The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the East Coast. Various

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      TAY STREET, PERTH.

      The Ruthvens have no longer part or lot in this district, where they once lorded it over the stout citizens of Perth, and dared to put their Sovereigns in thrall. Their old home of Ruthven, or Huntingtower Castle, is opposite Scone, and not far from the junction of the Almond with the Tay, where, if we could believe tradition, stood the original Perth—Rath-Inveralmon—until it was visited by one of the many floods that have vexed its burghers, and was removed a mile or two downward to its present site, more close to the shelter of Moncrieffe and Kinnoull Hills and the tide-water of the Tay. All around are historical scenes—among them Methven and Tibbermore, made memorable by stirring passages in the careers of Wallace, Bruce, and Montrose. But at few spots has more history been made, or contrived, than at the Castle of the Ruthvens. Four or five generations of its lords made themselves illustrious or notorious in the annals of the “troublous times” that preceded the Union of the Crowns. Above all, they were zealous, not to say unscrupulous, partisans of the Reformation. It was the third lord who rose from a sick-bed, and, clad in armour, and “haggard and terrific” in visage, took a foremost share in the murder of David Rizzio. His son, the fourth Lord Ruthven, grandfather of the “great Marquis” of Montrose, had a hand in the same bloody business, and he it was who conducted Mary to Lochleven, and extorted from her the renouncement of her right to rule.

      The year after this same fourth lord had been made first Earl of Gowrie was enacted the “Raid of Ruthven.” The young King James was invited to visit Huntingtower Castle, on his way from Athole to Edinburgh, and was there detained by force by the Gowrie faction, whose professed object was to preserve him from evil counsel and wicked favourites. Here, when he wept, he was bluntly told, “Better bairns greet than bearded men.” He never forgave the affront, and as soon as he got the power in his hands the ruin of the Ruthvens was decreed. Lingering at Dundee to plot, Gowrie was captured and beheaded, and this event, in the time of the second and last earl, led to the still more mysterious and tragic episode of the “Gowrie Conspiracy,” which gave the Stuarts the desired opportunity to “root out the whole name and race.” Every reader of Scottish history remembers the strange story—how, in the autumn of 1600, the King was summoned by the Master of Ruthven, at early morning, while buckhunting at Falkland, to ride to Perth to see a “pot of gold” discovered there; how, by his own tale, he found in the turret chamber to which he was led, not a treasure but an armed man, and a portrait on the wall, covered by a curtain, which, being drawn aside, revealed the features of the slain earl; how James shrieked for help, and his attendants, bursting in from the courtyard, found him struggling in the hands of Gowrie and his brother, both of whom were instantly despatched. 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.

      The Church of St. John is still a venerable and venerated object in Perth; although it also has suffered from the hard usage of time and the Reformers, and its roof now covers, in place of the numerous shrines and chapels of Roman Catholic days, three Presbyterian places of worship. It was in St. John’s that Knox preached his iconoclastic sermon; and many other conspicuous events in the civil and religious history of Scotland—and more particularly during the long struggle between Protestantism and Papacy, and between Episcopacy and the Covenant—were transacted within a stone-throw of its time-worn walls. Fourteen Scottish Parliaments, and a still larger number of Councils of Churchmen, are reckoned to have met in Perth previous to the Reformation. Here schism and martyrdom had begun a century and a half before Knox. Girdings and gibings at priestly ways crept even into the “Miracle Plays” annually performed on Corpus Christi Day; and the town and country around were “more infested with heresy than any other part of the nation.” Cardinal Beaton watched from the Spey Tower while example was made of heretics by hanging and drowning them “for the encouragement of others:” to such good effect that in a few years the monasteries were in ashes, and the Lords of the Congregation, assembled at Perth, had proclaimed their resolution to spend goods and lives in the cause of the “true worship of God, the public welfare of the nation, and the common liberty,” in token whereof the burghers set out on their southward march with ropes—“St. Johnston’s ribands”—about their necks. Mary Queen of Scots and her son had small reason to remember with pleasure their visits to Perth; and after the Gowrie incident King James did all in his power to humiliate the town. It was here that the Assemblies of the Kirk and Parliaments, or Conventions of Estates, alternately proclaimed and disowned the authority of the bishops; the town was the centre of fighting in the long battle between Prelacy and Presbytery. Perth loyally entertained Charles I., and thirteen brethren of the Craft of Glovers—fateful number!—danced the sword-dance before him; and soon after, these selfsame swords were girded to oppose the King at Duns. Montrose captured and pillaged the town, after defeating the Covenanting troops СКАЧАТЬ