The Mystery of Mary Stuart

That the second indictment, about October 1, 1568, was still in the making, I at first inferred from the following passage which occurs in a set of pieces of evidence collected for Lennox, but without date. ‘Ferder your h. sall have advertisement of, as I can find, but it is gude that this mater’ (Lennox’s construction of a new indictment) ‘be not endit quile’ (until) ‘your h. may haif copie of the letter, quhilk I sall haif at York, so sone as I may haif a traist berar’ (a trusty bearer to carry the copy to Lennox). So I read the letter, but Father Pollen, no doubt correctly, in place of ‘York’ reads ‘your h.;’ that is, ‘Your Honour,’ a common phrase. The date yielded by ‘York’ therefore vanishes. We can, therefore, only infer that this correspondent, writing not to Lennox, it appears, but to some one, Wood perhaps, engaged in getting up the case, while sending him information for his indictment, advises that it be not finished till receipt of a copy of a certain letter, which is to be sent by a trusty bearer. It may be our Letter II. We can have no certainty. In his new indictment, substituted for his former discourse, Letter II. is the only one to which Lennox makes distinct allusion.

He now omits the useful citations of the mysterious epistle which he had previously used; and, instead, quotes Letter II. The old passages cited were more than good enough for Lennox’s purpose, but they are no longer employed by him. There can be no doubt as to which of his discourses is the earlier and which the later. That containing the report of Mary’s letter which agrees with Moray’s report to de Silva, lacks the numerous details about Hiegait, Crawford, Mary’s taunts to Darnley, their quarrel at Stirling, and so forth, and we know that, on June 11, 1568, Lennox had sent to Scotland asking for all these particulars. They all duly appear in the second discourse which contains reference to Letter II. They are all absent from the discourse which contains the letter about the scheme for poisoning Darnley and Lady Bothwell. Therefore that indictment is the earlier: written on evidence of Darnley’s servants, and from ‘the sayings and reports’ of Mary’s servants.

For what reason should Lennox drop the citations from the poisonous letter, which he quoted in his earlier discourse, if such a letter was to be produced by the Lords? The words were of high value to his argument. But drop them he did in his later discourse, and, in place of them, quoted much less telling lines from Letter II.

All this is explained, if Letter II. was a revised and less explicit edition of the letter first reported on by Lennox; or if the letter first quoted was an improved and more vigorous version of a genuine Letter II. Mr. Hosack, when he had only Moray’s account of the mysterious letter before him, considered it fatal to the authenticity of Letter II., which he thought a cleverly watered-down version of the mysterious letter, and, like it, a forgery. Mr. Hosack’s theory is reinforced by Lennox’s longer account of the mysterious epistle. But he overlooked the possibility that Letter II. may not be a diluted copy of the forgery, but a genuine original on which the forgery was based. It may be asked, if the Letter touched on by Lennox and Moray was a forged letter, why was it dropped, and why was another substituted before the meeting of Commissioners at York? As we have only brief condensed reports of the Letter which never was produced, our answer must be incomplete. But Moray’s description of the document speaks of ‘the house where the explosion was arranged,’ before Mary left Edinburgh for Glasgow. Now, according to one confession, taken after the finding of the Casket, namely on December 8, 1567, the explosion was not dreamed of ‘till within two days before the murder.’[253 - Bowton’s confession. Laing, ii. 256, 257.] Therefore Mary could not, on reflection, be made to write that the gunpowder plot was arranged before January 21, 1567, for that contradicted the confession, and the confession was put in as evidence.

The proceedings of Mary’s accusers, therefore, may have taken the following line. First, having certainly got hold of a silver casket of Mary’s, about June 21, 1567, they either added a forgery, or, perhaps, interpolated, as her Lords said, ‘the most principal and substantious’ clauses. They probably gave copies to du Croc: and they told Throckmorton that they had not only letters, but witnesses of Mary’s guilt. These witnesses doubtless saw Mary at the murder ‘in male apparel,’ as Lennox says some declared that she was. But these witnesses were never produced. They sent, probably, by ‘Jhone a Forret,’ copies to Moray, one of which, the mysterious letter, in July, 1567, he partly described to de Silva. In June, 1568, they sent translated copies into England with Wood. These were not seen by Sussex, Norfolk, and Sadleyr (the men who, later, sat as Commissioners at York), but Wood, perhaps, showed them, or parts of them, to Lennox, who cited portions of the mysterious Letter in his first indictment. But, when Moray, Morton, Lethington, and the other Commissioners of the Lords were bound for the Inquiry at York, they looked over their hand of cards, re-examined their evidence. They found that the ‘long letter’ cited by Moray and Lennox contradicted the confession of Bowton, and was altogether too large and mythical. They therefore manufactured a subtler new edition, or fell back upon a genuine Letter II. If so, they would warn Lennox, or some one with Lennox, in framing his new indictment, to wait for their final choice as to this letter. He did wait, received a copy of it, dropped the first edition of the letter, and interwove the second edition, which may be partly genuine, with his ‘discourse.’

This is, at least, a coherent hypothesis. There is, however, another possible hypothesis: admirers of the Regent Moray may declare. Though capable of using his sister’s accomplices to accuse his sister, ‘the noble and stainless Moray’ was not capable of employing a forged document. On returning to Scotland he found that, in addition to the falsified Letter, there existed the genuine Letter II., really by Mary. Like a conscientious man, he insisted that the falsified Letter should be suppressed, and Letter II. produced.

This amiable theory may be correct. It is ruined, however, if we are right in guessing that, when Moray sent Wood into England with Scots versions of the Letters (May, 1568), he may have included among these a copy of the falsified Letter, which was therefore cited by Lennox.

There is another point of suspicion, suggested by the Lennox Papers. In Glasgow Letter II., Mary, writing late at night, is made to say, ‘I cannot sleep as thay do, and as I wald desyre, that is in zour armes, my deir lufe.’ In the Lennox account of the letter quoted by Moray to de Silva, she ‘wishes him then present in her arms.’ In the Lennox Paper she speaks of Darnley’s ‘sweet baits,’ ‘flattering and sweet words,’ which have ‘almost overcome her.’ In the English text of Letter II., Darnley ‘used so many kinds of flatteries so coldly and wisely as you would marvel at.’ His speeches ‘would make me but to have pity on him.’ Finally, in the Lennox version of the unproduced Letter, Mary represents herself as ready to ‘abandon her God, put in adventure the loss of her dowry in France, hazard such titles as she had to the crown of England, as heir apparent thereof, and also to the crown of the realm.’ Nothing of this detailed kind occurs, we have seen, in the Letters, as produced. Similar sentiments are found, however, in the first and second Casket Sonnets. ‘Is he not in possession of my body, of my heart which recoils neither from pain, nor dishonour, nor uncertainty of life, nor offence of kindred, nor worse woe? For him I esteem all my friends less than nothing… I have hazarded for him name and conscience; for him I desire to renounce the world … in his hands and in his power I place my son’ (which she did not do), ‘my honour, my life, my realm, my subjects, my own subject soul.’

It is certainly open, then, to a defender of Mary to argue that the Letters and Sonnets, as produced and published, show traces of the ideas and expressions employed in the letter described by Moray, and by Lennox. Now that letter, certainly, was never written by Mary. It had to be dropped, for it was inconsistent with a statement as to the murder put forward by the prosecution; Bowton’s examination.

In short, the letter cited by Moray, and by Lennox, the long letter from Glasgow, looks like a sketch, later modified, for Letter II., or a forgery based on Letter II., and suggests that forgeries were, at some period, being attempted. As the Glasgow Letter (II.), actually produced, also contains (see ‘The Internal Evidence’) the highly suspicious passage tallying verbally with Crawford’s deposition, there is no exaggeration in saying that the document would now carry little weight with a jury. Against all this we must not omit to set the failure to discredit the Letters, when published later, by producing the contemporary copies reported by de Silva to be in the hands of La Forest, or du Croc, as early as July, 1567. But the French Government (if ever it had the copies) was not, as we have said, when Buchanan’s ‘Detection’ was thrust on the courtiers, either certain to compare La Forest’s copies and the published Letters critically, or to raise a question over discrepancies, if they existed. In any case neither Charles IX., nor La Mothe Fénelon, in 1571, wrote a word to suggest that they thought the Casket Papers an imposture.

XI

THE LETTERS AT THE CONFERENCE OF YORK

In tracing the history of the mysterious letter cited by Moray in July, 1567, and by Lennox about July, 1568, we have been obliged to diverge from the chronological order of events. We must return to what occurred publicly, as regards the Letters, after Throckmorton was told of their existence, by Lethington in Scotland in July, 1567. Till May, 1568, Mary remained a prisoner in Loch Leven. For some time after July, 1567, we hear nothing more of the Letters. Elizabeth (August 29) bade Throckmorton tell Mary’s party, the Hamiltons, that ‘she well allows their proceedings as far as they concern the relief of the Queen.’ On August 30, Moray asked Cecil to move Elizabeth ‘to continue in her good will of him and his proceedings!’[254 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 331.] Elizabeth, then, was of both parties: but rather more inclined to that of Mary, despite Throckmorton’s report as to Mary’s Letters. They are next alluded to by Drury, writing from Berwick on October 28, 1567. ‘The writings which comprehended the names and consents of the chief for the murdering of the King is turned into ashes, the same not unknown to the Queen (Mary) and the same which concerns her part kept to be shown.’[255 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 363.]

On December 4, the Lords of the Privy Council, ‘and other barons and men of judgement,’ met in Edinburgh. They were mainly members of the Protestant Left.[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.] Their Declaration (to be reported presently) was the result, they tell us, of several days of reasoning and debate. Nor is it surprising that they found themselves in a delicate posture. Some of them had been in the conspiracy; others had signed the request to Bothwell that he would marry the Queen, and had solemnly vowed to defend his quarrel, and maintain his innocence. Yet if they would gain a paper and Parliamentary security for their lives and estates (subject to be attainted and forfeited if ever Mary or her son came to power, and wished to avenge Darnley’s murder and the Queen’s imprisonment), they must prove that, in imprisoning Mary, they had acted lawfully. This they demonstrated, though ‘most loth to do so,’ by asking Parliament to approve of all their doings since Darnley’s death (which included their promise to defend Bothwell, and their advice to Mary to marry him). And Parliament was to approve, because their hostile acts ‘was in the said Queen’s own default, in as far as by divers her private letters, written and subscribed with her own hand, and sent by her to James, Earl Bothwell, chief executor of the said horrible murder, as well before the committing thereof as thereafter, and by her ungodly and dishonourable proceeding in a private marriage with him; … it is most certain that she was privy, art and part, and of the actual device and deed of the forementioned murder, … and therefore justly deserves whatsoever has been attempted or shall be used toward her for the said cause…’

From the first, it seems, ‘all men in their hearts were fully persuaded of the authors’ of the crime. Bothwell, to be sure, had been acquitted, both publicly and privately, by his peers and allies. Moray had invited an English envoy to meet him, at a dinner where all the other guests were murderers. People, however, only ‘awaited until God should move the hearts of some to enter in the quarrel of avenging the same’ – which they did by letting Bothwell go free, and entrapping Mary! The godly assemblage then explains how ‘God moved the hearts of some.’ The nobles were ‘in just fear’ of being ‘handled’ like Darnley, ‘perceiving the Queen so thrall and bloody’ (sic: probably a miswriting for ‘blindly’) ‘affectionate to the private appetite of that tyrant,’ Bothwell.

The Council thus gave the lie to their own repeated averments, that Bothwell caused Mary to wed him by fear and force. Now she is gracefully spoken of as ‘bloody affectionate.’

It will be observed that, like Moray earlier, they here describe Mary’s Letters as ‘signed.’ The Casket Letters (in our copies) are unsigned. The originals may have been signed, they were reported to La Forest to be signed as late as December, 1568.

On December 15, a Parliament met in Edinburgh. According to Nau, Mary’s secretary, inspired by her, she had already written from prison a long letter to Moray. ‘She demanded permission to be heard in this Parliament, either in person or by deputy, thereby to answer the false calumnies which had been published about her since her imprisonment.’ Mary offered to lay down her crown ‘of free will,’ and to ‘submit to all the rigour of the laws’ which she desired to be enforced against Darnley’s murderers. None should be condemned unheard. If not heard, she protested against all the proceedings of the Parliament.[257 - Nau, pp. 71-73.]

This may be true: this was Mary’s very attitude when accused at Westminster. Mary made the same assertion as to this demand of hers to be heard, in her ‘Appeal to Christian Princes,’ in June, 1568.[258 - Teulet, ii. 247.] Not only had she demanded leave to be present, and act as her own advocate, but Atholl and Tullibardine, she said, had admitted the justice of her claim – and just it was. But neither then, nor at Westminster in December, 1568, was Mary allowed to appear and defend herself. She knew too much, could have proved the guilt of some of her accusers, and would have broken up their party. A Scots Parliament always voted with the dominant faction. The Parliament passed an Act in the sense of the resolution of the Council and assessors. The Letters, however, are now described, in this Act, not as ‘signed’ or ‘subscribed,’ but as ‘written wholly with her own hand.’[259 - Act in Henderson, 177-185.] No valuable inference can be drawn from the discrepancy.

Nau says not a word about the Letters, but avers that Herries protested that Mary might not have signed her abdication by free will: her signature might even have been forged. He asked leave, with others, to visit her at Loch Leven, but this was refused. ‘Following his example, many of the Lords refused to sign the Acts of this Parliament.’[260 - Nau, 74, 75.] It appears that the Letters really were ‘produced’ in this Parliament, for Mary’s Lords say so in their Declaration of September 12, 1568, just before the Commissioners met at York. They add that ‘there is in no place’ (of ‘her Majesty’s writing’) ‘mention made, by which her highness might be convict, albeit it were her own handwriting, as it is not.’ The Lords add, ‘and also the same’ (Mary’s ‘writing’) ‘is devysit by themselves in some principal and substantious clauses.’[261 - Goodall, ii. 361. B. M. Titus, c. 12, fol. 157 (olim 175). ‘And gif it beis allegit, yat hir ma

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.’] This appears to mean that, while the handwriting of the Letters is not Mary’s, parts of the substance were really hers, ‘principal and substantious clauses’[262 - Sepp, Tagebuch, Munich, 1882.] being introduced by the accusers.

This theory is upheld by Gerdes, and Dr. Sepp, with his hypothesis that the Casket Letters consist of a Diary of Mary’s, mingled with letters of Darnley’s, and interpolated with ‘substantious clauses.’[263 - Bain, ii. 441, 442.] When the originals were produced in England, none of Mary’s party were present to compare them with the Letters shown in the Scottish Parliament.

The Letters are not remarked on again till after Mary’s escape from Loch Leven, and flight into England (May 16, 1568), when Moray writes about them on June 22, 1568.

Wood, in May, as we saw, had carried with him into England copies of the Letters translated into our language: so says the instruction given by Elizabeth’s Government to Middlemore. Moray understood that Elizabeth intended to ‘take trial’ of Mary’s case, ‘with great ceremony and solemnities.’ He is ‘most loth’ to accuse Mary, though, privately or publicly, his party had done so incessantly, for a whole year. Now he asks that those who are to judge the case shall read the Scots translations of the Letters in Wood’s possession (why in Scots, not in the original French?), and shall say whether, if the French originals coincide, the evidence will be deemed sufficient.

Whatever we may think of the fairness of this proposal, it is clear that the French texts, genuine or forged, as they then stood, were already in accordance with the Scots texts, to be displayed by Wood. If the mysterious letter was in Wood’s hands in Scots, doubtless Moray had a forged French version of it. Any important difference in the French texts, when they came to be shown, would have been fatal. But, apparently, they were not shown at this time to Elizabeth.

It is unnecessary to enter on the complicated negotiations which preceded the meeting of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, at York (October, 1568), with Mary’s representatives, and with Moray (who carried the Casket with him) and his allies, Buchanan, Wood, Makgill, Lethington, and others. Mary had the best promises from Elizabeth. She claimed the right of confronting her accusers, from the first. If the worst came to the worst, if the Letters were produced, she believed that she had valid evidence of the guilt of Morton and Lethington, at least. In a Lennox Paper, of 1569, we read: ‘Whereas the Queen said, when she was in Loch Leven, that she had that in black and white that would cause Lethington to hang by the neck, which Letter, if it be possible, it were very needful to be had.’ Nau says that Bothwell, on leaving Mary at Carberry, gave her a band for Darnley’s murder, signed by Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, ‘and told her to take good care of that paper.’ Some such document, implicating Lethington at least, Mary probably possessed ‘in black and white.’ The fact was known to her accusers, she had warned Lethington as we saw (p. 189), and their knowledge influenced their policy. When Wood wrote to Moray, from Greenwich, on June 12, 1568, as to Scottish Commissioners to meet Elizabeth’s, and discuss Mary’s case, he said that it was much doubted, in England, whether Lethington should be one of them. To Lethington he said that he had expected Mary to approve of his coming, ‘but was then surely informed she had not only written and accused him, and my Lord of Morton as privy to the King’s murder, but affirmed she had both their handwritings to testify the same, which I am willed to signify to you, that you may consider thereof. You know her goodwill towards you, and how prompt of spirit she is to invent anything that might tend to your hurt. The rest I remit to your wisdom… Mr. Secretary’ (Cecil) ‘and Sir Nicholas’ (Throckmorton) ‘are both direct against your coming here to this trial.’[264 - Maitland Club Miscellany, iv. 120, 121.] But it was less unsafe for Lethington to come, and perhaps try to make his peace with Mary, than to stay in Scotland. Mary also, in her appeal to all Christian Princes, declares that the handwriting of several of her accusers proves that they are guilty of the crime they lay to her charge.[265 - Teulet, ii. 248.] It is fairly certain that she had not the murder band, but something she probably did possess. And Nau says that she had told Lethington what she knew on June 16, 1567.

If the Casket Letters were now produced, and if Mary were allowed to defend herself, backed by her own charms of voice and tears, then some, at least, of her accusers would not be listened to by that assemblage of Peers and Ambassadors before which she constantly asked leave to plead, ‘in Westminster Hall.’ The Casket Letters, produced by men themselves guilty, would in these circumstances be slurred as probable forgeries. Mary would prefer not to come to extremities, but if she did, as Sussex, one of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, declared, in the opinion of some ‘her proofs would fall out the better.’

This I take to have been Mary’s attitude towards the Letters, this was her last line of defence. Indeed the opinion is corroborated by her letter from Bolton to Lesley (October 5, 1568). She says that Knollys has been trying tirer les vers du nez (‘to extract her secret plans’), a phrase used in Casket Letter II. ‘My answer is that I would oppose the truth to their false charges, and something which they perchance have not yet heard.’[266 - Bain, ii. 517.] Mr. Froude thinks that Mary trusted to a mere theatrical denial, on the word of a Queen. But I conceive that she had a better policy; and so thought Sussex.

Much earlier, on June 14, 1568, soon after her flight into England, Mary had said to Middlemore, ‘If they’ (her accusers) ‘will needs come, desire my good sister, the Queen, to write that Lethington and Morton (who be two of the wisest and most able of them to say most against me) may come, and then let me be there in her presence, face to face, to hear their accusations, and to be heard how I can make my own purgation, but I think Lethington would be very loath of that commission.’[267 - Bain, ii. 434.]

Lethington knew Mary’s determination. Wood gave him warning, and his knowledge would explain his extraordinary conduct throughout the Conference at York, and later. As has been said, Mary and he were equally able to ‘blackmail’ each other. Any quarrel with Moray might, and a quarrel finally did, bring on Lethington the charge of guilt as to Darnley’s murder. Once accused (1569), he was driven into Mary’s party, for Mary could probably have sealed his doom.

As to what occurred, when, in October, the Commission of Inquiry met at York, we have the evidence of the letters of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, Norfolk, Sussex, and Sadleyr. We have also the evidence of one of Mary’s Commissioners, Lesley, Bishop of Ross, given on November 6, 1571, when he was prisoner of Elizabeth, in the Tower, for his share in the schemes of the Duke of Norfolk. All confessions are suspicious, and Lesley’s alleged gossip against Mary (she poisoned her first husband, murdered Darnley, led Bothwell to Carberry that he might be slain, and would have done for Norfolk!) is reported by Dr. Wilson, who heard it![268 - Nov. 8, 1571. Murdin, p. 57.] ‘Lord, what a people are these, what a Queen, and what an ambassador!’ cries Wilson, in his letter to Burghley. If Lesley spoke the words attributed to him by Wilson, we can assign scant value to any statement of his whatever: and we assign little or none to Wilson’s.

In his confession (1571) he says that, when he visited Mary, at Bolton, about September 18, 1568, she told him that the York Conference was to end in the pardon, by herself, of her accusers: her own restoration being implied. Lesley answered that he was sorry that she had consented to a conference, for her enemies ‘would utter all that they could,’ rather than apologise. He therefore suggested that she should not accuse them at all, but work for a compromise. Mary said that, from messages of Norfolk to his sister, Lady Scrope, then at Bolton, she deemed him favourable to her, and likely to guide his fellow-commissioners: there was even a rumour of a marriage between Norfolk and herself. Presently, says Lesley, came Robert Melville, ‘before our passing to York,’ bearing letters from Lethington, then at Fast Castle. Lethington hereby (according to Lesley) informed Mary that Moray was determined to speak out, and was bringing the letters, ‘whereof he’ (Lethington) ‘had recovered the copy, and had caused his wife’ (Mary Fleming) ‘write them, which he sent to the Queen.’ He added that he himself was coming merely to serve Mary: how she must inform him by Robert Melville. This is Lesley’s revelation. The statements are quite in accordance with our theory, that Lethington, now when there was dire risk that the Letters might come out publicly, and that Mary would ruin him in her own defence, did try to curry favour with the Queen: did send her copies of the Letters.

For what it is worth, Lesley’s tale to this effect has some shadowy corroboration. At Norfolk’s Trial for Treason (1571), Serjeant Barham alleged that Lethington ‘stole away the Letters, and kept them one night, and caused his wife to write them out.’ That story Barham took from Lesley’s confession. But he added, from what source we know not, ‘Howbeit the same were but copies, translated out of French into Scots: which, when Lethington’s wife had written them out, he caused to be sent to the Scottish Queen. She laboured to translate them again into French, as near as she could to the originals wherein she wrote them, but that was not possible to do, but there was some variance in the phrase, by which variance, as God would, the subtlety of that practice came to light.’ ‘What if all this be true? What is this to the matter?’ asked the Duke.[269 - State Trials, i. 978.]

What indeed? Mary had not kept copies of her letters to Bothwell, if she wrote them. She was short of paper when she wrote Letter II., if she wrote it, and certainly could make no copy: the idea is grotesque. What ‘subtlety of practice’ could she intend?[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.] Conceivably, if Lethington sent her copies of both French and Scots (which is denied), she may have tried whether she could do the Scots into the French idioms attributed to her, and, if she could not, might advance the argument that the French was none of hers. Barham avers that she received no French copies. But did Lesley say, with truth, that she received any copies? Here, confession for confession, that of Robert Melville gives the lie to Lesley’s. Melville (who, years later, had been captured with Lethington and Kirkcaldy of Grange in the Castle) was examined at Holyrood, on October 19, 1573.[271 - British Museum Addit. MSS. 33531, fol. 119, et seq. The MS. is much injured.] According to Lesley, Melville rode to Bolton with Lethington’s letters from Fast Castle, before the meeting of Commissioners at York. But Melville denies this: his account runs thus:

‘Inquirit quhat moved him to ryde to the quene in England the tyme that the erll of morey Regent was thair, he not being privie therto? Answeris it wes to get a discharge of sic thingis as she had gotten from him. And that the Regent wes privie to the same and grantit him licence to follow efter. Bot wald not let him pas in company wt him. And denys that he past first to bolton bot come first to York.’

If Melville told truth, then he did not secretly visit Mary before the Conference, and she did not deal then with Lethington, or receive copies of the Casket Letters, or bid any one ‘stay these rigorous accusations and travail with the Duke of Norfolk in her favour,’ as Lesley confessed.[272 - Murdin, pp. 52, 58.] The persons who examined Melville, in 1573, were acquainted with Lesley’s confession of 1571, and Melville is deliberately and consciously contradicting the evidence of Lesley. Both confessed when in perilous circumstances. Which of the two can we believe?

On Saturday, October 2, Mary’s Commissioners arrived in York, but Wood did not ride in from London till October 8.[273 - Bain, ii. 524.] Moray and the other Commissioners of the Lords came in on Sunday, followed, an hour later, by the English negotiators: ‘mediators,’ Mary calls them. Then began a contest of intrigue and infamy. If we believe Melville, he no sooner arrived in York than Moray sent him to Bolton, ‘to deal with the Queen as of his awin heid,’ – that is, as if the proposal were an unofficial suggestion of his own. He was to propose a compromise: the Lords were not to accuse her, and she was to stay in England with a large allowance, Moray still acting as Regent. ‘The Quene did take it verie hardlie at the begyning … bot in the end condescendit to it, swa that it come of [part obliterated] the Quene of England’s sute.’ Melville was then kept going to and from Bolton, till the Commissioners departed to London. On this statement Moray, apparently as soon as the Commissioners met at York, treated with Mary for a compromise in his favour, and Mary assented, though reluctantly.[274 - Addit. MSS. ut supra.]

Turning to the reports of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, we find that, on October 4, they met Mary’s Commissioners, and deemed their instructions too limited. Mary’s men proposed to ask for larger license, and, meanwhile, to proceed. But Herries (Oct. 6) declared that he would ‘in no ways say all in this matter that he knew to be true.’[275 - Goodall, ii. 111.] Moray and Lethington, already ‘though most sorry that it is now come to that point,’ said that they must disclose what they knew. Lethington by no means tried to ‘mitigate these rigours intended,’ as in the letter which Lesley says that he sent to Mary by Melville. He already boasted of what ‘they could an’ they would.’ Probably Lethington, to use a modern phrase, was ‘bluffing.’ Nothing could suit him worse than a public disclosure of the letters, laying him open to a riposte from Mary if she were allowed to be present, and speak for herself. His game was to threaten disclosure, and even to make it unofficially, so as to frighten Mary into silence, and residence in England, while he kept secretly working for another arrangement with Norfolk, behind the backs of the other English Commissioners.

This was a finesse in which Lethington delighted, but it was a most difficult game to play. His fellows, except Morton, not a nervous man, were less compromised than he, or not compromised at all, and they might break away from him, and offer in spite of him (as they finally did) a public disclosure of the Letters. The other English Commissioners, again, might not take their cue from Norfolk. Above all, Norfolk himself must be allowed to see the Letters, and yet must be induced to overlook or discredit the tale of the guilt of Mary, which they revealed. This was the only part of Lethington’s arduous task in which he succeeded, and here he succeeded too well.[276 - Bain, ii. 518, 519.]

On October 6, Norfolk, writing for himself, told Cecil that, from the talk of Mary’s enemies, ‘the matter I feare wyll fall owte very fowle.’[277 - Ibid. 519.] On October 8, Mary’s men produced their charges against the Lords. The signers were Lesley, Lord Livingstone (who certainly knew whether the anecdote about himself, in the Glasgow Letter II., was true or not), Herries (who, in June, had asked Elizabeth what she intended to do if Mary was proved guilty), Cockburn of Skirling, a Hamilton, commendator or lay abbot of Kilwinning, and Lord Boyd.

Lennox, who was present at York,[278 - Bain, ii. 524.] burning for leave to produce his indictment, had asked his retainers to collect evidence against Herries, Fleming, Lord Livingstone, ‘and all these then in England,’ with Mary. On this head Lennox got no help, except so far as an anecdote, in the Casket Letter II., implied Livingstone’s knowledge of Mary’s amour with Bothwell. He, therefore, in a paper which we can date about October 4, 1568,[279 - Lennox MSS.] suggests ‘that the Lord Livingstone may be examined upon his oath of the words between his mistress and him at Glasgow, mentioned in her own letter.’ But this very proper step was never taken: nor was Lennox then heard. The words might have been used, but that would not prove Mary’s authorship of the letter containing them. They might have been supplied by Lady Reres, after her quarrel with Mary in April-May, 1567. Moray next desired to know —

1. Whether the English Commissioners had authority to pronounce Mary guilty or not guilty. (She had protested (Oct. 7) that she ‘was not subject to any judge on earth.’)

2. Whether the Commissioners will promise to give verdict instantly.

3. Whether, if the verdict was ‘guilty,’ Mary would be handed over to them, or kept prisoner in England.

4. Whether, in that case, Elizabeth would recognise Moray as Regent.

Till these questions were answered (they were sent on to Elizabeth), Moray could not ‘enter to the accusation.’[280 - Bain, ii. 520, 521.] Hitherto they had been ‘content rather to hide and conceal than to publish and manifest to the world’ Mary’s dishonour. They had only told all Europe – in an unofficial way. The English Commissioners waited for Elizabeth’s reply. On the 11th October, Moray replied to the charges of Mary, without accusing her of the murder. He also ‘privately,’ and unofficially, showed to the English Commissioners some of the Casket Papers. Lethington, Wood (?), Makgill, and Buchanan (in a new suit of black velvet) displayed and interpreted the documents. They included a warrant of April 19, signed by Mary, authorising the Lords to sign the Ainslie band, advising Bothwell to marry her.[281 - Goodall, ii. 140.] Of this warrant we hear nothing, as far as I have observed, at Westminster.[282 - The production is asserted, Goodall, ii. 87.] Calderwood, speaking of Morton’s trial in 1581, says that ‘he had,’ for signing Ainslie’s band, ‘a warrant from the Queen, which none of the rest had.’[283 - Calderwood, iii. 556.] At York, the Lords said that all of them had this warrant. ‘Before they had this warrant, there was none of them that did, or would, set to their hands, saving only the Earl of Huntly.’ Yet they also alleged that they signed ‘more for fear than any liking they had of the same.’ They alleged that they were coerced by 200 musketeers.[284 - For the Ainslie Band, and the signatories, see Bain, ii. 322, and Hay Fleming, p. 446, note 60, for all the accounts.] Now Kirkcaldy, on April 20, 1567, reports the signing of the Band on the previous day, to Bedford, but says not a word of the harquebus men. They are not mentioned till ten days later.

Lethington kindly explained the reason for Mary’s abduction, which certainly needs explanation. A pardon for that, he told the English Lords, would be ‘sufficient also for the murder.’ The same story is given in the ‘Book of Articles,’ the formal impeachment of Mary.[285 - Hosack, i. 543.] Presently the English Commissioners were shown ‘one horrible and long letter of her own hand, containing foul matter and abominable … with divers fond ballads of her own hand, which letters, ballads, and other writings before specified, were closed in a little coffer of silver and gilt, heretofore given by her to Bothwell.’

After expressing abhorrence, the three Commissioners enclose extracts, partly in Scots.[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.] The Commissioners, after seeing the papers unofficially, go on to ask how they are to proceed. Their letter has been a good deal modified, by the authors, in a rather less positive and more sceptical sense than the original, which has been deciphered.[287 - Bain, ii. 526-528. See also in Hosack, ii. 496-501, with the obliterated lines restored.]

On the same day, Norfolk wrote separately to Pembroke, Leicester, and Cecil. He excused the delays of the Scots: ‘they stand for their lives, lands, goods, and they are not ignorant, if they would, for it is every day told them, that, as long as they abstain from touching their Queen’s honour, she will make with them what reasonable end they can devise…’ In fact, as Melville has told us, he himself was their go-between for the compromise. Norfolk adds that there are two ways, by justice public and condign, ‘if the fact shall be thought as detestable and manifest to you, as, for aught we can perceive, it seemeth here to us,’ or, if Elizabeth prefer it, ‘to make such composition as in so broken a cause may be.’

Norfolk seems in exactly the mind of an honourable man, horrified by Mary’s guilt, and anxious for her punishment. He either dissembled, or was a mere weathercock of sentiment, or, presently, he found reason to doubt the authenticity of what he had been shown. Lethington, we saw, showed the letters, unofficially, on October 11. On October 12, Knollys had a talk with Mary. ‘When,’ asked she, ‘will they proceed to their odious accusations, or will they stay and be reconciled to me, or what will my good sister do for me?’ Surely an innocent lady would have said, ‘Let them do their worst: I shall answer them. A reconciliation with dastardly rebels I refuse.’ That was not Mary’s posture: ‘But,’ she said, ‘if they will fall to extremities they shall be answered roundly, and at the full, and then are we past all reconciliations.’ So wrote Knollys to Norfolk, on October 14.[288 - Bain, ii. 529-530.] Mary would fall back on her ‘something in black and white.’