Letter III.). An imitator as clever as Mr. F. Compton Price (who has

kindly supplied these illustrations) would easily have deceived the crowd of Lords who were present at the comparison of the Casket Letters with genuine epistles of Mary to Elizabeth.

Scotland, in that age, was rich in ‘fause notaries’ who made a profession of falsification. In the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, just before Mary’s fall, we find a surgeon rewarded for healing two false notaries, whose right hands had been chopped off at the wrists. (Also for raising up a dead woman who had been buried for two days.) But these professionals were probably versed only in native forms of handwriting, whereas that of Mary, as of Bothwell, was the new ‘Roman’ hand. An example of Mary Beaton’s Roman hand is given in Plate C. Probably she had the same writing-master as her Queen, in France, but her hand is much neater and smaller than that of Mary, wearied with her vast correspondence. Probably Mary Beaton, if she chose, could imitate the Queen’s hand, especially as that hand was, before the Queen had written so much. The ‘Maries’ of Mary Stuart, Mary Beaton, and Mary Flemyng are all very similar. But to a layman, Mary Beaton’s hand seems rather akin to that of the copyist of the Sonnets in the Cambridge MSS. (Plate A). The aunts of Mary Beaton, Lady Reres and the Lady of Branxholme, were, after April 1567, on the worst terms with the Queen, railing at her both in talk and in letters. But that Mary Beaton forged the Casket Letters I utterly disbelieve.

Kirkcaldy, whose signature is given, could not have adapted fingers hardened by the sword-hilt to a lady’s Roman hand. Maitland of Lethington, whose signature follows Kirkcaldy’s, would have found the task less impossible, and, if there is any truth in Camden’s anecdote, may perhaps have been able to imitate the Queen’s writing. But if any forged letters or portions of letters were exhibited, some unheard-of underling is most likely to have been the actual culprit.

XVIII

_LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS_

The best official description of the famous Casket is in the Minutes of the Session of Commissioners at Westminster, on December 7, 1568. It was ‘a small gilt coffer, not fully one foot long, being garnished in many places with the Roman (_Italic_) letter F set under a king’s crown.’ This minute is in the hand of Cecil’s clerk, and is corrected by Cecil.[397] The Casket was obviously long in shape, not square, like a coffer decorated with Mary’s arms, as Dowager of France, with thistles and other badges, the property of M. Victor Luzarche, and described by him in ‘Un Coffret de Bijoux de Marie Stuart’ (Tours, 1868). Possibly the Casket was the _petite boyte d’argent_, which Mary intended to bequeath to Margaret Carwood, if she herself died in childbed in 1566.[398]

The Casket with the Letters was in Morton’s hands till shortly before his death in 1581. On November 8, 1582, Bowes, Elizabeth’s envoy in Scotland, wrote to Walsingham about the Casket. He had learned from a bastard of Morton’s, the Prior (lay) of Pluscarden, that the box was now in the possession of Gowrie, son of the Ruthven of Riccio’s murder, and himself engaged in that deed. Gowrie was at this time master of James’s person. Bowes thought that Gowrie would not easily give up the Casket to Elizabeth, who desired it.[399]

After trying to get agents to steal the Casket, Bowes sought to induce Gowrie to give it up, with promises of ‘princely thanks and gratuity.’ Gowrie was not willing to admit the fact of possession, but Bowes proved that the coffer had reached him through Sandy Jordan, a servant of the late Earl of Morton. Gowrie then said that, without the leave of James, and of the nobles, who had dragged down Mary, he could not part with the treasure, as the Letters warranted their action--undertaken before they knew that such Letters existed! However, Gowrie promised to look for the Casket, and consider of the matter. On November 24, Bowes again wrote. Mary was giving out that the Letters ‘were counterfeited by her rebels,’ and was trying to procure them, or have them destroyed. To keep them would involve danger to Gowrie. Bowes would obtain the consent of the other lords interested, ‘a matter more easy to promise than to perform;’ finally Gowrie ought to give them to Elizabeth ‘for the _secrecy_ and benefit of the cause.’ Mary’s defenders may urge that this ‘secrecy’ is suspicious. Gowrie would think of it, but he must consult James, which, Bowes said, ‘should adventure great danger to the cause.’ On December 2, Bowes wrote about another interview with Gowrie, who said that the Duke of Lennox (Stewart d’Aubigny, the banished and now dead favourite of James) had sought to get the Letters, and that James knew where they were, and nothing could be done without James’s consent.[400]

Gowrie was executed for treason in May, 1584, and of the Casket no more is heard. Goodall, in 1754, supposed that the Earl of Angus got it as Morton’s ‘heir by tail,’ whereas we know that Gowrie succeeded Morton as custodian. In an anonymous writer of about 1660, Goodall found that ‘the box and letters were at that time to be seen with the Marquis of Douglas; and it is thought by some they are still in that family, though others say they have since been seen at Hamilton.’[401] In 1810, Malcolm Laing, the historian, corresponded on the subject with Mr. Alexander Young, apparently the factor, or chamberlain, of the Duke of Hamilton. He could hear nothing of the Letters, but appears to have been told about a silver casket at Hamilton, rather less than a foot in length. A reproduction of that casket, by the kindness of the Duke of Hamilton, is given in this book. Laing maintained that, without the F’s, crowned as mentioned in Cecil’s minute, the casket could not be Mary’s Casket. In any case it is a beautiful work of art, of Mary’s age, and has been well described by Lady Baillie-Hamilton in ‘A Historical Relic,’ _Macmillan’s Magazine_.[402] Lady Baillie-Hamilton, when staying at Hamilton Palace, asked to be shown a ring which Mary bequeathed to Lord John Hamilton, created Marquis in 1599. The ring was produced from a silver box, which also contained papers. One of these, written probably about 1700-1715, gave the history of the box itself. It was ‘bought from a Papist’ by the Marchioness of Douglas, daughter of George (first Marquis of Huntly). In 1632 this lady became the second wife of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Her eldest son married Lady Anne Hamilton, heiress of James, first Duke of Hamilton, who later became Duchess of Hamilton in her own right, her husband (Lord William Douglas, later Earl of Selkirk) bearing the ducal title. The Marchioness of Douglas bought the box from a papist at an unknown date after 1632, the box being sold as the Casket. The Marchioness ‘put her own arms thereon,’ the box having previously borne ‘the Queen’s arms.’ The Marchioness bequeathed her plate to her son, Lord John Douglas, who sold it to a goldsmith. The daughter-in-law of the Marchioness, namely the Duchess of Hamilton, purchased the box from the goldsmith, as she had learned from the Marchioness that it was the historical Casket, and, by her husband’s desire, she effaced the arms of the Marchioness, and put on her own, as may be seen in Plate D. Only one key was obtained by the Duchess, and is shown lying beside the Casket. The lock has been, at some time, ‘stricken up,’ as Morton says that the lock of the Casket was (see Plate E). The box is ‘not fully a foot long’; it measures eight inches in length. The scroll-work (Plate E) and bands have been gilded, but the whole piece has not been ‘overgilt,’ as in Morton’s description. That by the English Commissioners at York, ‘a little coffer of silver and gilt,’ better describes the relic. It is pronounced to be ‘French work of the early part of the sixteenth century,’ but Lady Baillie-Hamilton observes that the scroll-work closely resembles the tooling on a book of Catherine de’ Medici, now in the British Museum.

Is the Hamilton Casket the historical Casket? It has the advantage of a fairly long pedigree in that character, as we have seen. But where are ‘the many Roman letters F set under a king’s crown,’ of Cecil’s description, which is almost literally copied in the memorandum added to the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection’? Buchanan did not insert this memorandum, it is merely borrowed from Cecil’s description, a fact of which Lady Baillie-Hamilton was not aware. There is no room on the panel now occupied by the Duchess of Hamilton’s arms for _many_ crowned F’s. Only a cypher of two F’s interlaced and crowned could have found space on that panel. Conceivably F’s were attached in some way, and later removed, but there is no trace of them. We can hardly suppose that, as in the case of the coffer with a crimson cover, which was sent to Mary at Loch Leven, the crowned F’s were worked in gold on the covering velvet. Dr. Sepp, in 1884, published, in a small pamphlet, the document rediscovered by Lady Baillie-Hamilton. He was informed that there were small crowned F’s stamped on the bottom of the box, but these Lady Baillie-Hamilton accounts for as ‘the mark of a French silversmith, consisting of a distinctive sign surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and a crown.’ Thus for lack of any certainty about the ‘many or sundry’ crowned F’s, this beautiful piece of work shares in the doubt and mystery which seem inseparable from Mary Stuart.

Very possibly the Hamilton Casket may be the other of the ‘twa silver cofferis’ seen by Hepburn of Bowton at Dunbar (see p. xvi). Tradition, knowing that the Casket had been Mary’s, would easily confuse it with the other more famous coffer, full of evils as the Casket of Pandora.

APPENDIX A

THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL

Monsieur Jusserand, the well-known writer on English and Scottish literature, has kindly allowed me to print the following letter on the burial-place of Bothwell, and on the body which is traditionally regarded as his corpse.

Légation de France, à Copenhague, December 26, 1900.

MY DEAR LANG,--Our poor Queen’s last scoundrel lies low in a darksome place.

The Faarvejle church is quite isolated on a little eminence formerly washed by the water of a fiord now dried up (the work of an agricultural company which expected great benefits and lost much money instead). There is no village around; the houses are scattered rather thinly throughout the country--a very frequent case in Denmark.

This church is, however, the one from which the castle of Dragsholm has ever, ecclesiastically, depended. Castle and church are at some distance: about twenty miles drive.

The castle was formerly a royal one; it was so in Bothwellian times.[403] Little remains of the old building; it was burnt during the Swedish wars in the seventeenth century; and rebuilt by the Zytphen-Adeler family (of Dutch origin); it still belongs to them.

Only the walls have been preserved; they are of red brick; but the actual owner has caused them to be whitewashed throughout. The characteristic great tower it used to have in Hepburnian times has been destroyed. Almost no trace of any style is left, and the house, big as it is, is plain enough. The park around it is fine, with plenty of deer, hares, &c. The sea is near at hand and you see it from the walls.

As for the mummy, it lies in an oak coffin now preserved in a vault under the floor of the nave in the Faarvejle church. This vault is under the passage in the middle, near the step leading to the choir. The wooden planks on the floor are removed, a ladder is provided, and you find yourself in a subterranean chamber, with coffins piled on the top of one another, right and left. ‘Bothwell’s’ stands apart on the left; it is an oak chest; as it was in a bad state, the present Baron Zytphen-Adeler has caused it to be placed in another one, with a sheet of glass allowing the head to be seen. But he kindly allowed me to see the body complete. The man must have been rather tall, not very; the hands and feet have a very fine and aristocratic appearance; the mummifying process may have something to do with this appearance; yet I think some of it came from nature. The head is absolutely hairless; the face is close shaven; the skull has no hair. I noticed, however, on the top of it faint traces of reddish-brown hair, but extremely close cropped. Horace Marryat, who saw it in 1859, says (in the same innocent fashion as if he had been performing a pious rite) that he ‘severed a lock of his red and silver hair.’ If he really did so, he must have severed all that was left. (‘Residence in Jutland,’ 1860.)

The skin remains; the nose, very prominent and arched, is complete; the mouth _very_ broad. The jawbone is prominent (partly on account of the drying up of the flesh). The hind part of the skull is broad and deep. The arms are folded on the chest, below which the body is still wrapped in its winding sheet, only the feet emerging from it. The head lies on some white stuff which seems to be silk. All about the body is a quantity of vegetable remains, looking like broken sticks; they told me it was hops, supposed to have preserving qualities.

As for the authenticity of the relic, there is no absolute proof. It is probable and likely; not certain. That Bothwell died in Dragsholm and was buried in Faarvejle church is certain. The coffin has no mark, no inscription, no sign whatever allowing identification. But, if not Bothwell, who can this be--for there _it_ is? That careful embalming is not a usual process; the other people buried in the church either have their names on their coffins or are not of such importance as to justify such a costly process.

A careful burial and no name on the tomb tally rather well with the circumstances: for the man was a great man, the husband of a Queen; and yet what was to be done with his body? would he not be sent back to Scotland some day? what rites should be allowed him? Even before his death Bothwell had become, so to say, anonymous; and, to get rid of importunities, the Danish King, Fred. II., had allowed the rumour of his death to be spread several years before it happened.

The question remains an open one. J. J. A. Worsaae believed in the authenticity of the relic. The professor of anatomy, I. Ibsen, has also pronounced in its favour. Others have disagreed. Anatomici certant.

APPENDIX B

THE BURNING OF LYON KING OF ARMS

Among the mysteries of Mary’s reign, none is more obscure than the burning of Sir William Stewart, the Lyon King at Arms: at St. Andrews, in August, 1569. In 1560, Stewart was Ross Herald, and carried letters between Mary and Elizabeth.[404] On February 11, 1568, when Moray was Regent, we find Stewart sent on a mission to Denmark. He was to try to obtain the extradition of Bothwell, or, at least, to ask that he might be more strictly guarded.[405] Now we know that, according to Moray, Bothwell’s valet, Paris, did not arrive in Scotland from Denmark till June, 1569, though he was handed over to Captain Clark in October, 1568. Miss Strickland conjectured that Sir William Stewart, now Lyon Herald, brought back Paris from Denmark, learned from him that Mary was innocent, and Moray’s associates culpable, and so had to be put out of the way. But the Lyon Herald returned to Scotland without Paris, a year before Paris; for he was in Scotland by July, 1568, and Paris did not land till June, 1569.

On July 20, 1568, Drury informs Cecil that Moray ‘has understanding who has determined to kill him,’ and has enlisted a bodyguard of thirty gentlemen. Drury adds--I cite him in his native orthography--

‘I send unto your h. herewt. some pease off the woorke that the conjurers that dyd vse theyre develysshe skyle dyd devyse above Edenborogh, the platte whereoff I sente you before paynted.[406] And so ajayne I humbly take my leave.

‘Some money they fownde. Will Stwart kyng off herauldee one off the parte players he that they judge schoold be the fynder off the threasure, schoold be the rejente.’

Here Drury speaks of ‘conjurers,’ who have played some prank involving discovery of a treasure. Stewart was one of the party, but what is meant by ‘he that they judge should be finder of the treasure, should be Regent’? There is, apparently, some connection between the treasure hunt and the plot to kill Moray, and Stewart is mixed up with the magic of the treasure hunters. We know that Napier of Merchistoun, inventor of Logarithms, was to assist Logan of Restalrig to find treasure, ‘by arts to him known,’ at a later date. Probably the divining rod was to be employed, as in a case cited by Scott.

But in 1568, Napier of the Logarithms was only a boy of eighteen.

Returning to the plot to kill Moray: on August 14, 1568, Patrick Hepburn, bastard of the Bishop of Moray, and cousin of Bothwell, was taken in Scone, by Ruthven and Lindsay, brought before Moray at Stirling, and thence taken to Edinburgh. He was examined, revealed the nature of the plot, and gave up the names of his accomplices.[407]

This Patrick Hepburn was parson of Kynmoir by simoniacal arrangement with his father, the Bishop. It seems possible that Stewart met Bothwell, when he was in Denmark, in the spring of the year, and induced him to arrange a conspiracy with his cousin, Patrick Hepburn. Before Hepburn was taken, the Lyon Herald, on August 2, fled to Dumbarton, where he was safe under the protection of Lord Fleming, then holding Dumbarton Castle for Mary.[408] The Herald ‘was suspecte of conspiracy against the life of the Regent, the Earll of Moray.’ He lost his place as Lyon King at Arms, and Sir David Lindsay was appointed to the office, held under James V. by his poet namesake. On August 19, Sir William Stewart wrote, from Dumbarton, a letter to a lord, not named. This lord had written to ask Fleming to give up Stewart, who believes that he was instigated by some other. ‘For I cannot think that you can be so ingrate as to seek my innocent life and blood, considering that I have so favourably and so oft forewarned you of the great misery that you are like to fall into now, for not following my counsel and admonitions made oft and in due time.’ Here we see Stewart claiming foreknowledge of events. ‘Desist, I pray you, to seek further my blood, for as I shall answer to the eternal God, I never conspired or consented to the Earl of Moray’s death.... I fear you not, nor none of that monstrous faction, for, as God is the defender of innocents, so is he the just and severe punisher of cruel monsters and usurpers, who spare not to execute all kind of cruelty, under the pretext of religion and justice.... But there be some of his own secret Council that both directly and indirectly have sought that bloody usurper’s life, whom I shall name as occasion shall serve....’ Stewart again protests his own innocence, apparently with conviction. He ends ‘I pray you be favourable to the Parson of Kenmore’ (Patrick Hepburn), ‘and with such as have meddled with my apparel, bows, and books, to keep all well till meeting, which will be soon God willing....’[409]

This letter shows Stewart as a believer in foreknowledge of events, as one who hates Moray, ‘a bloody usurper,’ and as acquainted with a plot against Moray by his intimates. Lethington and Sir James Balfour were more or less at odds with Moray, about this time, but we have no evidence that they conspired to kill him.

How it happened we do not know, but Stewart was captured, despite the protection of Dumbarton Castle. On October 4, 1568, his reception there was one of the charges made, perhaps by John Wood, against Mary’s party, ‘Lord Fleming refusing his delivery.’[410] At all events, on August 5, 1569, we find Stewart imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, as also was Paris, who, says Moray, arrived at Leith in June of the year. On August 5, both men were taken to St. Andrews, ‘there to be punished according to their demerits.’[411]

On the same day, August 5, 1569, Stewart wrote from the Castle a piteous letter to ‘the most merciful Regent.’ He declared, as to the conspiracy of 1568, that he only knew of it by public talk. ‘The bruit of your Grace’s murder was tossed up and down at Edinburgh.’ Even if Stewart foreknew and concealed the plot, ‘yet till the principal devisers are tried and convicted, I cannot be accused.’ Stewart himself first heard of the conspiracy on July 21, 1568, from Patrick Hepburn. The comptroller (Tullibardine) had, on that day, ‘purged himself’ of the affair at Stirling. Now July 21 was the day after Drury gave his second notice of the treasure-hunt by magic, somehow involving a new regent, in which Stewart was concerned. Stewart cannot be accurate in referring his first hearsay knowledge of the conspiracy to July 21, 1568.

He goes on excusing himself. He could not believe that the persons implicated by Patrick Hepburn ever contemplated the murder of Moray, who knows their names. Moreover, there is some one who predicted many events to Stewart, such as Darnley’s murder, the fall of Bothwell, ‘the death of Lyon Herald, and my promotion, the Queen’s deliverance,’ Langside, ‘and other predictions which have proved true.’ This soothsayer said that Moray was only in danger from ‘domestical treason.’ Therefore, Stewart disbelieved wholly in Patrick Hepburn’s story of a plot, and so did not divulge it. As witness, he cites ‘a certain courtier’ to whom he had given the same reason for his scepticism, in the middle of July, 1568. He adds that he thinks it wrong, following St. Paul, to resist ‘tyrants and usurpers.’ He regarded Moray as a tyrant and usurper, we have seen, in August, 1568. He ends by offering disclosures, privately, and asking for mercy.[412]

On August 15, 1569, ‘William Stewart, being convictit for witcherie, was burnt, and the said Paris, convictit for ane of the slayaris of the King, wes hangit in Sanctandrois,’ says the ‘Diurnal.’

Now, why was Lyon Herald burned? If there was a conspiracy, in July, 1568, no others suffered for it. It was easy to convict Stewart for ‘witchery’: he confessed to dealings with a soothsayer, and the Kirk was beginning its campaign against witches. But what was the political or personal reason for Moray’s cruelty? Had he seen Stewart’s letter of August 19, 1568?

As to the soothsayer, he may have been a familiar spirit, but he may also have been the Laird of Merchistoun, Napier, the father of the inventor of Logarithms. One of his prophecies to Stewart dealt with Mary’s escape from Loch Leven. And Nau, Mary’s secretary, writes, ‘The Laird of Merchistoun, who had the reputation of being a great wizard, made bets with several persons, to the amount of 500 crowns, that by the 5th of May, her Majesty would be out of Loch Leven.’[413]

Thus there were two wizard Lairds of Merchistoun, the scientific son (the treasure-hunter for the laird of Restalrig) and his father.

For the rest, the conspiracy against Moray, in July, 1568, and the secret as to the cause of Lyon Herald’s death, remain mysterious.[414]

APPENDIX C

THE DATE OF MARY’S VISIT TO GLASGOW

The question of the possibility that Letter II. may be authentic turns on dates. If the Lords are right in declaring, in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ that Mary left Edinburgh on January 21, 1567, and arrived in Glasgow on January 23, then the evidence of the Letter is incompatible with that of Paris, and one or both testimonies must be abandoned. They fare no better if we accept the statement of Drury, writing from Berwick, that Mary entered Glasgow on January 22. It is shown in the text that, if we accept the date as given in Birrel’s ‘Diary,’ and also in the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents’: if we make Mary leave Edinburgh on January 20, and (contrary to Drury and ‘Cecil’s Journal’) make her enter Glasgow on January 21, then the Letter may be brought into harmony with the statement of Paris.

Of course it may be argued that the ‘Diurnal’ and Birrel’s ‘Diary’ coincide in an error of date. The ‘Diary’ of Birrel describes itself as extending from 1532 to 1605. One man cannot have kept a daily note of events for seventy-three years. The ‘Diary,’ in fact, is _not_ a daily record. There is but one entry for 1561, one for 1562, one for 1565, ten for 1566, and twenty-four for 1567; up to Mary’s surrender at Carberry (June 15). The ‘Diurnal,’ for our period, is more copious, and is by a contemporary, though probably he did not always write his remarks on the day of the occurrence noted.

From August 19, 1561, to June 15, 1567, the ‘Diurnal’ and the ‘Diary’ record in common twenty-one events, with date. In seven of these cases they differ, as to date. They differ as to the day of Mary’s departure from Edinburgh to Jedburgh, as to the departure of the ambassadors from Stirling, as to the arrival of Mary with her infant child in Edinburgh (January, 1567), as to the return of Mary and Darnley from Glasgow, as to the day of Darnley’s burial, as to the day of opening Parliament, and as to the attack on Borthwick Castle by the Lords: while the ‘Diurnal’ makes the explosion at Kirk o’ Field occur at 2 A.M. on February 10, but ends the Parliament on April 29, which is absurd. When the dates are correctly known from other sources, and when the ‘Diary’ and the ‘Diurnal’ coincide as to these dates, then, of course, we may accept their authority. But when, as in the case of Mary’s departure from Edinburgh, and arrival in Glasgow, the ‘Diary’ and ‘Diurnal’ oppose ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ and Drury’s version, every reader must estimate the value of their coincidence for himself. If their date, January 20, is correct, then a letter may have been written, and sent, and received, and the facts, so far, are corroborated by Paris’s deposition.

The argument of Chalmers, that Mary was at Edinburgh till January 24, because there are entries as if of her presence there in the Register of Privy Seal, is not valid, as such entries were occasionally made in the absence of the King or Queen.

APPENDIX D

THE BAND FOR DARNLEY’S MURDER

This Band, which is constantly cited in all the troubles from 1567 to 1586, is a most mysterious document. We have seen that Mary’s secretary, Nau, wilfully or accidentally confuses it with an anti-Darnley band signed by Morton, Moray, and many others, early in October, 1566. We have also seen that Randolph, in 1570, distinguishes between this ‘old band’ and the band for the murder, which, he says, Lethington and Balfour abstracted from a little coffer in the Castle, covered with green cloth or velvet, immediately after Mary surrendered at Carberry. I have ventured the theory that this carefully covered little coffer may have been the Casket itself.[415] Drury, again, in November, 1567, reports that the band has been burned, while the papers as to Mary are ‘kept to be shewn.’ But, in Scotland, till Morton’s execution in June, 1581, the murder band was believed to be extant: at least Sir James Balfour, if he chose, could give evidence about it. What Mary wished to be believed as to this matter, we have seen in Nau, who wrote under her inspiration between 1575 and 1587. He asserts that Bothwell, ‘to ease his conscience’ gave Mary a copy of the band, when he rode away from Carberry (June 15, 1567). He showed Mary the signatures of Morton, Balfour, Lethington, and others. She kept the document, and, when she met Morton on Carberry Hill, told him that he was one of the chief murderers, as she had learned. He slunk away.[416] Probably Mary did accuse Morton, at Carberry. When he was executed (June 3, 1581) Sir John Foster, from Alnwick, sent an account of the trial to Walsingham. In the evidence against Morton was ‘the Queen’s confession when she was taken at Carberry Hill. She said he was the principal man that was the deed-doer, and the drawer of that purpose.’ Morton certainly was not present, and it is as good as certain that he did not sign the band. Still, Mary, at Carberry, charged him with complicity.[417]

We have seen that Mary, ever after Carberry, also inculpated Lethington, and vowed that she had something in black and white which would hang him. Something she probably did possess, but not a band signed also by Morton. Concerning the murder-band, Hay of Tala, before execution (January 3, 1568), ‘in presence of the whole people,’ named as subscribers ‘Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, Balfour, with divers other nobles.’[418] Hay saw their signatures, but not that of Morton. ‘He said my Lord Bothwell said to him that he subscribed the same.’ The Black Laird (December 13, 1573), when in a devout and penitent condition, said that Bothwell had shown him the contract, ‘subscribed by four or five handwrites, which, he affirmed to me, was the subscription of the Earl of Huntly, Argyll, the secretary Maitland, and Sir James Balfour.’ Ormistoun repeated part of the contents: the paper was drawn up by Balfour, a Lord of Session.[419] (See Introduction, pp. xiii-xviii.)

Morton, we know, was accused of Darnley’s death, and arrested, at the end of December, 1580. Archibald Douglas was sought for, but escaped into England. Elizabeth sent Randolph down to save Morton: Hunsdon was to lead an army over the Border. Every kind of violence was designed, and forgery was attempted, but Randolph had to fly to Berwick, at the end of March. Meanwhile the arch traitor, Balfour, had been summoned from France, as an evidence against Morton. But he was not of much use. On January 30, 1581, he wrote from Edinburgh to Mary. He had arrived in Scotland on December 17, 1580, when he found Morton in the height of power. Balfour secretly approached James’s new favourite, Stewart d’Aubigny, recently created Earl of Lennox. By giving them information ‘_had from your Majesty’s self_, and partly by other intelligence which I knew and learned from others,’ he gave them grounds for Morton’s arrest. But Morton, he says, trusting to the lack of testimony from the absence of Archibald Douglas, boldly ‘denies all things promised by him to Bothwell in that matter,’ ‘except his signature to the band whereof I did send the copy to your Majesty.’ Now that was only ‘Ainslie’s band,’ made _after_ the murder, on April 19, 1567, to defend Bothwell’s quarrel. On an extant copy Randolph has written, ‘upon this was grounded thacusation of therle Morton.’[420] This was no hanging matter, and Balfour either had not or would not produce the murder band. He therefore asks Mary for further information: ‘all that your Majesty has heard or known thereinto.’[421]

Balfour and Mary corresponded in cypher through Archbishop Beaton, her ambassador in France. On March 18, 1580, she had written to Beaton, ‘if possible make Balfour write to me fully about the band which he has seen, with the signatures, for the murder of my late husband, the King, or let him give you a copy in his own hand.’ If she really possessed the band which Nau says Bothwell gave her at Carberry, she needed no copy from Balfour. She does not seem to have believed in him and his band. On May 20, 1580, she writes to Beaton: ‘I put no faith in what Balfour has sent me, so far, and cannot trust him much having been so wretchedly betrayed by him,’ for Balfour had put Morton on the trail of the Casket, had sold the Castle, and later, had betrayed Kirkcaldy and Lethington when they held the Castle against Morton. However, she sent to Balfour a civil message, and bade him go on undermining Morton, in which he succeeded, in the following year. But the murder-band was never produced. On March 16, 1581, Randolph described a conference which had passed between him and James VI. ‘I spoke again of the _band in the green box_, containing the names of all the chief persons consenting to the King’s murder, which Sir James Balfour either hath or can tell of.’ Randolph, who was working for Morton, obviously knew that _he_ did not sign that band: otherwise he would have avoided the subject.[422]

We have no account of Morton’s trial, save what Foster tells Walsingham. ‘The murder of the King was laid to him by four or five witnesses. The first is the Lord Bothwell’s Testament’ (usually thought to be forged), ‘the second, Mr. Archibald Douglas, when he was his man.’ But Douglas, surely, dared not appear in Court, or in Scotland. Foster clearly means that Archibald’s servant, Binning, proved _his_ guilt, and that it reflected on Morton, whose ‘man’ Archibald was, in 1567, and later. Next came the charge that Morton ‘spoke with’ Bothwell, as he confessed that he did, at Whittingam, about January 20, 1567, when he says that he declined to join the plot without Mary’s written warrant. How could this be known, except through Mary or Archibald Douglas? Possibly his brother, at whose house the conference was held, may have declared the matter, as he ‘split,’ in 1581, on Archibald, and all concerned. ‘And then’ Morton was condemned on ‘the consenting to the murder of the King’ (how was _that_ proved?), on Ainslie’s band to support Bothwell’s quarrel, ‘no person being excepted,’ and finally, ‘the Queen’s confession at Carberry Hill,’ when she confessed nothing, but accused Morton.

Mary’s conduct, as far as it can be construed, looks as if she knew very little either about Morton or the murder-band. If Bothwell told her anything, what he told her was probably more or less untrue.

APPENDIX E

THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS

The casual treatment of the Casket Letters by Mary’s accusers, and by the English Commissioners, is demonstrated by an inspection of the texts as they now exist. One thing is absolutely certain, the Letters were produced, at Westminster and Hampton Court, in the original French, whether that was forged, or garbled, or authentic. This is demonstrated by the occurrence, in the English translation, of the words ‘I have taken the worms out of his nose.’ This ugly French phrase for extracting a man’s inmost thoughts is used by Mary in an authentic letter.[423] But the Scots version of the passage runs, ‘I have drawn all out of him.’ Therefore the English translator had a French original before him, _not_ the French later published by the Huguenots, where for _tiré les vers du nez_, we find _j’ay sçeu toutes choses de luy_.

Original French letters were therefore produced; the only doubt rests on part of Crawford’s deposition, where it verbally agrees with Letter II. But we may here overlook Crawford’s part in the affair, merely reminding the reader that the French idioms in that portion of the Letter (Scots version) which most closely resembles his very words, in his deposition, may have come in through the process of translating Crawford’s Scots into French, and out of French into Scots again, to which we return.

The Casket Letters were produced, in French, on December 7 and 8. On December 9, the English Commissioners read them, ‘being duly translated into English.’[424] We are never told that the Scottish Lords prepared and produced the _English_ translations. These must have been constructed on December 7 and 8, in a violent hurry. So great was the hurry that Letter VI. was not translated from French at all: the English was merely done, and badly done, out of the Scots. Thus, Scots, ‘I am wod;’ English, ‘I am wood.’ As far as this Letter goes, there need have been no original French text.[425] In this case (Letter VI.) the English is the Scots Anglified, word for word. The same easy mode of translating French is used in Letter V.; it is the Scots done word for word into English. In Letters I. and II., M. Philippson makes it pretty clear that the English translator had a copy of the Scots version lying by him, from which he occasionally helped himself to phrases. M. Cardauns, in _Der Sturz der Maria Stuart_, had proved the same point, which every one can verify. Dozens of blunders occur in the English versions, though, now and then, they keep closer to the originals than do the Scots translators.

Of this we give a singular and significant proof. In the Scots of Letter I. the first sentence ends, ‘Ze promisit to mak me advertisement of zour newis from tyme to tyme.’ The next sentence begins: ‘The waiting upon yame.’ In the English we read ‘at your departure you promised to send me newes from you. _Nevertheless I can learn none_:’ which is not in the Scots, but is in the published French, ‘et toutes fois je n’en puis apprendre.’ The _published_ French is translated from the Latin, which is translated from the Scots, but each of the French _published_ letters opens with a sentence or two from the _original_ French: thus the published French, in one of these sentences, keeps what the Scots omits.

Therefore, the Scots translator undeniably, in the first paragraph of