Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 5

PERTH
by which the king might have escaped, hut James had
ordered it to be built up, because the balls at tennis
were apt to fall into it. The first two conspirators who
leapt into the vault were seized by the king with his
naked hands, and their throats bore the mark of his
fingers for long afterwards ; but with their daggers they
overcame his resistance ; others of the accomplices came
to their assistance, and the poet-king fell with 16
wounds in his breast. But his murder was fully
avenged by his widow, who relentlessly tracked out his
assassins and put them to death with the cruellest
tortures. In the early history of the Reformation in
Scotland Perth made a considerable figure. In 1544 it
was the scene of the martyrdom of five Protestants,
who were burned at the instance of Cardinal Beaton.
But a few years later it saw the first blow struck
in the wholesale destruction and disfigurement by
the mob of the Roman Catholic churches and monas-
teries in Scotland ; the first impetus having been
given by a sermon preached in St John's church by
John Knox on 11 May 1559, and celebrated for two
centuries after by a weekly service. This demonstra-
tion of popular feeling, though unpremeditated and
condemned by the leaders of the Reforming party, was
a true indication of the disposition of the town ; and
although the Queen Regent immediately obtained pos-
session of the city and reintroduced the old worship
under the guard of a French garrison, the citizens rose
in revolt as soon as she had departed. In 1600 Gowrie
House in Perth was the scene of the mysterious occur-
rence kno-mi as the Gowrie conspiracy, which resulted
in the assassination of the Earl of Gowrie, then provost
of the city, and his brother, on the pretext that they
had attempted to murder the king, James VI. King
James had been prevailed upon by Alexander Ruthven,
brother of the Earl of Gowrie, to visit Gowrie House,
the pretext being a story of a mysterious captive with a
large store of foreign gold. James, who was hunting at
Falkland at the time, rode to Perth, accompanied by
about twenty attendants, among whom were the Duke
of Lennox and the Earl of Mar. After dinner, the
king was led aside by Alexander Ruthven, and when
his attendants missed him, they were told he had left
Gowrie House by a back way. For what had really
happened we are chiefly dependent on what is practically
the king's own account. Ruthven conducted him by
the great staircase, and through several apartments,
the doors of which he carefully locked after him, to a
small turret at the SW corner of the southern wing of
the house, and overhanging the wall. More direct
access to this turret was obtained by the ' black turn-
pike ' stair, which led into the larger apartment, ofl'
which the turret opened. In this chamber — one window
of which looked into the courtyard, and the other into
the Speygate — James found no captive, but an armed
man ; and an excited and threatening colloquy ensued
between the king and Ruthven. The latter retired to
bring his brother the Earl, but returning almost imme-
diately attempted to seize and bind the king's hands.
A desperate struggle then followed, during which the
armed man, according to his own account, stood entirely
neutral, except only that he first opened the window
over the Speygate, and then the other over the court-
yard. In the struggle James was thrust near this latter
window, and putting his head out he called lustily for
help. One of his attendants, Sir John Ramsay, heariug
the alarm, hastened up the ' black turnpike, ' burst into
the turret, and stabbed the king's assailant, whose dead
body the king himself hurled down the stair. Mean-
while the alarm had spread, and the Earl of Gowrie,
eluding the efforts made to seize him, rushed up the
turnpike stair, followed by five friends. These were
met by the king, Ramsay, and another ; and after a
brief contest, Gowrie fell dead under Ramsay's sword.
The other attendants of the king, hearing the alarm,
hastened to his assistance by the great staircase, but
they were retarded by the massive doors, which they
had to break down with hammers ; and when at last
they made their way to the turret, the tragic event had
PERTH
been accomplished. Tho alarm quickly spread among
the townspeople, who crowded about the palace, threat-
ening vengeance for the death of their beloved provost ;
but the magistrates succeeded in quieting them, and the
king stole away at night by boat across the Tay. The
object of this affair has never been satisfactorily cleared
up. Burton says that ' the theory that the whole was
a plot by the Court to ruin the powerful house of
Gowrie must at once, after a calm weighing of the
evidence, be dismissed as beyond the range of sane
conclusions.' He leans to the belief that it was a
genuine _ conspiracy, not to murder but to kidnap the
king, with the view of acquiring political influence.
In Perth, however, the former view is still cherished,
and three books have been produced there in the
present century in support of it. On 2 Sept. 1644,
the day after his victory of Tibbekmuie, Perth was
taken possession of by the Marquis of Montrose ; and in
1651, when besieged by Oliver Cromwell, the citizens, by
a deceptive appearance of military bustle and alertness,
secured good terms of surrender. In 1689, Claverhouse,
with 80 horse, seized the city. In 1715 the city was
occupied by Mar for the Pretender, and James VIII.
was proclaimed king at the cross ; and in January of
the following year he visited Perth in person. Again
in 1745 Perth became a centre of the Jacobite rising ;
and from 4 till 11 Sept. Prince Charles and his army
remained within its walls. On both occasions the
burgesses were subjected to a tax of several hundred
pounds. Though after 1482 Perth was no longer a
frequent residence of the kings, it has received many
royal visits. James "VI. visited it in 1601 and 1617,
and Charles I. in 1633 ; and both monarchs were re-
ceived with pageants and rejoicings. Queen Victoria
visited Perth on 6 Sept. 1842 ; and, on 29 Sept. 1848,
she spent a night at the Royal George Hotel. Perth
has suffered a good deal from inundations and plague ;
and it is still liable to the former. There were great
floods in 1210, 1621, 1740, 1773, 1814, 1847, and 1849.
There is an old Gaelic prophecy to the effect that
' Great Tay of the waves wiQ swe'ep Perth bare ; ' and
there is a Lowland rhyme, equally threatening, con-
cerning two streams which fall into the Tay, about 5
miles from the town —
' Says the Shochie to the Ordie
Wliere shall we meet?
At the Cross of Perth
When men are a' asleep.'
It is said that this prophecy was harmlessly fulfilled by
building the stones of an old cross into the bridge across
the Tay. Plagues visited Perth in 1512, 1585-87, 1608,
and 1645, and cholera in 1832. Allan Ramsay's poem
on Bessie Bell and Mary Gray describes the fate of two
young ladies, who, though they had retired into the
country for fear of the plague, yet caught the infection
from a young gentleman of Perth who visited them, and
is said to have been in love with both. The real event
is said to have happened in 1645.
James, fourth Lord Drummond, was created Earl of
Perth in 1605 ; and the fourth Earl, who embraced the
Jacobite cause, received the title of Duke of Perth from
James II. at St Germains in 1695. The earldoms of
Perth and Melfort, attainted in 1695 and 1715, were
restored by Act of Parliament in 1853 to George Drum-
mond, sixth Due de Melfort, Comte de Lussan, and
Baron de Valrose (France), the fifth descendant of the
third Earl of Perth. See DEtrjiMOND Castle.
Among the natives of Perth are Henry Adamson (1581-
1639), poet, author of The Muses Threnodie ; Patrick
Adamson or Constantino (1543-92), tulchan Archbishop
of St Andrews and Latinist, who was educated at Perth
grammar school; the Rev. "William Row (1563-1634),
anti-episcopalian divine ; and his brother, the Rev. John
Row (1568-1646), author of Eistorie of the Kirk of Scot-
land, 1558-1637, printed for the "Wodrow Society in 1842 ;
"William Murray (1705-93), Lord Chief Justice and first
Earl of Mansfield ; Robert Sandeman (1723-71), founder
of the religious sect of the Glassites or Sandemanians ;
James Bisset (1742-1832), artist and author of rhyming
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