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] 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]

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] 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]

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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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] 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]

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] ‘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]

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] 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] 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] 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] 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]

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] 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]

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] 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] 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