GOWRIE, JOHN RUTHVEN, THIRD EARL OF (c. 1600), Scottish conspirator, was the second son of William, 4th Lord Ruthven and first earl of Gowrie (?1541-1584), by his wife Dorothea, daughter of Henry Stewart, second Lord Methven. The Ruthven family was of ancient Scottish descent; the earl dom dated from 1581. The first earl of Gowrie and his father Patrick, third Lord Ruthven (c. 152o-1566), had both been con cerned in the murder of Rizzio in 1566; and both took an active part on the side of the Kirk in the constant intrigues of the period. Gowrie had been custodian of Mary, queen of Scots, dur ing her imprisonment in Loch Leven, and had also been the chief actor in the "raid of Ruthven" in 1582 when King James VI. was seized while a guest and kept prisoner. Though pardoned, he continued to plot, and was executed for high treason in 1584.
When, therefore, on the death of his elder brother the second earl in 1588 John Ruthven succeeded to the earldom, he inherited family traditions of treason and intrigue. He received an ex cellent education at the grammar school of Perth and at the Uni versity of Edinburgh, after which he joined with Atholl and Mont rose in offering to serve Queen Elizabeth, and had thus already been engaged in conspiracy when, in 1594, he went to study at Padua. On his way home in 1599, moreover, it is probable that he communicated at Paris with the exiled Bothwell.
In 1600 the earl and his brother, Alexander Ruthven, were murdered at Gowrie house in mysterious circumstances. Three solutions of the mystery of this "Gowrie conspiracy" have been suggested : first, that Gowrie and his brother had plotted to mur der or to kidnap King James at Gowrie house; second, that James visited Gowrie house with the intention of murdering the two Ruthvens; third, that the tragedy sprang from a brawl.
According to James the facts were as follows: on Aug. 5, 1600, James was asked while hunting near Falkland to go to Gowrie house to examine a prisoner with a quantity of foreign gold there. When he arrived with a small retinue, he was taken alone into a small turret by Alexander Ruthven. Here, instead of the prisoner with the foreign gold, he found an armed man. His retainers, who had been told that the king had left, were setting out to overtake him when they saw him struggling at a window, and heard his cry for help. They thereupon forced an entrance to the turret, and in the struggle Ruthven and Gowrie were killed.
One of Gowrie's younger brothers, William, fled abroad, while the other, Patrick, was imprisoned in the Tower. He was released in 1622, married Elizabeth Woodford, widow of the 1st Lord Gerrard; he died in poverty. Their daughter Mary married the famous painter Van Dyck.
See Andrew Lang, James VI. and the Gowrie Mystery (1902), and the authorities there cited ; Robert Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scot land (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1833) ; David Moysie, Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland 1577-1603 (Edinburgh, 1830) ; Louis A. Barbe, The Trag edy of Gowrie House (1887) ; Andrew Bisset, Essays on Historical Truth (1871) ; David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland (8 vols., Edinburgh, 1842-1849) . W. A. Craigie has edited as Skotlands Rimur, some Icelandic ballads relating to the Gowrie