I had myself been partly convinced that this was the correct view. But the existence of Mary’s memoranda, and the way in which they influence Letter II., seem to me an almost insuperable proof that part, at least, of Letter II. is genuine. It may, however, be said that the memoranda were genuine, but not compromising, and that the Letter was based, by forgers, on the memoranda (accidentally left lying in her Glasgow room, by Mary) and on Crawford’s report, obtained from Lennox. This is not impossible. But the craft of the forger in making Mary, on her second night of writing, find her forgotten memoranda (II. 15), be reminded by them of her last neglected item (‘Of Monsieur de Levingstoun’), and then go on (II. 16) to tell the anecdote of Livingstone, never publicly contradicted by him, seems superhuman. I scarcely feel able to believe in a forger so clever. Yet I hesitate to infer that Crawford, when asked to corroborate the statements in the Letter, took his report from the Letter itself, and perjured himself when he said, on oath, that his Deposition was derived from a writing taken down from Darnley’s lips ‘immediately at the time.’
I should come to this conclusion with regret and with hesitation. It is disagreeable to feel more or less in doubt as to Crawford’s honour. We know nothing against Crawford’s honour, unless it be that he was cruel to the Hamilton tenantry, and that he deposed to having received confessions on the scaffold, from Bothwell’s accomplices, implicating Mary.[345] These do not occur in the dying confessions printed with Buchanan’s ‘Detection,’ though Bowton hinted something against Mary, when he was in prison; so that trustworthy work informs us. Thus Crawford’s second Deposition, as to the dying confessions, is certainly rather suspicious. We know nothing else against the man. He lived to be a trusted servant of James VI. (but so did the infamous Archibald Douglas); he denounced Lethington of guilt in the murder; he won fame by the capture of Dumbarton Castle. Yet some are led to suspect that, when asked to corroborate a passage in a letter, he simply took the corroboration, textually, from the letter itself. If not the Letter is a forgery.
Mr. Henderson (who does not admit the verbal correspondence of Letter and Deposition) clearly sees no harm in this course. ‘It is by no means improbable that Crawford refreshed his recollection by the aid of the Letter, which, in any case, he may have seen before he prepared his statement.’ But he swore that he wrote a statement, from Darnley’s lips, ‘immediately at the time.’[346] He said nothing about losing the paper, which he wrote in January, 1567. (Mr. Henderson says it ‘had apparently been destroyed’—why ‘apparently’?) But, according to Mr. Henderson, ‘he may have seen the letter before he prepared his statement. Probably he would have been ready to have admitted this.’ He would have had an evil encounter with any judge to whom he admitted that, being called to corroborate part of a letter, written in French, he copied his corroborating statement, verbally on the whole, from a Scots translation of the letter itself! I do not think that Crawford would have been ‘ready to admit’ this unconscionable villainy. Yet we must either believe that he was guilty of it, or that the Letter was forged.
There is one indication which, for what it is worth, corroborates the truth of Crawford’s oath. He swore that he had written down Darnley’s report of conversations with Mary ‘immediately at the time,’ in order that he, in turn, might report them to Lennox, ‘because the said Earl durst not then, for displeasure of the Queen, come abroad,’ and speak to Darnley himself. But Crawford never swore, or said, that he wrote down his own conversation with Mary. Now, on June 11, 1568, Lennox does not ask for what Crawford swore that he wrote, much the most important part of his evidence, the account of Darnley’s talks with Mary. Lennox does not ask for that, for what Crawford swore that he wrote ‘immediately at the time.’ He merely asks ‘what purpois’ (talk) ‘Thomas Crawford held with the Queen at her coming to the town.’ This may be understood to mean that Lennox already held, and so did not need, Crawford’s written account, dictated by Darnley to him, of the conversations between Mary and Darnley. For that document, if he had it not, Lennox would most certainly ask, but ask he did not. Therefore, it may be argued, Lennox had it all the while in his portfolio, and therefore, again, parts of Letter II. are borrowed from Crawford’s written paper of January, 1567.[347]
In that case, we clear Crawford’s character for probity, but we destroy the authenticity of Letter II.[348] I confess that this last argument, with the fact that we have no evidence against the character of Crawford, a soldier of extraordinary daring and resource, and a country gentleman, not a politician, rather disturbs the balance of probabilities in favour of the theory that he borrowed his Deposition textually from the Letter, and increases the probability that the Letter is a forgery based on the Deposition.[349]
5. The contents of the Letter are said to be incoherent and inconsistent with Mary’s style and character. The last objection is worthless. In the Letter she says that she acts ‘against her natural’—contre son naturel—out of character. As for incoherence, the items of her memoranda are closely followed in sequence, up to paragraph 8, and the interloping part in paragraph 12. The rest, the work of the second night, is incoherent, as Mary’s moods, if she was guilty, must have been. Information, hatred, remorse, jealousy, and passion are the broken and blended strata of a mind rent by volcanic affections. The results in the Letter are necessarily unlike the style and sentiment of Mary’s authentic letters, except in certain very remarkable features.
Either Mary wrote the Letter or a forger wished to give the impression that this occurred. He wanted the world to believe that the Queen, her conscience tortured and her passion overmastering her conscience, could not cease to converse with her lover while paper served her turn. Her moods alternate: now she is resolved and cruel, now sick with horror, but still, sleepless as she is, she must be writing. Assuredly if this Letter be, in part at least, a forgery, it is a forgery by a master in the science of human nature. We seem to be admitted within the room where alone a light burns through the darkling hours, and to see the tormented Queen who fears her pillow. She writes, ‘I would have almaist had pitie of him.... He salutes everybody, yea unto the least, and makes pitious caressing unto them, to make them have pitie on hym,’ a touching picture. There is a pendant to this picture of Darnley, in Buchanan’s ‘History.’ He is speaking of Mary’s studied neglect of Darnley at the time of his son’s christening (December, 1566). Darnley, he says, endured all ‘not only with patience; he was seen trying to propitiate her unjust anger in every way, that humbly, and almost in servile fashion, he might keep some share in her good graces.’[350] What an etching is this of the man, a little while since so haughty and tyrannous, ‘dealing blows where he knew that they would be taken’! Again the passage (Letter II. 11) about Mary’s heart wherein only Bothwell’s ‘shot’ can make a breach, does certainly seem (as Laing notes) to refer to a sonnet of Mary’s favourite poet, Ronsard.
Depuis le jour que la première flèche
De ton bel oëil m’avança la douleur,
Et que sa blanche et sa noire couleur,
Forçant ma force, au cœur me firent brèche.
As in later letters, the writer now shows jealousy of Bothwell’s wife.
The writer again and again recurs to her remorse. ‘Remember how, gyf it were not to obey you, I had rather be deid or I dyd it, my heart bleides at it.... Alas, I nevir deceivit anybody; but I remit me altogidder to your will.’ The voice of conscience ‘deepens with the deepening of the night,’ a very natural circumstance showing the almost inhuman art of the supposed forger. What ensues is even more remarkable. Throughout, Mary professes absolute submission to Bothwell; she is here, as Sir John Skelton remarks, ‘the bond slave and humble minister of Bothwell’s ambition.’ He argues that she was really ‘the last woman in the world who would have prostrated herself in abject submission at the feet of a lover.’[351] But, in a later letter to Norfolk, when she regarded herself as affianced to him, Mary says ‘as you please command me, for I will, for all the world, follow your commands....’ She promises, in so many words, ‘humble submission’—though, conceivably, she may here mean submission to Elizabeth.[352] Again, ‘I will be true and obedient to you, as I have promised.’[353] There are other similar passages in the letters to Norfolk, indicating Mary’s idea of submission to a future husband, an attitude which, according to Randolph, she originally held towards Darnley. These letters to Norfolk, of course, were not dictated by passion. Therefore, under stress of passion or of a passionate caprice, Mary might naturally assume a humility otherwise foreign to her nature. It would be a joy to her to lay herself at her lover’s feet: the argument a priori, from character, is no disproof of the authenticity of this part of the Letter.