In October of the same year, we find the Master of Gray writing to
Douglas, thus: ‘Of late I was forced, at Restalrig’s suit, to pawn some
of my plate, and the best jewel I had, to get him money for his
marriage’—his second marriage, apparently. By December 1586 we find
Logan riding to London, as part of the suite of the Master of Gray, who
was to plead with Elizabeth for Mary’s life. He was the Master’s most
intimate confidant, and, as such, in February-March 1587, proposed to
sell all his secrets to Walsingham! Nevertheless, when Gray was driven
into exile, later in 1587, Logan was one of his ‘cautioners,’ or
sureties. He had been of the party of Gowrie’s father, during that
nobleman’s brief tenure of power in 1582, 1583, and, when Gowrie fell,
Logan was ordered to hand his eyrie of Fastcastle over, at six hours’
notice, to the officers of the King. Through the stormy years of
Bothwell’s repeated raids on James (1592–1594) Logan had been his
partisan, and had been denounced a rebel. Later he appears in trouble
for highway robbery committed by his retainers. Among the diversions of
this country gentleman was flat burglary. In December 1593, ‘when nichts
are lang and mirk,’ the Laird helped himself to the plate-chest of
William Nesbit of Newton. ‘Under silence of night he took spuilzie of
certain gold and silver to the value of three thousand merks Scots.’ The
executors of Nesbit did not bring their action till after Logan died, in
July 1606, ‘in respect the said clandestine deed and fact came not to our
knowledge, nor light as to who had committed the same,’ till just before
the action was brought.
In 1599, when conspiracies were in the air, Logan was bound over not to
put Fastcastle in the hands of his Majesty’s enemies and rebels. {158}
This brief sketch of a turbulent life is derived from Logan’s own letters
to Archibald Douglas, now among the Cecil Papers at Hatfield; from the
‘Papers relating to the Master of Gray,’ in which we find Logan, under a
cypher name, betraying the Master, his cousin and ally, and from the
Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, in which all that dead world,
from the King to the crofter, may be traced, often in circumstances
peculiarly private.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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