The Mystery of Mary Stuart

Thus she does not by any means bid her friends forthwith to accuse her foes. That would have been absurd, till she had seen the documents brought against her as proofs. But, to shorten a long story, neither at the repeated request of her Commissioners, nor of La Mothe, who demanded this act of common justice, would Elizabeth permit Mary to see either the originals, or even copies, of the Casket Letters. She promised, and broke her promise.[328 - La Mothe, January 20, 30, 1569, i. 133-162.]

This incident left Mary with the advantage. How can an accused person answer, if not allowed to see the documents in the case? We may argue that Elizabeth refused, because politics drifted into new directions, and inspired new designs. But Mary’s defenders can always maintain that she never was allowed to see the evidence on which she was accused. From Mary’s letter of December 19, or rather from Lesley’s précis of it (‘Extract of the principall heidis’) it is plain that she does not bid her Commissioners accuse anybody, at the moment. But, on December 22, Lindsay challenged Herries to battle for having said that Moray, and ‘his company here present,’ were guilty of Darnley’s death. Herries admitted having said that some of them were guilty. Lindsay lies in his throat if he avers that Herries spoke of him specially: and, on that quarrel, Herries will fight. And he will fight any of the principals of them if they sign Lindsay’s challenge, ‘and I shall point them forth and fight with some of the traitors therein.’ He communicated the challenge and reply to Leicester.[329 - Goodall, ii. 272, 273.] Herries probably hoped to fight Morton and Lethington.

On the 24th, Moray having complained that he and his company were slandered by Mary’s Commissioners, Lesley and Herries answered ‘that they had special command sent to them from the Queen their Mistress, to lay the said crime to their charge,’ and would accuse them. They were appointed to do this on Christmas Day, but only put in an argumentative answer to Moray’s ‘Eik.’ But on January 11, when Elizabeth had absolved both Moray and Mary (a ludicrous conclusion) and was allowing Moray and his company to go home, Cecil said that Moray wished to know whether Herries and Lesley would openly accuse him and his friends, or not. They declared that Mary had bidden them make the charge, and that they had done so, on the condition that Mary first received copies of the Casket documents. As soon as Mary received these, they would name, accuse, and prove the case, against the guilty. They themselves, as private persons, had only hearsay evidence, and would accuse no man. Moray and his party offered to go to Bolton, and be accused. But Mary (as her Commissioners at last understood) would not play her card, her evidence in black and white, till she saw the hand of her adversaries, as was fair, and she was never allowed to see the Casket documents.[330 - Goodall, ii. 307-309.] Mary’s Commissioners appear to have blundered as usual. They gave an impression, first that they would accuse unconditionally, next that they sneaked out of the challenge.[331 - Lesley, like Herries, had no confidence in Mary’s cause. On December 28, 1568, he wrote a curious letter to John Fitzwilliam, at Gray’s Inn. Lesley, Herries, and Kilwinning (a Hamilton) had met Norfolk, Leicester, and Cecil privately. The English showed the Book of Articles, but refused to give a copy, which seems unfair, as Mary could certainly have picked holes in that indictment. Lesley found the Englishmen ‘almost confirmed in favour of our mistress’s adversaries.’ Norfolk and Cecil ‘war sayrest’ (most severe), and Norfolk must either have been dissembling, or must have had his doubts about the authenticity of the Casket Letters shaken by comparing them with Mary’s handwriting. Lesley asks Fitzwilliam to go to their man of law, ‘and bid him put our defences to the presumptions in writ, as was devised before in all events, but we hope for some appointment (compromise), but yet we arm us well.’ Mary, however, would not again stoop to compromise. (Bain, ii. 592, 593.)] But, in fact, Mary had definitely made the delivery to her of the Casket Letters, originals or even copies, and her own presence to plead her own cause, the necessary preliminary conditions of producing her own charges and proofs.

Mary’s attitude as regards the Casket Papers is now, I think, intelligible. There was a moment, as we have seen, during the intrigues at York, when she consented to resign her crown, and let the matter be hushed up. From that position she receded, at Norfolk’s desire. The Letters were produced by her adversaries, at Westminster and at Hampton Court. She then occupied at once her last line of defence, as she had originally planned it. If allowed to see the documents put in against her, and to confront her accusers, she would produce evidence in black and white, which would so damage her opponents that her denial of the Letters would be accepted by the foreign ambassadors and the peers of England. ‘Her proofs will judicially fall out best as is thought,’ Sussex wrote, and he may have known what ‘her proofs’ were.

If we accept this as Mary’s line, we can account, as has already been hinted, for the extraordinary wrigglings of Lethington. At York, as always, he was foremost to show, or talk of the Casket Papers, in private, as a means of extorting a compromise, and hushing up the affair: publicly, he was most averse to their production. Whether he had a hand in falsifying the papers we may guess; but he knew that their public exhibition would make Mary desperate, and drive her to exhibit her ‘proofs.’ These would be fatal to himself.

We have said that Mary never forgave Lethington: who had been the best liked of her advisers, and, in his own interests, had ever pretended to wish to proceed against her ‘in dulse manner.’ Why did she so detest the man who, at least, died in her service?

The proofs of her detestation are found all through the MS. of her secretary, Claude Nau, written after Lethington’s death. They cannot be explained away, as Sir John Skelton tries to do, by a theory that the underlings about Mary were jealous of Lethington. Nau had not known him, and his narrative came direct from Mary herself. It is, of course, worthless as evidence in her favour, but it is highly valuable as an index of Mary’s own mind, and of her line of apology pro vita sua.

Nau, then, declares (we have told all this, but may recapitulate it) that the Lords, in the spring of 1567, sent Lethington, and two others, to ask her to marry Bothwell. Twice she refused them, objecting the rumours about Bothwell’s guilt. Twice she refused, but Lethington pointed out that Bothwell had been legally cleared, and, after the Parliament of April, 1567, they signed Ainslie’s band. Yet no list of the signers contains the name of Lethington, though, according to Nau, he urged the marriage. After the marriage, it was Lethington who induced the Lords to rise against Bothwell, with whom he was (as we elsewhere learn) on the worst terms. Lethington it was who brought his friend and kinsman, Atholl, into the rising. At Carberry Hill, Mary wished to parley with Lethington and Atholl, who both excused themselves, as not being in full agreement with the Lords. She therefore yielded to Kirkcaldy; and Bothwell, ere she rode away, gave her the murder band (this can hardly be true), signed by Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, bidding her keep it carefully. Entrapped by the Lords, Mary, by Lethington’s advice, was imprisoned in the house of the Provost of Edinburgh. Lethington was ‘extremely opposed’ to her, in her dreadful distress; he advised imprisonment in Loch Leven; he even, Randolph says, counselled the Lords to slay her, some said to strangle her, while persuading Throckmorton that he was her best friend. Lethington tried to win her favour in her prison, but, having ‘no assurance from her,’ fled on a false report of her escape. Lethington fought against her at Langside, and Mary knew very well why, though he privately displayed the Casket Letters, he secretly intrigued for her at York. Even his final accession (1569) to her party, and his death in her cause, did not win her forgiveness.

She dated from Carberry Hill her certain knowledge of his guilt in the murder, which she always held in reserve for a favourable opportunity. But, as she neither was allowed to see the Casket Letters, nor to appear in person before the Peers, that opportunity never came.

To conclude this part of the inquiry: Mary’s attitude, as regards the Letters, was less that of conscious innocence, than of a player who has strong cards in her hand and awaits the chance of bringing out her trumps.

XIV

INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE LETTERS

Letter I

This Letter, usually printed as Letter I., was the first of the Casket Letters which Mary’s accusers laid before the Commission of Inquiry at Westminster (December 7, 1568).[332 - Bain, ii. 570.] It does not follow that the accusers regarded this Letter as first in order of composition. There exists a contemporary copy of an English translation, hurriedly made from the French; the handwriting is that of Cecil’s clerk. The endorsing is, as usual, by a Scot, and runs, ‘Ane short Lettre from Glasco to the Erle Bothwell. Prufes her disdaign against her husband.’ Possibly this Letter, then, was put in first, to prove Mary’s hatred of Darnley, and so to lead up to Letter II., which distinctly means murder. If the accusers, however, regarded this piece (Letter I.) as first in order of composition, they did not understand the meaning and drift of the papers which they had seized.[333 - In the Cambridge MS. of the Scots translations (C) our Letter II. is placed first. This MS. is the earliest.]

Letter I., so called, must be, in order of composition, a sequel to Letter II. The sequence of events would run as follows: if we reject the chronology as given in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ a chronological summary handed to Cecil, we know not by whom, and supply the prosecution with a feasible scheme of time. ‘Cecil’s Journal’ makes Mary leave Edinburgh on January 21, stay at Lord Livingstone’s house of Callendar (not Callander in Perthshire) till January 23, and then enter Glasgow. If this is right, Letters I. and II. are forgeries, for II. could not, by internal evidence, have been finished before Mary’s second night, at least, in Glasgow, which, if she arrived on January 23, would be January 24. Consequently it could not (as in the statement of Paris, the alleged bearer) reach Bothwell the day before his departure for Liddesdale, which ‘Cecil’s Journal’ dates on January 24. Moreover, on the scheme of dates presented in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ Mary must have written and dispatched Letter I. on the morning of January 25 to Bothwell, whom it could not reach (for he was then making a raid on the Elliots, in Liddesdale), and Mary must, at the same time, have been labouring at the long Letter II. All this, with other necessary inferences from the scheme of dates, is frankly absurd.[334 - It is indubitable that ‘Cecil’s Journal’ was supplied by the prosecution, perhaps from Lennox, who had made close inquiries about the dates.]

The defenders of Mary, like Mr. Hosack, meet the Lords on the field of what they regard as the Lords’ own scheme of dates, and easily rout them. In a court of law this is fair procedure; in history we must assume that the Lords, if the Journal represents their ideas, may have erred in their dates. Now two contemporary townsmen of Edinburgh, Birrel, and the author of the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ coincide in making Mary leave Edinburgh on January 20. Their notes were separately written, without any possible idea that they might be appealed to by posterity as evidence in a State criminal case. The value of their testimony is discussed in Appendix C, ‘The date of Mary’s Visit to Glasgow.’

Provisionally accepting the date of the two diarists, we find that the Queen left Edinburgh on January 20, slept at Callendar, and possibly entered Glasgow on January 21. Drury from Berwick said that she entered on January 22, which, again, makes the letter impossible. Let us, however, suppose her to begin her long epistle, Letter II., at Glasgow on the night of January 21, finish it in the midnight hours of January 22, and send it to Bothwell by Paris (his valet, who had just entered her service) on January 23. Paris, in his declaration of August 10, 1569, avers that he met Bothwell, gave him the letter, stayed in Edinburgh till next day, again met Bothwell returning from Kirk o’ Field, then received from him for Mary a letter, a diamond (ring?), and a loving message; he received also a letter from Lethington, and from both a verbal report that Kirk o’ Field was to be Darnley’s home. Paris then returned to Glasgow. If Paris, leaving Edinburgh ‘after dinner,’ say three o’clock, on the 24th, did not reach Glasgow till the following noon, then the whole scheme of time stands out clearly. He left Glasgow on January 23, with the long Letter (II.) which Mary wrote on January 21 and 22. He gave it to Bothwell on the 23rd, received replies ‘after dinner’ on the 24th, slept at Callendar or elsewhere on the way, and reached Glasgow about noon on January 25. If, however, Paris reached Glasgow on the day he left Edinburgh (January 24), the scheme breaks down.

If he did not arrive till noon on the 25th, all is clear, and Letter I. falls into its proper place as really Letter II., and is easily intelligible. Its contents run thus: Mary, who left Bothwell on January 21, upbraids him for neglect of herself. She expected news, and an answer to her earlier Letter (II.) dispatched on the 23rd, and has received none. The news she looked for was to tell her what she ought to do. If no news comes, she will, ‘according to her commission,’ take Darnley to Craigmillar on Monday: she actually did take him on Monday, as far as Callendar. But she is clearly uncertain, when she writes on January 25, as to whether Craigmillar has been finally decided upon. A possible alternative was present to her mind. After describing the amorous Darnley, and her own old complaint, a pain in the side, she says, ‘If Paris doth bring back unto me that for which I have sent, it should much amend me.’ News of Bothwell, brought by Paris, will help to cure her. She had expected news on the day before, January 24.

Nothing could be more natural. Mary and Bothwell had parted on January 21. She should have heard from him, if he were a punctual and considerate lover, on the 23rd; at latest Paris should have brought back on the 24th his reply to her long letter, numbered II. but really I. But the morning of ‘this Saturday’ (the 25th) has dawned, and brought no news, no answer, no Paris. (That is, if Paris either slept in Edinburgh on the night of the 24th, or somewhere on the long dark moorland road.) Impatient of three days’ retarded news, ignorant as to whether Craigmillar is fixed on for Darnley, or not, without a reply to the letter carried to Bothwell by Paris (Letter II.), Mary writes Letter I. on January 25. It is borne by her chamberlain, Beaton, who is going on legal business to Edinburgh. Nothing can be simpler or more easily intelligible.

There remains a point of which much has been made. In the English, but not in the Scots translation, Mary says, ‘I send this present to Lethington, to be delivered to you by Beaton.’ The Scots is ‘I send this be Betoun, quha gais’ to his legal business. Nothing about Lethington. On first observing this, I inferred – (a) that Lethington had the reference to himself cut out of the Scots version, as connecting him with the affair. (b) I inferred that Lethington could have had no hand in forging the original French (if forging there was), because he never would have allowed his name to appear in such a connection. Later I observed that several Continental critics had made similar inferences.[335 - Bresslau, Hist. Taschenbuch, p. 71. Philippson, Revue Historique, Sept., Oct., 1887, p. 31. M. Philippson suggests that Lethington’s name may not have been mentioned in the French, but was inserted (perhaps by Makgill, or other enemy of his, I presume) in the English, to damage the Secretary in the eyes of the English Commissioners.] But all this is merely one of the many mare’s-nests of criticism. For proof of the futility of such deductions see Appendix E (#pgepubid00028), ‘The Translation of the Casket Letters.’

On the whole, I am constrained to regard Letter I. as possibly authentic in itself, and as affording a strong presumption that there was an authentic Letter II. Letter I. was written, and sent on a chance opportunity, just because no answer had been received to the Letter wrongly numbered II. This was a circumstance not likely to be invented.

Letter II

Round this long Letter, of more than 3,000 words, the Marian controversy has raged most fiercely. Believing that they had demonstrated its lack of authenticity, the Queen’s defenders have argued that the charges against her must be false. A criminal charge, supported by evidence deliberately contaminated, falls to the ground. But we cannot really argue thus: the Queen may have been guilty, even if her foes perjured themselves on certain points, in their desire to fortify their case. Yet the objections to Letter II. are certainly many and plausible.

1. While the chronology of ‘Cecil’s Journal’ was accepted, the Letter could not be regarded as genuine. We have shown, however, that by rectifying the dates of the accusers, the external chronology of the Letter can be made to harmonise with real time.

2. The existence of another long letter, never produced (the letter cited by Moray and Lennox) was another source of suspicion. While we had only Moray’s account of the letter in July 1567, and while Lennox’s version of about the same date in 1568 was still unknown, Mr. Hosack argued thus: ‘What is the obvious and necessary inference? Is it not that the forgers, in the first instance, drew up a letter couched in far stronger terms than that which they eventually produced?’ ‘Whenever,’ says Robertson, ‘a paper is forged with a particular intention, the eagerness of the forger to establish the point in view, his solicitude to cut off all doubts and cavils, and to avoid any appearance of uncertainty, seldom fail of prompting him to use expressions the most explicit and full to his purpose.’ ‘In writing this passage, we could well imagine,’ says Mr. Hosack, ‘that the historian had his eye on the Simancas’ (Moray’s) ‘description of the Glasgow Letter (II.), but he never saw it… We must assume that, upon consideration, the letter described by Moray, which seems to have been the first draft of the forgery, was withdrawn, and another substituted in its place.’[336 - Hosack, i. 217, 218.] This reasoning, of course, is reinforced by the discovery of Lennox’s account of the Letter. But Mr. Hosack overlooked a possibility. The Lords may have, originally, after they captured the Casket, forged the Letter spoken of by Moray and Lennox. But they may actually have discovered Letter II., and, on reflection, may have produced that, or a garbled form of that, and suppressed the forgery. To Letter II. they may have added ‘substantious clauses,’ but if any of it is genuine, it is compromising.

3. One of the internal difficulties is more apparent than real. It turns on the internal chronology, which seems quite impossible and absurd, and must, it is urged, be the result of treacherous dovetailing. The circumstance that Crawford, a retainer of Lennox, was put forward at the Westminster Commission, in December, 1568, to corroborate part of the Letter makes a real difficulty. He declared that Darnley had reported to him the conversations between himself and the Queen, described by Mary, in Letter II., and that he wrote down Darnley’s words ‘immediately, at the time,’ for the use of Lennox. But Crawford proved too much. His report was, partly, an English translation of the Scots translation of the French of the Letter. Therefore he either took his corroborative evidence from the Letter, or the Letter was in part based on Crawford’s report, and therefore was forged. Bresslau, Cardauns, Philippson, Mr. Hosack, and Sir John Skelton adopted the latter alternative. The Letter, they say, was forged, in part, on Crawford’s report.

4. The contents of the Letter are alien to Mary’s character and style: incoherent, chaotic, out of keeping.

We take these objections in the order indicated. First, as to the internal dates of the Letter. These are certainly impossible. Is this the result of clumsy dovetailing by a forger?

There is no date of day of the month or week, but the Letter was clearly begun on the night of Mary’s arrival in Glasgow (by our theory, January 21). Unless it was finished in the night of January 22, and sent off on January 23, it cannot be genuine: cannot have reached Bothwell in time. We are to suppose that, on sitting down to write, Mary made, first, a list of twelve heads of her discourse, on a separate sheet of paper, and then began her epistle on another sheet. Through paragraphs 1, 2, 3,[337 - See the letter in Appendix (#pgepubid00028), ‘Casket Letters.’] she followed the sequence of her notes of heads, and began paragraph 4, ‘The King sent for Joachim’ (one of her servants) ‘yesternicht, and asked why I lodged not beside him.’[338 - ‘Yesternicht’ is omitted in the English. See Appendix E (#pgepubid00028), ‘Translation of the Casket Letters.’]

If this means that Mary was in Glasgow on the day before she began writing, the dates cannot be made to harmonise with facts. For her first night of writing must then be January 22, her second January 23; Bothwell, therefore, cannot receive the letter till January 24, on which day he went to Liddesdale, and Paris, the bearer, declared that he gave the letter to Bothwell the day before he rode to Liddesdale.

The answer is obvious. Joachim probably reached Glasgow on the day before Mary’s arrival, namely on January 20. It was usual to send the royal beds, carpets, tapestries, and ‘cloth of State’ in front of the travelling prince, to make the rooms ready before he came. Joachim would arrive with the upholstery a day in advance of Mary. Therefore, on her first night, January 21, she can speak of what the King said to Joachim ‘yesterday.’

The next indication of date is in paragraphs 7, 8. Paragraph 7 ends: ‘The morne I wil speik to him upon this point’ (part of the affair of Hiegait); paragraph 8 is written on the following day: ‘As to the rest of Willie Hiegait’s, he’ (Darnley) ‘confessit it, bot it was the morne efter my cumming or he did it.’ The English is, ‘The rest as [to?] Wille Hiegait [he?] hath confessed, but it was the next day that he’ (Darnley) ‘came hither,’ that is, came so far on in his confession. Paragraph 8, therefore, tells the results of that examination of Darnley, which Mary promised at the end of paragraph 7 to make ‘to-morrow.’ We are now in a new day, January 22, at night.

But, while paragraphs 9, 10, 11 (about 500 words) intervene, paragraph 12 opens thus, ‘This is my first journey’ (day’s work); ‘I will end to-morrow. I write all, of how little consequence so ever it be, to the end you may take of the whole that shall be best for your purpose. I do here a work that I hate much, but I had begun it this morning.’[339 - The last italicised words are in the English translation, not in the Scots.]

Here, then, after 500 words confessedly written on her second night, Mary says that this is her first day’s work. The natural theory is that here we detect clumsy dovetailing by a forger, who has cut a genuine letter into pieces, and inserted false matter. But another explanation may be suggested. Mary, on her first night, did not really stop at paragraph 7: ‘I will talk to him to-morrow on that point.’ These words happened to come at the foot of her sheet of paper. She took up another fresh page, and wrote on, ‘This is my first journey …’ down to ‘I had begun it this morning.’ Then she stopped and went to bed. Next night (January 22) she took up the same sheet or page as she had written three sentences on, the evening before, but she took it up on the clean side, and did not observe her words ‘This is my first journey… I had begun it this morning’ till she finished, and turned over the clean side. She then probably ran her pen lightly across the now inappropriate words, written on the previous night, ‘This is my first journey,’ as she erased lines in her draft for a sonnet in the Bodleian Library.[340 - Hosack, ii. 24.] The words, as in the case of the sonnet in the Bodleian, remained perfectly legible, and the translators – not intelligent men – included them in their versions.

The letter should run from paragraph 7, ‘I will talk to him to-morrow upon that point’ to paragraph 12, ‘This is my first journey… I had begun it this morning.’ Then back to paragraph 8, ‘As to the rest of Willie Hiegait’s,’ and so straight on, merely omitting the words written on the previous night, ‘This is my first journey, … but I had begun it this morning.’

Mary’s mistake in taking for virgin a piece of paper which really had writing on the verso, must have occurred to most people: certainly it has often occurred to myself.

There is one objection to this theory. In paragraph 25, at the end of the letter, Mary apologises for having written part of a letter on a sheet containing the memoranda, or list of topics, which, as we saw, she began by writing. She says, in Scots, ‘Excuse that thing that is scriblit’ (MS. C,[341 - Father Pollen kindly lent me collations of this Cambridge MS. translation into Scots, marked by me ‘C.’] ‘barbulzeit’) ‘for I had na paper yesterday quhan I wrait that of ye memoriall.’ The English runs, ‘Excuse also that I scribbled, for I had yesternight no paper when I took the paper of a memorial.’

Now the part of Mary’s letter which is on the same paper as the ‘memorial,’ or scribbled list of topics, must have been written, not ‘yesternight,’ but ‘to-night’ (on the night of January 22), unless she is consciously writing in the early morning, after 12 P.M., January 22; in the ‘wee sma’ hours ayont the twal’,’ of January 23: which does not seem probable.

If this however meets the objection indicated, the chronology of the letter is consistent; it is of the night of January 21, and the night of January 22, including some time past midnight. The apparent breaks or ‘faults,’ then, are not the result of clumsy dovetailing by a forger, but are the consequence of a mere ordinary accident in Mary’s selection of sheets of paper.

We now come to the objections based on Crawford’s Deposition. Of Letter II., as we have it, paragraph 2, in some degree, and paragraphs 6 (from ‘Ye ask me quhat I mene be the crueltie’), 7, 9, 10, and parts of 21 also exist, with, in many places, verbal correspondence in phrase, in another shape. The correspondence of phrase, above all in 6, is usually with the Scots translation, sometimes, on the other hand, with the English. Consequently, as will be seen on comparison of the Scots Letter II. with this other form of part of its contents, these two texts have a common source and cannot be independent.[342 - See Letter and Crawford’s Deposition in Appendix (#pgepubid00028). Mr. Henderson, in his Casket Letters (second edition, pp. xxvi, xxvii, 82-84), argues that the interdependence of Crawford’s Deposition and of Letter II. ‘does not seem to be absolutely proved.’ Perhaps no other critic doubts it.] This new form is contained in a Deposition, made on oath by a gentleman, a retainer of Lennox, named Thomas Crawford, the very man who met Mary outside Glasgow (Letter II. 2). He had attended Darnley in Glasgow, and had received from Darnley, and written, a verbatim report of his discussions with Mary. Crawford was therefore brought forward, by the accusers, on December 9, 1568, before the Commission of Inquiry at Westminster. The object was to prove that no one alive but Mary could have written Letter II., because she, and she only, could know the nature of her private talk with her husband, as reported in Letter II., and, therefore, no one could have forged the Letter in which that talk was recorded. Providentially, however, Darnley had informed Crawford about those private talks, and here was Crawford, to corroborate Letter II.

But it escaped the notice of the accusers that all the world, or all whom Crawford chose to inform as to what Darnley told him about these conversations, might know the details of the talk even better than Mary herself. For the precise words would fade from Mary’s memory, whereas Crawford, as he swore, had written them down at once, as reported to him by Darnley, probably as soon as Mary left his sick-room. The written copy by Crawford must have preserved the words with fidelity beyond that of human memory, and the written words were in the custody of Crawford, or of Lennox, so long as they chose to keep the manuscript. This fact is proved on Crawford’s oath. On December 9, 1568, before the Commissioners, he swore that, when with Darnley, in Glasgow, in January, 1567, ‘he was secretly informed by the King of all things which had passed betwixt the said Queen and the King, … to the intent that he should report the same to the Earl of Lennox, his Master, and that he did, immediately at the same time, write the same word by word as near as he could possibly carry the same away.’ He was certain that his report of Mary’s words to himself, ‘the words now reported in his writing,’ ‘are the very same words, on his conscience, that were spoken,’ while Darnley’s reports of Mary’s talk (also contained in Crawford’s written deposition) are the same in effect, ‘though not percase in all parts the very words themselves.’[343 - Goodall, ii. 246.]

We do not know whether what Crawford now handed in on December 9, 1568, was an English version of his own written verbatim Scots report done in January, 1567; or a copy of it; or whether he copied it from Letter II., or whether he rewrote it from memory after nearly two years. The last alternative may be dismissed as impossible, owing to the verbal identity of Crawford’s report with that in the Scots version of the French Letter attributed to Mary. Another thing is doubtful: whether Lennox, at Chiswick, on June 11, 1568, did or did not possess the report which Crawford wrote for him in January, 1567. Lennox, on June 11, as we saw, wrote to Crawford asking ‘what purpose Crawford held with her’ (Mary) ‘at her coming to the town’ of Glasgow. He did not ask what conversation Mary then held with Darnley. Either he had that principal part of Crawford’s report, in writing, in his possession, or he knew nothing about it (which, if Crawford told truth, is impossible), or he forgot it, which is next to impossible. All he asked for on June 11 was Crawford’s recollection about what passed between himself and Mary ere she entered Glasgow, concerning which Crawford nowhere says that he made any written memorandum. Lennox, then, on June 11, 1568, wanted Crawford’s recollections of his own interview with the Queen, either to corroborate Letter II., if it then existed; or for secret purposes of Wood’s, who was with him.

It will be observed that Crawford’s account of this interview of his with Mary presents some verbal identities with Letter II. And this is notable, for these identities occur where neither Crawford nor the Letter is reporting the speeches on either side. These might easily be remembered, for a while, by both parties. But both parties could not be expected to coincide verbally in phrases descriptive of their meeting, and its details. Thus, Crawford, ‘I made my Lord, my Master’s humble commendations, with the excuse that he came not to meet her.’ In Letter II. we read ‘He made his’ (Lennox’s) ‘commendations, and excuses unto me, that he came not to meet me.’

The excuses, in Crawford, are first of Lennox’s bad health (not in the Letter); next, that he was anxious ‘because of the sharp words that she had spoken of him to Robert Cunningham, his servant,’ &c.

In Letter II. this runs: ‘considering the sharp words that I had spoken to Cunningham.’ Crawford next introduces praises of Lennox which are not in the Letter, but, where a speech is reported, he uses the very words of the Scots translation of Letter II., which vary from the words in the English translation.

It follows that, even here, the Letter, in the Scots version, and Crawford’s Deposition, have one source. Either Crawford took the Scots translation, and (while keeping certain passages) modified it: or the maker of the Letter borrowed from Crawford’s Deposition. In the former case, the sworn corroboration is a perjury: in the latter, the Letter is a forgery.

Crawford has passages which the Letter has not: they are his own reflections. Thus, after reporting Darnley’s remark about the English sailors, with whom he denied that he meant to go away (Letter II. 19), Crawford has, what the Letter has not: ‘And if he had’ (gone away) ‘it had not been without cause, seeing how he was used. For he had neither to sustain himself nor his servants, and needed not make further rehearsal thereof, seeing she knew it as well as he.’ Is this Crawford’s addition or Darnley’s speech? Then there is Crawford’s statement that Mary never stayed more than two hours, at a time, with Darnley – long enough, in an infected room of which the windows were never opened. It is here, after the grumble about Mary’s brief stay, that Crawford adds, ‘She was very pensive, whereat he found fault.’

Now Darnley may have told Crawford (though Crawford does not give this as part of the conversation), ‘I was vexed by the Queen’s moodiness,’ or the like. But it is incredible that Mary herself should also say, in the Letter, just before she mentions going to supper after her first brief interview (Scots) ‘he fand greit fault that I was pensive’ (Letter II. 5[344 - The English runs, ‘Indeede that he had found faulte with me…’ Mr. Bain notes ‘a blank left thus’ (Bain, ii. 723).]). To Mary’s defenders this phrase appears to be borrowed by the forger of the Letter from Crawford’s Deposition; not borrowed by Crawford, out of place and at random (with a skip from Letter II. 5 to Letter II. 19), and then thrust in after his own reflections on the brevity of Mary’s visits to Darnley. For Crawford is saying that her visits were not only short, but sulky. On the other hand, in the Letter the writer is made to contrast Darnley’s blitheness with her gloom.

Crawford does not report, what the Letter makes Mary report, Darnley’s unconcealed knowledge of her relations with Bothwell, at least in the passage, ‘It is thocht, and he belevis it to be trew, that I have not the power of myself unto myself, and that because of the refuse I maid of his offeris.’

Crawford ends with his own reply to Darnley, as to Mary’s probable intentions: ‘I answered I liked it not, because she took him to Craigmillar,’ not to Holyrood. The ‘Book of Articles,’ we know, declares that Mary ‘from Glasgow, be hir letteris and utherwise, held Bothwell continewally in rememberance of the said house,’ that is, Kirk o’ Field. But the Letters produced do nothing of the kind. Craigmillar, as we have seen, is dwelt on. In the Deposition the idea of Darnley’s being carried away as a prisoner is introduced as an original opinion of Crawford’s, expressed privately to Darnley, and necessarily unknown to Mary when she wrote Letter II. But it occurs thus, in Letter II. 9, after mention of a litter which Mary had brought for his conveyance, and to which Darnley, who loved riding of all things, made objection. ‘I trow he belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner’ – a passage not in the English translation. Darnley replied to Crawford’s remark about his being taken as ‘a prisoner’ that ‘he thought little else himself.’ It is reckoned odd that Mary in the Letter makes him ‘think little else himself.’ ‘I trow he belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner.’