The Mystery of Mary Stuart

by Andrew Lang

To this I reply that we know nothing of communication between Lennox and Moray in July, 1567, but we do know when Lennox began to collect evidence for the ‘discourse,’ in which this mysterious letter is cited. In June, 1568, Mary complained to Elizabeth that Lady Lennox was hounding Lennox on to prosecute her. Mary had somehow got hold of letters of Wood and of Lady Lennox.[246] We also infer that, when Lennox first took up his task, he may have already seen Scots translations of the Casket Letters as they then existed. We know too that he had now an adviser who should not have allowed him to make a damaging error in his indictment, such as quoting a non-existent letter. This adviser was John Wood. After Mary’s flight into England (May 16, 1568) Moray had sent, on May 21, his agent, John Wood (‘Jhone a Forret’?), to London, where he was dealing with Cecil on June 5, 1568.[247] Now Wood carried with him Scots translations of the Casket Letters, as they then existed. This is certain, for, on June 22, Moray sent to the English Council the information that Wood held these translations, and Moray made the request that the ‘judges’ in the case might see the Scots versions, and say whether, if the French originals corresponded, they would be reckoned adequate proof of Mary’s guilt.[248]

The judges, that is the Commissioners who sat at York in October, apparently did not, in June, see Wood’s copies: their amazement on seeing them later, at York, is evidence to that. But Lennox, perhaps, did see the Scots versions in Wood’s hands. On June 11, from Chiswick, as has been said, Lennox wrote three letters to Scotland; one to Moray, one to his retainers, the Lairds of Houstoun and Minto, men of his own clan; and one to other retainers, Thomas Crawford, Robert Cunningham, and Stewart of Periven. To Moray he said that of evidence against Mary ‘there is sufficiency in her own hand-writ, by the faith of her letters, to condemn her.’ But he also wanted to collect extraneous evidence, in Scotland.

Here Lennox writes as one who has seen, or been told the contents of, the Casket Letters on which he remarks. And well might he have seen them, for his three despatches of June 11 are ‘all written on the same sheets, and in the same hand,’ as two letters written and sent, on the following day, by John Wood, from Greenwich, to Moray and Lethington. Thus Wood, or his secretary, wrote out all five epistles.[249] Consequently Wood, who had translations of the Casket Letters, was then with Lennox, and was likely to be now and then with him, till the Conference at York in October. On October 3, just before the Conference at York, Lady Lennox tells Cecil that she means to speak to Mr. John Wood, if he is at Court, for he knows who the murderers are.[250] And Wood carried to Lennox, at York, Lady Lennox’s despatches.[251] Being allied with Wood, as the Chiswick and Greenwich letters of June 11, 12, prove, and writing to Wood’s master, Moray, about Mary’s Casket Letters, it is hardly probable that Lennox had not been shown by Wood the Scots versions of the Casket Letters, then in Wood’s custody. And when, about this date or later, Lennox composed the long indictment against Mary, and quoted the letter already cited by Moray, it is hardly credible that he described the long poisonous document from mere hearsay, caught from Moray in the previous year. It is at least as likely, if not much more so, that his description of the long letter was derived from a translation of the letter itself, as it then existed in the hands of Wood. Is it probable that Wood (who was known to have in his custody the Letters to which Lennox refers, in his epistle to Moray of June 11) could withhold them from the father of the murdered Darnley, a noble who had been selected by the Lords as a co-Regent with Moray, and who was, like himself, a correspondent of Moray and an eager prosecutor of the Queen? If then Wood did in June, 1568, show to Lennox the Casket Letters as they then existed, when Lennox presently described the long murderous letter, he described what he had seen, namely a pièce de conviction which was finally suppressed. And that it was later than his meeting with Wood, on June 11, 1568, that Lennox prepared his elaborate discourse, is obvious, for what reason had he to compose an indictment before, in June or later, it became clear that Mary’s case would be tried in England?

Not till June 8 did Elizabeth send to Moray, bidding him ‘impart to her plainly all that which shall be meet to inform her of the truth for their defence in such weighty crimes’ as their rebellion against Mary.[252] Mary, Elizabeth declared, ‘is content to commit the ordering of our case to her,’ and Moray has consented, through Wood, ‘to declare to us your whole doings.’ Elizabeth therefore asks for Moray’s evidence against Mary. From that date, June 8, the negotiations for some kind of trial of Mary went on till October, 1568. In that period, Lennox must have written the discourse in which he cites the false letter, and in that period he had the aid of Wood, in whose hands the Scots translations were.

The inference that Lennox borrowed his description of a long poisonous epistle from a forged letter, a very long letter, then in Wood’s custody with the rest, and occupying the place later taken by Letter II., is natural, and not illogical, but rather is in congruence with the relations between Wood and Lennox. The letter described had points in common with Letter II. (as when Mary wishes Bothwell in her arms) and with the Casket Sonnets. It certainly was not a genuine document, and certainly raises a strong presumption that fraud was being attempted by Mary’s enemies. But we need not, for that reason, infer that Letter II. is a forgery. It may be genuine, and may have been in the hands of Mary’s enemies. Yet they may have tried to improve upon it and make it more explicit, putting forward to that end the epistle quoted by Lennox and Moray. If so they later fell back on Letter II., possibly garbled it, and suppressed their first version.

Lennox, as we shall see, did not rest on his earlier form of the indictment, with its description of Mary’s letter about poisoning Darnley and Lady Bothwell, which he originally drew up, say in July-August, 1568. In his letters from Chiswick he asked for all sorts of evidence from Scotland. He got it, and, then, dropping his first indictment (which contained only parts of such matter), he composed a second. That second document was perhaps still unfinished, or imperfect, just before the meeting of Commissioners at York (October 6, 1568).

That the second indictment, about October 1, 1568, was still in the making, I at first inferred from the following passage which occurs in a set of pieces of evidence collected for Lennox, but without date. ‘Ferder your h. sall have advertisement of, as I can find, but it is gude that this mater’ (Lennox’s construction of a new indictment) ‘be not endit quile’ (until) ‘your h. may haif copie of the letter, quhilk I sall haif at York, so sone as I may haif a traist berar’ (a trusty bearer to carry the copy to Lennox). So I read the letter, but Father Pollen, no doubt correctly, in place of ‘York’ reads ‘your h.;’ that is, ‘Your Honour,’ a common phrase. The date yielded by ‘York’ therefore vanishes. We can, therefore, only infer that this correspondent, writing not to Lennox, it appears, but to some one, Wood perhaps, engaged in getting up the case, while sending him information for his indictment, advises that it be not finished till receipt of a copy of a certain letter, which is to be sent by a trusty bearer. It may be our Letter II. We can have no certainty. In his new indictment, substituted for his former discourse, Letter II. is the only one to which Lennox makes distinct allusion.

He now omits the useful citations of the mysterious epistle which he had previously used; and, instead, quotes Letter II. The old passages cited were more than good enough for Lennox’s purpose, but they are no longer employed by him. There can be no doubt as to which of his discourses is the earlier and which the later. That containing the report of Mary’s letter which agrees with Moray’s report to de Silva, lacks the numerous details about Hiegait, Crawford, Mary’s taunts to Darnley, their quarrel at Stirling, and so forth, and we know that, on June 11, 1568, Lennox had sent to Scotland asking for all these particulars. They all duly appear in the second discourse which contains reference to Letter II. They are all absent from the discourse which contains the letter about the scheme for poisoning Darnley and Lady Bothwell. Therefore that indictment is the earlier: written on evidence of Darnley’s servants, and from ‘the sayings and reports’ of Mary’s servants.

For what reason should Lennox drop the citations from the poisonous letter, which he quoted in his earlier discourse, if such a letter was to be produced by the Lords? The words were of high value to his argument. But drop them he did in his later discourse, and, in place of them, quoted much less telling lines from Letter II.

All this is explained, if Letter II. was a revised and less explicit edition of the letter first reported on by Lennox; or if the letter first quoted was an improved and more vigorous version of a genuine Letter II. Mr. Hosack, when he had only Moray’s account of the mysterious letter before him, considered it fatal to the authenticity of Letter II., which he thought a cleverly watered-down version of the mysterious letter, and, like it, a forgery. Mr. Hosack’s theory is reinforced by Lennox’s longer account of the mysterious epistle. But he overlooked the possibility that Letter II. may not be a diluted copy of the forgery, but a genuine original on which the forgery was based. It may be asked, if the Letter touched on by Lennox and Moray was a forged letter, why was it dropped, and why was another substituted before the meeting of Commissioners at York? As we have only brief condensed reports of the Letter which never was produced, our answer must be incomplete. But Moray’s description of the document speaks of ‘the house where the explosion was arranged,’ before Mary left Edinburgh for Glasgow. Now, according to one confession, taken after the finding of the Casket, namely on December 8, 1567, the explosion was not dreamed of ‘till within two days before the murder.’[253] Therefore Mary could not, on reflection, be made to write that the gunpowder plot was arranged before January 21, 1567, for that contradicted the confession, and the confession was put in as evidence.