On December 4, Mary’s men, without consulting her, made a fatal error. Before seeing Elizabeth they met Leicester and Cecil, in a room apart, and asked that Elizabeth should be informed of their readiness, even now, to make a compromise, with surety to Moray and his party. Now Mary had declared to Knollys that, if once Moray accused her publicly, they were ‘past all reconciliation.’ That was the only defensible position, yet her Commissioners, perhaps with her approval, receded from it. Elizabeth seized the opportunity. It was better, she said, and rightly, for her sister’s honour, that Mary’s accusers should be charged with their audacious defaming of their Queen, and punished for the same, unless they could show ‘apparent just causes of such an attempt.’ In fact, Elizabeth must see the Letters, or cause them to be seen by her nobles. She could not admit Mary in person while, as at present, there seemed so little to justify the need of her appearance—for the Letters had not yet been shown. When they were shown, it would probably turn out, she said, that Mary need not appear at all.
The unhappy Scottish Commissioners tried to repair a blunder, which clearly arose from their undeniable want of confidence in their cause. The proposal for a compromise, they said, was entirely their own. We remember that, by Norfolk’s desire, Mary had already refused a compromise to which she had once consented. She would probably, in the now existing circumstances, have adhered to her resolution.[305]
On December 6, Moray and his party were at Westminster to produce their proofs. But Lesley put in a protest that he must, in that case, withdraw. The English Commissioners declared that, in this protest, Elizabeth’s words of December 4 were misrepresented: her words (as to seeing Moray’s proofs) having, in fact, been utterly ambiguous. She had first averred that Moray must be punished if he should be unable to show some apparent just causes ‘of such an attempt,’ and then, at a later stage of the conversation, had ‘answered that she meant not to require any proofs.’ So runs the report, annotated and endorsed by Cecil.[306] But now the Council were sitting to receive the proofs which Elizabeth had first declared that she would, and then that she would not ask for, while, after vowing that she would not ask for them, she had said that she ‘would receive them for her own satisfaction’!
The words of the protest by Mary’s Commissioners described all this, and the production of proofs in Mary’s absence, as ‘a preposterous order.’[307] No more preposterous proceedings were ever heard of in history. The English Commissioners, seizing on the words ‘a preposterous order,’ declined to receive the protest till it should be amended, and at once called on Moray to produce his proofs. Moray then put in the ‘Book of Articles,’ ‘containing certain conjectures,’ a long arraignment of Mary. In the Lennox Papers is a shorter collection of ‘Probable and Infallyable Conjectures,’ an early form of Buchanan’s ‘Detection.’ The ‘Book of Articles’ occupies twenty-six closely printed pages, in Hosack, who first published it, and is written in Scots.[308] The band for Bothwell’s marriage is said to have been made at Holyrood, and Mary’s signature is declared to have been appended later. This mysterious band seems to have reached Cecil unofficially, and is marked ‘To this the Queen gave consent the night before the marriage,’ May 14 (cf. p. 254). Nothing is noted as to Darnley’s conduct in seeking to flee the realm in September, 1566, and this account is given of the well-known scene in which Mary, the Council, and du Croc attempted to extract from him his grievances. ‘He was rejected and rebuked opinlie in presence of diverse Lords then of her previe counsale, quhill he was constrenit to return to Streviling.’ Though less inaccurate than the ‘Detection,’ the ‘Book of Articles’ is a violent ex parte harangue.
Moray also put in the Act of Parliament of December, 1567. The English heard the ‘Book of Articles’ and the Act read aloud, on the night of December 6. On the 7th,[309] Moray hoped that they were satisfied. They declined to express an opinion. Moray retired with his company, and returned bearing, at last, The Casket. Morton, on oath, declared that his account of the finding of the Casket was true, and that the contents had been kept unaltered. Then a contract of marriage, said to be in Mary’s hand, and signed, but without date, was produced. The contract speaks of Darnley’s death as a past event, but they ‘did suppose’ that the deed was made before the murder. They may have based this suspicion on Casket Letter III. (or VIII.) which, as we shall show, fits into no known part of Mary’s relations with Bothwell. Another contract, said to be in Huntly’s hand, and dated April 5, was next exhibited. Papers as to Bothwell’s Trial were shown, and those for his divorce. The Glasgow Letter I. (which in sequence of time ought to be II.) was displayed in French, and then Letter II.[310] Neither letter is stated to have been copied in French from the French original, and we have no copies of the original French, which, however, certainly existed. Next day (December 8) Moray produced seven other French writings ‘in the lyk Romain hand,’ which seven writings, ‘being copied, weare red in Frenche, and a due collation made thereof as neare as could be by reading and inspection, and made to accord with the originals, which the said Erle of Murray required to be redelivered, and did thereupon deliver the copies being collationd, the tenours of which vii wrytinges hereafter follow in ordre, the first being in manner of a sonnett, “O Dieux ayez de moy etc.”’ Apparently all the sonnets here count as one piece, the other six papers being the Casket Letters III.-VIII.
No French contemporary copies of Letters I. II. have been discovered, as in the cases of III. IV. V. VI. It is notable that while the sonnets, and Letters III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. are said to have been copied from the French, this is not said of Letters I. and II. The English versions of I. and II. have been collated with the French, whether in copies or the originals. Perhaps no French copies of these have been found, because no copies were ever made: the absence of the copies in French is deplorable.
The next things were the depositions (not the dying confessions, which implicated some of the Lords) of Tala, Bowton, Powrie, and Dalgleish, and other legal documents. It does not appear that Mary’s warrant for the signing of the Ainslie band, though exhibited at York, was again produced.[311] On the 9th the Commissioners read the Casket Papers ‘duly translated into English.’ They had been translated throughout the night, probably, and very ill translated they were, to judge by the extant copies.[312] Several of the copies are endorsed in Scots. Lesley now put in a revised and amended copy of his Protest of December 6. Morton put in a written copy of his Declaration as to the finding of the Casket, and swore to its truth.[313]
Morton’s tale is that, as he was dining with Lethington in Edinburgh, on June 19, 1567, four days after Mary’s surrender at Carberry, ‘a certain man’ secretly informed him that Hepburn, Parson of Auldhamstokes, John Cockburn, brother of Mary’s adherent, Cockburn of Skirling, and George Dalgleish, a valet of Bothwell’s (and witness, at his divorce, to his adultery), had entered the Castle, then held by Sir James Balfour, who probably betrayed them. Morton sent Archibald Douglas (the blackest traitor of the age) and two other retainers to seize the men. Robert Douglas, brother of Archibald, caught Dalgleish in the Potter Row, not far from the Kirk o’ Field Gate, with charters of Bothwell’s lands. Being carried before Morton, Dalgleish denied that he had any other charge: he was detained, and, on June 20, placed in the Tolbooth. Being put into some torture engine, he asked leave to go with Robert Douglas to the Potter Row, where he revealed the Casket. It was carried to Morton at 8 o’clock at night, and, next day, June 21, was broken open, ‘in presence of Atholl, Mar, Glencairn, Morton, Home, Semple, Sanquhar, the Master of Graham, Lethington, Tullibardine, and Archibald Douglas.’ The Letters were inspected (sichtit) and delivered over to Morton, who had in no respect altered, added to, or subtracted from them.
True or false, and it is probably true, the list of persons present adds nothing to the credibility of Morton’s account. The Commissioners of Mary had withdrawn; there could not be, and there was not, any cross-examination of the men named in Morton’s list, as witnesses of the opening of the Casket. Lethington alone, of these, was now present, if indeed he appeared at this sitting, and his emotions may be imagined! The rest might learn, later, that they had been named, from Lethington, after he joined Mary’s cause, but it is highly improbable that Lethington wanted to stir this matter again, or gave any information to Home (who was with him in the long siege of the Castle). Sanquhar and Tullibardine, cited by Morton, signed the band for delivering Mary from Loch Leven; so much effect had the ‘sichting’ of the Casket Letters on them. The story of Morton is probably true, so far: certainly the Lords, about June 21, got the Casket, whatever its contents then were. But that the contents remained unadded to and unimpaired, and unaltered, is only attested by Morton’s oath, and by the necessary silence of Lethington, who, of all those at Westminster, alone was present at the ‘sichting,’ on June 21, 1567. But Lethington dared not speak, even if he dared to be present. If any minute was made of the meeting of June 21, if any inventory of the documents in the Casket was then compiled, Morton produced neither of these indispensable corroborations at Westminster. His peril was perhaps as great as Lethington’s, but he was of a different temperament.
The case of the Prosecution is full of examples of such unscientific handling by the cautious Scots, as the omission of minutes of June 21.