his brother incidentally, and in a manner probably not perceived by the deponents themselves. They denied all knowledge of a plot, disclaimed belief in a plot by the Earl, and let out what was suspicious in a casual way, without observing the import of their own remarks.