The Mystery of Mary Stuart

183

Hay Fleming, pp. 442-443.

184

Robertson, Inventories, p. 53.

185

Anderson, i. 112. Bain, ii. 322.

186

Keith knew a copy in the Scots College at Paris, attested by Sir James Balfour as ‘the authentick copy of the principall band.’ This copy Sir James sent to Mary, in January, 1581, after Morton’s arrest. The names of laymen are Huntly, Argyll, Morton, Cassilis, Sutherland, Errol, Crawford, Caithness, Rothes, Boyd, Glamis, Ruthven, Semple, Herries, Ogilvy, Fleming. John Read’s memory must have been fallacious. There are eight prelates in Balfour’s band, including Archbishop Hamilton, the Bishop of Orkney, who joined in prosecuting Mary, and Lesley, Bishop of Ross (Keith, ii. 562-569). On the whole subject see a discussion by Mr. Bain and Mr. Hay Fleming, in The Genealogist, 1900-1901. Some copies are dated April 20. See Fraser, The Melvilles, i. 89.

187

Spanish Calendar, i. 662.

188

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 213.

189

Bain, ii. 323, 324.

190

Melville, p. 177.

191

Melville, p. 178.

192

Drury to Cecil, Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 222.

193

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 223-224.

194

May 6, Drury to Cecil.

195

Drury to Cecil, May 6. Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 223, 224.

196

Undated letter in Bannatyne, of 1570-1572.

197

See Stewart’s Lost Chapter in the History of Queen Mary for the illegalities of the divorce. The best Catholic opinion is agreed on the subject.

198

Melville, 182. Teulet, ii. 153, 170.

199

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 235.

200

Drury to Cecil, Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 240.

201

Dates from James Beaton’s letter of June 17. Laing, ii. 106, 115.

202

Nau, 46-48.

203

Laing, i. 113. June 17, 1567.

204

Melville, p. 183.

205

Teulet, ii. 179.

206

Teulet, ii. 169, 170. June 17.

207

Bannatyne’s Memorials, p. 126.

208

Nau, 50-54.

209

Laing, ii, 115.

210

Bannatyne, Journal, 477, 482.

211

Chalmers, Life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1818), ii. 486, 487, note. I do not understand Randolph to bring these charges merely on the ground of Mary’s word. That he only adds as corroboration, I think, of facts otherwise familiar to him.

212

Mr. Froude has observed that the Lords, ‘uncertain what to do, sent one of their number in haste to Paris, to the Earl of Moray, to inform him of the discovery of the Letters, and to entreat him to return immediately.’ Mr. Hosack says that Mr. Froude owes this circumstance ‘entirely to his imagination.’ This is too severe. The Lords did not send ‘one of their number’ to Moray, but they sent letters which Robert Melville carried as far as London, and, seventeen days later, they did send a man who, if not ‘one of their number,’ was probably Moray’s agent, John Wood (Hosack, i. 352).

213

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. p. 261.

214

Spanish Calendar, i. 657.

215

Cal. For. Eliz. ix. pp. 354, 355.

216

Fénelon, Dépêches (1838), i. 19, 20.

217

Fénelon, i. 22. To this point we shall return.

218

La Mothe Fénelon, vii. 275-276.

219

Cal. Span. i. 659.

220

Bain, ii. 336.

221

Bain, ii. 338.

222

Bain, ii. 339.

223

Bain, ii. 341.

224

Melville to Cecil, July 1. Bain, ii. 343.

225

Bain, ii. 350, 351.

226

Bain, ii. 322, 360.

227

Ibid. 358.

228

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 297, 298. Keith, ii. 694, 700.

229

Already, on July 16, Mary had offered verbally, by Robert Melville, to the Lords, to make Moray Regent: or, failing him, to appoint a Council of Regency, Châtelherault, Huntly, Argyll, Atholl, Lennox, and, ‘with much ado,’ Morton, Moray, Mar, and Glencairn. But she would not abandon Bothwell, as she was pregnant. Throckmorton does not say that she now promised to sign an abdication. A letter of Mary’s, to Bothwell’s captain in Dunbar, was intercepted, ‘containing matter little to her advantage.’ It never was produced by her prosecutors (Throckmorton, July 18. Bain, ii. 355,356). Robert Melville, visiting her, declined to carry such a letter to Bothwell. See his examination, in Addit. MSS. British Museum, 33531, fol. 119 et seq.

230

Bain, ii. 367.

231

Bain, ii. 328.

232

Ibid. i. 346-348.

233

Bain, ii. 346.

234

Ibid. 354. July 16.

235

Alava to Philip, July 17. Teulet, v. 29.

236

De Silva, July 26, August 2. Spanish Calendar, i. 662, 665. I have occasionally preferred the Spanish text to Major Hume’s translations. See also Hosack, i. 215, 216.

237

Froude, iii. 118. 1866.

238

Lennox MSS.

239

The words within inverted commas are autograph additions by Lennox himself.

240

Ogilvy of Boyne, who married his old love, Lady Bothwell, after the death of her second husband, the Earl of Sutherland. See pp. 26, 27, supra.

241

A Lost Chapter in the History of Mary Stuart.

242

Throckmorton to Elizabeth, July 18. Bain, ii. 355.

243

Throckmorton to Elizabeth, July 31, 1567. Bain, ii. 370.

244

Maitland Miscellany, vol. iv. part i. p. 119.

245

Teulet, ii. 255, 256.

246

Labanoff, ii. 106.

247

Bain, ii. 423.

248

Ibid. 441, 442.

249

I do not know where the originals of these five letters now are. They were among the Hamilton Papers, having probably been intercepted by the Hamiltons before they reached Moray, Lethington, Crawford, and the others.

250

Bain, ii. 514.

251

Ibid. 523, 524.

252

For. Eliz. viii. 478, 479. Bain, ii. 426, 427.

253

Bowton’s confession. Laing, ii. 256, 257.

254

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 331.

255

Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 363.

256

Moray, Morton, Glencairn, Errol, Buchan, Home, Ruthven, Semple, Glamis, Lindsay, Gray, Graham, Ochiltree (Knox’s father-in-law), Innermeith, the treacherous Bishop of Orkney, Sir James Balfour (deeply involved in the murder), Makgill, Lethington, Erskine of Dun, Wishart of Pitarro, Kirkcaldy of Grange, and others of less note.

257

Nau, pp. 71-73.

258

Teulet, ii. 247.

259

Act in Henderson, 177-185.

260

Nau, 74, 75.

261

Goodall, ii. 361. B. M. Titus, c. 12, fol. 157 (olim 175). ‘And gif it beis allegit, yat hir matz wretting producit in pliamẽt, sould proiff hir g, culpable. It maybe ansrit yat yäre is na plane mentione maid in it, be ye quhilk hir hienes may be convict Albeit it wer hir awin hand wreitt, as it is not And als the same is cuttit (cullit?) be yame selfis in sum principall & substantious clausis.’

262

Sepp, Tagebuch, Munich, 1882.

263

Bain, ii. 441, 442.

264

Maitland Club Miscellany, iv. 120, 121.

265

Teulet, ii. 248.

266

Bain, ii. 517.

267

Bain, ii. 434.

268

Nov. 8, 1571. Murdin, p. 57.

269

State Trials, i. 978.

270

As to ‘the subtlety of that practice,’ which puzzled Mr. Froude, Laing offers a highly ingenious conjecture. Mary was to do the Scots translations, procured for her by Lethington, into her own French, omitting the compromising portions. Lethington was next ‘privately to substitute or produce the Queen’s transcript instead of the originals, with the omission of those criminal passages, which might then be opposed as interpolated in the translation.’ But in that case ‘some variance of phrase’ by Mary could bring nothing ‘to light,’ for there would be no originals to compare. Lethington, while slipping Mary’s new transcript into the Casket (Laing, i. 145, 146), would, of course, remove the original letters in French, leaving the modified transcript in their place. ‘Variance of phrase’ between an original and a translation could prove nothing. Moreover, if Lethington had access to the French letters, it was not more dangerous for him to destroy them than to substitute a version which Moray, Morton, Buchanan, and all concerned could honestly swear to be false. The Bishop of Ross did, later, manage an ingenious piece of ‘palming’ letters on Cecil, but, in the story of ‘palming’ fresh transcripts into the Casket there is no consistency. Moreover Melville’s word is at least as good as Lesley’s, and Melville denies the truth of Lesley’s confession.

271

British Museum Addit. MSS. 33531, fol. 119, et seq. The MS. is much injured.

272

Murdin, pp. 52, 58.

273

Bain, ii. 524.

274

Addit. MSS. ut supra.

275

Goodall, ii. 111.

276

Bain, ii. 518, 519.

277

Ibid. 519.

278

Bain, ii. 524.

279

Lennox MSS.

280

Bain, ii. 520, 521.

281

Goodall, ii. 140.

282

The production is asserted, Goodall, ii. 87.

283

Calderwood, iii. 556.

284

For the Ainslie Band, and the signatories, see Bain, ii. 322, and Hay Fleming, p. 446, note 60, for all the accounts.

285

Hosack, i. 543.

286

There are two sets of extracts (Goodall, ii. 148-153): one of them is in the Sadleyr Papers, edited by Sir Walter Scott, and in Haynes, p. 480. This is headed ‘A brief Note of the chief and principal points of the Queen of Scots Letters written to Bothwell for her consent and procurement of the murder of her husband, as far forth as we could by the reading gather.’ The other set is in Scots, ‘Notes drawin furth of the Quenis letters sent to the Erle Bothwell.’ If this were, as Miss Strickland supposed, an abstract made and shown in June-July, it would prove, of course, that Letter II. was then in its present shape, and would destroy my hypothesis. But Cecil endorses it. ‘sent October 29.’ I think it needless to discuss the notion that Lethington and his companions showed only the Scots texts, and vowed that they were in Mary’s handwriting! They could not conceivably go counter, first, to Moray’s statement (June 22, 1568) that the Scots versions were only translations. Nor could they, later, produce the Letters in French, and pretend that both they and the Scots texts were in Mary’s hand. Doubtless they showed the French (though we are not told that they did), but the English Commissioners, odd as it seems, preferred to send to Elizabeth extracts from the Scots.

287

Bain, ii. 526-528. See also in Hosack, ii. 496-501, with the obliterated lines restored.

288

Bain, ii. 529-530.

289

Bain, ii. 533, 534.

290

Goodall, ii. 162-170. The dates here are difficult. Lesley certainly rode to Bolton, as Knollys says, on October 13, a Wednesday. (See the English Commissioners to Elizabeth. Goodall, ii. 173. York, October 17.) By October 17, Lesley was again at York (Goodall, ii. 174). Therefore I take it that Lesley’s letter to Mary (Bain, ii. 533, 534) is of October 18, or later, and that the ‘Saturday’ when Norfolk and Lethington rode together, and when Lethington probably shook Norfolk’s belief in the authenticity of the Casket Letters, is Saturday, October 16.

291

Bain, ii. 533, 534.

292

Ibid. ii. 693.

293

Bain, ii. 541.

294

Ibid. ii. 533.

295

Addit. MSS. ut supra.

296

His letter is given in full by Hosack, i. 518-522.

297

Goodall, ii. 179-182.

298

Bain, ii. 551.

299

Goodall, ii. 182, 186.

300

Goodall, ii. No. lxvi. 189.

301

Anderson, iv. pt. ii. 115-121. Goodall, ii. 203-207.

302

Teulet, ii. 237.

303

Anderson, ii. 125-128. Bain, ii. 562, 563.

304

See Hosack, i. 432, 583. The opinions of the Legists are taken from La Mothe, i. 51, 54. December 15, 1568.

305

Goodall, ii. 222-227. But compare her letter of Nov. 22, p. 265, supra.

306

Bain, ii. 565, 566.

307

Goodall, ii. 229.

308

In my opinion the book is by George Buchanan, who presents many coincident passages in his Detection. On February 25, 1569, one Bishop, an adherent of Mary’s, said, under examination, that ‘there were sundry books in Latin against her, one or both by Mr. George Buchanan,’ books not yet published (Bain, ii. 624). Can the Book of Articles have been done into Scots out of Buchanan’s Latin?

309

When Goodall and Laing wrote (1754, 1804) the Minutes of December 7 had not been discovered.

310

Bain, ii. 569, 570.

311

Bain, ii. 571-573. (Cf. pp. 254, note 3, and 271, supra.)

312

See Appendix E, ‘The Translation of the Casket Letters.’

313

The extant copy is marked as of December viii. That is cancelled, and the date ‘Thursday, December 29’ is given; the real date being December 9. (Bain, ii. 576, 593, 730, 731.) This Declaration was one of the MSS. of Sir Alexander Malet, bought by the British Museum in 1883. The Fifth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission contains a summary, cited by Bresslau, in Kassetenbriefen, pp. 21, 23, 1881. In 1889, Mr. Henderson published a text in his Casket Letters. That of Mr. Bain, ut supra, is more accurate (ii. 730 et seq.). Mr. Henderson substitutes Andrew for the notorious Archibald Douglas, and there are other misreadings in the first edition.

314

See ‘The Internal Evidence,’ pp. 302-313.

315

Mr. Bain omits December 13; see Goodall, ii. 252.

316

Bain, ii. 579, 580.

317

Froude, 1866, iii. 347.

318

Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research, vol. iii. pp. 282, 283, 294.

319

See Bain, ii. 581, for Crawford; the matter of this his second deposition, made on December 13, is not given; we know it from the Lennox Papers. The Diurnal avers that Tala, on the scaffold, accused Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, Balfour, and others of signing the band for the murder, ‘whereto the Queen’s grace consented.’ Naturally the Queen’s accusers did not put the confession about Lethington forward, but if Tala publicly accused Mary, why did they omit the circumstance?

320

Ballad by Tom Truth, in Bain under date of December, 1568.

321

Goodall, ii. 257-260. Bain, ii. 580, 581.

322

Froude, viii. 484. Mr. Froude’s page-heading runs: ‘The English nobles pronounce them’ (the Letters) ‘genuine.’ But this, as he shows in the passage cited, they really did not do. They only said that Elizabeth must not see Mary, ‘until some answer had been made first…’ However, Elizabeth would not even let Mary see the Letters; and so no ‘answer’ was possible.

323

Lingard, vi. 94, note 2 (1855).

324

Bain, ii. 583.

325

Another account, by Lesley, but not ‘truly nor fully’ reported, as Cecil notes, is in Groodall, ii. 260, 261. Compare La Mothe Fénelon, i. 82. Bain, ii. 585.

326

Hosack, i. 460.

327

Goodall, ii. 281.

328

La Mothe, January 20, 30, 1569, i. 133-162.

329

Goodall, ii. 272, 273.

330

Goodall, ii. 307-309.

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.)

332

Bain, ii. 570.

333

In the Cambridge MS. of the Scots translations (C) our Letter II. is placed first. This MS. is the earliest.

334

It is indubitable that ‘Cecil’s Journal’ was supplied by the prosecution, perhaps from Lennox, who had made close inquiries about the dates.

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.

336

Hosack, i. 217, 218.

337

See the letter in Appendix, ‘Casket Letters.’

338

‘Yesternicht’ is omitted in the English. See Appendix E, ‘Translation of the Casket Letters.’

339

The last italicised words are in the English translation, not in the Scots.

340

Hosack, ii. 24.

341

Father Pollen kindly lent me collations of this Cambridge MS. translation into Scots, marked by me ‘C.’

342

See Letter and Crawford’s Deposition in Appendix. 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.

343

Goodall, ii. 246.

344

The English runs, ‘Indeede that he had found faulte with me…’ Mr. Bain notes ‘a blank left thus’ (Bain, ii. 723).

345

Lennox MSS.

346

Mr. Frazer-Tytler, who did not enter into the controversy, supposed that Crawford’s Deposition was the actual written report, made by him to Lennox in January 1567. If so, Letter II. is forged.

347

Mr. Henderson writes (Casket Letters, second edition, p. xxvi): ‘It must be remembered that while Crawford affirms that he supplied Lennox with notes of the conversation immediately after it took place, he does not state that the notes were again returned to him by Lennox in order to enable him to form his deposition.’ How else could he get them, unless he kept a copy? ‘It is also absurd to suppose that Lennox, on June 11, 1568, should have written to Crawford for notes which he had already in his own possession.’ But Lennox did not do that; he asked, not for Mary’s conversation with Darnley, but for Crawford’s with Mary, which Crawford never says that he wrote down ‘at the time.’ Mr. Henderson goes on to speak of ‘the notes having been lost,’ and ‘these documents had apparently been destroyed’ (p. 84), of which I see no appearance.

348

Goodall, ii. 246. Maitland Club Miscellany, iv. pt. i. p. 119. It will be observed that while Crawford swears to having written down Darnley’s report for Lennox ‘at the time,’ he says that he ‘caused to be made’ the writing which he handed in to the Commissioners, ‘according to the truth of his knowledge.’ Crawford’s Deposition handed in to the Commissioners, in fact, has been ‘made,’ that is, has been Anglicised from the Scots; this is proved by the draft in the Lennox Papers. This is what Crawford means by saying that he ‘caused it to be made.’ There is a corrected draft of the declaration in the Lennox MSS., but Crawford’s original autograph text, ‘written with his hand’ (in Scots doubtless), was retained by the Lords (Goodall, ii. 88).

349

The Deposition, in Bain, ii. 313, is given under February, 1567, but this copy of it, being in English, cannot be so early.

350

Historia, fol. 213. Yet the Lennox dossier represents Darnley as engaged, at this very time, at Stirling, in a bitter and angry quarrel with Mary. He may have been in contradictory moods: Buchanan omits the mood of fury.

351

Maitland of Lethington, ii. 337.

352

Mary to Norfolk, Jan. 31, 1570. Labanoff, iii. 19.

353

Labanoff, iii. 62.

354

The prosecution is in rather an awkward position as to Bothwell’s action when he returned to Edinburgh, after leaving Mary at Callendar, which we date January 21, and they date January 23. Cecil’s Journal says, ‘January 23 … Erle Huntly and Bothwell returnit that same nycht to Edynt [Edinburgh] and Bothwell lay in the Town.’ The Book of Articles has ‘Bot boithuell at his cuming to Edinburgh ludgit in the toun, quhair customably he usit to ly at the abbay,’ that is, in Holyrood (Hosack, i. 534). The author of the Book of Articles clearly knew Cecil’s Journal; perhaps he wrote it. Yet he makes Mary stay but one night at Callendar; Cecil’s Journal makes her stay two nights. However, our point is that both sources make Bothwell lie in the town, not at Holyrood, on the night of his return from Callendar. His object, they imply, was to visit Kirk o’ Field privately, being lodged near it and not in his official rooms. But here they are contradicted by Paris, who says that when he brought Mary’s first Glasgow Letter to Bothwell he found him in his chambers at Holyrood (Laing, ii. 282).