[285] Hosack, i. 543.
[286] There are two sets of extracts (Goodall, ii. 148-153): one of them is in the Sadleyr Papers, edited by Sir Walter Scott, and in Haynes, p. 480. This is headed ‘A brief Note of the chief and principal points of the Queen of Scots Letters written to Bothwell for her consent and procurement of the murder of her husband, as far forth as we could by the reading gather.’ The other set is in Scots, ‘Notes drawin furth of the Quenis letters sent to the Erle Bothwell.’ If this were, as Miss Strickland supposed, an abstract made and shown in June-July, it would prove, of course, that Letter II. was then in its present shape, and would destroy my hypothesis. But Cecil endorses it. ‘sent October 29.’ I think it needless to discuss the notion that Lethington and his companions showed only the Scots texts, and vowed that they were in Mary’s handwriting! They could not conceivably go counter, first, to Moray’s statement (June 22, 1568) that the Scots versions were only translations. Nor could they, later, produce the Letters in French, and pretend that both they and the Scots texts were in Mary’s hand. Doubtless they showed the French (though we are not told that they did), but the English Commissioners, odd as it seems, preferred to send to Elizabeth extracts from the Scots.
[287] Bain, ii. 526-528. See also in Hosack, ii. 496-501, with the obliterated lines restored.
[288] Bain, ii. 529-530.
[289] Bain, ii. 533, 534.
[290] Goodall, ii. 162-170. The dates here are difficult. Lesley certainly rode to Bolton, as Knollys says, on October 13, a Wednesday. (See the English Commissioners to Elizabeth. Goodall, ii. 173. York, October 17.) By October 17, Lesley was again at York (Goodall, ii. 174). Therefore I take it that Lesley’s letter to Mary (Bain, ii. 533, 534) is of October 18, or later, and that the ‘Saturday’ when Norfolk and Lethington rode together, and when Lethington probably shook Norfolk’s belief in the authenticity of the Casket Letters, is Saturday, October 16.
[291] Bain, ii. 533, 534.
[292] Ibid. ii. 693.
[293] Bain, ii. 541.
[294] Ibid. ii. 533.