History of the life and death of John, Earl of Gowrie

JOHN, EARL OF GOWRIE. 117
knew any who had recourse to those unlawful cu-
riosities who lived the ordinary age of man, God
Almighty removing his grace from them.'**
But an intimacy which the Earl of Gowrie con-
tracted at Paris, seems to have affected in no in-
considerable degree, his after circumstances. Sir
Ralph Winwood, in his Memoirs, mentions the
friendship which subsisted between the Earl and
the English ambassador, Sir Henry Neville. The
ambassador wrote letters in his commendation to
Queen Elizabeth and her ministers, and, in the
character of a statesman, added, that the Earl was
a person who could be useful to them in their tran-
sactions with Scotland!. But the EarPs purpose
was to take the opportunity, for his farther im-
provement, to visit the Court of England in his
way home, and he needed the ambassador's letters
of introduction.
The state of Scotland, at this time, was, that the
King was at open variance with the generality of
the presbyterian ministers and their people, upon
whom he was forcing a new ecclesiastical consti-
tution, to which, upon many accounts, they were
* Drummond of Hawthornden's Works, page 147.
t Winwood's Memoirs, vol. L page 156.