We know that the Lords, in December of the same year, publicly and in Parliament, and with strange logic, declared that the ground of their rising and imprisonment of Mary was her guilt as revealed in letters written by her hand, though these were not discovered when the Lords imprisoned Mary. Now Lethington, in his dispatch to Cecil, carried by Melville the day of the Casket finding, says that the bearer, Mr. Robert Melville, ‘can report to you at length the ground of the Lords’ so just and honourable cause.’ Presently that ‘ground’ was declared to be the evidence of the Casket Letters. Melville then would verbally report this new ‘ground’ to Cecil and Elizabeth. He was dispatched at that very date for no other reason. The Lords were Melville’s employers, but his heart was sore for Mary. Elizabeth, on June 30, tells Mary (Throckmorton carried her letter) that ‘your own faithful servant, Robert Melville, used much earnest speech on your behalf.’[388] What Elizabeth knew about Lethington’s bad behaviour as to the Letters, and spoke of to de Silva, she must have heard from Robert Melville. She did not, as far as we are aware, mention her knowledge of the subject till de Silva introduced it on July 21, but only from Melville could she learn whatever she did learn about Lethington. Throckmorton, her envoy to Scotland, did not mention the Letters till July 25, four days after Elizabeth spoke to de Silva. ‘Jhone a Forret,’ whom the Lords sent through London on July 8 to bring Moray, was not exactly the man to blame Lethington and discredit the Letters: for he was probably John Wood, later a chief enemy of Mary.
Suspicions of Lethington, later, were not confined to Elizabeth alone. In Mary’s instructions to her Commissioners (Sept. 9, 1568) she says, ‘There are divers in Scotland, both men and women, that can counterfeit my handwriting, and write the like manner of writing which I use [the ‘Roman’ or Italic] as well as myself, and principally such as are in company with themselves,’[389] as Lethington then was.
Lesley stated the matter thus: ‘There are sundry can counterfeit her handwriting, who have been brought up in her company, of whom there are some assisting themselves’ (the Lords) ‘as well of other nations as of Scots, as I doubt not both your highness’ (Elizabeth) ‘and divers others of your Highness’s Court, has seen sundry letters sent here from Scotland, which would not be known from her own handwriting.’[390]
All this is vague, and Mary’s reference to women, Lesley’s reference to those ‘brought up in her company,’ glance, alas! at the Queen’s Maries. Mary Livingstone, wedded to John Sempil, was not on the best terms with Queen Mary about certain jewels. Mary Fleming was Lethington’s wife. Mary Beaton’s aunts were at open feud with the Queen. A lady, unnamed, was selected as the forger by the author of ‘L’Innocence de la Royne d’Escosse’ (1572).
To return to Lethington. In 1615, Camden, writing, as it were, under the eye of James VI. and I., declared that Lethington ‘had privately hinted to the Commissioners at York, that he had counterfeited Mary’s hand frequently.’[391] There is nothing incredible, a priori, in the story. Between October 11, 1568 (when Norfolk, having been privately shown the Letters, was blabbing, even to his servant Bannister, his horror of Letter II.), and October 16, when Lethington rode out with Norfolk, and the scheme for his marrying Mary struck deep root, something may have been said. Lethington may have told Norfolk that perhaps the Letters were forged, that he himself, for amusement, had imitated Mary’s hand. As a fact, the secretaries of two of the foremost of contemporary statesmen did write to the innumerable bores who beset well-known persons, in hands hardly to be distinguished from those of their chiefs. Norfolk, as Laing says, did acknowledge, at his trial, that Lethington ‘moved him to consider the Queen as not guilty of the crimes objected.’ Lethington appears to have succeeded; possibly by aid of the obvious argument that, if he could imitate Mary’s hand for pastime, others might do it for evil motives. Nay, we practically know, and have shown, that Lethington did succeed in making Norfolk, to whom, five days before, he had offered the Letters as proofs of Mary’s guilt, believe that she had not written them. For, as we have seen, whereas Mary at this time was making a compromise with Moray, Norfolk persuaded her to abandon that course. Thus Lethington, on October 11, 1568, made Norfolk believe in the Letters; on October 16, he made him disbelieve or doubt.
We are not to suppose Lethington so foolish as to confess that he was himself the forger. Even if Lethington did tell Norfolk that he had often imitated Mary’s hand, he could not have meant to accuse himself in this case. His son, in 1620, asked Camden for his authority, and we know not that Camden ever replied. He never altered his statement, which meant no more than that, by the argument of his own powers of imitating Mary’s handwriting, Lethington kept urging the Duke of Norfolk to doubt her guilt.[392] Lethington’s illustration of the ease with which Mary’s writing could be imitated is rather, if he used it, a proof that he did not hold the pen which may have tampered with the Casket Letters. Our reasons for suspecting him of engaging, though not as penman, in the scheme are:
1. Elizabeth’s early suspicion of Lethington, and the probability that Robert Melville, who had just parted from Lethington, inspired that suspicion.
2. The probability, derived from Randolph’s letter, already cited, that Lethington had access to the Casket before June 21, 1567, but after Mary’s capture at Carberry.
3. Of all men Lethington, from his knowledge of Mary’s disgust at his desertion, ingratitude, and ‘extreme opposition’ to her, in her darkest hour, and from his certainty that Mary held, or professed to hold, documentary proof of his own guilt, had most reason to fear her, and desire and scheme her destruction.
4. Kirkcaldy of Grange, on April 20, 1567, months before the Letters were discovered, wrote to Cecil that Mary ‘has said that she cares not to lose (a) France, (b) England, and (c) her own country’ for Bothwell.[393]