On the whole, these reasons are the strongest for thinking the Letter, in parts, probably genuine. The Lords may, conceivably, have added ‘some principal and substantious clauses,’ such as the advice to Bothwell ‘to find out some more secret invention by medicine’ (paragraph 20), and they may have added the words ‘of the ludgeing in Edinburgh’ (Kirk o’ Field) to the dubious list of directions which we find at the end of the Scots, but not in the English, version. There is no other reference to Kirk o’ Field, though the ‘Book of Articles’ says that there were many. And there were many, in the forged letter! Paris, indeed, confessed that Mary told him that Letter II. was to ask where Darnley should be placed, at Craigmillar or Kirk o’ Field. But the evidence of Paris is dubious.
Lennox was very anxious, as was the author of the ‘Book of Articles,’ to prove that the Kirk o’ Field plan was arranged between Bothwell and Mary, before she went to meet Darnley at Glasgow in January, 1567. We have already seen that the ‘Book of Articles’ makes Mary and Bothwell ‘devise’ this house ‘before she raid to Glasgow,’ and ‘from Glasgow by her letters and otherwise she held him continually in remembrance of the said house.’
The ‘Book of Articles’ also declares that she ‘wrote to Bothwell to see if he might find out a more secret way by medicine to cut him off’ than the Kirk o’ Field plan. Now this phrase, ‘a more secret invention by medicine,’ occurs in Letter II. 20, but is instantly followed by ‘for he should take medicine and the bath at Craigmillar:’ not a word of the house in Edinburgh.
Next, we find Lennox, like the author of the ‘Book of Articles,’ hankering after, and insisting on, a mention of the ‘house in Edinburgh’ in Mary’s Letters. There exists an indictment by Lennox in Scots, no doubt intended to be, as it partly was, later done into English. The piece describes Moray as present with the English Commissioners, doubtless at York, in October, 1568. This indictment in Scots is by one who has seen Letter II., or parts of it, for we read ‘Of quhilk purpos reported to Heigat she makes mention in hir lettre sent to Boithuile from Glasgow, meaning sen that purpose’ (the plan of arresting Darnley) ‘wes reveled that he suld invent a mare secrete way be medecine to cutt him of’ (the very phrase used in the ‘Book of Articles’) ‘as alsua puttes the said Boithuil in mynde of the house in Edinburgh, divisit betwix thame for the King hir husband’s distructioune, termand thair ungodlie conspiracy “thair affaire.”’
Now Mary, in Letter II., does not ‘put Bothwell in mind of the house in Edinburgh,’ nor does she here use the expression ‘their affair,’ though in Letter III. she says ‘your affair.’ In Buchanan’s mind (if he was, as I feel convinced, the author of the ‘Book of Articles’) the forged letter described by Moray and Lennox, with its insistence on Kirk o’ Field, was confused with Letter II., in which there is nothing of the sort. The same confusion pervades Lennox’s indictment in Scots, perhaps followed by Buchanan. When parts of the Scots indictment are translated into Lennox’s last extant English indictment, we no longer hear that Kirk o’ Field is mentioned in the Letters, but we do read of ‘such a house in Edinburgh as she had prepared for him to finish his days in’—which Mary had not done when she wrote Letter II. Consequently the memorandum at the end of Letter II., ‘remember zow of the ludgeing in Edinburgh,’ a memorandum not in the English translation, may have been added fraudulently to prove the point that Kirk o’ Field was, from the first, devised for Darnley’s destruction.[354] These passages, in any case, prove that the false letter reported by Moray and Lennox haunted the minds of Lennox and Buchanan to the last.
The evidence of Nelson, Darnley’s servant,[355] later with Lady Lennox, to the effect that Craigmillar was proposed, but that Darnley rejected it, may be taken either as corroboration of the intention to lodge Darnley at Craigmillar (as is insisted on in Letters I. and II.) or as one of the sources whence Letter II. was fraudulently composed. On the whole, however, the Craigmillar references in the Letters have an air of authenticity. They were not what the accusers wanted; they wanted references to Kirk o’ Field, and these they amply provided in the Letter about poisoning Lady Bothwell, echoes of which are heard in the ‘Book of Articles,’ and in Lennox’s indictment in Scots.
The letter described by Moray and Lennox, when both, at different dates, were in contact with Wood, was full of references to Kirk o’ Field, which are wholly absent in Letters I. and II. The letter known to Moray and Lennox was probably forged in the interval between June 21 and July 8, 1567, when (July 8) the Lords sent ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Moray. As I shall make it evident that Robert Melville was sent to inform Elizabeth about the capture of the Casket on the very day of the event, the pause of seventeen days before the sending of ‘Jhone a Forret’ to Moray is very curious. In that time the letter noticed by Moray and Lennox may have been forged to improve the evidence against Mary. At all events its details were orally circulated. But I think that, finding this letter inconsistent, and overcharged, the Lords, in December, 1568, fell back on the authentic, or partially authentic, Letter II., and produced that. My scheme of dates for that Letter need not necessarily be accepted. My theory that Mary made a mistake as to her sheets of paper which caused the confusion of the internal chronology is but a conjecture, and the objection to it I have stated. The question is one of the most delicately balanced probabilities. Either Lennox, from January 1567 onwards, possessed the notes which Crawford swore that he wrote concerning Darnley’s conversation (in which case much of Letter II. is a forgery based on Crawford), or Crawford, in December 1568, deliberately perjured himself. The middle course involves the unlikely hypothesis that Crawford did take notes ‘immediately at the time;’ but that they were lost or destroyed; and that he, with dishonest stupidity, copied his deposition from Letter II. There appears to me to be no hint of the loss or disappearance of the only notes which Crawford swore that he made. Consequently, on either alternative, the conduct of the prosecutors is dishonest. Dishonesty is again suggested by the mysterious letter which Moray and Lennox cite, and which colours both Lennox’s MS. discourses and the ‘Book of Articles.’ But, on the other hand, parts of Letter II. seem beyond the power of the Genius of Forgery to produce. Perhaps the least difficult theory is that Letter II. is in part authentic, in part garbled.[356]