Letter II., but is distorted out of all knowledge by passing through three

mouths. This natural theory is no longer tenable.

In the Lennox Papers the writer, Lennox, breaks off in his account of Darnley’s murder to say, ‘And before we proceed any further, I cannot omit to declare and call to remembrance her Letter written to Bothwell from Glasgow before her departure thence, together with such cruel and strange words “unto” him, which he her husband should have better considered and marked, but that “the” hope “he” had to win her “love” now did blind him; together that it lieth not in the power of man to prevent that which the suffering will of God determineth. The contents of her letter to the said Bothwell was to let him understand that, although the flattering and sweet words of him with whom she was then presently, the King her husband, has almost overcome her, yet the remembering the great affection which she bore unto him [Bothwell] there should no such sweet baits dissuade her, or cool her said affection from him, but would continue therein, yea though she should thereby 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 the crown of the realm; wishing him then present in her arms; therefore bid him go forward with all things, according to their enterprize, and that the place and everything might be finished as they had devised, against her coming to Edinburgh, which should be shortly. And for the time of execution thereof she thought it best to be the time of Bastian’s marriage, which indeed was the night of the King her husband’s murder. She wrote also in her letter that the said Bothwell should “in no wise fail” in the meantime to dispatch his wife, and to give her the drink as they had devised before.’[239]

Except as regards the draught to be given to Darnley, in a house by the way, and Mary’s promise ‘to go herself and fetch him,’ this report of the letter closely tallies, not with Casket Letter II., but with what the man who had read it told Moray, and with what Moray told de Silva. Did there exist, then, such a compromising letter accepted by Moray’s informant, the ‘man who read the letter,’ and recorded by Lennox in a document containing copy of a letter from Darnley to himself?

This appears a natural inference, but it is suggested to me that the brief reports by Moray and Lennox are ‘after all not so very different’ from