LETTER VI

This Letter still deals with the manner of the _enlèvement_. Mary is now reconciled to the idea of trusting Huntly.

She advises Bothwell as to his relations with the Lords. The passage follows:--

‘Methinkis that zour services, and the lang amitie, having ye gude will of ye Lordis, do weill deserve ane pardoun, gif above the dewtie of ane subject yow advance yourself, not to constrane me, bot to assure yourself of sic place neir unto me, that uther admonitiounis or forane [foreign] perswasiounis may not let [hinder] me from consenting to that, that ye hope your service sall mak yow ane day to attene; and to be schort, to mak yourself sure of the Lordis and fre to mary; and that ye are constraint for your suretie, and to be abill to serve me faithfully, to use are humbil requeist, joynit to ane importune actioun.

‘And to be schort, excuse yourself, and perswade thame the maist ye can, yat ye ar constranit to mak persute aganis zour enemies.’

Now compare Mary’s excuses for her marriage, and for Bothwell’s conduct, as written in Scots by Lethington, her secretary, in May, 1567, for the Bishop of Dunblane to present to the Court of France.[366] First she tells at much length the tale of Bothwell’s ‘services, and the lang amitie,’ as briefly stated in Letter VI. Later she mentions his ambition, and ‘practising with ye nobillmen secretly to make yame his friendis.’ This answers to ‘having ye gude will of ye Lordis,’ in the Letter. In the document for the French Court, Mary suggests, as one of Bothwell’s motives for her abduction, ‘incidentis quhilk mycht occur to frustrat him of his expectatioun.’ In the Letter he is ‘constrainit for his suretie, to carry her off.’ Finally, in the Memorial for the French Court, it is said that Bothwell ‘_ceased never till be persuasionis and importune sute accumpaneit not the less with force_,’ he won Mary’s assent. In Letter VI. she advises him to allege that he is obliged ‘_to use ane humble requeist joynit to ane importune action_.’ Letter VI., in fact, is almost a succinct _précis_, before the abduction, of the pleas and excuses which Mary made to the French Court after her marriage. Could a forger have accidentally produced this coincidence? One could: according to Sir John Skelton the letter to her ambassador ‘is understood to have been drawn by Maitland.’[367] The letter of excuses to France is a mere expansion of the excuses that, in the Casket Letter which we are considering, Mary advises Bothwell to make to the Lords. Either, then, this Letter is genuine, or the hypothetical forger had seen, and borrowed from, the Memorial addressed in May to the Court of France. This alternative is not really difficult; for Lethington, as secretary, must have seen, and may even (as Skelton suggests) have composed, the Scots letter of excuses carried to France by the Bishop of Dunblane, and Lethington had joined Mary’s enemies before they got possession of the Casket and Letters. Oddly enough, the letter to the ambassador contains a phrase in Scots which Lethington had used in writing to Beaton earlier, Mary ‘could not find ane outgait.’[368] No transcript of the original French, and no English translation, have been found.