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.