Parliament, and with strange logic, declared that the ground of their
rising and imprisonment of Mary was her guilt as revealed in letters
written by her hand, though these were not discovered when the Lords
imprisoned Mary. Now Lethington, in his dispatch to Cecil, carried by
Melville the day of the Casket finding, says that the bearer, Mr. Robert
Melville, ‘can report to you at length the ground of the Lords’ so just
and honourable cause.’ Presently that ‘ground’ was declared to be the
evidence of the Casket Letters. Melville then would verbally report this
new ‘ground’ to Cecil and Elizabeth. He was dispatched at that very date
for no other reason. The Lords were Melville’s employers, but his heart
was sore for Mary. Elizabeth, on June 30, tells Mary (Throckmorton carried
her letter) that ‘your own faithful servant, Robert Melville, used much
earnest speech on your behalf.’[388] What Elizabeth knew about
Lethington’s bad behaviour as to the Letters, and spoke of to de Silva,
she must have heard from Robert Melville. She did not, as far as we are
aware, mention her knowledge of the subject till de Silva introduced it on
July 21, but only from Melville could she learn whatever she did learn
about Lethington. Throckmorton, her envoy to Scotland, did not mention the
Letters till July 25, four days after Elizabeth spoke to de Silva. ‘Jhone
a Forret,’ whom the Lords sent through London on July 8 to bring Moray,
was not exactly the man to blame Lethington and discredit the Letters: for
he was probably John Wood, later a chief enemy of Mary.
Suspicions of Lethington, later, were not confined to Elizabeth alone. In
Mary’s instructions to her Commissioners (Sept. 9, 1568) she says, ‘There
are divers in Scotland, both men and women, that can counterfeit my
handwriting, and write the like manner of writing which I use [the ‘Roman’
or Italic] as well as myself, _and principally such as are in company with
themselves_,’[389] as Lethington then was.
Lesley stated the matter thus: ‘There are sundry can counterfeit her
handwriting, who have been brought up in her company, of whom there are
some assisting themselves’ (the Lords) ‘as well of other nations as of
Scots, as I doubt not both your highness’ (Elizabeth) ‘and divers others
of your Highness’s Court, has seen sundry letters sent here from Scotland,
which would not be known from her own handwriting.’[390]
All this is vague, and Mary’s reference to _women_, Lesley’s reference to
those ‘brought up in her company,’ glance, alas! at the Queen’s Maries.
Mary Livingstone, wedded to John Sempil, was not on the best terms with
Queen Mary about certain jewels. Mary Fleming was Lethington’s wife. Mary
Beaton’s aunts were at open feud with the Queen. A lady, unnamed, was
selected as the forger by the author of ‘L’Innocence de la Royne
d’Escosse’ (1572).
To return to Lethington. In 1615, Camden, writing, as it were, under the
eye of James VI. and I., declared that Lethington ‘had privately hinted to
the Commissioners at York, that he had counterfeited Mary’s hand
frequently.’[391] There is nothing incredible, _a priori_, in the story.
Between October 11, 1568 (when Norfolk, having been _privately_ shown the
Letters, was blabbing, even to his servant Bannister, his horror of Letter
II.), and October 16, when Lethington rode out with Norfolk, and the
scheme for his marrying Mary struck deep root, something may have been
said. Lethington may have told Norfolk that perhaps the Letters were
forged, that he himself, for amusement, had imitated Mary’s hand. As a
fact, the secretaries of two of the foremost of contemporary statesmen did
write to the innumerable bores who beset well-known persons, in hands
hardly to be distinguished from those of their chiefs. Norfolk, as Laing
says, did acknowledge, at his trial, that Lethington ‘moved him to
consider the Queen as not guilty of the crimes objected.’ Lethington
appears to have succeeded; possibly by aid of the obvious argument that,
if _he_ could imitate Mary’s hand for pastime, others might do it for evil
motives. Nay, we practically know, and have shown, that Lethington did
succeed in making Norfolk, to whom, five days before, he had offered the
Letters as proofs of Mary’s guilt, believe that she had not written them.
For, as we have seen, whereas Mary at this time was making a compromise
with Moray, Norfolk persuaded her to abandon that course. Thus Lethington,
on October 11, 1568, made Norfolk believe in the Letters; on October 16,
he made him disbelieve or doubt.
We are not to suppose Lethington so foolish as to confess that he was
himself the forger. Even if Lethington did tell Norfolk that he had often
imitated Mary’s hand, he could not have meant to accuse himself in this
case. His son, in 1620, asked Camden for his authority, and we know not
that Camden ever replied. He never altered his statement, which meant no
more than that, by the argument of his own powers of imitating Mary’s
handwriting, Lethington kept urging the Duke of Norfolk to doubt her
guilt.[392] Lethington’s illustration of the ease with which Mary’s
writing could be imitated is rather, if he used it, a proof that he did
_not_ hold the pen which may have tampered with the Casket Letters. Our
reasons for suspecting him of engaging, though not as penman, in the
scheme are:
1. Elizabeth’s early suspicion of Lethington, and the probability that
Robert Melville, who had just parted from Lethington, inspired that
suspicion.
2. The probability, derived from Randolph’s letter, already cited, that
Lethington had access to the Casket before June 21, 1567, but after
Mary’s capture at Carberry.
3. Of all men Lethington, from his knowledge of Mary’s disgust at his
desertion, ingratitude, and ‘extreme opposition’ to her, in her darkest
hour, and from his certainty that Mary held, or professed to hold,
documentary proof of his own guilt, had most reason to fear her, and
desire and scheme her destruction.
4. Kirkcaldy of Grange, on April 20, 1567, months before the Letters were
discovered, wrote to Cecil that Mary ‘has said that she cares not to lose
(a) _France_, (b) _England_, and (c) _her own_ country’ for Bothwell.[393]
Compare, in the Lennox version of the letter never produced (p. 214)--
(_a_) The loss of her dowry in _France_.
(_b_) Her titles to the crown of _England_.
(_c_) The crown _of her realm_.
Unless this formula of renunciations, _in this sequence_, was a favourite
of Mary’s, in correspondence and in general conversation, its appearance,
in the letter not produced, and in Kirkcaldy’s letter written before the
Casket was captured, _donne furieusement à penser_.
5. Another curious coincidence between a Casket Letter (VII.) and Mary’s
instructions to the Bishop of Dunblane, in excuse of her marriage, has
already been noticed. We may glance at it again.
INSTRUCTIONS
We thocht his continuance in the awayting upon us ... had procedit
onelie upoun the ackawlegeing of _his dewtie, being our borne
subject_.
The _persuasionis_ quhilk oure friendis or his unfriendis _mycht cast
out for his hinderence_ ...
Sa ceased he nevir till be persuasionis and _importune sute,
accumpaneit nottheles with force_.
LETTER VII.
Gif _abone the dewtie of ane subject_ yow advance yourself.
That uther admonitiounis or forane _persuasiounis_ may not let me from
consenting ...
To use _ane humbil requiest joynit to ane importune action_.
The whole scheme of excuse given in Letter VII. is merely expanded into
the later Instructions, a piece of eleven pages in length. ‘The
Instructions are understood to have been drawn by Lethington,’ says Sir
John Skelton; certainly Mary did not write them, as they stand, for they
are in Scots. ‘Many things we resolved with ourselves, but never could
find ane outgait,’ say the Instructions. ‘How to be free of him she has no
outgait,’ writes Maitland to Beaton. If Lethington, as Secretary, penned
the Instructions, who penned Letter VII.?
6. We have already cited Randolph’s letter to Kirkcaldy and Lethington,
when they had changed sides, and were holding the Castle for the Queen.
But we did not quote all of the letter. Lethington, says Randolph, with
Grange, is, as Mary herself has said, the chief occasion of all her
calamities, by his advice ‘to apprehend her, to imprison her; yea, to have
taken presently the life from her.’ This follows a catalogue of
Lethington’s misdeeds towards Mary, exhaustive, one might think. But it
ends, ‘_with somewhat more that we might say, were it not to grieve you
too much herein_.’ What ‘more’ beyond arrest, loss of crown, prison, and
threatened loss of life, was left that Lethington could do against Mary?
The manipulation of the Casket Letters was left: ‘somewhat more that we
might say, were it not to grieve you too much herein.’[394]
Randolph had been stirring the story of Lethington’s opening the coffer in
a green cover, in the autumn of 1570. Charges and counter-charges as to
the band for murdering Darnley had been flying about. On January 10, 1571,
Cecil darkly writes to Kirkcaldy that of Lethington he ‘has heard such
things as he dare not believe.’[395] This cannot refer to the declaration,
by Paris, that Lethington was in the murder, for _that_ news was stale
fifteen months earlier.
As to the hand that may have done whatever unfair work was done, we can
hope for no certainty. Robert Melville, in 1573, being taken out of the
fallen Castle, and examined, stated that ‘he thinkis that the lard of
Grange’ (Kirkcaldy) ‘counterfaitit the Regentis’ (Moray’s) ‘handwrite,
that was sent to Alixr Hume that nycht.’ But we do not accuse Kirkcaldy.
There is another possible penman, Morton’s jackal, a Lord of Session,
Archibald Douglas. That political forgery was deemed quite within the
province of a Scottish Judge, or Lord of Session, in the age of the
Reformation, we learn from his case. A kinsman of Morton, one of Darnley’s
murderers, and present, according to Morton, at the first opening of the
Casket, Archibald was accused by his elder brother, William Douglas of
Whittingham, of forging letters from Bishop Lesley to Lennox, the
favourite of James VI., and others (1580-1581).[396] Of course a Lord of
Session might bear false witness against his brother in the flesh, and on
the Bench. But perhaps Archibald himself, a forger of other letters,
forged the Casket Letters; he had been in France, and may have known
French. All things are conceivable about these Douglases.
It is enough to know that experts in forgery, real or reputed, were among
Mary’s enemies. But, for what they are worth, the hints which we can still
pick up, and have here put together, may raise a kind of presumption that,
if falsification there was, the manager was Lethington. ‘The master wit of
Lethington was there to shape the plot,’ said Sir John Skelton, though
later he fell back on Morton, with his ‘dissolute lawyers and unfrocked
priests’--like Archie Douglas.
I do not, it will be observed, profess to be certain, or even
strongly inclined to believe, that there was any forgery of Mary’s
writings, except in the case of the letter never produced. But, if forgery
there was, our scraps and hints of evidence point to Lethington as manager
of the plot.
[Illustration: PLATE A B
EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND
One of these two is, in part, not genuine, but imitated]
[Illustration: PLATE B A
EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND
In one some parts are not genuine, but imitated
The text is Mary to Elizabeth, B. Museum, Calig. C.I. Number 421 in Bain.
Calendar II. p. 659 (1900)]
As to problems of handwriting, they are notoriously obscure, and the
evidence of experts, in courts of justice, is apt to be conflicting. The
testimony in the case of Captain Dreyfus cannot yet have been forgotten.
In Plates BA, AB the reader will find a genuine letter of Mary to
Elizabeth, and a copy in which some of the lines are not her own, but have
been imitated for the purpose of showing what can be done in that way.
‘The puzzle is’ to discover which example is entirely by the Queen, and
which is partly in imitation of her hand. In Plate F is an imitation of
Mary’s hand, as it might have appeared in writing Letter VIII (Henderson’s
Letter III.). An imitator as clever as Mr. F. Compton Price (who has
kindly supplied these illustrations) would easily have deceived the crowd
of Lords who were present at the comparison of the Casket Letters with
genuine epistles of Mary to Elizabeth.
Scotland, in that age, was rich in ‘fause notaries’ who made a profession
of falsification. In the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, just before Mary’s
fall, we find a surgeon rewarded for healing two false notaries, whose
right hands had been chopped off at the wrists. (Also for raising up a
dead woman who had been buried for two days.) But these professionals
were probably versed only in native forms of handwriting, whereas that of
Mary, as of Bothwell, was the new ‘Roman’ hand. An example of Mary
Beaton’s Roman hand is given in Plate C. Probably she had the same
writing-master as her Queen, in France, but her hand is much neater and
smaller than that of Mary, wearied with her vast correspondence. Probably
Mary Beaton, if she chose, could imitate the Queen’s hand, especially as
that hand was, before the Queen had written so much. The ‘Maries’ of Mary
Stuart, Mary Beaton, and Mary Flemyng are all very similar. But to a
layman, Mary Beaton’s hand seems rather akin to that of the copyist of the
Sonnets in the Cambridge MSS. (Plate A). The aunts of Mary Beaton, Lady
Reres and the Lady of Branxholme, were, after April 1567, on the worst
terms with the Queen, railing at her both in talk and in letters. But that
Mary Beaton forged the Casket Letters I utterly disbelieve.
Kirkcaldy, whose signature is given, could not have adapted fingers
hardened by the sword-hilt to a lady’s Roman hand. Maitland of Lethington,
whose signature follows Kirkcaldy’s, would have found the task less
impossible, and, if there is any truth in Camden’s anecdote, may perhaps
have been able to imitate the Queen’s writing. But if any forged letters
or portions of letters were exhibited, some unheard-of underling is most
likely to have been the actual culprit.
[Illustration: PLATE C
HANDS OF MARY BEATON, KIRKCALDY, LETHINGTON, AND MARY FLEMING]
XVIII
_LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS_
The best official description of the famous Casket is in the Minutes of
the Session of Commissioners at Westminster, on December 7, 1568. It was
‘a small gilt coffer, not fully one foot long, being garnished in many
places with the Roman (_Italic_) letter F set under a king’s crown.’ This
minute is in the hand of Cecil’s clerk, and is corrected by Cecil.[397]
The Casket was obviously long in shape, not square, like a coffer
decorated with Mary’s arms, as Dowager of France, with thistles and other
badges, the property of M. Victor Luzarche, and described by him in ‘Un
Coffret de Bijoux de Marie Stuart’ (Tours, 1868). Possibly the Casket was
the _petite boyte d’argent_, which Mary intended to bequeath to Margaret
Carwood, if she herself died in childbed in 1566.[398]
The Casket with the Letters was in Morton’s hands till shortly before his
death in 1581. On November 8, 1582, Bowes, Elizabeth’s envoy in Scotland,
wrote to Walsingham about the Casket. He had learned from a bastard of
Morton’s, the Prior (lay) of Pluscarden, that the box was now in the
possession of Gowrie, son of the Ruthven of Riccio’s murder, and himself
engaged in that deed. Gowrie was at this time master of James’s person.
Bowes thought that Gowrie would not easily give up the Casket to
Elizabeth, who desired it.[399]
After trying to get agents to steal the Casket, Bowes sought to induce
Gowrie to give it up, with promises of ‘princely thanks and gratuity.’
Gowrie was not willing to admit the fact of possession, but Bowes proved
that the coffer had reached him through Sandy Jordan, a servant of the
late Earl of Morton. Gowrie then said that, without the leave of James,
and of the nobles, who had dragged down Mary, he could not part with the
treasure, as the Letters warranted their action--undertaken before they
knew that such Letters existed! However, Gowrie promised to look for the
Casket, and consider of the matter. On November 24, Bowes again wrote.
Mary was giving out that the Letters ‘were counterfeited by her rebels,’
and was trying to procure them, or have them destroyed. To keep them would
involve danger to Gowrie. Bowes would obtain the consent of the other
lords interested, ‘a matter more easy to promise than to perform;’ finally
Gowrie ought to give them to Elizabeth ‘for the _secrecy_ and benefit of
the cause.’ Mary’s defenders may urge that this ‘secrecy’ is suspicious.
Gowrie would think of it, but he must consult James, which, Bowes said,
‘should adventure great danger to the cause.’ On December 2, Bowes
wrote about another interview with Gowrie, who said that the Duke of
Lennox (Stewart d’Aubigny, the banished and now dead favourite of James)
had sought to get the Letters, and that James knew where they were, and
nothing could be done without James’s consent.[400]
[Illustration: PLATE D
SIDE OF CASKET WITH ARMS OF HAMILTON
RAISED WORK ON ROOF OF CASKET]
Gowrie was executed for treason in May, 1584, and of the Casket no more is
heard. Goodall, in 1754, supposed that the Earl of Angus got it as
Morton’s ‘heir by tail,’ whereas we know that Gowrie succeeded Morton as
custodian. In an anonymous writer of about 1660, Goodall found that ‘the
box and letters were at that time to be seen with the Marquis of Douglas;
and it is thought by some they are still in that family, though others say
they have since been seen at Hamilton.’[401] In 1810, Malcolm Laing, the
historian, corresponded on the subject with Mr. Alexander Young,
apparently the factor, or chamberlain, of the Duke of Hamilton. He could
hear nothing of the Letters, but appears to have been told about a silver
casket at Hamilton, rather less than a foot in length. A reproduction of
that casket, by the kindness of the Duke of Hamilton, is given in this
book. Laing maintained that, without the F’s, crowned as mentioned in
Cecil’s minute, the casket could not be Mary’s Casket. In any case it is a
beautiful work of art, of Mary’s age, and has been well described by Lady
Baillie-Hamilton in ‘A Historical Relic,’ _Macmillan’s Magazine_.[402]
Lady Baillie-Hamilton, when staying at Hamilton Palace, asked to be shown
a ring which Mary bequeathed to Lord John Hamilton, created Marquis in
1599. The ring was produced from a silver box, which also contained
papers. One of these, written probably about 1700-1715, gave the history
of the box itself. It was ‘bought from a Papist’ by the Marchioness of
Douglas, daughter of George (first Marquis of Huntly). In 1632 this lady
became the second wife of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Her eldest
son married Lady Anne Hamilton, heiress of James, first Duke of Hamilton,
who later became Duchess of Hamilton in her own right, her husband (Lord
William Douglas, later Earl of Selkirk) bearing the ducal title. The
Marchioness of Douglas bought the box from a papist at an unknown date
after 1632, the box being sold as the Casket. The Marchioness ‘put her own
arms thereon,’ the box having previously borne ‘the Queen’s arms.’ The
Marchioness bequeathed her plate to her son, Lord John Douglas, who sold
it to a goldsmith. The daughter-in-law of the Marchioness, namely the
Duchess of Hamilton, purchased the box from the goldsmith, as she had
learned from the Marchioness that it was the historical Casket, and, by
her husband’s desire, she effaced the arms of the Marchioness, and put on
her own, as may be seen in Plate D. Only one key was obtained by the
Duchess, and is shown lying beside the Casket. The lock has been, at
some time, ‘stricken up,’ as Morton says that the lock of the Casket was
(see Plate E). The box is ‘not fully a foot long’; it measures eight
inches in length. The scroll-work (Plate E) and bands have been gilded,
but the whole piece has not been ‘overgilt,’ as in Morton’s description.
That by the English Commissioners at York, ‘a little coffer of silver and
gilt,’ better describes the relic. It is pronounced to be ‘French work of
the early part of the sixteenth century,’ but Lady Baillie-Hamilton
observes that the scroll-work closely resembles the tooling on a book of
Catherine de’ Medici, now in the British Museum.
[Illustration: PLATE E
CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY
FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN ‘STRICKEN UP’]
Is the Hamilton Casket the historical Casket? It has the advantage of a
fairly long pedigree in that character, as we have seen. But where are
‘the many Roman letters F set under a king’s crown,’ of Cecil’s
description, which is almost literally copied in the memorandum added to
the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection’? Buchanan did not insert
this memorandum, it is merely borrowed from Cecil’s description, a fact of
which Lady Baillie-Hamilton was not aware. There is no room on the panel
now occupied by the Duchess of Hamilton’s arms for _many_ crowned F’s.
Only a cypher of two F’s interlaced and crowned could have found space on
that panel. Conceivably F’s were attached in some way, and later removed,
but there is no trace of them. We can hardly suppose that, as in the case
of the coffer with a crimson cover, which was sent to Mary at Loch Leven,
the crowned F’s were worked in gold on the covering velvet. Dr. Sepp, in
1884, published, in a small pamphlet, the document rediscovered by Lady
Baillie-Hamilton. He was informed that there were small crowned F’s
stamped on the bottom of the box, but these Lady Baillie-Hamilton accounts
for as ‘the mark of a French silversmith, consisting of a distinctive sign
surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and a crown.’ Thus for lack of any certainty
about the ‘many or sundry’ crowned F’s, this beautiful piece of work
shares in the doubt and mystery which seem inseparable from Mary Stuart.
Very possibly the Hamilton Casket may be the other of the ‘twa silver
cofferis’ seen by Hepburn of Bowton at Dunbar (see p. xvi). Tradition,
knowing that the Casket had been Mary’s, would easily confuse it with the
other more famous coffer, full of evils as the Casket of Pandora.
APPENDIX A
THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL
Monsieur Jusserand, the well-known writer on English and Scottish
literature, has kindly allowed me to print the following letter on the
burial-place of Bothwell, and on the body which is traditionally regarded
as his corpse.
Légation de France, à Copenhague, December 26, 1900.
MY DEAR LANG,--Our poor Queen’s last scoundrel lies low in a darksome
place.
The Faarvejle church is quite isolated on a little eminence formerly
washed by the water of a fiord now dried up (the work of an agricultural
company which expected great benefits and lost much money instead). There
is no village around; the houses are scattered rather thinly throughout
the country--a very frequent case in Denmark.
[Illustration: FAARVEJLE CHURCH (ACTUAL STATE).
(1) A side chapel used for burials, now attached to the Zytphen-Adeler
family. ‘Bothwell’ was buried in it, and removed to the vault under the
chancel when the Z.-A. family had some time adopted it.
(2) The entrance porch, with a fine oak door ornamented with iron work
representing the dragons of ‘Drags’-holm.]
This church is, however, the one from which the castle of Dragsholm has
ever, ecclesiastically, depended. Castle and church are at some distance:
about twenty miles drive.
The castle was formerly a royal one; it was so in Bothwellian times.[403]
Little remains of the old building; it was burnt during the Swedish wars
in the seventeenth century; and rebuilt by the Zytphen-Adeler family (of
Dutch origin); it still belongs to them.
Only the walls have been preserved; they are of red brick; but the actual
owner has caused them to be whitewashed throughout. The characteristic
great tower it used to have in Hepburnian times has been destroyed. Almost
no trace of any style is left, and the house, big as it is, is plain
enough. The park around it is fine, with plenty of deer, hares, &c. The
sea is near at hand and you see it from the walls.
As for the mummy, it lies in an oak coffin now preserved in a vault under
the floor of the nave in the Faarvejle church. This vault is under the
passage in the middle, near the step leading to the choir. The wooden
planks on the floor are removed, a ladder is provided, and you find
yourself in a subterranean chamber, with coffins piled on the top of one
another, right and left. ‘Bothwell’s’ stands apart on the left; it is an
oak chest; as it was in a bad state, the present Baron Zytphen-Adeler has
caused it to be placed in another one, with a sheet of glass allowing the
head to be seen. But he kindly allowed me to see the body complete. The
man must have been rather tall, not very; the hands and feet have a very
fine and aristocratic appearance; the mummifying process may have
something to do with this appearance; yet I think some of it came from
nature. The head is absolutely hairless; the face is close shaven; the
skull has no hair. I noticed, however, on the top of it faint traces of
reddish-brown hair, but extremely close cropped. Horace Marryat, who saw
it in 1859, says (in the same innocent fashion as if he had been
performing a pious rite) that he ‘severed a lock of his red and silver
hair.’ If he really did so, he must have severed all that was left.
(‘Residence in Jutland,’ 1860.)