But the scene of this was not Ruthven Castle, but old Gowrie House, the town residence of the doomed family, which stood on the site of the present County Buildings of Perth, close by the Tay; and the episode belongs to the annals of the "good city of Sanct Johnstoun." Thanks to the civil and religious broils of former days, and to the spirit of modern improvement, nearly all the antiquities of Perth--the relics of days when it was the seat of the Court, the centre of trade and religious life, and the great "objective" of warlike operations and political intrigue--have disappeared from the face of the earth. Of its Castle, which stood near the north end of what is now the Skinnergate, not a trace now remains; of its ancient walls, besieged and breached so often in the wars between Scots and English, scarcely a vestige. Four monasteries, and numerous other religious houses, once existed here; and according to information that reached Erasmus, their inmates led a specially delicate and lazy life. All disappeared--monks and monasteries together--at the Reformation, and the "rascall multitude," who had perhaps seen too much of their cowled and cloistered neighbours to cherish a deep respect for them, showed little scruple in spoiling "the monuments of idolatry," and in making free with the meat and drink with which buttery and cellar were found well stored, and bore in triumph through the streets the great dinner-pot of the Blackfriars, thus spreading abroad the last savour of the mediæval religious life of Perth. Blackfriars Wynd and Street indicate the position of this Dominican convent, and King James VI.'s Hospital serves to mark the site of the only Carthusian foundation that existed in Scotland. In the former, James I. was done to death, and in the latter, richly endowed by him, the murdered poet-king was buried. The dark tale--the portents and warnings vouchsafed to the victim, the midnight clash of arms and flare of torches in the Monastery gardens, while James was gaily chatting with the Queen and her ladies before retiring to rest; the heroism of Catherine Douglas, who thrust her arm through the staple of the door as a bar against the traitors; the temporary escape of the king into the vault below the floor; his discovery, the savage struggle before he was despatched, and the terrible revenge that was wreaked by the widowed Joanna--is as familiar as the Gowrie tragedy itself.