Edinburgh,’ nor does she here use the expression ‘their affair,’ though in
Letter III. she says ‘your affair.’ In Buchanan’s mind (if he was, as I
feel convinced, the author of the ‘Book of Articles’) the forged letter
described by Moray and Lennox, with its insistence on Kirk o’ Field, was
confused with Letter II., in which there is nothing of the sort. The same
confusion pervades Lennox’s indictment in Scots, perhaps followed by
Buchanan. When parts of the Scots indictment are translated into Lennox’s
last extant English indictment, we no longer hear that Kirk o’ Field is
mentioned in the Letters, but we _do_ read of ‘such a house in Edinburgh
as she had prepared for him to finish his days in’--which Mary had not
done when she wrote Letter II. Consequently the memorandum at the end of
Letter II., ‘remember zow of the ludgeing in Edinburgh,’ a memorandum
_not_ in the English translation, may have been added fraudulently to
prove the point that Kirk o’ Field was, from the first, devised for
Darnley’s destruction.[354] These passages, in any case, prove that the
false letter reported by Moray and Lennox haunted the minds of Lennox and
Buchanan to the last.
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,
however, the Craigmillar references in the Letters have an air of
authenticity. They were not what the accusers wanted; they wanted
references to Kirk o’ Field, and these they amply provided in the Letter
about poisoning Lady Bothwell, echoes of which are heard in the ‘Book of
Articles,’ and in Lennox’s indictment in Scots.
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. The question is one of the most delicately
balanced probabilities. Either Lennox, from January 1567 onwards,
possessed the notes which Crawford swore that he wrote concerning
Darnley’s conversation (in which case much of Letter II. is a forgery
based on Crawford), or Crawford, in December 1568, deliberately perjured
himself. The middle course involves the unlikely hypothesis that Crawford
did take notes ‘immediately at the time;’ but that they were lost or
destroyed; and that he, with dishonest stupidity, copied his deposition
from Letter II. There appears to me to be no hint of the loss or
disappearance of the only notes which Crawford swore that he made.
Consequently, on either alternative, the conduct of the prosecutors is
dishonest. Dishonesty is again suggested by the mysterious letter which
Moray and Lennox cite, and which colours both Lennox’s MS. discourses and
the ‘Book of Articles.’ But, on the other hand, parts of Letter II. seem
beyond the power of the Genius of Forgery to produce. Perhaps the least
difficult theory is that Letter II. is in part authentic, in part
garbled.[356]
XV
_THE SIX MINOR CASKET LETTERS_
If the accusers had authentic evidence in Letters I. and II., they needed
no more to prove Mary’s guilt. But the remaining six Letters bear on
points which they wished to establish, such as Mary’s attempt to make her
brother, Lord Robert, assassinate her husband, and her insistence on her
own abduction. There are some difficulties attendant on these Letters. We
take them in order. First Letter III. (or VIII.). This Letter, the third
in Mr. Henderson’s edition, is the eighth and last in that of Laing. As
the Letter, forged or genuine, is probably one of the last in the series,
it shall be discussed in its possible historical place.
LETTER III (IV)
Of this Letter, fortunately, we possess a copy of the French
original.[357] The accusers connected the letter with an obscure intrigue
woven while Darnley was at Kirk o’ Field. Lord Robert Stuart, Mary’s
half-brother, commendator of Holyrood, is said by Sir James Melville to
have warned Darnley of his danger. Darnley repeated this to Mary, but Lord
Robert denied the story. The ‘Book of Articles’ alleges that Mary then
tried to provoke a fight between her husband and her brother on this
point. Buchanan adds that, when Darnley and Lord Robert had their hands on
their swords, Mary called in Moray to part them. She hoped that he would
‘get the redder’s stroke,’ and be killed, or, if Darnley fell, that Moray
would incur suspicion. As usual Buchanan spoils his own case. If Mary did
call in Moray to separate the brawlers, she was obviously innocent, or
repented at the last moment. Buchanan’s theory is absurd, but his
anecdote, of course, may be false. Lennox, in his MSS., says that Moray
was present at the quarrel.[358]
The indications of the plot, in the Letter, are so scanty, that the
purpose has to be read into them from the alleged facts which the Letter
is intended to prove.[359] I translate the copy of the French original.
‘I watched later up there’ (at Kirk o’ Field?) ‘than I would have done,
had it not been to draw out [‘of him,’ in Scots] what this bearer will
tell you: that I find the best matter to excuse your affair that could be
offered. I have promised him’ (Darnley?) ‘to bring him’ (Lord Robert?) ‘to
him’ (Darnley?) ‘to-morrow: if you find it good, put order to it. Now,
Sir, I have broken my promise, for you have commanded me not to send or
write. Yet I do it not to offend you, and if you knew my dread of giving
offence you would not have so many suspicions against me, which, none the
less, I cherish, as coming from the thing in the world which I most desire
and seek, namely your good grace. Of that my conduct shall assure me, nor
shall I ever despair thereof, so long as, according to your promise, you
lay bare your heart to me. Otherwise I shall think that my misfortune, and
the fair attitude[360] of those’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘who have not the third
part of the loyalty and willing obedience that I bear to you, have gained
over me the advantage won by the second love of Jason [Creusa or Glauce?]
Not that I compare you _à un si malheureuse_’ (_sic_) ‘nor myself to one
so pitiless [as Medea] however much you make me a little like her in what
concerns you; or [but?] to preserve and guard you for her to whom alone
you belong, if one can appropriate what one gains by honourably, and
loyally, and absolutely loving, as I do and will do all my life, come what
pain and misery there may. In memory whereof and of all the ills that you
have caused me, be mindful of the place near here’ (Darnley’s chamber?).
‘I do not ask you to keep promise with me to-morrow’ (the Scots has,
wrongly, ‘I crave with that ye keepe promise with me the morne,’ which
Laing justifies by a false conjectural restoration of the French), ‘but
that we meet’ (_que nous truvions = que nous nous trouvions ensemble_?),
‘and that you do not listen to any suspicion you may have without letting
me know. And I ask no more of God than that you may know what is in my
heart which is yours, and that He preserve you at least during my life,
which shall be dear to me only while my life and I are dear to you. I am
going to bed, and wish you good night. Let me know early to-morrow how you
fare, for I shall be anxious. And keep good watch if the bird leave his
cage, or without his mate. Like the turtle I shall abide alone, to lament
the absence, however short it may be. What I cannot do, my letter [would
do?] heartily, if it were not that I fear you are asleep. For I did not
dare to write before Joseph’ (Joseph Riccio) ‘and bastienne (_sic_) and
Joachim, who only went away when I began.’
This Letter is, in most parts, entirely unlike the two Glasgow letters in
style. They are simple and direct: this is obscure and affected. As Laing
had not the transcript of the original French (a transcript probably
erroneous in places) before him, his attempts to reconstruct the French
are unsuccessful. He is more happy in noting that the phrase _vous m’en
dischargeres votre cœur_, occurs twice in Mary’s letters to
Elizabeth[361] (_e.g._ August 13, 1568). But to ‘unpack the heart’ is, of
course, a natural and usual expression. If Darnley is meant by the bird in
the cage, the metaphor is oddly combined with the comparison (a stock one)
of Mary to a turtle dove. Possibly the phrase ‘I do _not_ ask that you
keep promise with me to-morrow,’ is meant to be understood ‘I do not ask
you to keep promise except that we may meet,’ as Laing supposes. But (1)
the sense cannot be got out of the French, (2) it does not help the
interpretation of the accusers if, after all, Mary is only contriving an
excuse for a meeting between herself and Bothwell. The obscure passage
about the turtle dove need not be borrowed from Ronsard, as Laing thinks:
it is a commonplace. The phrase which I render ‘what I cannot do, my
letter [would do] heartily, if it were not that I fear you are asleep,’
the Scots translates ‘This letter will do with ane gude hart, that thing
quhilk I cannot do myself gif it be not that I have feir that ze ar in
sleiping.’ The French is ‘ce que je ne puis faire ma lettre de bon cœur si
ce nestoit que je ay peur que soyes endormy.’ Laing, reconstructing the
French, says, ‘Ce que je ne saurois faire moi-même; that is, instigate
Lord Robert to commit the murder.’ The end of the phrase he takes ‘in its
figurative sense, _d’un homme endormi_; slow, or negligent.’ Thus we are
to understand ‘what I cannot do, my letter would do heartily--that is
excite you to instigate my brother to kill my husband, if I were not
afraid that you were slow or negligent.’ This is mere nonsense. The writer
means, apparently, ‘what I cannot do, my letter would gladly do--that is
salute you--if I were not afraid that you are already asleep, the night
being so far advanced.’ She is sorry if her letter arrives to disturb his
sleep.
It needs much good will, or rather needs much ill will, to regard this
Letter as an inducement to Bothwell to make Lord Robert draw on Darnley.
Mary, without Bothwell’s help, could have summoned Lord Robert on any
pretext, and then set him and Darnley by the ears. The date of Mary’s
attempt to end Darnley by her brother’s sword, Buchanan places ‘about
three days before the King was slain.’ ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ as we saw,
places it on February 8. Darnley was murdered after midnight of February
9. Paris said that, to the best of his memory, he carried letters on the
Friday night, the 7th, from Mary, at Kirk o’ Field, to Bothwell. On
Saturday, Mary told her attendants of the quarrel between Darnley and Lord
Robert. ‘Lord Robert,’ she said, ‘had good means of killing the King at
that moment, for there was then nobody in the chamber to part them but
herself.’ These are rather suspicious confessions.[362] Moreover, Lennox,
in his MSS., says that Moray was present at the incident, and could bear
witness at Westminster. The statement of Paris is confused: he carried
letters both on Thursday and Friday nights (February 6 and 7), and his
declaration about all this affair is involved in contradictions.
According to the confession of Hay of Tala, it was on February 7 that
Bothwell arranged the method by gunpowder. When he had just settled that,
Mary, _ex hypothesi_, disturbed him with the letter on the scheme of using
Lord Robert and a chance scuffle: an idea suggested to her by what she had
extracted, that very night, from Darnley--namely, the warning whispered to
him by Lord Robert. She thinks that, if confronted, they will fight,
Darnley will fall, and this will serve ‘pour excuser votre affaire,’ as
the Letter says. Buchanan adds in his ‘History,’ that Bothwell was present
to kill anybody convenient (fol. 350). It was a wildly improbable scheme,
especially if Mary, as Buchanan says, called in Moray to stop the quarrel,
or share the blame, or be killed by Bothwell.
That the Letter, with some others of the set, is written in an odd,
affected style, does not yield an argument either to the attack or the
defence. If it is unlikely that Mary practised two opposite kinds of
style, it is also unlikely that a forger, or forgers, would venture on
attributing to her the practice. To this topic there will be opportunities
of returning.
LETTER IV
This Letter merely concerns somebody’s distrust of a maid of Mary’s. The
maid is about to be married, perhaps to Bastian, but there is nothing
said that identifies either the girl, or the recipient of the letter. Its
tone, however, is that of almost abjectly affectionate submission, and
there is a note of a common end, to which the writer and the recipient are
working, _ce à quoy nous tandons tous deux_. If Mary dismisses the maid,
she, in revenge, may reveal her scheme. The writer deprecates the
suspicions of her correspondent, and all these things mark the epistle as
one in this series. As it proves nothing against Mary, beyond affection
for somebody, a common aim with him, and fear that the maid may spoil the
project, there could be no reason for forging the Letter. A transcript of
the original French is in the Record Office.[363] The translators have
blundered over an important phrase from ignorance of French.[364]
LETTER V
On the night of April 19, 1567, Bothwell obtained the signatures of many
nobles to ‘Ainslie’s Band,’ as it is called, a document urging Mary to
marry Bothwell.[365] On Monday, April 21, Mary went to Stirling, to see
her child. She was suspected of intending to hand him over to Bothwell. If
she meant to do this, her purpose was frustrated. On Wednesday, April 23,
she went to Linlithgow, and on Thursday, April 24, was seized by Bothwell,
near Edinburgh, and carried to Dunbar. This Letter, if genuine, proves her
complicity; and is intended to prove it, if forged. On the face of it, the
Letter was written at Stirling. Mary regrets Bothwell’s confidence in an
unworthy person, Huntly, the brother of his wife. Huntly has visited her,
and, instead of bringing news as to how and when the abduction is to
managed, has thrown cold water on the plot. He has said that Mary can
never marry a married man who abducts her, and that the Lords _se
dédiroient_, which the Scots translator renders ‘the Lordis wald unsay
themselves, and wald deny that they had said.’ The reference is to their
acquiescence in the Ainslie band of April 19. Mary, as usual, displays
jealousy of Bothwell, who has ‘two strings to his bow,’ herself and his
wedded wife. The Letter implies that, for some reason, Mary and Bothwell
had not arranged the details of the abduction before they separated. A
transcript of the original French is at Hatfield; the English translation,
also at Hatfield, is not from the French, but is a mere Anglicising of the
Scots version. Oddly enough the French copy at Hatfield, unlike the rest,
is in a Roman hand, such as Mary wrote. The hand resembles that of the
copyist of the Casket Sonnets in the Cambridge (Lennox) MSS., and that of
Mary Beaton, but it is not Mary Beaton’s hand.
LETTER VI
This Letter still deals with the manner of the _enlèvement_. Mary is now
reconciled to the idea of trusting Huntly.
She advises Bothwell as to his relations with the Lords. The passage
follows:--
‘Methinkis that zour services, and the lang amitie, having ye gude will of
ye Lordis, do weill deserve ane pardoun, gif above the dewtie of ane
subject yow advance yourself, not to constrane me, bot to assure yourself
of sic place neir unto me, that uther admonitiounis or forane [foreign]
perswasiounis may not let [hinder] me from consenting to that, that ye
hope your service sall mak yow ane day to attene; and to be schort, to mak
yourself sure of the Lordis and fre to mary; and that ye are constraint
for your suretie, and to be abill to serve me faithfully, to use are
humbil requeist, joynit to ane importune actioun.
‘And to be schort, excuse yourself, and perswade thame the maist ye can,
yat ye ar constranit to mak persute aganis zour enemies.’
Now compare Mary’s excuses for her marriage, and for Bothwell’s conduct,
as written in Scots by Lethington, her secretary, in May, 1567, for the
Bishop of Dunblane to present to the Court of France.[366] First she tells
at much length the tale of Bothwell’s ‘services, and the lang amitie,’ as
briefly stated in Letter VI. Later she mentions his ambition, and
‘practising with ye nobillmen secretly to make yame his friendis.’ This
answers to ‘having ye gude will of ye Lordis,’ in the Letter. In the
document for the French Court, Mary suggests, as one of Bothwell’s motives
for her abduction, ‘incidentis quhilk mycht occur to frustrat him of his
expectatioun.’ In the Letter he is ‘constrainit for his suretie, to carry
her off.’ Finally, in the Memorial for the French Court, it is said that
Bothwell ‘_ceased never till be persuasionis and importune sute
accumpaneit not the less with force_,’ he won Mary’s assent. In Letter VI.
she advises him to allege that he is obliged ‘_to use ane humble requeist
joynit to ane importune action_.’ Letter VI., in fact, is almost a
succinct _précis_, before the abduction, of the pleas and excuses which
Mary made to the French Court after her marriage. Could a forger have
accidentally produced this coincidence? One could: according to Sir John
Skelton the letter to her ambassador ‘is understood to have been drawn by
Maitland.’[367] The letter of excuses to France is a mere expansion of the
excuses that, in the Casket Letter which we are considering, Mary advises
Bothwell to make to the Lords. Either, then, this Letter is genuine, or
the hypothetical forger had seen, and borrowed from, the Memorial
addressed in May to the Court of France. This alternative is not really
difficult; for Lethington, as secretary, must have seen, and may even (as
Skelton suggests) have composed, the Scots letter of excuses carried to
France by the Bishop of Dunblane, and Lethington had joined Mary’s enemies
before they got possession of the Casket and Letters. Oddly enough, the
letter to the ambassador contains a phrase in Scots which Lethington had
used in writing to Beaton earlier, Mary ‘could not find ane outgait.’[368]
No transcript of the original French, and no English translation, have
been found.
LETTER VII
This Letter purports to follow on another, ‘sen my letter writtin,’ and
may be of Tuesday, April 22, as Mary reports that Huntly is anxious about
what he is to do ‘after to-morrow.’ She speaks of Huntly as ‘your
brother-in-law that _was_,’ whereas Huntly, Bothwell not being divorced,
was still his brother-in-law. Huntly is afraid that Mary’s people, and
especially the Earl of Sutherland, will die rather than let her be carried
off. We do not know, from other sources, that Sutherland was present. Mary
implores Bothwell to bring an overpowering force. No transcript of the
original French, nor any English translation, is known. Mary must have
written two of these letters (and apparently eleven sonnets also) while
ill, anxious, and busy, on the 22nd, at Stirling, with the third on the
23rd, either at Stirling or Linlithgow. She could hardly get answers to
anything written as late as the 22nd, before Bothwell arrived at Haltoun,
near Linlithgow, on the night of April 23.
LETTER VIII (III IN HENDERSON)
There are differences of opinion as to the date of this curious Letter,
and as to its place in the series. The contemporary transcript, made
probably for the Commissioners on December 9, 1568, is in the Record
Office. I translate the Letter afresh, since it must be read before any
inference as to its date and importance can be drawn.
‘Sir,--If regret for your absence, the pain caused by your forgetfulness,
and by fear of the danger which every one predicts to your beloved person,
can console me, I leave it to you to judge; considering the ill fortune
which my cruel fate and constant trouble have promised me, in the sequel
of sorrows and terrors recent and long passed; all which you well know.
But, in spite of all, I will not accuse you either of your scant
remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, or of
the coldness of your letters, I being so much your own that what pleases
you pleases me. And my thoughts are so eagerly subject to yours that I am
fain to suppose that whatsoever comes from you arises not from any of the
aforesaid causes, but from such as are just and reasonable, and desired by
myself. Which is the final order that you have promised me to take for the
safety[369] and honourable service of the sole support of my life, for
whom alone I wish to preserve it, and without which I desire only instant
death. And to show you how humbly I submit me to your commands, I send
you, by Paris, in sign of homage, the ornament’ (her hair) ‘of the head,
the guide of the other members, thereby signifying that, in investing you
with the spoil of what is principal, the rest must be subject to you with
the heart’s consent. In place of which heart, since I have already
abandoned it to you, I send you a sepulchre, of hard stone, painted black,
_semé_ with tears and bones.[370] I compare it to my heart, which, like
it, is graven into a secure tomb or receptacle of your commands, and
specially of your name and memory, which are therein enclosed, like my
hair in the ring. Never shall they issue forth till death lets you make a
trophy of my bones, even as the ring is full of them’ (_i.e._ in enamel),
‘in proof that you have made entire conquest of me, and of my heart, to
such a point that I leave you my bones in memory of your victory, and of
my happy and willing defeat, to be better employed than I deserve. The
enamel round the ring is black, to symbolise the constancy of her who
sends it. The tears are numberless as are my fears of your displeasure, my
tears for your absence, and for my regret not to be yours, to outward
view, as I am, without weakness of heart or soul.
‘And reasonably so, were my merits greater than those of the most perfect
of women, and such as I desire to be. And I shall take pains to imitate
such merits, to be worthily employed under your dominion. Receive this
then, my only good, in as kind part as with extreme joy I have received
your marriage’ (apparently, from what follows, a contract of marriage or a
ring of betrothal), ‘which never shall leave my bosom till our bodies are
publicly wedded, as a token of all that I hope or desire of happiness in
this world. Now fearing, my heart, to weary you as much in the reading as
I take pleasure in the writing, I shall end, after kissing your hands,
with as great love as I pray God (O thou, the only prop of my life!) to
make your life long and happy, and to give me your good grace, the only
good thing which I desire, and to which I tend. I have shown what I have
learned to this bearer, to whom I remit myself, knowing the credit that
you give him, as does she who wishes to be ever your humble and obedient
loyal wife, and only lover, who for ever vows wholly to you her heart and
body changelessly, as to him whom I make possessor of my heart which, you
may be assured, will never change till death, for never shall weal or woe
estrange it.’
The absurd affectation of style in this Letter, so different from the
plain manner of Letters I. and II., may be a poetical effort by Mary, or
may be a forger’s idea of how a queen in love ought to write. In the
latter case, to vary the manner so much from that of the earlier Letters,
was a bold experiment and a needless.