Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sprott, George
SPROTT, GEORGE (d. 1608), conspirator and alleged forger, practised as a notary at Eyemouth before and after 1600. About that year he seems to have made the acquaintance of Robert Logan of Restalrig [q. v.] Logan died in 1606. Two years later Sprott let fall some incautious expressions to the effect that he had proofs that Logan had conspired with John Ruthven, third earl of Gowrie [q. v.], to murder James VI while on a visit to Gowrie House in 1600. Sprott was at once arrested on a charge of having concealed this knowledge and of being therefore an abettor of the crime. Five letters incriminating Logan were produced by Sprott, of which four were alleged to have been written by Logan to the Earl of Gowrie in July 1600, and one was said to have been addressed by Logan to his agent Bower. Sprott was examined nine times by the council, and his depositions (of which the official copies belong to the Earl of Haddington) are self-contradictory. In effect he admitted that he had forged three of the letters to Gowrie, counterfeiting Logan's handwriting; that he had stolen the fourth letter to Gowrie, which was genuinely written by Logan; and that he had written the letter to Bower from Logan's dictation, and then copied it in a forged handwriting. All the five letters have been accepted as genuine by modern historians in ignorance of the existence of Sprott's confessions.
On 12 Aug. Sprott was tried by a parliamentary committee, was found guilty, not without some hesitation, of complicity in the conspiracy, and was duly executed (cf. also Burton, History, 2nd edit. v. 416–20). The Earl of Dunbar presided in state over the last scene, and is said to have promised to provide for Sprott's wife and family. Calderwood the historian suggested that the attention paid to Sprott upon the scaffold was due to a fear that he should reveal too much (Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, ed. Wodrow, vi. 779). He adds, ‘This notar could counterfoote anie mans handwritt vivelie, so that no man who knew Restalrig's [i.e. Logan's] handwritt could discerne it to be counterfooted.’
[Memorials of the Earls of Haddington, by Sir William Fraser, K.C.B., i. 102–7; cf. also Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, ii. 256–60, 276–93; Examinations, Arraignment, and Conviction of George Sprot, notary, &c., by Sir William Hart, 4to, 1608, with a long preface by George Abbot, dean of Winchester, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; cf. also Harleian Miscellany, ix. 560–79; Acts Parl. Scotl. iv. 419–22; and the Histories of Calderwood, Spottiswood, Fraser-Tytler, and Hill Burton.]