Compare, in the Lennox version of the letter never produced (p. 214)—

(a) The loss of her dowry in France.

(b) Her titles to the crown of England.

(c) The crown of her realm.

Unless this formula of renunciations, in this sequence, was a favourite of Mary’s, in correspondence and in general conversation, its appearance, in the letter not produced, and in Kirkcaldy’s letter written before the Casket was captured, donne furieusement à penser.

5. Another curious coincidence between a Casket Letter (VII.) and Mary’s instructions to the Bishop of Dunblane, in excuse of her marriage, has already been noticed. We may glance at it again.

Instructions Letter VII.
We thocht his continuance in the awayting upon us ... had procedit onelie upoun the ackawlegeing of his dewtie, being our borne subject. Gif abone the dewtie of ane subject yow advance yourself.
The persuasionis quhilk oure friendis or his unfriendis mycht cast out for his hinderence ... That uther admonitiounis or forane persuasiounis may not let me from consenting ...
Sa ceased he nevir till be persuasionis and importune sute, accumpaneit nottheles with force. To use ane humbil requiest joynit to ane importune action.

The whole scheme of excuse given in Letter VII. is merely expanded into the later Instructions, a piece of eleven pages in length. ‘The Instructions are understood to have been drawn by Lethington,’ says Sir John Skelton; certainly Mary did not write them, as they stand, for they are in Scots. ‘Many things we resolved with ourselves, but never could find ane outgait,’ say the Instructions. ‘How to be free of him she has no outgait,’ writes Maitland to Beaton. If Lethington, as Secretary, penned the Instructions, who penned Letter VII.?

6. We have already cited Randolph’s letter to Kirkcaldy and Lethington, when they had changed sides, and were holding the Castle for the Queen. But we did not quote all of the letter. Lethington, says Randolph, with Grange, is, as Mary herself has said, the chief occasion of all her calamities, by his advice ‘to apprehend her, to imprison her; yea, to have taken presently the life from her.’ This follows a catalogue of Lethington’s misdeeds towards Mary, exhaustive, one might think. But it ends, ‘with somewhat more that we might say, were it not to grieve you too much herein.’ What ‘more’ beyond arrest, loss of crown, prison, and threatened loss of life, was left that Lethington could do against Mary? The manipulation of the Casket Letters was left: ‘somewhat more that we might say, were it not to grieve you too much herein.’[394]