5. Mr. Froude speaks of Lennox having “gathered about him a knot of wild and desperate youths—Cassilis, Eglinton, Montgomery, and Bothwell.” If he had read his authority (Randolph) with decent care, he would have seen that these were not the friends of Lennox, but, on the contrary, the strongest dependence of Murray and Argyle against Lennox. Moreover, Eglinton and Montgomery are one and the same person.
6. A blunder which has already excited some discussion is Mr Froude’s statement, on the authority of a letter from Randolph to Cecil, October 5, 1565, that Mary, “deaf to advice as she had been to menace,” said she would have no peace till she had Murray’s or Chatelherault’s head.” There is no such letter. It appears, however, from a letter of Randolph’s, dated October 4, that Mary was “not only uncertain as to what she should do, but inclined to clement measures, and so undecided as to hope that matters could be arranged.” The document to which Mr. Froude refers is a letter from the Earl of Bedford, who was not at Mary’s court, but at Alnwick, on the English side of the border, and who consequently had no such opportunities as Randolph for knowing the temper of the Scottish Queen. But even Bedford does not say what Mr. Froude reports. The earl merely relates the substance of information brought back from the rebel camp by one of his officers. According to this man, Murray and the other rebel
lords are dissatisfied with the little that England is doing to help them, and they say, “There is no talk of peace with that Queen, but that she will first have a head of the duke or of the Earl of Murray.”
7. One instance of Mr. Froude’s incorrigible propensity to blunder in that peculiar manner which is vulgarly called “going off at half-cock,” deserves to be mentioned, not for its importance, but because it is amusing. He describes Mary on a furious night-ride of “twenty miles in two hours,” at the end of which she wrote “with her own hand” a letter to Elizabeth, “fierce, dauntless, and haughty,” “the strokes thick, and slightly uneven from excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of trembling.” It is a pity to spoil such a picturesque passage; but the very letter which Mr. Froude seems to have examined with such care contains the Queen’s apology for not writing it with her own hand, because she was “so tired and ill at ease,” and mentions, moreover, that the twenty-miles ride occupied five hours, not two.
8. In his account of the murder of Darnley, Mr. Froude pursues a singularly devious course, through which his reviewer follows him with inimitable pertinacity. The historian accepts without reserve the most notoriously untrustworthy authorities, distorts evidence, throws in a multitude of artful suggestions, and suppresses in a manner that is downright dishonest every circumstance that tells in Mary’s favor. We have no space to recapitulate here the numberless blunders and perversions of which he is convicted by Mr. Meline; but some of them are too ludicrous to be passed over. For instance, Mr. Froude finds it suspicious that Mary should have “preferred to believe” that she herself was the object of the lords’ conspiracy, though a
dispatch from Paris had conveyed “a message to her from Catharine de Medicis that her husband’s life was in danger.” The message was not from Catharine de Medicis, but from the Spanish ambassador in France, and wanted her to “take heed to herself,” for there was “some notable enterprise in hand against her.” Not a word is said of her husband.
9. It is again mentioned, as confirmation of her guilt, that “she sent for none of the absent noblemen to protect her,” and that “Murray was within reach, but she did not seem to desire his presence.” Now, Mr. Froude’s own authorities show that Mary did send for many of the absent noblemen, and in particular that she twice sent for Murray, who would not come.
10. When Elizabeth sent Killigrew to Scotland to inquire into the circumstances of the murder, Murray (as Killigrew himself relates) entertained the English ambassador at dinner, and invited to meet him Huntly, Argyle, Bothwell, and Maitland—all of them among the murderers of Darnley. This was strong circumstantial evidence of Murray’s guilt. Mr. Froude accordingly (referring to Killigrew as his authority) suppresses all mention of Murray, who gave the dinner and presided at it, and states that Killigrew “was entertained at dinner by the clique who had attended her [Mary] to Seton”—thus implying that Mary, instead of Murray, was in league with Bothwell and the others to prevent his getting at the truth. The whole substance of Killigrew’s letter is most outrageously misrepresented. Mr. Meline gives the original and the false version side by side.
But we must pause. We cannot follow Mr. Meline in his admirable discussion of the authenticity of the famous casket letters, or his exposure
of the extraordinary misstatements with which Mr. Froude has loaded this portion of his book. With the question of the innocence of the Queen of Scots, we are not now concerned. Our business is rather with the innocence of the Queen of Scots’ most notorious modern accuser. And whatever may be thought of the honesty of Mr. Froude’s motives, whether we decide that he blunders through sheer incapacity, or lies with malice aforethought, we believe candid students will admit that his reputation as a historical writer has been utterly ruined, and that his work will be remembered hereafter as a disastrous literary failure.