LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS

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

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

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

Plate D

SIDE OF CASKET WITH ARMS OF HAMILTON

RAISED WORK ON ROOF OF CASKET

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

Plate E

CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY

FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN ‘STRICKEN UP’

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

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