  INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE LETTERS Letter I This Letter, usually printed as Letter I., was the first of the Casket Letters which Mary’s accusers laid before the Commission of Inquiry at Westminster (December 7, 1568).[332] It does not follow that the accusers regarded this Letter as first in order of composition. There exists a contemporary copy of an English translation, hurriedly made from the French; the handwriting is that of Cecil’s clerk. The endorsing is, as usual, by a Scot, and runs, ‘Ane short Lettre from Glasco to the Erle Bothwell. Prufes her disdaign against her husband.’ Possibly this Letter, then, was put in first, to prove Mary’s hatred of Darnley, and so to lead up to Letter II., which distinctly means murder. If the accusers, however, regarded this piece (Letter I.) as first in order of composition, they did not understand the meaning and drift of the papers which they had seized.[333] The defenders of Mary, like Mr. Hosack, meet Provisionally accepting the date of the two diarists, we find that the Queen left Edinburgh on January 20, slept at Callendar, and possibly entered Glasgow on January 21. Drury from Berwick said that she entered on January 22, which, again, makes the letter impossible. Let us, however, suppose her to begin her long epistle, Letter II., at Glasgow on the night of January 21, finish it in the midnight hours of January 22, and send it to Bothwell by Paris (his valet, who had just entered her service) on January 23. Paris, in his declaration of August 10, 1569, avers that he met Bothwell, gave him the letter, stayed in Edinburgh till next day, again met Bothwell returning from Kirk o’ Field, then received from him for Mary a letter, a diamond (ring?), and a loving message; he received also a letter from If he did not arrive till noon on the 25th, all is clear, and Letter I. falls into its proper place as really Letter II., and is easily intelligible. Its contents run thus: Mary, who left Bothwell on January 21, upbraids him for neglect of herself. She expected news, and an answer to her earlier Letter (II.) dispatched on the 23rd, and has received none. The news she looked for was to tell her what she ought to do. If no news comes, she will, ‘according to her commission,’ take Darnley to Craigmillar on Monday: she actually did take him on Monday, as far as Callendar. But she is clearly uncertain, when she writes on January 25, as to whether Craigmillar has been finally decided upon. A possible alternative was present to her mind. After describing the amorous Darnley, and her own Nothing could be more natural. Mary and Bothwell had parted on January 21. She should have heard from him, if he were a punctual and considerate lover, on the 23rd; at latest Paris should have brought back on the 24th his reply to her long letter, numbered II. but really I. But the morning of ‘this Saturday’ (the 25th) has dawned, and brought no news, no answer, no Paris. (That is, if Paris either slept in Edinburgh on the night of the 24th, or somewhere on the long dark moorland road.) Impatient of three days’ retarded news, ignorant as to whether Craigmillar is fixed on for Darnley, or not, without a reply to the letter carried to Bothwell by Paris (Letter II.), Mary writes Letter I. on January 25. It is borne by her chamberlain, Beaton, who is going on legal business to Edinburgh. Nothing can be simpler or more easily intelligible. There remains a point of which much has been made. In the English, but not in the Scots translation, Mary says, ‘I send this present to Lethington, to be delivered to you by Beaton.’ The Scots is ‘I send this be Betoun, quha gais’ to his legal business. Nothing about Lethington. On first observing this, I inferred—(a) that Lethington had the reference to himself cut out of the Scots version, as connecting On the whole, I am constrained to regard Letter I. as possibly authentic in itself, and as affording a strong presumption that there was an authentic Letter II. Letter I. was written, and sent on a chance opportunity, just because no answer had been received to the Letter wrongly numbered II. This was a circumstance not likely to be invented. Letter II Round this long Letter, of more than 3,000 words, the Marian controversy has raged most fiercely. Believing that they had demonstrated its lack of authenticity, the Queen’s defenders have argued that the charges against her must be false. A criminal charge, supported by evidence deliberately contaminated, falls to the ground. But we cannot really 1. While the chronology of ‘Cecil’s Journal’ was accepted, the Letter could not be regarded as genuine. We have shown, however, that by rectifying the dates of the accusers, the external chronology of the Letter can be made to harmonise with real time. 2. The existence of another long letter, never produced (the letter cited by Moray and Lennox) was another source of suspicion. While we had only Moray’s account of the letter in July 1567, and while Lennox’s version of about the same date in 1568 was still unknown, Mr. Hosack argued thus: ‘What is the obvious and necessary inference? Is it not that the forgers, in the first instance, drew up a letter couched in far stronger terms than that which they eventually produced?’ ‘Whenever,’ says Robertson, ‘a paper is forged with a particular intention, the eagerness of the forger to establish the point in view, his solicitude to cut off all doubts and cavils, and to avoid any appearance of uncertainty, seldom fail of prompting him to use expressions the most explicit and full to his purpose.’ ‘In writing this passage, we could well imagine,’ says Mr. Hosack, ‘that the historian had his eye on the Simancas’ (Moray’s) ‘description of the Glasgow Letter (II.), but he never saw it.... We must assume that, 3. One of the internal difficulties is more apparent than real. It turns on the internal chronology, which seems quite impossible and absurd, and must, it is urged, be the result of treacherous dovetailing. The circumstance that Crawford, a retainer of Lennox, was put forward at the Westminster Commission, in December, 1568, to corroborate part of the Letter makes a real difficulty. He declared that Darnley had reported to him the conversations between himself and the Queen, described by Mary, in Letter II., and that he wrote down Darnley’s words ‘immediately, at the time,’ for the use of Lennox. But Crawford proved too much. His report was, partly, an English translation of the Scots translation of the French of the Letter. Therefore he either took his corroborative evidence from the Letter, or the Letter was in 4. The contents of the Letter are alien to Mary’s character and style: incoherent, chaotic, out of keeping. We take these objections in the order indicated. First, as to the internal dates of the Letter. These are certainly impossible. Is this the result of clumsy dovetailing by a forger? There is no date of day of the month or week, but the Letter was clearly begun on the night of Mary’s arrival in Glasgow (by our theory, January 21). Unless it was finished in the night of January 22, and sent off on January 23, it cannot be genuine: cannot have reached Bothwell in time. We are to suppose that, on sitting down to write, Mary made, first, a list of twelve heads of her discourse, on a separate sheet of paper, and then began her epistle on another sheet. Through paragraphs 1, 2, 3,[337] she followed the sequence of her notes of heads, and began paragraph 4, ‘The King sent for Joachim’ (one of her servants) ‘yesternicht, and asked why I lodged not beside him.’[338] If this means that Mary was in Glasgow on the day before she began writing, the dates cannot be made The answer is obvious. Joachim probably reached Glasgow on the day before Mary’s arrival, namely on January 20. It was usual to send the royal beds, carpets, tapestries, and ‘cloth of State’ in front of the travelling prince, to make the rooms ready before he came. Joachim would arrive with the upholstery a day in advance of Mary. Therefore, on her first night, January 21, she can speak of what the King said to Joachim ‘yesterday.’ The next indication of date is in paragraphs 7, 8. Paragraph 7 ends: ‘The morne I wil speik to him upon this point’ (part of the affair of Hiegait); paragraph 8 is written on the following day: ‘As to the rest of Willie Hiegait’s, he’ (Darnley) ‘confessit it, bot it was the morne efter my cumming or he did it.’ The English is, ‘The rest as [to?] Wille Hiegait [he?] hath confessed, but it was the next day that he’ (Darnley) ‘came hither,’ that is, came so far on in his confession. Paragraph 8, therefore, tells the results of that examination of Darnley, which Mary promised at the end of paragraph 7 to make ‘to-morrow.’ We are now in a new day, January 22, at night. But, while paragraphs 9, 10, 11 (about 500 Here, then, after 500 words confessedly written on her second night, Mary says that this is her first day’s work. The natural theory is that here we detect clumsy dovetailing by a forger, who has cut a genuine letter into pieces, and inserted false matter. But another explanation may be suggested. Mary, on her first night, did not really stop at paragraph 7: ‘I will talk to him to-morrow on that point.’ These words happened to come at the foot of her sheet of paper. She took up another fresh page, and wrote on, ‘This is my first journey ...’ down to ‘I had begun it this morning.’ Then she stopped and went to bed. Next night (January 22) she took up the same sheet or page as she had written three sentences on, the evening before, but she took it up on the clean side, and did not observe her words ‘This is my first journey.... I had begun it this morning’ till she finished, and turned over the clean side. She then probably ran her pen lightly across the now inappropriate words, written on the previous night, ‘This is my first journey,’ as she erased lines in her draft for a sonnet in the Bodleian Library.[340] The The letter should run from paragraph 7, ‘I will talk to him to-morrow upon that point’ to paragraph 12, ‘This is my first journey.... I had begun it this morning.’ Then back to paragraph 8, ‘As to the rest of Willie Hiegait’s,’ and so straight on, merely omitting the words written on the previous night, ‘This is my first journey, ... but I had begun it this morning.’ Mary’s mistake in taking for virgin a piece of paper which really had writing on the verso, must have occurred to most people: certainly it has often occurred to myself. There is one objection to this theory. In paragraph 25, at the end of the letter, Mary apologises for having written part of a letter on a sheet containing the memoranda, or list of topics, which, as we saw, she began by writing. She says, in Scots, ‘Excuse that thing that is scriblit’ (MS. C,[341] ‘barbulzeit’) ‘for I had na paper yesterday quhan I wrait that of ye memoriall.’ The English runs, ‘Excuse also that I scribbled, for I had yesternight no paper when I took the paper of a memorial.’ Now the part of Mary’s letter which is on the same paper as the ‘memorial,’ or scribbled list of topics, must have been written, not ‘yesternight,’ If this however meets the objection indicated, the chronology of the letter is consistent; it is of the night of January 21, and the night of January 22, including some time past midnight. The apparent breaks or ‘faults,’ then, are not the result of clumsy dovetailing by a forger, but are the consequence of a mere ordinary accident in Mary’s selection of sheets of paper. We now come to the objections based on Crawford’s Deposition. Of Letter II., as we have it, paragraph 2, in some degree, and paragraphs 6 (from ‘Ye ask me quhat I mene be the crueltie’), 7, 9, 10, and parts of 21 also exist, with, in many places, verbal correspondence in phrase, in another shape. The correspondence of phrase, above all in 6, is usually with the Scots translation, sometimes, on the other hand, with the English. Consequently, as will be seen on comparison of the Scots Letter II. with this other form of part of its contents, these two texts have a common source and cannot be independent.[342] This new form is contained in a Deposition, made on oath But it escaped the notice of the accusers that all the world, or all whom Crawford chose to inform as to what Darnley told him about these conversations, might know the details of the talk even better than Mary herself. For the precise words would fade from Mary’s memory, whereas Crawford, as he swore, had written them down at once, as reported to him by Darnley, probably as soon as Mary left his sick-room. The written copy by Crawford must have preserved the words with fidelity beyond that of human memory, and the written words were in the custody of Crawford, or of Lennox, so long as they chose to keep the manuscript. This fact is proved on Crawford’s oath. On December 9, 1568, before We do not know whether what Crawford now handed in on December 9, 1568, was an English version of his own written verbatim Scots report done in January, 1567; or a copy of it; or whether he copied it from Letter II., or whether he rewrote it from memory after nearly two years. The last alternative may be dismissed as impossible, owing to the verbal identity of Crawford’s report with that in the Scots version of the French Letter attributed to Mary. Another thing is doubtful: whether Lennox, at Chiswick, on June 11, 1568, did or did not possess the report which Crawford wrote for him in January, 1567. Lennox, on June 11, as we saw, wrote to Crawford asking It will be observed that Crawford’s account of this interview of his with Mary presents some verbal identities with Letter II. And this is notable, for these identities occur where neither Crawford nor the Letter is reporting the speeches on either side. These might easily be remembered, for a while, by both parties. But both parties could not be expected to coincide verbally in phrases descriptive of their meeting, and its details. Thus, Crawford, ‘I made my Lord, my Master’s humble commendations, with the excuse that he came not to meet her.’ In Letter II. we read ‘He made his’ (Lennox’s) ‘commendations, and excuses unto me, that he came not to meet me.’ The excuses, in Crawford, are first of Lennox’s bad health (not in the Letter); next, that he was anxious In Letter II. this runs: ‘considering the sharp words that I had spoken to Cunningham.’ Crawford next introduces praises of Lennox which are not in the Letter, but, where a speech is reported, he uses the very words of the Scots translation of Letter II., which vary from the words in the English translation. It follows that, even here, the Letter, in the Scots version, and Crawford’s Deposition, have one source. Either Crawford took the Scots translation, and (while keeping certain passages) modified it: or the maker of the Letter borrowed from Crawford’s Deposition. In the former case, the sworn corroboration is a perjury: in the latter, the Letter is a forgery. Crawford has passages which the Letter has not: they are his own reflections. Thus, after reporting Darnley’s remark about the English sailors, with whom he denied that he meant to go away (Letter II. 19), Crawford has, what the Letter has not: ‘And if he had’ (gone away) ‘it had not been without cause, seeing how he was used. For he had neither to sustain himself nor his servants, and needed not make further rehearsal thereof, seeing she knew it as well as he.’ Is this Crawford’s addition or Darnley’s speech? Then there is Crawford’s statement that Mary never stayed more than two hours, at a time, with Darnley—long enough, in an infected room of which the windows were never opened. It is here, Now Darnley may have told Crawford (though Crawford does not give this as part of the conversation), ‘I was vexed by the Queen’s moodiness,’ or the like. But it is incredible that Mary herself should also say, in the Letter, just before she mentions going to supper after her first brief interview (Scots) ‘he fand greit fault that I was pensive’ (Letter II. 5[344]). To Mary’s defenders this phrase appears to be borrowed by the forger of the Letter from Crawford’s Deposition; not borrowed by Crawford, out of place and at random (with a skip from Letter II. 5 to Letter II. 19), and then thrust in after his own reflections on the brevity of Mary’s visits to Darnley. For Crawford is saying that her visits were not only short, but sulky. On the other hand, in the Letter the writer is made to contrast Darnley’s blitheness with her gloom. Crawford does not report, what the Letter makes Mary report, Darnley’s unconcealed knowledge of her relations with Bothwell, at least in the passage, ‘It is thocht, and he belevis it to be trew, that I have not the power of myself unto myself, and that because of the refuse I maid of his offeris.’ Crawford ends with his own reply to Darnley, as to Mary’s probable intentions: ‘I answered I liked For these reasons some German defenders of Mary have decided that the parts of Letter II. which correspond with Crawford’s Deposition must have been borrowed from that Deposition by a forger of the Letter. About June, 1568, Lennox, on this theory, would lend a copy of Crawford’s report (made in January, 1567, at Glasgow) to Wood, and, on returning to Scotland, Wood might have I had myself been partly convinced that this was the correct view. But the existence of Mary’s memoranda, and the way in which they influence Letter II., seem to me an almost insuperable proof that part, at least, of Letter II. is genuine. It may, however, be said that the memoranda were genuine, but not compromising, and that the Letter was based, by forgers, on the memoranda (accidentally left lying in her Glasgow room, by Mary) and on Crawford’s report, obtained from Lennox. This is not impossible. But the craft of the forger in making Mary, on her second night of writing, find her forgotten memoranda (II. 15), be reminded by them of her last neglected item (‘Of Monsieur de Levingstoun’), and then go on (II. 16) to tell the anecdote of Livingstone, never publicly contradicted by him, seems superhuman. I scarcely feel able to believe in a forger so clever. Yet I hesitate to infer that Crawford, when asked to corroborate the statements in the Letter, took his report from the Letter itself, and perjured himself when he said, on oath, that his Deposition was derived from a writing taken down from Darnley’s lips ‘immediately at the time.’ I should come to this conclusion with regret and with hesitation. It is disagreeable to feel more or less in doubt as to Crawford’s honour. We know nothing against Crawford’s honour, unless it be that he was cruel to the Hamilton tenantry, and that he Mr. Henderson (who does not admit the verbal correspondence of Letter and Deposition) clearly sees no harm in this course. ‘It is by no means improbable that Crawford refreshed his recollection by the aid of the Letter, which, in any case, he may have seen before he prepared his statement.’ But he swore that he wrote a statement, from Darnley’s lips, ‘immediately at the time.’[346] He said nothing about losing the paper, which he wrote in January, 1567. (Mr. Henderson says it ‘had apparently been destroyed’—why ‘apparently’?) But, according to There is one indication which, for what it is worth, corroborates the truth of Crawford’s oath. He swore that he had written down Darnley’s report of conversations with Mary ‘immediately at the time,’ in order that he, in turn, might report them to Lennox, ‘because the said Earl durst not then, for displeasure of the Queen, come abroad,’ and speak to Darnley himself. But Crawford never swore, or said, that he wrote down his own conversation with Mary. Now, on June 11, 1568, Lennox does not ask for what Crawford swore that he wrote, much the most important part of his evidence, the account of Darnley’s talks with Mary. Lennox does not ask for that, for what Crawford swore that he wrote ‘immediately at the time.’ He merely asks ‘what purpois’ (talk) ‘Thomas Crawford held with the Queen at her coming to the town.’ This may be understood to mean that Lennox already held, and so In that case, we clear Crawford’s character for probity, but we destroy the authenticity of Letter II.[348] I confess that this last argument, with the fact that we have no evidence against the character of Crawford, a soldier of extraordinary daring and resource, 5. The contents of the Letter are said to be incoherent and inconsistent with Mary’s style and character. The last objection is worthless. In the Letter she says that she acts ‘against her natural’—contre son naturel—out of character. As for incoherence, the items of her memoranda are closely followed in sequence, up to paragraph 8, and the interloping part in paragraph 12. The rest, the work of the second night, is incoherent, as Mary’s moods, if she was guilty, must have been. Information, hatred, remorse, jealousy, and passion are the broken and blended strata of a mind rent by volcanic affections. The results in the Letter are necessarily unlike the style and sentiment of Mary’s authentic letters, except in certain very remarkable features. Either Mary wrote the Letter or a forger wished to give the impression that this occurred. He wanted the world to believe that the Queen, her conscience tortured and her passion overmastering her conscience, could not cease to converse with her lover while paper served her turn. Her moods alternate: now she is resolved and cruel, now sick with horror, but still, sleepless as she is, she must be writing. Depuis le jour que la premiÈre flÈche The writer again and again recurs to her remorse. ‘Remember how, gyf it were not to obey you, I had rather be deid or I dyd it, my heart bleides at it.... Alas, I nevir deceivit anybody; but I remit me altogidder to your will.’ The voice of conscience ‘deepens with the deepening of the night,’ a very natural circumstance showing the almost inhuman art of the supposed forger. What ensues is even more remarkable. Throughout, Mary professes absolute submission to Bothwell; she is here, as Sir John Skelton remarks, ‘the bond slave and humble minister of Bothwell’s ambition.’ He argues that she was really ‘the last woman in the world who would have prostrated herself in abject submission at the feet of a lover.’[351] But, in a later letter to Norfolk, when she regarded herself as affianced to him, Mary says ‘as you please command me, for I will, for all the world, follow your commands....’ She promises, in so many words, ‘humble submission’—though, conceivably, she may here mean submission to Elizabeth.[352] Again, ‘I will be true and obedient to you, as I have promised.’[353] There are other similar passages in the letters to Norfolk, indicating Mary’s idea of submission to a future husband, an attitude which, according to Randolph, she On the whole, these reasons are the strongest for thinking the Letter, in parts, probably genuine. The Lords may, conceivably, have added ‘some principal and substantious clauses,’ such as the advice to Bothwell ‘to find out some more secret invention by medicine’ (paragraph 20), and they may have added the words ‘of the ludgeing in Edinburgh’ (Kirk o’ Field) to the dubious list of directions which we find at the end of the Scots, but not in the English, version. There is no other reference to Kirk o’ Field, though the ‘Book of Articles’ says that there were many. And there were many, in the forged letter! Paris, indeed, confessed that Mary told him that Letter II. was to ask where Darnley should be placed, at Craigmillar or Kirk o’ Field. But the evidence of Paris is dubious. Lennox was very anxious, as was the author of the ‘Book of Articles,’ to prove that the Kirk o’ Field plan was arranged between Bothwell and Mary, before she went to meet Darnley at Glasgow in January, 1567. We have already seen that the ‘Book of Articles’ makes Mary and Bothwell ‘devise’ this The ‘Book of Articles’ also declares that she ‘wrote to Bothwell to see if he might find out a more secret way by medicine to cut him off’ than the Kirk o’ Field plan. Now this phrase, ‘a more secret invention by medicine,’ occurs in Letter II. 20, but is instantly followed by ‘for he should take medicine and the bath at Craigmillar:’ not a word of the house in Edinburgh. Next, we find Lennox, like the author of the ‘Book of Articles,’ hankering after, and insisting on, a mention of the ‘house in Edinburgh’ in Mary’s Letters. There exists an indictment by Lennox in Scots, no doubt intended to be, as it partly was, later done into English. The piece describes Moray as present with the English Commissioners, doubtless at York, in October, 1568. This indictment in Scots is by one who has seen Letter II., or parts of it, for we read ‘Of quhilk purpos reported to Heigat she makes mention in hir lettre sent to Boithuile from Glasgow, meaning sen that purpose’ (the plan of arresting Darnley) ‘wes reveled that he suld invent a mare secrete way be medecine to cutt him of’ (the very phrase used in the ‘Book of Articles’) ‘as alsua puttes the said Boithuil in mynde of the house in Edinburgh, divisit betwix thame for the King hir husband’s distructioune, termand thair ungodlie conspiracy “thair affaire.”’ The evidence of Nelson, Darnley’s servant,[355] later with Lady Lennox, to the effect that Craigmillar was proposed, but that Darnley rejected it, may be taken either as corroboration of the intention to lodge Darnley at Craigmillar (as is insisted on in Letters I. and II.) or as one of the sources whence Letter II. was fraudulently composed. On the whole, The letter described by Moray and Lennox, when both, at different dates, were in contact with Wood, was full of references to Kirk o’ Field, which are wholly absent in Letters I. and II. The letter known to Moray and Lennox was probably forged in the interval between June 21 and July 8, 1567, when (July 8) the Lords sent ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Moray. As I shall make it evident that Robert Melville was sent to inform Elizabeth about the capture of the Casket on the very day of the event, the pause of seventeen days before the sending of ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Moray is very curious. In that time the letter noticed by Moray and Lennox may have been forged to improve the evidence against Mary. At all events its details were orally circulated. But I think that, finding this letter inconsistent, and overcharged, the Lords, in December, 1568, fell back on the authentic, or partially authentic, Letter II., and produced that. My scheme of dates for that Letter need not necessarily be accepted. My theory that Mary made a mistake as to her sheets of paper which caused the confusion of the internal chronology is but a conjecture, and the objection to it I have stated. |
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