Since 1592, Mowbray had been corresponding with Logan’s friend, Archibald Douglas, and offering his services to Cecil. To Cecil, in September 1600, he was again applying, regarding Elizabeth as his debtor. In 1600, he was in touch with Henry Locke, who had been Cecil’s go-between in his darkest intrigues against James, and his agent with Bothwell, Atholl, and the Gowrie slain on August 5, 1600. But, in the autumn of 1602, Cecil had become the secret ally of James, and gave up poor Francis, a broken tool of his and of Elizabeth’s. {160b} We have now learned a good deal about Logan’s habitual associates, and we have merely glanced at a few of the numberless plots against James which were encouraged by the English Government. If James was nervously apprehensive of treason, he had good cause. But of Logan at the moment of the Gowrie Plot, we know nothing from public documents. We do know, however, on evidence which has previously been in part unpublished, in part unobserved, that from August 1600 onwards, Logan was oddly excited and restless. Though not in debt—or at least though no record of his ‘horning’ exists—he took to selling his lands, Restalrig, Flemington, Gunnisgreen, Fastcastle. {161} After 1600 he sold them all; he wallowed in drink; he made his wife wretched; with his eldest son he was on ill terms; he wandered to London, and to France in 1605, and he returned to die (of plague, it seems) in the Canongate, a landless but a monied man, in July 1606. Why did Logan sell all his lands, investing in shipping property? The natural inference, at the time, was that he had been engaged in ‘some ill turn,’ some mysterious conspiracy, and people probably (certainly, if we believe the evidence to follow) thought that he had been an accomplice in the Gowrie affair. He died, and his children by his first wives dissociated themselves from his executorship. The bulk of it was the unpaid part of the purchase money for his lands, sold by him to Balmerino, and Dunbar, James’s trusted ministers, who owed some 33,000 marks to the estate. Logan had a ‘doer,’ or law agent, a country writer, or notary, named Sprot, who dwelt at Eyemouth, a hungry creature, who did not even own a horse. When Logan rode to Edinburgh, Sprot walked thither to join him. Yet the two were boon companions; Sprot was always loitering and watching at Gunnisgreen, always a guest at the great Christmas festivals, given by the Laird to his rough neighbours. The death of Logan was a disaster to Sprot, and to all the parasites of the Laird.