Earl of Gowrie

Topic: The Earl of Gowrie

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• In the local Neville Letters Corpus, letter_053, dated 1600-02-27 O.S. and addressed to Robert Cecil, Henry Neville writes:

“The Earl Gowrie, a nobleman of Scotland, who hath spent some time in these parts, is purposed to return home through England”

• In the same letter, Neville writes:

“because I know him well, and have had good communication with him”

• In the same letter, Neville writes:

“I have thought good to recommend him especially unto your honor”

• In the same letter, Neville writes:

“If your honor please to confer with him about these alterations feared in Scotland, I believe he will give you good satisfaction”

• In the same letter, Neville writes:

“I have given him my passport, to serve him till he come to her majesties court”

• In the local Neville Letters Corpus, letter_074, dated 1600-08-08 O.S. and addressed to Robert Cecil, Neville writes:

“I hear that the earie of gowrie and his brother have been flaine in Scotland, upon an attempt against the King's person.”

• In the local Neville Letters Corpus, letter_078, dated 1600-11-02 O.S. and addressed to Ralph Winwood, Neville writes:

“Their crime is, that they refused to declare the conspiracy and attempt of Gowrie and his brother against the King, in such sort as they were required.”

• In the local Neville Letters Corpus, letter_079, dated 1600-11-15 O.S. and addressed to Ralph Winwood, Neville writes:

“many are of opinion, that the discovery of some affection between her and the Earl gowry's brother, (who was killed with him) was the truest cause and motive of all that tragedy.”

• Gustavo Secchi Turner quotes John Chamberlain’s 18 December 1604 letter to Ralph Winwood as follows:

“the tragedie of Gowrie with all the action and actors hath ben twise represented by the Kings players, with exceding concourse of all sortes of people”

• The same Chamberlain letter continues:

“I heare that some great counsaillors are much displeased with yt: and so is thought shalbe forbidden.”

• The Folger-hosted Lost Plays Database page for Gowrie independently summarizes the same Chamberlain letter, identifies the lost play as anonymous and dated 1604, and says the King's players had acquired Gowrie by late autumn 1604.

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• Ken Feinstein's Twitter layer stresses that Neville personally knew Gowrie, that Neville wrote about Gowrie before and after the affair, and that the King's Men later staged a lost Gowrie play known through Chamberlain's letter to Winwood.
• Those tweets are useful as a map of the letter/play convergence, but the operative evidence is the Neville letters XML plus Chamberlain/McClure/Turner/Lost Plays.

3. Sourced Timeline

4. Quoted Source Text

Neville’s 27 February 1600 O.S. letter to Robert Cecil

• “The Earl Gowrie, a nobleman of Scotland, who hath spent some time in these parts, is purposed to return home through England”
• “because I know him well, and have had good communication with him”
• “I have thought good to recommend him especially unto your honor”
• “If your honor please to confer with him about these alterations feared in Scotland, I believe he will give you good satisfaction”
• “I have given him my passport, to serve him till he come to her majesties court”

Neville’s later 1600 Gowrie references

• “I hear that the earie of gowrie and his brother have been flaine in Scotland, upon an attempt against the King's person.”
• “Their crime is, that they refused to declare the conspiracy and attempt of Gowrie and his brother against the King, in such sort as they were required.”
• “many are of opinion, that the discovery of some affection between her and the Earl gowry's brother, (who was killed with him) was the truest cause and motive of all that tragedy.”

Chamberlain to Winwood on the lost play

• “the tragedie of Gowrie with all the action and actors hath ben twise represented by the Kings players, with exceding concourse of all sortes of people”
• “I heare that some great counsaillors are much displeased with yt: and so is thought shalbe forbidden.”

5. Citations

• Neville Letters Corpus. Version 8. XML corpus of 138 letters and 3 documents, /Users/kenf/Neville Book/08_Neville_Letters_Vocabulary/source_xml/Neville_Letters_Corpus_v8.xml. Used here for letter_053, letter_074, letter_078, and letter_079.
• Turner, Gustavo Secchi. The Matter of Fact: The Tragedy of Gowrie (1604) and its Contexts. PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2006. Local copy: The_matter_of_fact_“The_Trage.pdf.
• Chamberlain, John. The Letters of John Chamberlain. Edited by Norman Egbert McClure, vol. 1, American Philosophical Society, 1939, p. 199. Quoted in Turner.
• “Gowrie.” Lost Plays Database, Folger Shakespeare Library, https://lostplays.folger.edu/Gowrie.

6. Notes on Access

• The primary Neville material in this packet comes directly from the local letters XML, not from a blog or tweet summary.
• The newly added Gowrie PDFs provide strong context for the 1604 lost play and Chamberlain’s letter to Winwood, but they do not add a direct Neville reference beyond the letters corpus material quoted above.
• The letter_079 phrase “all that tragedy” is preserved exactly from the local corpus witness. In that letter Neville is reporting a view about the motive of the event, not explicitly using “tragedy” as a formal title.
• Local Twitter files with Gowrie leads include twitter_France.md and twitter_Music_and_Arts.md.