The proceedings of Mary’s accusers, therefore, may have taken the following line. First, having certainly got hold of a silver casket of Mary’s, about June 21, 1567, they either added a forgery, or, perhaps, interpolated, as her Lords said, ‘the most principal and substantious’ clauses. They probably gave copies to du Croc: and they told Throckmorton that they had not only letters, but witnesses of Mary’s guilt. These witnesses doubtless saw Mary at the murder ‘in male apparel,’ as Lennox says some declared that she was. But these witnesses were never produced. They sent, probably, by ‘Jhone a Forret,’ copies to Moray, one of which, the mysterious letter, in July, 1567, he partly described to de Silva. In June, 1568, they sent translated copies into England with Wood. These were not seen by Sussex, Norfolk, and Sadleyr (the men who, later, sat as Commissioners at York), but Wood, perhaps, showed them, or parts of them, to Lennox, who cited portions of the mysterious Letter in his first indictment. But, when Moray, Morton, Lethington, and the other Commissioners of the Lords were bound for the Inquiry at York, they looked over their hand of cards, re-examined their evidence. They found that the ‘long letter’ cited by Moray and Lennox contradicted the confession of Bowton, and was altogether too large and mythical. They therefore manufactured a subtler new edition, or fell back upon a genuine Letter II. If so, they would warn Lennox, or some one with Lennox, in framing his new indictment, to wait for their final choice as to this letter. He did wait, received a copy of it, dropped the first edition of the letter, and interwove the second edition, which may be partly genuine, with his ‘discourse.’
This is, at least, a coherent hypothesis. There is, however, another possible hypothesis: admirers of the Regent Moray may declare. Though capable of using his sister’s accomplices to accuse his sister, ‘the noble and stainless Moray’ was not capable of employing a forged document. On returning to Scotland he found that, in addition to the falsified Letter, there existed the genuine Letter II., really by Mary. Like a conscientious man, he insisted that the falsified Letter should be suppressed, and Letter II. produced.
This amiable theory may be correct. It is ruined, however, if we are right in guessing that, when Moray sent Wood into England with Scots versions of the Letters (May, 1568), he may have included among these a copy of the falsified Letter, which was therefore cited by Lennox.
There is another point of suspicion, suggested by the Lennox Papers. In Glasgow Letter II., Mary, writing late at night, is made to say, ‘I cannot sleep as thay do, and as I wald desyre, that is in zour armes, my deir lufe.’ In the Lennox account of the letter quoted by Moray to de Silva, she ‘wishes him then present in her arms.’ In the Lennox Paper she speaks of Darnley’s ‘sweet baits,’ ‘flattering and sweet words,’ which have ‘almost overcome her.’ In the English text of Letter II., Darnley ‘used so many kinds of flatteries so coldly and wisely as you would marvel at.’ His speeches ‘would make me but to have pity on him.’ Finally, in the Lennox version of the unproduced Letter, Mary represents herself as ready to ‘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 to the crown of the realm.’ Nothing of this detailed kind occurs, we have seen, in the Letters, as produced. Similar sentiments are found, however, in the first and second Casket Sonnets. ‘Is he not in possession of my body, of my heart which recoils neither from pain, nor dishonour, nor uncertainty of life, nor offence of kindred, nor worse woe? For him I esteem all my friends less than nothing.... I have hazarded for him name and conscience; for him I desire to renounce the world ... in his hands and in his power I place my son’ (which she did not do), ‘my honour, my life, my realm, my subjects, my own subject soul.’
It is certainly open, then, to a defender of Mary to argue that the Letters and Sonnets, as produced and published, show traces of the ideas and expressions employed in the letter described by Moray, and by Lennox. Now that letter, certainly, was never written by Mary. It had to be dropped, for it was inconsistent with a statement as to the murder put forward by the prosecution; Bowton’s examination.
In short, the letter cited by Moray, and by Lennox, the long letter from Glasgow, looks like a sketch, later modified, for Letter II., or a forgery based on Letter II., and suggests that forgeries were, at some period, being attempted. As the Glasgow Letter (II.), actually produced, also contains (see ‘The Internal Evidence’) the highly suspicious passage tallying verbally with Crawford’s deposition, there is no exaggeration in saying that the document would now carry little weight with a jury. Against all this we must not omit to set the failure to discredit the Letters, when published later, by producing the contemporary copies reported by de Silva to be in the hands of La Forest, or du Croc, as early as July, 1567. But the French Government (if ever it had the copies) was not, as we have said, when Buchanan’s ‘Detection’ was thrust on the courtiers, either certain to compare La Forest’s copies and the published Letters critically, or to raise a question over discrepancies, if they existed. In any case neither Charles IX., nor La Mothe Fénelon, in 1571, wrote a word to suggest that they thought the Casket Papers an imposture.
XI
THE LETTERS AT THE CONFERENCE OF YORK