The final and deepest mystery of the mysterious Gowrie affair rises, like a mist from a marsh, out of these facts concerning Sprot. When he was convicted, and hanged, persisting in his confessions, on August 12, 1608, no letters by Gowrie, or any other conspirator, were produced in Court. Extracts, however, of a letter from Gowrie to Logan, and of one from Logan to Gowrie, were quoted in Sprot’s formal Indictment. They were also quoted in an official publication, an account of Sprot’s case, prepared by Sir William Hart, the Chief Justice, and issued in 1608. Both these documents (to which we return) are given by Mr. Pitcairn, in the second volume of his ‘Criminal Trials.’ But later, when the dead Logan was tried in 1609, five of his alleged plot letters (never _publicly_ mentioned in Sprot’s trial) were produced by the prosecution, and not one of these was identical with the letter of Logan cited in the Indictment of Sprot, and in the official account of his trial. There were strong resemblances between Logan’s letter, quoted but not produced, in 1608, and a letter of Logan’s produced, and attested to be in his handwriting, in 1609. But there were also remarkable variations. Of these undeniable facts most modern historians who were convinced of the guilt of the Ruthvens take no notice; though the inexplicable discrepancies between the Logan letters _quoted_ in 1608, and the letters _produced_ as his in 1609, had always been matters of comment and criticism. As to the letters of 1609, Mr. Tytler wrote, ‘their import cannot be mistaken; _their authenticity has never been questioned_; they still exist . . . ’ Now assuredly the letters exist. The five alleged originals were found by Mr. Pitcairn, among the Warrants of Parliament, in the General Register House, in Edinburgh, and were published by him, but without their endorsements, in his ‘Criminal Trials’ in Scotland. (1832). {169} Copies of the letters are also ‘bookit,’ or engrossed, in the Records of Parliament. These ‘bookit’ transcripts were made carelessly, and the old copyist was puzzled by the handwriting and orthography of the alleged originals before him. The controversy about the genuineness of the five letters took new shapes after Mr. Pitcairn discovered those apparently in Logan’s hand, and printed them in 1832. Mr. Hill Burton accepts them with no hint of doubt, and if Mr. Tytler was the most learned and impartial, Mr. Hill Burton was the most sceptical of our historians. Yet on this point of authenticity these historians were too hasty. The authenticity of the letters (except one, No. IV) was denied by the very man, Sprot, in whose possession most of them were originally found. {170} The evidence of his denial has been extant ever since Calderwood wrote, who tells us, clearly on the authority of an older and anonymous History in MS. (now in the Advocates’ Library), that Sprot, when first taken (April 13–19, 1608), accused Logan of writing the