‘at first only four--Cecil, Sadleyr, Leicester, and Bacon--declared
themselves convinced.’[322] Lingard quotes a Simancas MS. saying that the
nobles ‘showed some heart, and checked a little the terrible fury with
which Cecil sought to ruin’ Mary.[323] Camden (writing under James VI.)
says that Sussex, Arundel, Clinton, and Norfolk thought that Mary had a
right to be heard in person. But Elizabeth held this advantage: Mary would
not acknowledge her as a judge: she must therefore admit Mary to her
presence, if she admitted her at all, _not_ as a culprit. Elizabeth (who
probably forgot Amy Robsart’s affair) deemed herself too good and pure to
see, not as a prisoner at the Bar, a lady of dubious character. Thus all
was well. Mary was firmly discredited (though after all most of the nobles
presently approved of her marriage to Norfolk), yet she could not plead
her cause in person.
XIII
_MARY’S ATTITUDE AFTER THE CONFERENCE_
The haggling was not ended. On December 16, 1568, Elizabeth offered three
choices to Lesley: Mary might send a trusty person with orders to make a
direct answer; or answer herself to nobles sent by Elizabeth; or appoint
her Commissioners, or any others, to answer before Elizabeth’s
Commissioners.[324] Lesley fell back on Elizabeth’s promises: and an
anecdote about Trajan. On December 23 or 24, Mary’s Commissioners received
a letter by her written at Bolton on December 19.[325] Mr. Hosack says
that ‘she commanded them forthwith to charge the Earl of Moray and his
accomplices’ with Darnley’s murder.[326] But that was just what Mary did
not do as far as her letter goes, though on December 24, Herries declared
that she did.[327] Friends and foes of Mary alike pervert the facts. Mary
first said that she had received the ‘Eik’ in which her accusers lied,
attributing to her the crimes of which they are guilty. She glanced
scornfully at the charge that _she_ meant to murder her child, whom _they_
had striven to destroy in her womb, at Riccio’s murder: ‘intending to have
slane him and us both.’ She then, before she answers, asks to see the
copies and originals of the Casket Letters, ‘the principal writings, if
they have any produced,’ which she as yet knew not. And then, if she may
see Elizabeth, she will prove her own innocence and her adversaries’
guilt.
Thus she does not by any means bid her friends _forthwith_ to accuse her
foes. That would have been absurd, till she had seen the documents brought
against her as proofs. But, to shorten a long story, neither at the
repeated request of her Commissioners, nor of La Mothe, who demanded this
act of common justice, would Elizabeth permit Mary to see either the
originals, or even copies, of the Casket Letters. She promised, and broke
her promise.[328]
This incident left Mary with the advantage. How can an accused person
answer, if not allowed to see the documents in the case? We may argue that
Elizabeth refused, because politics drifted into new directions, and
inspired new designs. But Mary’s defenders can always maintain that she
never was allowed to see the evidence on which she was accused. From
Mary’s letter of December 19, or rather from Lesley’s précis of it
(‘Extract of the principall heidis’) it is plain that she does not bid her
Commissioners accuse anybody, _at the moment_. But, on December 22,
Lindsay challenged Herries to battle for having said that Moray, and ‘his
company here present,’ were guilty of Darnley’s death. Herries admitted
having said that _some_ of them were guilty. Lindsay lies in his throat if
he avers that Herries spoke of him specially: and, on that quarrel,
Herries will fight. And he will fight any of the principals of them if
they sign Lindsay’s challenge, ‘and I shall point them forth and fight
with some of the traitors therein.’ He communicated the challenge and
reply to Leicester.[329] Herries probably hoped to fight Morton and
Lethington.
On the 24th, Moray having complained that he and his company were
slandered by Mary’s Commissioners, Lesley and Herries answered ‘that they
had special command sent to them from the Queen their Mistress, to lay the
said crime to their charge,’ and would accuse them. They were appointed to
do this on Christmas Day, but only put in an argumentative answer to
Moray’s ‘Eik.’ But on January 11, when Elizabeth had absolved both Moray
and Mary (a ludicrous conclusion) and was allowing Moray and his company
to go home, Cecil said that Moray wished to know whether Herries and
Lesley would openly accuse him and his friends, or not. They declared that
Mary had bidden them make the charge, and that they had done so, _on the
condition_ that Mary first received copies of the Casket documents. As
soon as Mary received these, they would name, accuse, and prove the case,
against the guilty. They themselves, as private persons, had only hearsay
evidence, and would accuse no man. Moray and his party offered to go to
Bolton, and be accused. But Mary (as her Commissioners at last understood)
would not play her card, her evidence in black and white, till she saw the
hand of her adversaries, as was fair, and she was never allowed to see the
Casket documents.[330] Mary’s Commissioners appear to have blundered as
usual. They gave an impression, first that they would accuse
unconditionally, next that they sneaked out of the challenge.[331] But, in
fact, Mary had definitely made the delivery to her of the Casket Letters,
originals or even copies, and her own presence to plead her own cause, the
necessary preliminary conditions of producing her own charges and proofs.
Mary’s attitude as regards the Casket Papers is now, I think,
intelligible. There was a moment, as we have seen, during the intrigues at
York, when she consented to resign her crown, and let the matter be hushed
up. From that position she receded, at Norfolk’s desire. The Letters were
produced by her adversaries, at Westminster and at Hampton Court. She then
occupied at once her last line of defence, as she had originally planned
it. If allowed to see the documents put in against her, and to confront
her accusers, she would produce evidence in black and white, which would
so damage her opponents that her denial of the Letters would be accepted
by the foreign ambassadors and the peers of England. ‘Her proofs will
judicially fall out best as is thought,’ Sussex wrote, and he may have
known what ‘her proofs’ were.
If we accept this as Mary’s line, we can account, as has already been
hinted, for the extraordinary wrigglings of Lethington. At York, as
always, he was foremost to show, or talk of the Casket Papers, _in
private_, as a means of extorting a compromise, and hushing up the affair:
_publicly_, he was most averse to their production. Whether he had a hand
in falsifying the papers we may guess; but he knew that their public
exhibition would make Mary desperate, and drive her to exhibit _her_
‘proofs.’ These would be fatal to himself.
We have said that Mary never forgave Lethington: who had been the best
liked of her advisers, and, in his own interests, had ever pretended to
wish to proceed against her ‘in dulse manner.’ Why did she so detest the
man who, at least, died in her service?
The proofs of her detestation are found all through the MS. of her
secretary, Claude Nau, written after Lethington’s death. They cannot be
explained away, as Sir John Skelton tries to do, by a theory that the
underlings about Mary were jealous of Lethington. Nau had not known him,
and his narrative came direct from Mary herself. It is, of course,
worthless as evidence in her favour, but it is highly valuable as an index
of Mary’s own mind, and of her line of apology _pro vita sua_.
Nau, then, declares (we have told all this, but may recapitulate it) that
the Lords, in the spring of 1567, sent Lethington, and two others, to ask
her to marry Bothwell. Twice she refused them, objecting the rumours about
Bothwell’s guilt. Twice she refused, but Lethington pointed out that
Bothwell had been legally cleared, and, after the Parliament of April,
1567, they signed Ainslie’s band. Yet no list of the signers contains the
name of Lethington, though, according to Nau, he urged the marriage. After
the marriage, it was Lethington who induced the Lords to rise against
Bothwell, with whom he was (as we elsewhere learn) on the worst terms.
Lethington it was who brought his friend and kinsman, Atholl, into the
rising. At Carberry Hill, Mary wished to parley with Lethington and
Atholl, who both excused themselves, as not being in full agreement with
the Lords. She therefore yielded to Kirkcaldy; and Bothwell, ere she rode
away, gave her the murder band (this can hardly be true), signed by
Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, bidding her keep it carefully.
Entrapped by the Lords, Mary, by Lethington’s advice, was imprisoned in
the house of the Provost of Edinburgh. Lethington was ‘extremely opposed’
to her, in her dreadful distress; he advised imprisonment in Loch Leven;
he even, Randolph says, counselled the Lords to slay her, some said to
strangle her, while persuading Throckmorton that he was her best friend.
Lethington tried to win her favour in her prison, but, having ‘no
assurance from her,’ fled on a false report of her escape. Lethington
fought against her at Langside, and Mary knew very well why, though he
privately displayed the Casket Letters, he secretly intrigued for her at
York. Even his final accession (1569) to her party, and his death in her
cause, did not win her forgiveness.
She dated from Carberry Hill her certain knowledge of his guilt in the
murder, which she always held in reserve for a favourable opportunity.
But, as she neither was allowed to see the Casket Letters, nor to appear
in person before the Peers, that opportunity never came.
To conclude this part of the inquiry: Mary’s attitude, as regards the
Letters, was less that of conscious innocence, than of a player who has
strong cards in her hand and awaits the chance of bringing out her
trumps.
XIV
_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]
Letter I., so called, must be, in order of composition, a sequel to Letter
II. The sequence of events would run as follows: if we reject the
chronology as given in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ a chronological summary handed
to Cecil, we know not by whom, and supply the prosecution with a feasible
scheme of time. ‘Cecil’s Journal’ makes Mary leave Edinburgh on January
21, stay at Lord Livingstone’s house of Callendar (not Callander in
Perthshire) till January 23, and then enter Glasgow. If this is right,
Letters I. and II. are forgeries, for II. could not, by internal evidence,
have been finished before Mary’s second night, at least, in Glasgow,
which, if she arrived on January 23, would be January 24. Consequently it
could not (as in the statement of Paris, the alleged bearer) reach
Bothwell the day before his departure for Liddesdale, which ‘Cecil’s
Journal’ dates on January 24. Moreover, on the scheme of dates presented
in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ Mary must have written and dispatched Letter I. on
the morning of January 25 to Bothwell, whom it could not reach (for he was
then making a raid on the Elliots, in Liddesdale), and Mary must, at the
same time, have been labouring at the long Letter II. All this, with other
necessary inferences from the scheme of dates, is frankly absurd.[334]
The defenders of Mary, like Mr. Hosack, meet the Lords on the field of
what they regard as the Lords’ own scheme of dates, and easily rout them.
In a court of law this is fair procedure; in history we must assume that
the Lords, if the Journal represents their ideas, may have erred in their
dates. Now two contemporary townsmen of Edinburgh, Birrel, and the author
of the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents,’ coincide in making Mary leave Edinburgh on
January 20. Their notes were separately written, without any possible idea
that they might be appealed to by posterity as evidence in a State
criminal case. The value of their testimony is discussed in Appendix C,
‘The date of Mary’s Visit to Glasgow.’
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 Lethington, and from both a verbal report that Kirk o’
Field was to be Darnley’s home. Paris then returned to Glasgow. If Paris,
leaving Edinburgh ‘after dinner,’ say three o’clock, on the 24th, did not
reach Glasgow till the following noon, then the whole scheme of time
stands out clearly. He left Glasgow on January 23, with the long Letter
(II.) which Mary wrote on January 21 and 22. He gave it to Bothwell on the
23rd, received replies ‘after dinner’ on the 24th, slept at Callendar or
elsewhere on the way, and reached Glasgow about noon on January 25. If,
however, Paris reached Glasgow on the day he left Edinburgh (January 24),
the scheme breaks down.
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 old complaint, a pain in the side, she says, ‘If Paris doth
bring back unto me that for which I have sent, it should much amend me.’
News of Bothwell, brought by Paris, will help to cure her. She had
expected news on the day before, January 24.
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 him with the affair.
(_b_) I inferred that Lethington could have had no hand in forging the
original French (if forging there was), because he never would have
allowed his name to appear in such a connection. Later I observed that
several Continental critics had made similar inferences.[335] But all this
is merely one of the many mare’s-nests of criticism. For proof of the
futility of such deductions see Appendix E, ‘The Translation of the Casket
Letters.’
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 argue thus: the
Queen may have been guilty, even if her foes perjured themselves on
certain points, in their desire to fortify their case. Yet the objections
to Letter II. are certainly many and plausible.
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, upon consideration, the letter described by Moray, which
seems to have been the first draft of the forgery, was withdrawn, and
another substituted in its place.’[336] This reasoning, of course, is
reinforced by the discovery of Lennox’s account of the Letter. But Mr.
Hosack overlooked a possibility. The Lords may have, originally, after
they captured the Casket, forged the Letter spoken of by Moray and Lennox.
But they may actually have discovered Letter II., and, on reflection, may
have produced _that_, or a garbled form of that, and suppressed the
forgery. To Letter II. they _may_ have added ‘substantious clauses,’ but
if any of it is genuine, it is compromising.
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 part based on Crawford’s report, and
therefore was forged. Bresslau, Cardauns, Philippson, Mr. Hosack, and Sir
John Skelton adopted the latter alternative. The Letter, they say, was
forged, in part, on Crawford’s report.
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 to harmonise with facts. For her first
night of writing must then be January 22, her second January 23; Bothwell,
therefore, cannot receive the letter till January 24, on which day he went
to Liddesdale, and Paris, the bearer, declared that he gave the letter to
Bothwell the day _before_ he rode to Liddesdale.
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 words) intervene, paragraph 12
opens thus, ‘_This is my first journey_’ (day’s work); ‘_I will end
to-morrow_. I write all, of how little consequence so ever it be, to the
end you may take of the whole that shall be best for your purpose. I do
here a work that I hate much, _but I had begun it this morning_.’[339]