In the Lennox Papers the writer, Lennox, breaks off in his account of Darnley’s murder to say, ‘And before we proceed any further, I cannot omit to declare and call to remembrance her Letter written to Bothwell from Glasgow before her departure thence, together with such cruel and strange words “unto” him, which he her husband should have better considered and marked, but that “the” hope “he” had to win her “love” now did blind him; together that it lieth not in the power of man to prevent that which the suffering will of God determineth. The contents of her letter to the said Bothwell was to let him understand that, although the flattering and sweet words of him with whom she was then presently, the King her husband, has almost overcome her, yet the remembering the great affection which she bore unto him [Bothwell] there should no such sweet baits dissuade her, or cool her said affection from him, but would continue therein, yea though she should thereby abandon her God, put in adventure the loss of her dowry in France, “hazard” such titles as she had to the crown of England, as heir apparent thereof, and also the crown of the realm; wishing him then present in her arms; therefore bid him go forward with all things, according to their enterprize, and that the place and everything might be finished as they had devised, against her coming to Edinburgh, which should be shortly. And for the time of execution thereof she thought it best to be the time of Bastian’s marriage, which indeed was the night of the King her husband’s murder. She wrote also in her letter that the said Bothwell should “in no wise fail” in the meantime to dispatch his wife, and to give her the drink as they had devised before.’[239]
Except as regards the draught to be given to Darnley, in a house by the way, and Mary’s promise ‘to go herself and fetch him,’ this report of the letter closely tallies, not with Casket Letter II., but with what the man who had read it told Moray, and with what Moray told de Silva. Did there exist, then, such a compromising letter accepted by Moray’s informant, the ‘man who read the letter,’ and recorded by Lennox in a document containing copy of a letter from Darnley to himself?
This appears a natural inference, but it is suggested to me that the brief reports by Moray and Lennox are ‘after all not so very different’ from Letter II. ‘If we postulate a Scots translation’ (used by Moray and Lennox) ‘with the allusions explained by a hostile hand in the margin, then those who professed to give a summary of its “more than three double pages” in half a dozen lines’ (there are thirty-seven lines of Lennox’s version in my hand, and Mary wrote large) ‘would easily take the striking points, not from the Letter, though it was before their eyes, but from the explanations; which were, of course, much more impressive than that extraordinary congeries of inconsequences,’ our Letter II.
To this we reply that, in Moray’s and Lennox’s versions, we have expansions and additions to the materials of Letter II. All the tale about poisoning Darnley in a house on the way is not a hostile ‘explanation,’ but an addition. All the matter about poisoning or divorcing Lady Bothwell is not an explanation, but an addition. Marginal notes are brief summaries, but if Moray and Lennox quoted marginal notes, these were so expansive that they may have been longer than the Letter itself.
Take the case of what Mary, as described in the Letter, is to forfeit for Bothwell’s sake. Lennox is in his catalogue of these goods more copious than Moray: and Letter II., in place of these catalogues, merely says ‘honour, conscience, hazard, nor greatness.’ Could a marginal annotator expand this into the talk about God, her French dowry, her various titles and pretensions? Marginal notes always abbreviate: Moray and Lennox expand; and they clearly, to my mind, cite a common text. Lennox has in his autograph corrected this passage and others.
Moray’s and Lennox’s statements about the poisoning, about the divorce or poisoning for Lady Bothwell, about Bastian (whose marriage Letter II. mentions as a proof of Darnley’s knowledge of Mary’s affairs), about the ‘finishing and preparing of the place’ (Kirk o’ Field), about ‘the house on the way,’—can all these be taken from marginal glosses, containing mere gossip certainly erroneous? If so, never did men display greater stupidity than Lennox and Moray. Where it was important to quote a letter, both (according to the theory which has been suggested) neglect the Letter and cite, not marginal abbreviations, but marginal scholia containing mere tattle. If Moray truly said that he had only ‘heard of the Letter from a “man who had read it,”’ is it conceivable that the man merely cited the marginal glosses to Moray, while Lennox also selected almost nothing but the same glosses? But, of all impossibilities, the greatest is that the author of the glosses expanded ‘honour, conscience, hazard, and greatness’ (as in Letter II.) into the catalogue beginning with God, in which Moray and Lennox abound. ‘Honour, conscience, hazard, and greatness,’ explain themselves. They need no such long elaborate explanation as the supposed scholiast adds on the margin. Where we do find such contemporary marginal notes, as on the Lennox manuscript copy of the Casket Sonnets, they are brief and simply explain allusions. Thus Sonnet IV. has, in the Lennox MSS.,
‘un fascheux sot qu’elle aymoit cherement:’
elle being Lady Bothwell.
The marginal note is ‘This is written of the Lord of Boyn, who was alleged to be the first lover of the Earl of Bothwell’s wife.’[240] We must remember that Lennox was preparing a formal indictment, when he reported the same Letter as Moray talked of to de Silva; and that, when the Casket Letters were produced, his discrepancies from Letter II. might perhaps be noticed even in an uncritical age. He would not, therefore, quote the scholia and neglect the Letter.
The passage about Lady Bothwell’s poison or divorce is perhaps mirrored in, or perhaps originated, Lesley’s legend that she was offered a writing of divorce to sign, with a bowl of poison to drink if she refused. In fact, she received a valuable consideration in land, which she held for some forty years, as Countess of Sutherland.[241] Suppose that the annotator recorded this gossip about the poisoning of Lady Bothwell on the margin. Could a man like Moray be so foolish as to recite it viva voce as part of the text of a letter?