THE CASKET LETTERS
II. A POSSIBLY FORGED LETTER
Were the documents in the possession of the Lords, after June 21, those which they later exhibited before Elizabeth’s Commissioners at Westminster (December, 1568)? Here we reach perhaps the most critical point in the whole inquiry. A Letter to Bothwell, attributed to Mary, was apparently in the hands of the Lords (1567-1568), a Letter which was highly compromising, but never was publicly produced. We first hear of this Letter by a report of Moray to de Silva, repeated by de Silva to Philip of Spain (July, 1567).
Before going further we must examine Moray’s probable sources of information as to Mary’s correspondence. From April 7, to the beginning of July, he had been out of Scotland: first in England; later on the Continent. As early as May 8, Kirkcaldy desired Bedford to forward a letter to Moray, bidding him come to Normandy, in readiness to return, (and aid the Lords,) now banding against Bothwell.[231] ‘He will haste him after he has seen it.’ Moray did not ‘haste him,’ his hour had not come. He was, however, in touch with his party. On July 8, a fortnight after the discovery of the Casket, Robert Melville, at ‘Kernye’ in Fife, sends ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Cecil. John is to go on to Moray, and (Lethington adds, on July 9) a packet of letters for Moray is to be forwarded ‘with the greatest diligence that may be.’ Melville says, as to ‘Jhone a Forret’ (whom Cecil, in his endorsement, calls ‘Jhon of Forrest’), ‘Credit the bearer, who knows all occurrents.’ Can ‘Jhone a Forret’ be a cant punning name for John Wood, sometimes called ‘John a Wood,’ by the English, a man whom Cecil knew as Moray’s secretary? John Wood was a Fifeshire man, a son of Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, and from Fife Melville was writing. Jhone a Forret is, at all events, a bearer whom, as he ‘knows all occurents,’ Cecil is to credit.[232] This Wood is the very centre of the secret dealings of Mary’s enemies, of the Lords, and Lennox. Cecil, Elizabeth, and Leicester are asked to ‘credit’ him, later, as Cecil ‘credited’ ‘Jhone a Forret.’
Up to this date (July 8) when letters were sent by the Lords to Moray, he was, or feigned to be, friendly to his sister. On that day a messenger of his, from France, was with Elizabeth, who told Cecil that Moray was vexed by Mary’s captivity in Loch Leven, and that he would be ‘her true servant in all fortunes.’ He was sending letters to Mary, which the Lords were not to see.[233] His messenger was Nicholas Elphinstone, who was not allowed to give Mary his letters.[234] After receiving the letters sent to him from Scotland on July 8, Moray turned his back on his promises of service to Mary. But, before he received these letters, Archbishop Beaton had told Alava that Moray was his sister’s mortal enemy and by him mistrusted.[235] Moray’s professions to Elizabeth may have been a blind, but his letters for Mary’s private eye have a more genuine air.
Moray arrived in England on July 23.
About July 22, Mary’s confessor, Roche Mameret, a Dominican, had come to London. He was much grieved, he said to de Silva, by Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, which, as he had told her, was illegal. ‘He swore to me solemnly that, till the question of the marriage with Bothwell was raised, he never saw a woman of greater virtue, courage, and uprightness....’ Apparently he knew nothing of the guilty loves, and the Exchequer House scandal. ‘She swore to him that she had contracted the marriage’ with the object of settling religion by that means, though Bothwell was so stout a Protestant that he had twice married Catholic brides by Protestant rites! ‘As regarded the King’s murder, her confessor has told me’ (de Silva) ‘that she had no knowledge whatever of it.’ Now de Silva imparted this fact to Moray, when he visited London, as we saw, in the end of July, 1567, and after Moray had seen Elizabeth. He gave de Silva the impression that ‘although he always returned to his desire to help the Queen, this is not altogether his intention.’ Finally, Moray told de Silva ‘something that he had not even told this Queen, although she had given him many remote hints upon the subject.’ The secret was that Mary had been cognisant of Darnley’s murder. ‘This had been proved beyond doubt by a letter which the Queen had written to Bothwell, containing more than three double sheets (pliegos) of paper, written with her own hand and signed with her name; in which she says in substance that he is not to delay putting into execution that which he had been ordered (tenia ordenado), because her husband used such fair words to deceive her, and bring her to his will, that she might be moved by them if the other thing were not done quickly. She said that she herself would go and fetch him [Darnley], and would stop at a house on the road where she would try to give him a draught; but if this could not be done, she would put him in the house where the explosion was arranged for the night upon which one of her servants was to be married. He, Bothwell, was to try to get rid of his wife either by putting her away or poisoning her, since he knew that she, the Queen, had risked all for him, her honour, her kingdom, her wealth, which she had in France, and her God; contenting herself with his person alone.... Moray said he had heard of this letter from a man who had read it....’[236]
As to ‘hearing of’ this epistle, the reader may judge whether, when the Lords sent ‘Jhone a Forret’ (probably John Wood) to Moray, and also sent a packet of letters, they did not enclose copies of the Casket Letters as they then existed. Is it probable that they put Moray off with the mere hearsay of Jhone a Forret, who ‘knows all occurrents’? If so, Jhone, and Moray, and de Silva, as we shall prove, had wonderfully good verbal memories, like Chicot when he carried in his head the Latin letter of Henri III. to Henri of Navarre.
Mr. Froude first quoted de Silva’s report of Moray’s report of this bloodthirsty letter of Mary’s: and declared that Moray described accurately the long Glasgow Letter (Letter II.).[237] But Moray, as Mr. Hosack proved, described a letter totally and essentially different from Letter II. That epistle, unlike the one described by Moray, is not signed. We could not with certainty infer this from the want of signatures to our copies; their absence might be due to a common custom by which copyists did not add the writer’s signature, when the letter was otherwise described. But Mary’s defenders, Lesley and Blackwood, publicly complained of the absence of signatures, and were not answered. This point is not very important, but in the actual Casket Letter II. Mary does not say, as in Moray’s account, that there is danger of Darnley’s ‘bringing her round to his will.’ She says the reverse, ‘The place will hold,’ and, therefore, she does not, as in Moray’s report, indicate the consequent need of hurry. She does not say that ‘she herself will go and fetch him;’ she was there already: this must be an error of reporting. She does not speak of ‘giving him a draught’ in a house on the road. She says nothing of a house where ‘the explosion was arranged.’ No explosion had been arranged, though some of the earlier indictments drawn up by Lennox for the prosecution declare that this was the case: ‘The place was already prepared with [undermining and] trains of powder therein.’[238] This, however, was the early theory, later abandoned, and it occurs in a Lennox document which contains a letter of Darnley to the Queen, written three days before his death. The Casket Letter II. says nothing about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell, nor much, in detail, about Mary’s abandonment of her God, her wealth in France, and her realm, for her lover. On the other hand she regards God as on her side. In short, the letter described by Moray to de Silva agrees in no one point with any of the Letters later produced and published: except in certain points provocative of suspicion. Mr. Froude thought that it did harmonise, but the opinion is untenable.De Silva’s account, however, is only at third hand. He merely reports what Moray told him that he had heard, from ‘a man who had read the letter.’ We might therefore argue that the whole reference is to the long Casket 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 Letter II. ‘If we postulate a Scots translation’ (used by Moray and Lennox) ‘with the allusions explained by a hostile hand in the margin, then those who professed to give a summary of its “more than three double pages” in half a dozen lines’ (there are thirty-seven lines of Lennox’s version in my hand, and Mary wrote large) ‘would easily take the striking points, not from the Letter, though it was before their eyes, but from the explanations; which were, of course, much more impressive than that extraordinary congeries of inconsequences,’ our Letter II.
To this we reply that, in Moray’s and Lennox’s versions, we have expansions and additions to the materials of Letter II. All the tale about poisoning Darnley in a house on the way is not a hostile ‘explanation,’ but an addition. All the matter about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell is not an explanation, but an addition. Marginal notes are brief summaries, but if Moray and Lennox quoted marginal notes, these were so expansive that they may have been longer than the Letter itself.
Take the case of what Mary, as described in the Letter, is to forfeit for Bothwell’s sake. Lennox is in his catalogue of these goods more copious than Moray: and Letter II., in place of these catalogues, merely says ‘honour, conscience, hazard, nor greatness.’ Could a marginal annotator expand this into the talk about God, her French dowry, her various titles and pretensions? Marginal notes always abbreviate: Moray and Lennox expand; and they clearly, to my mind, cite a common text. Lennox has in his autograph corrected this passage and others.
Moray’s and Lennox’s statements about the poisoning, about the divorce or poisoning for Lady Bothwell, about Bastian (whose marriage Letter II. mentions as a proof of Darnley’s knowledge of Mary’s affairs), about the ‘finishing and preparing of the place’ (Kirk o’ Field), about ‘the house on the way,’—can all these be taken from marginal glosses, containing mere gossip certainly erroneous? If so, never did men display greater stupidity than Lennox and Moray. Where it was important to quote a letter, both (according to the theory which has been suggested) neglect the Letter and cite, not marginal abbreviations, but marginal scholia containing mere tattle. If Moray truly said that he had only ‘heard of the Letter from a “man who had read it,”’ is it conceivable that the man merely cited the marginal glosses to Moray, while Lennox also selected almost nothing but the same glosses? But, of all impossibilities, the greatest is that the author of the glosses expanded ‘honour, conscience, hazard, and greatness’ (as in Letter II.) into the catalogue beginning with God, in which Moray and Lennox abound. ‘Honour, conscience, hazard, and greatness,’ explain themselves. They need no such long elaborate explanation as the supposed scholiast adds on the margin. Where we do find such contemporary marginal notes, as on the Lennox manuscript copy of the Casket Sonnets, they are brief and simply explain allusions. Thus Sonnet IV. has, in the Lennox MSS.,
‘un fascheux sot qu’elle aymoit cherement:’
elle being Lady Bothwell.The marginal note is ‘This is written of the Lord of Boyn, who was alleged to be the first lover of the Earl of Bothwell’s wife.’[240] We must remember that Lennox was preparing a formal indictment, when he reported the same Letter as Moray talked of to de Silva; and that, when the Casket Letters were produced, his discrepancies from Letter II. might perhaps be noticed even in an uncritical age. He would not, therefore, quote the scholia and neglect the Letter.
The passage about Lady Bothwell’s poison or divorce is perhaps mirrored in, or perhaps originated, Lesley’s legend that she was offered a writing of divorce to sign, with a bowl of poison to drink if she refused. In fact, she received a valuable consideration in land, which she held for some forty years, as Countess of Sutherland.[241] Suppose that the annotator recorded this gossip about the poisoning of Lady Bothwell on the margin. Could a man like Moray be so foolish as to recite it viva voce as part of the text of a letter?
Once more, the hypothetical marginal notes of explanation explain nothing—to Moray and Lennox. They knew from the first about Bastian’s marriage, and the explosion. The passage about poisoning Darnley ‘in a house by the way’ does not explain, but contradicts, the passage in Letter II., where Mary does not say that she is poisoning Darnley, but suggests that Bothwell should find ‘a more secret way by medicine,’ later. Lennox and Moray, again, of all people, did not need to be told, by an annotator, what Mary’s possessions and pretensions were. Finally, the lines about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell are not a note explanatory of anything that occurs in Letter II., nor even an annotator’s added piece of information; for Lennox cites them, perhaps, from the Letter before him, ‘She wrote also in her letter, that the said Bothwell should in no wise fail to give his wife the drink as they had devised’—The Mixture as Before! Thus there seems no basis for the ingenious theory of marginalia, supposed to have been cited, instead of the Letter, by Lennox and Moray.
It has again been suggested to me, by a friend interested in the problem of the Casket Letters, that Moray and Lennox are both reporting mere gossip, reverberated rumours, in their descriptions of the mysterious Letter. It is hinted that Lennox heard of the Letters, perhaps from Buchanan, before Lennox left Scotland. In that case Lennox heard of the Letters just two months before they were discovered. He left Scotland on April 23, the Casket was opened on June 21. Buchanan certainly was not Moray’s informant: Jhone a Forret carried the news.
As to the idea that Moray and Lennox both report a fortuitous congeries of atoms of gossip, Moray and Lennox both (1) begin their description with Mary’s warning that Darnley’s flatteries had almost overcome her.
(2) Both speak to the desirability of speedy performance, but Lennox does not, like Moray, assign this need to the danger of Mary’s being won over.
(3) Moray does, and Lennox does not, say that Mary ‘will go and fetch’ Darnley, which cannot have been part of a letter purporting to be written at Glasgow.
(4) Moray does, and Lennox does not, speak of poisoning Darnley on the road. From a letter of three sheets no two persons will select absolutely the same details.
(5) Moray and Lennox both give the same catalogue, Lennox at more length, of all that Mary sacrifices for Bothwell.
(6) Both Moray and Lennox make Mary talk of the house where the explosion is already arranged: at least Lennox talks of its being ‘prepared,’ which may merely mean made inhabitable.
(7) Both make her say that the night of Bastian’s marriage will be a good opportunity.
(8) Both make Mary advise Bothwell to poison his wife, Moray adding the alternative that he may divorce her.
(9) Lennox does, and Moray does not, mention the phrase ‘wishing him then in her arms,’ which occurs in Casket Letter II. The fact does not strengthen the case for the authenticity of Letter II.As to order of sequence in these nine items, they run,
| 1. Moray 1. | | Lennox 1. |
| 2. Moray 2. | | Lennox 2. |
| 3. Moray 3. | (an error) | | Lennox 0. |
| 4. Moray 4. | | Lennox 0. |
| 5. Moray 8. | = | = | Lennox 5. |
| 6. Moray 6. | | Lennox 6. |
| 7. Moray 7. | | Lennox 7. |
| 8. Moray 5. | = | = | Lennox 8. |
| 9. Moray 0. | | Lennox 9. |
Thus, in four out of nine items (Moray 3 being a mere error in reporting), the sequence in Moray’s description is the same as the sequence in that of Lennox. In one item Moray gives a fact not in Lennox. In one Lennox gives a fact not in Moray. In the remaining items, Moray and Lennox give the same facts, but that which is fifth in order with Lennox is eighth in order with Moray.
Mathematicians may compute whether these coincidences are due to a mere fortuitous concurrence of atoms of gossip, possessing a common basis in the long Glasgow Letter II., and in the facts of the murder, and accidentally shaken into the same form, and almost the same sequence, in the minds of two different men, at two different times.
My faith in fortuitous coincidence is not so strong. Is it possible that the report of Lennox and the report of Moray, both of them false, as far as regards Letter II., or any letter ever produced, have a common source in a letter at one time held by the Lords, but dropped by them?The sceptic, however, will doubtless argue, ‘We do not know the date of this discourse, in which Lennox describes a letter to very much the same effect as Moray does. May not Lennox have met Moray, in or near London, when Moray was there in July, 1567? May not Moray have told Lennox what he told de Silva, and even more copiously? What he told was (by his account) mere third-hand gossip, but perhaps Lennox received it from him as gospel, and sat down at once, and elaborated a long “discourse,” in which he recorded as fact Moray’s tattle. By this means de Silva and Lennox would offer practically identical accounts of the long letter; accounts which, indeed, correspond to no known Casket Letter, but err merely because Moray’s information was hearsay, casual, and unevidential.’ ‘Why,’ my inquirer goes on, ‘do you speak of Lennox and Moray giving their descriptions of the Letter at two different times?’
The answer to the last question may partly be put in the form of another question. Why should Lennox be making a long indictment, of seven folio pages, against Mary, in July, 1567, when Moray was passing through town on his way from France to Scotland? Mary was then a prisoner in Loch Leven. Lennox, though in poverty, was, on July 16, 1567, accepted as a Joint-Regent by Mary, if Moray did not become Regent, alone.[242] On July 29, 1567, James VI. was crowned, a yearling King, and it was decided that if Moray, who had not yet arrived in Scotland, refused to be Regent alone, Lennox should be joined with him and others on a Commission of Regency.[243] Moray, of course, did not refuse power, nor did Lennox go to Scotland. But, even if Lennox had really been made a co-Regent when Moray held his conversation about the Letter with de Silva, he would have had, at that moment, no need to draw up his ‘discourse’ against Mary. The Lords had subdued her, had extorted her abdication, and did not proceed to accuse their prisoner. Again, even if they had meant to try her at this time, that would not explain Lennox’s supposed conduct in then drawing up against her an indictment, including the gossip about her Letter, which (on the hypothesis) he had, at that hour, obtained from Moray, in London. This can easily be proved: thus. The document in which Lennox describes the Letter was never meant for a Scottish court of justice. It is carefully made out in English, by an English scribe, and is elaborately corrected in Lennox’s hand, as a man corrects a proof-sheet. Consequently, this early ‘discourse’ of Lennox’s, with its description of the murderous letter, never produced, was meant, not for a Scottish, but for an English Court, or meeting of Commissioners. None such could be held while Mary was a prisoner in Scotland: and no English indictment could then be made by Lennox. He must have expected the letter he quoted to be produced: which never was done.
Therefore Lennox did not weave this discourse, and describe the mysterious Letter, while Moray was giving de Silva a similar description, at London, in July, 1567. Not till Mary fled into England, nearly a year later, May 15, 1568, not till it was determined to hold an inquiry in England (about June 30, 1568), could Lennox construct an indictment in English, to go before English Commissioners. Consequently his description of the letter was not written at the same time (July, 1567) as Moray described the epistle to de Silva. The exact date when Lennox drew up his first Indictment, including his description of the Letter described by Moray, is unknown. But it contains curious examples of ‘the sayings and reports’ of Mary’s own suite, as to words spoken by her in their own ears. Therefore it would seem to have been written after June 11, 1568, when Lennox wrote to Scotland, asking his chief clansmen to collect ‘the sayings of her servants and their reports.’[244] Again, as late as August 25, 1568, Lennox had not yet received permission from Elizabeth to go to the meeting of the Commission of Inquiry which it was then intended to hold at Richmond. Elizabeth ‘flatly denied him,’ though later she assented.[245] Thus Lennox’s composition of this indictment with its account of the mysterious epistle, may be provisionally dated between, say, July 1 (when he might have got a letter of information from Scotland in answer to his request for information) and August 25, 1568.
But an opponent, anxious to make the date of Lennox’s knowledge of the poisonous letter seem early, may say, ‘Probably Lennox, in July, 1567, when Moray was in London, met him. Probably Moray told Lennox what he would not tell Elizabeth. Probably Lennox then wrote down Moray’s secondhand hearsay gossip about the letter, kept it, and, later, in 1568, copied it into his discourse to go before English Commissioners. Moray’s verbal report is his only source, and Moray’s was hearsay gossip. We have, so far, no proof that the letter described by Lennox and Moray ever existed.’
To this I reply that we know nothing of communication between Lennox and Moray in July, 1567, but we do know when Lennox began to collect evidence for the ‘discourse,’ in which this mysterious letter is cited. In June, 1568, Mary complained to Elizabeth that Lady Lennox was hounding Lennox on to prosecute her. Mary had somehow got hold of letters of Wood and of Lady Lennox.[246] We also infer that, when Lennox first took up his task, he may have already seen Scots translations of the Casket Letters as they then existed. We know too that he had now an adviser who should not have allowed him to make a damaging error in his indictment, such as quoting a non-existent letter. This adviser was John Wood. After Mary’s flight into England (May 16, 1568) Moray had sent, on May 21, his agent, John Wood (‘Jhone a Forret’?), to London, where he was dealing with Cecil on June 5, 1568.[247] Now Wood carried with him Scots translations of the Casket Letters, as they then existed. This is certain, for, on June 22, Moray sent to the English Council the information that Wood held these translations, and Moray made the request that the ‘judges’ in the case might see the Scots versions, and say whether, if the French originals corresponded, they would be reckoned adequate proof of Mary’s guilt.[248]
The judges, that is the Commissioners who sat at York in October, apparently did not, in June, see Wood’s copies: their amazement on seeing them later, at York, is evidence to that. But Lennox, perhaps, did see the Scots versions in Wood’s hands. On June 11, from Chiswick, as has been said, Lennox wrote three letters to Scotland; one to Moray, one to his retainers, the Lairds of Houstoun and Minto, men of his own clan; and one to other retainers, Thomas Crawford, Robert Cunningham, and Stewart of Periven. To Moray he said that of evidence against Mary ‘there is sufficiency in her own hand-writ, by the faith of her letters, to condemn her.’ But he also wanted to collect extraneous evidence, in Scotland.Here Lennox writes as one who has seen, or been told the contents of, the Casket Letters on which he remarks. And well might he have seen them, for his three despatches of June 11 are ‘all written on the same sheets, and in the same hand,’ as two letters written and sent, on the following day, by John Wood, from Greenwich, to Moray and Lethington. Thus Wood, or his secretary, wrote out all five epistles.[249] Consequently Wood, who had translations of the Casket Letters, was then with Lennox, and was likely to be now and then with him, till the Conference at York in October. On October 3, just before the Conference at York, Lady Lennox tells Cecil that she means to speak to Mr. John Wood, if he is at Court, for he knows who the murderers are.[250] And Wood carried to Lennox, at York, Lady Lennox’s despatches.[251] Being allied with Wood, as the Chiswick and Greenwich letters of June 11, 12, prove, and writing to Wood’s master, Moray, about Mary’s Casket Letters, it is hardly probable that Lennox had not been shown by Wood the Scots versions of the Casket Letters, then in Wood’s custody. And when, about this date or later, Lennox composed the long indictment against Mary, and quoted the letter already cited by Moray, it is hardly credible that he described the long poisonous document from mere hearsay, caught from Moray in the previous year. It is at least as likely, if not much more so, that his description of the long letter was derived from a translation of the letter itself, as it then existed in the hands of Wood. Is it probable that Wood (who was known to have in his custody the Letters to which Lennox refers, in his epistle to Moray of June 11) could withhold them from the father of the murdered Darnley, a noble who had been selected by the Lords as a co-Regent with Moray, and who was, like himself, a correspondent of Moray and an eager prosecutor of the Queen? If then Wood did in June, 1568, show to Lennox the Casket Letters as they then existed, when Lennox presently described the long murderous letter, he described what he had seen, namely a piÈce de conviction which was finally suppressed. And that it was later than his meeting with Wood, on June 11, 1568, that Lennox prepared his elaborate discourse, is obvious, for what reason had he to compose an indictment before, in June or later, it became clear that Mary’s case would be tried in England?
Not till June 8 did Elizabeth send to Moray, bidding him ‘impart to her plainly all that which shall be meet to inform her of the truth for their defence in such weighty crimes’ as their rebellion against Mary.[252] Mary, Elizabeth declared, ‘is content to commit the ordering of our case to her,’ and Moray has consented, through Wood, ‘to declare to us your whole doings.’ Elizabeth therefore asks for Moray’s evidence against Mary. From that date, June 8, the negotiations for some kind of trial of Mary went on till October, 1568. In that period, Lennox must have written the discourse in which he cites the false letter, and in that period he had the aid of Wood, in whose hands the Scots translations were.
The inference that Lennox borrowed his description of a long poisonous epistle from a forged letter, a very long letter, then in Wood’s custody with the rest, and occupying the place later taken by Letter II., is natural, and not illogical, but rather is in congruence with the relations between Wood and Lennox. The letter described had points in common with Letter II. (as when Mary wishes Bothwell in her arms) and with the Casket Sonnets. It certainly was not a genuine document, and certainly raises a strong presumption that fraud was being attempted by Mary’s enemies. But we need not, for that reason, infer that Letter II. is a forgery. It may be genuine, and may have been in the hands of Mary’s enemies. Yet they may have tried to improve upon it and make it more explicit, putting forward to that end the epistle quoted by Lennox and Moray. If so they later fell back on Letter II., possibly garbled it, and suppressed their first version.
Lennox, as we shall see, did not rest on his earlier form of the indictment, with its description of Mary’s letter about poisoning Darnley and Lady Bothwell, which he originally drew up, say in July-August, 1568. In his letters from Chiswick he asked for all sorts of evidence from Scotland. He got it, and, then, dropping his first indictment (which contained only parts of such matter), he composed a second. That second document was perhaps still unfinished, or imperfect, just before the meeting of Commissioners at York (October 6, 1568).
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] 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.
