her hair. It is enamelled in black, with tears and bones. Such a ring is
given by a girl to her lover, as a parting token, in the _Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles_ (xxvi.), a ring _d’or, esmailée de larmes noires_.[371] She
promises always to keep the ‘marriage’ (that is the contract of marriage,
or can it be a ring typical of marriage?) in her bosom, till the actual
wedding in public. Now she had a sentimental habit of wearing love tokens
‘in her bosom.’ She writes to Norfolk from Coventry (December, 1569), ‘I
took the diamant from my Lord Boyd, which I shall keep unseene about my
neck till I give it agayn to the owner of it and of me both.’[372]
As to the Contract of Marriage (if Mary wore that in her bosom[373]), two
alleged contracts were produced for the prosecution. One was a ‘contract
or promise of marriage’ by Mary to Bothwell, in the Italic hand, and in
French; the hand was said to be Mary’s own. It was undated, and a
memorandum in the ‘Detection’ says, ‘Though some words therein seme to the
contrary, yet is on credible groundes supposed to have been made and
written by her befoir the death of her husband.’ The document explicitly
mentions that ‘God has taken’ Darnley. The document, or jewel, treasured
by Mary would, of course, be Bothwell’s solemn promise, or token of
promise, the counterpart of hers to him, published in Buchanan.[374]
Now there also existed a contract, said to be in Huntly’s hand, and signed
by Mary and Bothwell, of date April 5 (at Seton), 1567. But this contract
speaks of the process of divorce ‘intentit’ between Bothwell and his
‘pretensit spouse.’ Now that suit, on April 5, was not yet before the
Court (though some documents had been put in), nor did Lady Bothwell move
in the case till after Mary’s abduction.
If Mary kept _this_ contract, and if it be correctly dated, then Letter
VIII. is not of January-February, but of April, 1567.
If Mary regarded herself as now privately married, this pose would explain
the phrase ‘your brother-in-law _that was_,’ in Letter VIII. But this is
stretching possibilities.
Mr. Hosack has argued that the Letter just translated was really written
to Darnley, between whom and Mary some private preliminary ceremony of
marriage was said to have passed. In that case the words _par Paris_, ‘I
send you by Paris, &c.,’ are a forged interpolation, as Paris was not in
Mary’s service till January, 1567. The opening sentence about the danger
which, as every one thinks, menaces her correspondent, might refer to
Darnley. But the tone of remonstrance against indifference, suspicion, and
violated promises, is the tone of almost all the Casket Letters, and does
not apply to Darnley--before his public marriage.
As to the ‘heart in a ring,’ Mary, as Laing notes, had written to
Elizabeth ‘Je vous envoye mon cœur en bague.’ The phrase in the Letter,
_seul soutien de ma vie_, also occurs in one of the Casket Sonnets.
To what known or alleged circumstances in Mary’s relations with Bothwell
can this Letter refer? The alternatives are (1) either to her receipt of
Bothwell’s answer to Letter II., which Paris (on our scheme of dates) gave
to Mary on January 25, at Glasgow; (2) to the moment of her stay at
Callendar, where she arrived, with Darnley, on January 27, taking him on
January 28 to Linlithgow, whence, on January 29, ‘she wraytt to Bothwell.’
She had learned at Linlithgow, on January 28, by Hob Ormistoun, that
Bothwell was on his way from Liddesdale.[375] Or (3) does the letter refer
to Monday, April 21, when she was at Stirling till Wednesday, April 23,
when she went to Linlithgow, Bothwell being ‘at Haltoun hard by,’ and
carrying her off on April 24?[376]
Taking first (1)--we find Mary acknowledging in this letter the receipt of
Bothwell’s ‘marriage.’ If this is a contract, did Bothwell send it in the
letter which, according to Paris, he wrote on January 24, accompanying it
with a diamond? ‘Tell the Queen,’ said Bothwell, ‘that I send her this
diamond, which you are to carry, and that if I had my heart I would send
it willingly, but I have it not.’ The diamond, a ring probably, might be
referred to in Bothwell’s letter as a marriage or betrothal ring (French,
_union_). In return Mary would send her mourning ring; ‘the stone I
compare to my heart.’
This looks well, but how could Mary, who, _ex hypothesi_, had just
received a ring, a promise or contract of marriage, and a loving message,
complain, as she does, of ‘the coldness of your letters,’ ‘your violated
promise,’ ‘your forgetfulness,’ ‘your want of care for me’? Danger to
Bothwell, in Liddesdale, she might fear, but these other complaints are
absolutely inconsistent with the theory that Bothwell had just sent a
letter, a ring, a promise of marriage, and a loving verbal message. We
must therefore dismiss hypothesis 1.
(2) Did Mary send this Letter on January 29 from Linlithgow? She had no
neglect to complain of _there_; for, according to her accusers, she was
met by Hob Ormistoun, with a letter or message. Paris says this was at
Callendar, where she slept on January 27.[377] In that case Bothwell was
yet more prompt. Again, Mary had now no fear of danger to Bothwell’s
person, as she had just learned that Bothwell had left perilous
Liddesdale. Here, once more, there is no room, reason, or ground for her
complaints. Again, in the Letter she says that she sends the mourning ring
‘by Paris.’ But, if we are to believe Paris, she did not do so. He gave
her Bothwell’s letter, received from Bothwell’s messenger, at Callendar,
January 27. She answered it at bedtime, gave it to Paris to be given to
Bothwell’s messenger, enclosing a ring, and the messenger carried ring and
letter to Bothwell. She could not write, ‘I have sent you by Paris’ the
ring, if she did nothing of the sort. Later, according to Paris, she did
send him, with the bracelets, from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, where he met
Bothwell, just mounting to ride and join Mary and Darnley on their return.
The Letter, then, does not fit the circumstances of one written either at
Callendar, January 27 (Paris), or at Linlithgow, January 29 (‘Cecil’s
Journal’).
(3) That the ring, and the lamentations, were carried, by Paris, from
Linlithgow to the neighbouring house of Haltoun, where Bothwell lay, on
the night of April 23, the night before he bore Mary off to Dunbar, is not
credible. Nothing indicates her receipt of token or contract of marriage
at that date. The danger to Bothwell was infinitesimal. He was not
neglecting Mary, he was close to her, and only waiting for daylight to
carry her off. He wrote in reply, Paris says, and verbally promised to
meet her, ‘on the road, at the bridge.’[378]
To a man who was thus doing his best to please her, a man whom she was to
meet next day, Mary could not be writing long, affected complaints and
lamentations. She would write, if at all, on details of the business on
hand. No ring was carried by Paris, according to his own deposition.
Thus the contents of the Letter do not fit into any recorded or alleged
juncture in Mary’s relations with Bothwell, after January 21, 1567, when
Paris (whom the Letter mentions) first entered her service. Laing places
the Letter last in the series, and supposes that the ring and letter were
sent from Linlithgow, to Bothwell hard by (at Haltoun), the night before
the ‘ravishment.’ But he does not make it plain that the contents of the
Letter are really consistent with its supposed occasion.[379] When was
Bothwell absent from Mary, cold, forgetful, and in danger, between the
return from Glasgow, and the abduction? The Letter does not help the case
of the prosecution.
We have exhausted the three conceivable alternatives as to the date,
occasion, and circumstances of this Letter. Its contents fit none of
these dates and occasions. Mr. Froude adds a fourth alternative. This
Letter ‘was written just before the marriage’[380] when Bothwell (whose
absence is complained of) was never out of Mary’s company.
There is not, in short, an obvious place for this Letter in the recorded
circumstances of Mary’s history, though the lack of obviousness may arise
from our ignorance of facts.
XVI
_THE CASKET SONNETS_
When the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan was first published, La Mothe Fénelon,
French ambassador in England, writing to Charles IX., described the
Sonnets as the worst, or most compromising, of all the evidence. They
never allude to Darnley, and must have been written after his death. As is
well known, Brantôme says that such of Mary’s verses as he had seen were
entirely unlike the Casket Sonnets, which are ‘too rude and unpolished to
be hers.’ Ronsard, he adds, was of the same opinion. Both men had seen
verses written hastily by Mary, and still ‘unpolished,’ whether by her, or
by Ronsard, who may have aided her, as Voltaire aided Frederick the Great.
Both critics were, of course, prejudiced in favour of the beautiful Queen.
Both were good judges, but neither had ever seen 160 lines of sonnet
sequence written by her under the stress of a great passion, and amidst
the toils of travel, of business, of intense anxiety, all in the space of
two days, April 21 to April 23.
[Illustration: PLATE A
TWO SONNETS FROM THE CAMBRIDGE MS.
The hand somewhat resembles that of Mary in early youth, and that of Mary
Beaton
The copyist is unknown]
That the most fervent and hurried sonneteer should write eleven sonnets in
such time and circumstances is hard to believe, but we must allow for
Mary’s sleepless nights, which she may have beguiled by versifying. It
is known that a distinguished historian is occupied with a critical
edition of these Sonnets. We may await his decision as to their relations
with the few surviving poems of the Queen. My own comparison of these does
not convince me that the favoured rhymes are especially characteristic of
Mary. The topics of the Casket Sonnets, the author’s inability to remove
the suspicions of the jealous Bothwell; her protestations of submission;
her record of her sacrifices for him; her rather mean jealousy of Lady
Bothwell, are also the frequent topics of the Casket Letters. The very
phrases are occasionally the same: so much so as to suggest the suspicion
that the Letters may have been modelled on the Sonnets, or the Sonnets on
the Letters. If there be anything in this, the Sonnets are probably the
real originals. Nothing is less likely than that a forger would think of
such a task as forging verses by Mary: nor do we know any one among her
enemies who could have produced the verses even if he had the will. To
suspect Buchanan is grotesque. On the theory of a literary contest between
Mary and Lady Bothwell for Bothwell’s affections, something is to be said
in the following chapter. Meanwhile, I am obliged to share the opinion of
La Mothe Fénelon, that, as proof of Mary’s passion for Bothwell, the
Sonnets are stronger evidence than the Letters, and much less open to
suspicion than some parts of the Letters.
XVII
_CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS_
A few words must be said as to a now obsolete difficulty, the question as
to the language in which the Letters were originally written. That
question need not be mooted: it is settled by Mr. Henderson’s ‘Casket
Letters.’ The original language of the epistles was French.
I. The epistles shown at Westminster were certainly in French, which was
not (except in the first one or two sentences) the French later published
by the Huguenots. _That_ French was translated from the Latin, which was
translated from the Scots, which was translated from the original French.
Voluminous linguistic criticisms by Goodall, Hosack, Skelton, and others
have ceased, therefore, to be in point.
II. Many phrases, whether as mirrored in the Scots and English
translations, or as extant in contemporary copies of the original French,
can be paralleled from authentic letters of Mary’s. Bresslau proved this
easily, but it was no less easily proved that many of the phrases were
conventional, and could be paralleled from the correspondence of Catherine
de’ Medici and other contemporary ladies. A forger would have ample
opportunities of knowing Mary’s phrasing and orthography. It would be easy
for me to write a letter reproducing the phrasing and orthography, which
is very distinctive, of Pickle the Spy. No argument against forgery can be
based on imitations of peculiarities of phrase and spelling which the
hypothetical forger was sure to know and reproduce.
But phrasing and spelling are not to be confounded with tone and style.
Now the Letters, in tone, show considerable unity, except at one point.
Throughout Mary is urging and spurring an indifferent half-hearted wooer
to commit an abominable crime, and another treasonable act, her abduction.
Really, to judge from the Letters, we might suppose Bothwell to be almost
as indifferent and reluctant as Field-Marshal Keith was, when the Czarina
Elizabeth offered him her hand. Keith put his foot down firmly, and
refused, but the Bothwell who hesitated was lost. It is Mary who gives him
no rest till he carries her off: we must blame Bothwell for not arranging
the scheme before parting from Mary in Edinburgh; to be sure, Buchanan
declares in his History that the scheme _was_ arranged. In short, we
become almost sorry for Bothwell, who had a lovely royal bride thrust on
him against his will, and only ruined himself out of reluctance to
disoblige a lady. It is the old Irish tale of Diarmaid and Grainne over
again.
But, on the other hand, Letter II. represents Mary as tortured by remorse
and regret. Only to please Bothwell would she act as she does. Her heart
bleeds at it. We must suppose that she not only grew accustomed to the
situation, but revelled in it, and insisted on an abduction, which even
Lethington could only explain by her knowledge of the _apices juris_, the
sublimities of Scots law. A pardon for the abduction would, in Scots law,
cover the murder.
Such is the chief difference in tone. In style, though the fact seems to
have been little if at all noticed, there are two distinct species. There
is the simple natural style of Letters I., II., and the rest, and there is
the alembicated, tormented, precious, and affected style of Letters VIII.
(III.) and IV. Have we any other examples, from Mary’s hand, of the
obscure affectations of VIII. (III.) and IV.? Letter VIII., while it
contains phrases which recur in the Casket ‘Sonnets,’ is really more
contorted and _symboliste_ in manner than the verses. These ‘fond ballads’
contain, not infrequently, the same sentiments as the Letters, whether the
Letters be in the direct or in the affected style. Thus, in Letter II.,
where Lady Bothwell and Mary’s jealousy of her are the theme, we read ‘Se
not hir’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘quhais feinzeit teiris should not be sa mekle
praisit or estemit as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk I sustene
for to merite her place.’ Compare Sonnets ii. iii.:
Brief je feray de ma foy telle preuve,
Qu’il cognoistra sans faulte ma constance,
Non par mes pleurs ou fainte obeyssance
Comme autres font, mais par divers espreuve.
In both passages the writer contrasts the ‘feigned tears,’ ‘feigned
obedience’ of Bothwell’s wife with her own practical proofs of devotion:
in the Sonnet using ‘them’ for ‘her’ as in Letter IV.
A possible, but unexpected explanation of the extraordinary diversity of
the two styles, I proceed to give. We have briefly discussed the Sonnets,
which (despite the opinion of Ronsard) carry a strong appearance of
authenticity, though whether their repetitions of the matter and phrasing
of the Letters be in favour of the hypothesis that _both_ are authentic
might be argued variously. Now from the Sonnets it appears that Lady
Bothwell was endeavouring to secure her bridegroom’s heart in a rather
unlooked-for manner: namely, by writing to him elaborately literary love
letters in the artificial style of the age of the Pleiad. As the Sonnets
say, she wooes him ‘par les escriptz tout fardez de sçavoir.’ But Mary
maintains that Lady Bothwell is a mere plagiarist. Her ingenious letters,
treasured by Bothwell, and the cause of his preference for her, are
empruntés de quelque autheur luisant!
We have already tried to show that Bothwell was not the mere ‘brave stupid
strong-handed Border noble,’ ‘the rough ignorant moss-trooper,’ but a man
of taste and culture. If the Sonnets be genuine, there was actually a
contest in literary excellence between Bothwell’s wife and his royal
mistress. This queer rivalry would account for the style of Letter VIII.,
in which Mary labours to prove to Bothwell, as it were, that she is as
capable as his wife of writing a fashionable, contorted, literary style,
if she chooses: in poetry, too, if she likes. We naturally feel sorry for
a man of action who received, at a moment when decisive action was
needful, such an epistle as Letter VIII., and we naturally suppose that he
never read it, but tossed it into the Casket with an explosion of profane
words. But it is just conceivable that Bothwell had a taste for the
‘precious,’ and that, to gratify this taste, and eclipse Lady Bothwell,
Mary occasionally wrote in the manner of Letter VIII. or quoted Jason,
Medea, and Creusa.
This hypothesis, far-fetched as it may seem, at all events is naturally
suggested by Sonnet VI. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that
a dexterous forger would sit down to elaborate, whether from genuine
materials or not, anything so much out of keeping with his Letter II. as
is his Letter VIII. Yet Letter VIII., as we saw, cannot be connected with
any known moment of the intrigue.
While the Letters thus vary in style, in tone of sentiment they are all
uniform, except Letter II. We are to believe that the forger deliberately
laid down a theory of this strange wooing. The Queen throughout is much
more the pursuer than the pursued. Bothwell is cold, careless, breaks
promises, is contemptuously negligent, does not write, is suspicious,
prefers his wedded wife to his mistress. Contemporary gossip averred that
this, in fact, was his attitude. Thus, after Mary had been sent to Loch
Leven, Lethington told du Croc that ‘Bothwell had written several times to
his first wife, Lady Bothwell, since he lay with the Queen, and in his
letters assured Lady Bothwell that he regarded her as his wife, and the
Queen as his concubine.’ Lethington reported this to Mary herself, who
discredited the fact, but Lethington relied on the evidence of Bothwell’s
letters.[381] How could he know anything about them? The belief in
Bothwell’s preference of his wife was general, and, doubtless, it may be
urged that this explains the line taken by the forger.
The passion, in the Letters, is all on the side of Mary. By her eternal
protests of entire submission she recalls to us at once her eager service
to Darnley in the first days of their marriage, and her constant promises
of implicit obedience to Norfolk. To Norfolk, as to Bothwell (we have
already shown), she expresses her hope that ‘you will mistrust me no
more.’[382] ‘If you be in the wrong I will submit me to you for so
writing, and ax your pardon thereof.’ She will beg pardon, even if Norfolk
is in the wrong! Precisely in the same tone does Mary (in Letter VIII.),
after complaining of Bothwell’s forgetfulness, say, ‘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, seeing that what pleases you pleases
me.’
This woman, whose pride is said to be in contradiction with her
submission, as expressed in the Casket Letters, writes even to Elizabeth,
‘Je me sousmetray à vos commandemants.’[383] In Letter VIII. Bothwell is
congratulated on ‘votre victoire et mon agreable perte.’ To Elizabeth Mary
writes ‘Vous aurés fayt une profitable conqueste de moy.’
That any forger should have known Mary so well as to place her,
imaginatively, as regarded Bothwell, in the very attitude which we see
that, on occasion, she chose later to adopt in fact, as regarded Norfolk,
is perhaps beyond belief. It may be urged that she probably, in early
days, wrote to Darnley in this very tone, that Darnley’s papers would fall
into his father’s hands, and that Lennox would hand them over as materials
to the forger. But ‘it is to consider too curiously to consider thus.’
Such are the arguments, for the defence and the attack, which may be drawn
from internal evidence of style. To myself this testimony seems rather in
favour of the authenticity of considerable and compromising portions of
the papers.
Letter VIII. (intended to prove a contract of marriage with Bothwell)
remains an enigma to me: the three Letters proving Mary’s eagerness for
the abduction are not without suspicious traits. The epistle about
bringing Lord Robert to kill Darnley in a quarrel is involved in the
inconsistencies which we have shown to beset that affair. The note about
the waiting-woman was hardly worth forging, compromising as it is. Letter
I. seems to me certainly authentic, if we adopt the scheme of dates
suggested, and reject that of ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ which appears to be
official, and answers to Lennox’s demands for dates. It may be merely
Lennoxian, but no other scheme of chronology is known to have been put in
by the accusers. Letter I., if our dates are admitted, implies the
existence of a letter answering to Letter II., which I have had to regard
as, in some parts at least, genuine. If forgery and tampering were
attempted (as I think they certainly were in the letter never produced,
but described by Lennox and Moray, and perhaps in other cases), who was
the criminal?
My reply will have been anticipated. Whoever held the pen of the forger,
Lethington must have directed the scheme. This idea, based on we know not
what information, though I shall offer a conjecture, occurred to
Elizabeth, as soon as she heard the first whisper of the existence of the
Letters, in June-July, 1567. On July 21, de Silva mentioned to her what he
had heard--that the Lords held certain Letters ‘proving that the Queen had
been cognisant of the murder of her husband. She told me it was not true,
though Lethington had behaved badly in the matter.’[384] The person from
whom Elizabeth thus early heard something connecting Lethington, in an
evil way, with the affair must have been Robert Melville. His position was
then peculiar. He was first accredited to Elizabeth, on June 5, 1567, by
Mary, Bothwell, and Lethington.[385] Melville left Scotland, for Mary, on
June 5, returned to Scotland, and again rode to London on June 21, as the
envoy of some of her enemies. Now June 21 was the day of the opening of
the Casket, and inspection of its contents. A meeting of the Privy Council
was held on that day, but Lethington’s name is not among those of the
nobles who attended it.[386] The minutes of the Council say not a word
about the Casket, though the members attending Council were, with several
others, present, so Morton declared, at the opening of the Casket. Though
not at the Council, Lethington was at the Casket scene, according to
Morton. And on that very day, Lethington wrote a letter to Cecil, the
bearer being Robert Melville, who, says Lethington, is sent ‘on _sudden_
dispatch.’[387] Melville, in addition to Lethington’s letter, carried a
verbal message to Cecil, as the letter proves. We may glean the nature of
the verbal message from the letter itself.