last line of defence. Indeed the opinion is corroborated by her letter
from Bolton to Lesley (October 5, 1568). She says that Knollys has been
trying _tirer les vers du nez_ (‘to extract her secret plans’), a phrase
used in Casket Letter II. ‘My answer is that I would oppose the truth to
their false charges, _and something which they perchance have not yet
heard_.’[266] Mr. Froude thinks that Mary trusted to a mere theatrical
denial, on the word of a Queen. But I conceive that she had a better
policy; and so thought Sussex.
Much earlier, on June 14, 1568, soon after her flight into England, Mary
had said to Middlemore, ‘If they’ (her accusers) ‘will needs come, desire
my good sister, the Queen, to write that Lethington and Morton (who be
two of the wisest and most able of them to say most against me) may come,
and then let me be there in her presence, face to face, to hear their
accusations, and to be heard how I can make my own purgation, but I think
Lethington would be very loath of that commission.’[267]
Lethington knew Mary’s determination. Wood gave him warning, and his
knowledge would explain his extraordinary conduct throughout the
Conference at York, and later. As has been said, Mary and he were equally
able to ‘blackmail’ each other. Any quarrel with Moray might, and a
quarrel finally did, bring on Lethington the charge of guilt as to
Darnley’s murder. Once accused (1569), he was driven into Mary’s party,
for Mary could probably have sealed his doom.
As to what occurred, when, in October, the Commission of Inquiry met at
York, we have the evidence of the letters of Elizabeth’s Commissioners,
Norfolk, Sussex, and Sadleyr. We have also the evidence of one of Mary’s
Commissioners, Lesley, Bishop of Ross, given on November 6, 1571, when he
was prisoner of Elizabeth, in the Tower, for his share in the schemes of
the Duke of Norfolk. All confessions are suspicious, and Lesley’s alleged
gossip against Mary (she poisoned her first husband, murdered Darnley, led
Bothwell to Carberry that he might be slain, and would have done for
Norfolk!) is reported by Dr. Wilson, who heard it![268] ‘Lord, what a
people are these, what a Queen, and what an ambassador!’ cries Wilson, in
his letter to Burghley. If Lesley spoke the words attributed to him by
Wilson, we can assign scant value to any statement of his whatever: and we
assign little or none to Wilson’s.
In his confession (1571) he says that, when he visited Mary, at Bolton,
about September 18, 1568, she told him that the York Conference was to end
in the pardon, by herself, of her accusers: her own restoration being
implied. Lesley answered that he was sorry that she had consented to a
conference, for her enemies ‘would utter all that they could,’ rather than
apologise. He therefore suggested that she should not accuse them at all,
but work for a compromise. Mary said that, from messages of Norfolk to his
sister, Lady Scrope, then at Bolton, she deemed him favourable to her, and
likely to guide his fellow-commissioners: there was even a rumour of a
marriage between Norfolk and herself. Presently, says Lesley, came Robert
Melville, ‘_before our passing to York_,’ bearing letters from Lethington,
then at Fast Castle. Lethington hereby (according to Lesley) informed Mary
that Moray was determined to speak out, and was bringing the letters,
‘whereof he’ (Lethington) ‘had recovered the copy, and had caused his
wife’ (Mary Fleming) ‘write them, which he sent to the Queen.’ He added
that he himself was coming merely to serve Mary: _how_ she must inform
him by Robert Melville. This is Lesley’s revelation. The statements are
quite in accordance with our theory, that Lethington, now when there was
dire risk that the Letters might come out publicly, and that Mary would
ruin him in her own defence, did try to curry favour with the Queen: did
send her copies of the Letters.
For what it is worth, Lesley’s tale to this effect has some shadowy
corroboration. At Norfolk’s Trial for Treason (1571), Serjeant Barham
alleged that Lethington ‘stole away the Letters, and kept them one night,
and caused his wife to write them out.’ _That_ story Barham took from
Lesley’s confession. But he added, from what source we know not, ‘Howbeit
the same were but copies, translated out of French into Scots: which, when
Lethington’s wife had written them out, he caused to be sent to the
Scottish Queen. She laboured to translate them again into French, as near
as she could to the originals wherein she wrote them, but that was not
possible to do, but there was some variance in the phrase, by which
variance, as God would, the subtlety of that practice came to light.’
‘What if all this be true? What is this to the matter?’ asked the
Duke.[269]
What indeed? Mary had not kept copies of her letters to Bothwell, if she
wrote them. She was short of paper when she wrote Letter II., if she wrote
it, and certainly could make no copy: the idea is grotesque. What
‘subtlety of practice’ could she intend?[270] Conceivably, if Lethington
sent her copies of both French and Scots (which is denied), she may have
tried whether she could do the Scots into the French idioms attributed to
her, and, if she could not, might advance the argument that the French was
none of hers. Barham avers that she received no French copies. But did
Lesley say, with truth, that she received any copies? Here, confession for
confession, that of Robert Melville gives the lie to Lesley’s. Melville
(who, years later, had been captured with Lethington and Kirkcaldy of
Grange in the Castle) was examined at Holyrood, on October 19, 1573.[271]
According to Lesley, Melville rode to Bolton with Lethington’s letters
from Fast Castle, _before_ the meeting of Commissioners at York. But
Melville denies this: his account runs thus:
‘Inquirit quhat moved him to ryde to the quene in England the tyme that
the erll of morey Regent was thair, he not being privie therto? Answeris
it wes to get a discharge of sic thingis as she had gotten from him. And
that the Regent wes privie to the same and grantit him licence to follow
efter. Bot wald not let him pas in company wt him. _And denys that he past
first to bolton bot come first to York._’
If Melville told truth, then he did not secretly visit Mary before the
Conference, and she did not deal then with Lethington, or receive copies
of the Casket Letters, or bid any one ‘stay these rigorous accusations and
travail with the Duke of Norfolk in her favour,’ as Lesley confessed.[272]
The persons who examined Melville, in 1573, were acquainted with Lesley’s
confession of 1571, and Melville is deliberately and consciously
contradicting the evidence of Lesley. Both confessed when in perilous
circumstances. Which of the two can we believe?
On Saturday, October 2, Mary’s Commissioners arrived in York, but Wood did
not ride in from London till October 8.[273] Moray and the other
Commissioners of the Lords came in on Sunday, followed, an hour later, by
the English negotiators: ‘mediators,’ Mary calls them. Then began a
contest of intrigue and infamy. If we believe Melville, he no sooner
arrived in York than Moray sent him to Bolton, ‘to deal with the Queen as
of his awin heid,’--that is, as if the proposal were an unofficial
suggestion of his own. He was to propose a compromise: the Lords were not
to accuse her, and she was to stay in England with a large allowance,
Moray still acting as Regent. ‘The Quene did take it verie hardlie at the
begyning ... bot in the end condescendit to it, swa that it come of [part
obliterated] the Quene of England’s sute.’ Melville was then kept going to
and from Bolton, till the Commissioners departed to London. On this
statement Moray, apparently as soon as the Commissioners met at York,
treated with Mary for a compromise in his favour, and Mary assented,
though reluctantly.[274]
Turning to the reports of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, we find that, on
October 4, they met Mary’s Commissioners, and deemed their instructions
too limited. Mary’s men proposed to ask for larger license, and,
meanwhile, to proceed. But Herries (Oct. 6) declared that he would ‘in no
ways say all in this matter that he knew to be true.’[275] Moray and
Lethington, already ‘though most sorry that it is now come to that point,’
said that they must disclose what they knew. Lethington by no means tried
to ‘mitigate these rigours intended,’ as in the letter which Lesley says
that he sent to Mary by Melville. He already boasted of what ‘they could
an’ they would.’ Probably Lethington, to use a modern phrase, was
‘bluffing.’ Nothing could suit him worse than a public disclosure of the
letters, laying him open to a _riposte_ from Mary if she were allowed to
be present, and speak for herself. His game was to threaten disclosure,
and even to make it unofficially, so as to frighten Mary into silence, and
residence in England, while he kept secretly working for another
arrangement with Norfolk, behind the backs of the other English
Commissioners.
This was a finesse in which Lethington delighted, but it was a most
difficult game to play. His fellows, except Morton, not a nervous man,
were less compromised than he, or not compromised at all, and they might
break away from him, and offer in spite of him (as they finally did) a
public disclosure of the Letters. The other English Commissioners, again,
might not take their cue from Norfolk. Above all, Norfolk himself must be
allowed to see the Letters, and yet must be induced to overlook or
discredit the tale of the guilt of Mary, which they revealed. This was the
only part of Lethington’s arduous task in which he succeeded, and here he
succeeded too well.[276]
On October 6, Norfolk, writing for himself, told Cecil that, from the talk
of Mary’s enemies, ‘the matter I feare wyll fall owte very fowle.’[277] On
October 8, Mary’s men produced their charges against the Lords. The
signers were Lesley, Lord Livingstone (who certainly knew whether the
anecdote about himself, in the Glasgow Letter II., was true or not),
Herries (who, in June, had asked Elizabeth what she intended to do if Mary
was proved guilty), Cockburn of Skirling, a Hamilton, commendator or lay
abbot of Kilwinning, and Lord Boyd.
Lennox, who was present at York,[278] burning for leave to produce his
indictment, had asked his retainers to collect evidence against Herries,
Fleming, Lord Livingstone, ‘and all these then in England,’ with Mary. On
this head Lennox got no help, except so far as an anecdote, in the Casket
Letter II., implied Livingstone’s knowledge of Mary’s amour with Bothwell.
He, therefore, in a paper which we can date about October 4, 1568,[279]
suggests ‘that the Lord Livingstone may be examined upon his oath of the
words between his mistress and him at Glasgow, mentioned in her own
letter.’ But this very proper step was never taken: nor was Lennox then
heard. The words might have been used, but that would not prove Mary’s
authorship of the letter containing them. They might have been supplied by
Lady Reres, after her quarrel with Mary in April-May, 1567. Moray next
desired to know--
1. Whether the English Commissioners had authority to pronounce Mary
guilty or not guilty. (She had protested (Oct. 7) that she ‘was not
subject to any judge on earth.’)
2. Whether the Commissioners will promise to give verdict instantly.
3. Whether, if the verdict was ‘guilty,’ Mary would be handed over to
them, or kept prisoner in England.
4. Whether, in that case, Elizabeth would recognise Moray as Regent.
Till these questions were answered (they were sent on to Elizabeth), Moray
could not ‘enter to the accusation.’[280] Hitherto they had been ‘content
rather to hide and conceal than to publish and manifest to the world’
Mary’s dishonour. They had only told all Europe--in an unofficial way. The
English Commissioners waited for Elizabeth’s reply. On the 11th October,
Moray replied to the charges of Mary, without accusing her of the murder.
He also ‘privately,’ and unofficially, showed to the English Commissioners
some of the Casket Papers. Lethington, Wood (?), Makgill, and Buchanan (in
a new suit of black velvet) displayed and interpreted the documents. They
included a warrant of April 19, signed by Mary, authorising the Lords to
sign the Ainslie band, advising Bothwell to marry her.[281] Of this
warrant we hear nothing, as far as I have observed, at Westminster.[282]
Calderwood, speaking of Morton’s trial in 1581, says that ‘he had,’ for
signing Ainslie’s band, ‘a warrant from the Queen, which none of the rest
had.’[283] At York, the Lords said that all of them had this warrant.
‘Before they had this warrant, there was none of them that did, or would,
set to their hands, saving only the Earl of Huntly.’ Yet they also alleged
that they signed ‘more for fear than any liking they had of the same.’
They alleged that they were coerced by 200 musketeers.[284] Now Kirkcaldy,
on April 20, 1567, reports the signing of the Band on the previous day, to
Bedford, but says not a word of the harquebus men. They are not mentioned
till ten days later.
Lethington kindly explained the reason for Mary’s abduction, which
certainly needs explanation. A pardon for that, he told the English Lords,
would be ‘sufficient also for the murder.’ The same story is given in the
‘Book of Articles,’ the formal impeachment of Mary.[285] Presently the
English Commissioners were shown ‘one horrible and long letter of her own
hand, containing foul matter and abominable ... with divers fond ballads
of her own hand, which letters, ballads, and other writings before
specified, were closed in a little coffer of silver and gilt, heretofore
given by her to Bothwell.’
After expressing abhorrence, the three Commissioners enclose extracts,
partly in Scots.[286] The Commissioners, after seeing the papers
unofficially, go on to ask how they are to proceed. Their letter has been
a good deal modified, by the authors, in a rather less positive and more
sceptical sense than the original, which has been deciphered.[287]
On the same day, Norfolk wrote separately to Pembroke, Leicester, and
Cecil. He excused the delays of the Scots: ‘they stand for their lives,
lands, goods, and they are not ignorant, if they would, for it is every
day told them, that, as long as they abstain from touching their Queen’s
honour, she will make with them what reasonable end they can devise....’
In fact, as Melville has told us, he himself was their go-between for the
compromise. Norfolk adds that there are two ways, by justice public and
condign, ‘if the fact shall be thought as detestable and manifest to you,
as, for aught we can perceive, it seemeth here to us,’ or, if Elizabeth
prefer it, ‘to make such composition as in so broken a cause may be.’
Norfolk seems in exactly the mind of an honourable man, horrified by
Mary’s guilt, and anxious for her punishment. He either dissembled, or was
a mere weathercock of sentiment, or, presently, he found reason to doubt
the authenticity of what he had been shown. Lethington, we saw, showed the
letters, unofficially, on October 11. On October 12, Knollys had a talk
with Mary. ‘When,’ asked she, ‘will they proceed to their odious
accusations, or will they stay and be reconciled to me, or what will my
good sister do for me?’ Surely an innocent lady would have said, ‘Let them
do their worst: I shall answer them. A reconciliation with dastardly
rebels I refuse.’ That was not Mary’s posture: ‘But,’ she said, ‘if they
will fall to extremities they shall be answered roundly, and at the full,
and then are we past all reconciliations.’ So wrote Knollys to Norfolk, on
October 14.[288] Mary would fall back on her ‘something in black and
white.’
On October 13, Lesley and Boyd rode to Bolton, says Knollys, and told Mary
what Lethington had done: his privy disclosure of her Letters. He himself
was doubtless their informant, his plan being to coerce her into a
compromise.
Of all things, it now seemed most unlikely that Norfolk would veer round
to Mary’s side, and desire to marry her. But this instantly occurred, and
the question is, had he seen reason to doubt the authenticity of the
letter which so horrified him? Had Lethington told him something on that
long ride which they took together, on Saturday, October 16?[289] As shall
be shown, in our chapter on the Possible Forgers, this may be what
Lethington had done, and over-done. He had shaken Norfolk’s belief in the
Letter, so much that Norfolk presently forbade Mary to accept a
compromise!
The evidence of Lesley is here, as usual, at cross purposes. In his
confession (November 6, 1571) he says that Robert Melville took him to
Lethington’s lodgings, _after_ Lethington had secretly shown the Letters.
‘We talked almost a whole night.’ Lethington said that Norfolk favoured
Mary, and wished Moray to drop the charges and arrange a compromise.
Meanwhile in a letter to Mary (after October 16)[290] Lesley first, as in
his confession, says that he has conferred with Lethington ‘great part of
a night.’ Lethington had ridden out with Norfolk, on October 16, and
learned from him that Elizabeth aimed at delay, and at driving Moray to do
his very worst. When they had produced ‘all they can against you,’
Elizabeth would hold Mary prisoner, till she could ‘show you favour.’
Norfolk therefore now advised Mary to feign submission to Elizabeth, who
would probably be more kind in two or three months.[291] If so,
Lethington’s words had not yet their full effect, or Norfolk dissembled.
If we are to believe Sir James Melville, who was at York, Norfolk also
conferred with Moray himself, who consulted Lethington and Sir James; but
not the other Commissioners, his allies. His friends advised him to listen
to Norfolk. We have Moray’s own account of the transaction. In October,
1569, when Norfolk was under the suspicion of Elizabeth, Moray wrote to
her with his version of the affair.[292] ‘When first in York I was moved
to sue familiar conference with the Duke as a mean to procure us
expedition.’ He found the Duke ‘careful to have her schame coverit, hir
honour repairit, schew(ed) hir interest to the title of the crown of
England.... It was convenient she had “ma” (more) children,’ who would be
friends of Moray, and so on. The guileless Regent dreamed ‘of nothing less
than that Norfolk had in any way pretended to the said marriage.’ But
_now_ (1569) Moray sees that Norfolk’s idea was to make him seem the
originator of the marriage.
Meanwhile Robert Melville was still (he says) negotiating between Mary and
Moray, on the basis of Mary’s abdication and receipt of a large pension
from Scotland. Melville rode to London to act for Mary on October 25.[293]
But, before that date, on October 16, Elizabeth wrote to Norfolk as to the
demands of Moray made on October 11, and under the influence of what she
had now learned from her Commissioners as to the Casket Letters, and,
perhaps, of suspicions of Norfolk. Practically, she removed the Conference
to London, ordering Norfolk so to manage that Mary should think her
restoration was to be arranged.[294] Mary weakly consented to the change
of _venue_ (October 22). She sent Lesley and Herries to represent her in
London.
At this moment, namely (October 22) when Mary consented to the London
Conference, it seems that she expected a compromise on the lines discussed
between Moray and herself. She would resign the crown, and live affluently
in England, while Moray would not produce his accusations, and would
exercise the Regency. This course would be fatal to Mary’s honour, in the
eyes of history, but contemporaries would soon forget all, except that
there had been gossip about compromising letters. The arrangement proposed
was, then, reluctantly submitted to by Mary, according to Robert Melville.
But it occurred to Norfolk that he could hardly marry a woman on whom such
a blot rested, or, more probably, that his ambition would gain little by
wedding a Queen retired, under a cloud, from her realm. If I am right, he
had now come, under Lethington’s influence, to doubt the authenticity of
the Casket Letters.
That Norfolk opposed compromise appears from Robert Melville’s deposition.
On arriving in London, he met Herries, who, rather to his surprise, knew
the instructions of Mary to Robert himself. ‘The Lord Herries sayand to
this deponair that he’ (Melville) ‘was cum thither with sic commission to
deale privelie with the Quene of England, howbeit thair wes mair honest
men thair’ (than Melville). ‘The men that had bene the caus of hir
trouble’ (Morton and the rest) ‘wald be prefarit in credit to thame. This
berair (Melville) be the contraire affirmit that the caus of his cumming
thair wes to be a witness in caise he should be called upon,’ namely to
the fact that Mary did not sign her abdication (at Loch Leven) as a free
agent. Melville goes on to say that, ‘in the tyme quhan it was thocht that
course’ (the compromise with Murray) ‘should have past furthair, thair com
a writing from the quene to the Bishop of Ross that the Scotch partie
heard the Bishop reid, and partly red himself, bearing amangis uther
purposis that the Duke of Norfolk had send liggynnis’ (Liggens, or Lygons
his messenger) ‘to hir and forbid hir to dimitt hir crown. And sa the
Bishop willit the Secretair’ (Lethington) ‘to lief of that course’ (the
compromise) ‘as a thing the Quene (Mary) was not willing to, without the
Duke’ (Norfolk) ‘gaif hir counsail thairto.’[295]
Thus it appears that Norfolk prevented Mary from pursuing her compromise
(which Lethington was favouring in his own interest) and from abdicating,
leaving the Letters unproduced. Lethington had shaken his faith in the
authenticity of the Casket Letters. That Mary should have acquiesced in a
compromise demonstrates that she dreaded Moray’s accusations. That, at a
word from Norfolk, she reconsidered and altered her plan, proves that she
could, in her opinion, outface her accusers, and indicates that Norfolk
now distrusted the genuine character of the Letters. She knew, if not by
the copies of her Letters which Lethington did (or did not) send her, at
least by Lesley’s report of that which Lethington showed the English
Commissioners, what her enemies could do. She would carry the war into
Africa, accuse her accusers, and, in a dramatic scene in Westminster Hall,
before the Peers and the foreign Ambassadors, would rout her enemies.
That, if accused, she would not be allowed to be present, and to reply,
did not occur to her. Such injustice was previously unknown. That she
would be submitting to a judge, or judges, she could overlook, or would,
later, protest that she had never done. According to Nau, she had made the
same offer to defend herself (as we have seen) to Moray, before the Scots
Parliament of December, 1567.
Mary’s plan was magnificent. Sussex himself, writing from York, on October
22, saw the force of her tactics.[296] He speaks, as well he might, of
‘the inconstancy and subtleness of the people with whom we deal.’ Mary
must be found guilty, or the matter must be huddled up ‘with a show of
saving her honour.’ ‘The first, I think, will hardly be attempted, for two
causes: the one for that if her adverse party accuse her of the murder by
producing of her letters, she will deny them, and accuse the most of them
of manifest consent to the murder, _hardly to be denied_; so as, upon the
trial on both sides, _her proofs will judicially fall out best_, as it is
thought.’ The other reason for not finding Mary guilty was that, if little
James died, the Hamiltons were next heirs. This would not suit Moray, he
(like Norfolk) would now wish for more children of Mary’s, to keep the
Hamiltons out, but, if she were now defamed, there would be a difficulty
as to their succession to the crown. So Sussex believed (rightly) that a
compromise was intended, for which Lethington, as he says, had been
working at York, while Robert Melville was also engaged. Sussex then
states the compromise in the same terms as Robert Melville did, adding
that Moray would probably hand his proofs over to Mary, and clear her by a
Parliamentary decree. The Hamiltons had other ideas. ‘You will find
Lethington wholly bent to composition.’ A general routing out of evidence
did not suit Lethington.