But their case was long since made up. They have said their last word, and shot all the arrows of their quiver. With each succeeding year Elizabeth's reputation fails, and is rapidly passing into disgrace. With the same rapidity Mary's fame grows brighter.
The books and pamphlets written in attack or defence of Mary would of themselves form a library. For the attack, the key-note is to be found in Cecil's avowed principle concerning the treatment of the dethroned queen, that their purpose could not be obtained without disgracing her. Hence, the silver-casket letters, and the so-called confessions of Paris. Hence, the issue, during every year of her long imprisonment of eighteen years, of some vile pamphlet, under Cecil's instructions, calculated to blast her character. Two men in particular powerfully contributed to defame the Queen of Scots—John Knox and George Buchanan. Knox by his sermons, in which, says Russel, (History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 292,) "lying strives with rage;" Buchanan, by his writings, which have been made by Mary's enemies one of the sources of history. Buchanan was an apostate monk, saved from the gallows by Mary, and loaded with her favors. An eye-witness of her dignity, her goodness, and her purity, he afterward described her as the vilest of women. He sold his pen to Elizabeth, and has been properly described as "unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude." His Detection was published (1570) in Latin, and copies were immediately sent by Cecil to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris with instructions to circulate them; "for they will come to good effect to disgrace her, which must be done before other purposes can be obtained."
This shameful work has been the inspiration of most of the portraits drawn of Mary. De Thou in France, Spotiswoode, Jebb, and many others in England, have all followed him. Holinshed too was deceived by Buchanan; but it is doubtful if he dared write otherwise than he did, between the terrors of Cecil's spies and Elizabeth's mace.
An English translation of Buchanan was first published in 1690, being called forth by the revolution of 1688. Jebb's two folio volumes appeared in 1725.
Two additional lives of Mary, by Heywood (1725) and Freebairn, were little more than translations from the French. In 1726, Edward Simmons published Mary's forged letters as genuine. Anderson's voluminous collection of papers (four large volumes) appeared in 1727 and 1728. Meantime, from the accession of a new dynasty and the rebellion of 1715, there arose in Edinburgh a sort of society having for its principal object the work of supporting Buchanan's credit and vilifying the Scottish queen. Later came the well-known and widely published histories of Scotland and of England by Robertson and Hume, which, read wherever the English language was known, may be said to have popularized the culpability of Mary. Until within comparatively few years, Hume's work was the only history of England generally read in the United States. Then came Malcolm Laing, who imagined he had closed the controversy against Mary in his bitter Dissertation. Mignet, in France, went further than Laing, while Froude, in his history of England, distancing all previous writers, portrays Mary in the blackest colors as one of the most criminal and devilish of women. For his material there is no statement so absurd, no invention so gross, no lie so palpable, no calumny so vile, provided only that it be to the prejudice of Mary Stuart, that does not find favor in his eyes. In his blind hatred of the Catholic queen, forgetting all historic dignity and even personal decency, he showers upon her such epithets as "panther," "ferocious animal," "wild-cat," "brute;" her persecutors being white-robed saints, such as "the pious Cecil," and "the noble and stainless Murray," and the virgin Queen Elizabeth appearing "as a beneficent fairy coming out of the clouds to rescue an erring sister."
But Mary's cause has not wanted defenders. Among the best known are, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross; Camden and Carte, the English historians; Herrera, the Spanish bishop; Robert Keith; Goodall, (1754,) who made the first searching analysis of the silver-casket letters, showing that the French text of the pretended Bothwell love-letters, until then supposed to be original, was a poor translation from the Latin or Scotch. William Tytler (1759) and John Whitaker (1788) proved that the letters were forged by those who produced them. Stuart, in his history of Scotland, (1762,) and Mademoiselle Keraglio, in her Life of Elizabeth, (1786,) both protested against the conclusions of Hume and Robertson. In 1818, George Chalmers took up Laing's book, and proved conclusively, with a mass of newly-discovered testimony, that the accusers of Mary were themselves the murderers of Darnley. Then followed the learned Dr. Lingard, Guthrie, and H. Glassford Bell. But all these works were either too heavy and cumbrous for popular reading, or too narrow in their scope; most of them being better prepared for reference than for reading, and of but slight effective service in the field occupied by Hume and Robertson. Miss Strickland's work is well known to all our readers, and has done much good. In 1866, Mr. McNeel Caird published Mary Stuart, her Guilt or Innocence, in which he effectively defends Mary and seriously damages Mr. Froude's veracity.
A most valuable historical contribution is the late work (1869) of M. Jules Gauthier. The first volume is out and the second will be issued in a few months. M. Gauthier says that after reading the work of M. Mignet, he had no doubt that Queen Mary had assassinated her husband in order to avenge the death of Riccio. "I was, therefore, surprised," he continues, "on arriving at Edinburgh, in 1861, to hear Mary warmly defended, and reference made to documents recently discovered that were strongly in her favor. I then formed the resolution to study for myself this historical problem and to discover the truth. I had no idea of writing a book, and no motive but that of satisfying my own curiosity. I have devoted several years solely to this object in Scotland, England, and Spain." M. Gauthier then gives a formidable list of authorities and manuscripts not usually quoted, acknowledges the aid of the librarians of the legal library at Edinburgh, the learned Mr. Robertson of the Register House, Robert Chambers, and the archivist of Simancas, Don Emanuel Gonzalez, and announces the result to be a complete change of opinion. He goes on to say that, before examining all the documents of the trial, he had no doubt of the guilt of Mary Stuart; but after having scrutinized and compared them, he remained and still remains convinced that it was solely to assure the fruit of their shameful victory that the barons, who had dethroned their queen with England's help, sought to throw upon her the crimes of which they themselves were the authors or the accomplices, and in which their auxiliaries were Elizabeth and her ministers.
But what is of far greater importance, M. Gauthier announces the discovery among the Simancas MSS. of documents that prove beyond all question that the silver-casket letters were forgeries. This important revelation he promises for the second volume. Preceding M. Gauthier in time, M. Wiesener, another French writer, had, in an admirable critique, demolished the foundations on which rest most of the calumnies against Mary Stuart.
And now we have Mr. Hosack's work. There is a beautiful poetic justice in the fact that the most effective defences of Mary Stuart, in the English language, come from Protestant pens, and that in Scotland among the sons of the Puritans are found her most enthusiastic advocates. Mr. Hosack is an Edinburgh lawyer, and a Protestant.