Gowrie

Gowrie is the next great division of Perthshire, and rather less easily delineated. Indeed, not everyone even in Perthshire could tell you what was in Gowrie and what was not. Many think of it merely as the Carse of Gowrie, that level plain between the Sidlaws and the Tay, between Perth and Dundee. But this is not to take into account Blairgowrie, many miles to the north; nor the Gowrie in the Stanley area; nor the fact that the seat and centre of the Earls of Gowrie was at Ruthven, north-west of Perth. The name merely means the Plain of the Wild Goats, which is not much help. In fact, Gowrie seems really to have been all eastern Perthshire, from the head of Strathmore and the flanking Grampians down to the Tay estuary, including the western Sidlaws. The city of Perth itself, therefore, is in Gowrie. Also the highly important areas, in previous ages, of Scone, Dunsinane and Inchtuthill--all of which indicates the enduring status of the area, from Roman times onwards, The great family of Ruthven dominated most of it, once, and in 1581 became Earls of Gowrie. The notorious Gowrie Conspiracy, one of the murkiest incidents in Scots history, is linked with their name--but they were the victims of it, not the perpetrators. That shame belongs to James VI, who, owing the young Earl 80,000 pounds, organised his murder, and that of his brother, at Perth in 1600; and six weeks later, to clear his own name, had the two dead bodies tried for treason in court at Edinburgh, himself attending. The Murrays of Tullibardine, who had aided the King in this sorry business, were rewarded with large sections of Gowrie, especially in the Stormonth or north-western area. Their representative, the Earl of Mansfield, still holds sway hereabouts from Scone Palace, his eldest son Lord Stormont.