Now there also existed a contract, said to be in Huntly’s hand, and signed by Mary and Bothwell, of date April 5 (at Seton), 1567. But this contract speaks of the process of divorce ‘intentit’ between Bothwell and his ‘pretensit spouse.’ Now that suit, on April 5, was not yet before the Court (though some documents had been put in), nor did Lady Bothwell move in the case till after Mary’s abduction.
If Mary keptthiscontract, and if it be correctly dated, then Letter VIII. is not of January-February, but of April, 1567.
If Mary regarded herself as now privately married, this pose would explain the phrase ‘your brother-in-lawthat was,’ in Letter VIII. But this is stretching possibilities.
Mr. Hosack has argued that the Letter just translated was really written to Darnley, between whom and Mary some private preliminary ceremony of marriage was said to have passed. In that case the wordspar Paris, ‘I send you by Paris, &c.,’ are a forged interpolation, as Paris was not in Mary’s service till January, 1567. The opening sentence about the danger which, as every one thinks, menaces her correspondent, might refer to Darnley. But the tone of remonstrance against indifference, suspicion, and violated promises, is the tone of almost all the Casket Letters, and does not apply to Darnley—before his public marriage.
As to the ‘heart in a ring,’ Mary, as Laing notes, had written to Elizabeth ‘Je vous envoye mon cœur en bague.’ The phrase in the Letter,seul soutien de ma vie, also occurs in one of the Casket Sonnets.
To what known or alleged circumstances in Mary’s relations with Bothwell can this Letter refer? The alternatives are (1) either to her receipt of Bothwell’s answer to Letter II., which Paris (on our scheme of dates) gave to Mary on January 25, at Glasgow; (2) to the moment of her stay at Callendar, where she arrived, with Darnley, on January 27, taking him on January 28 to Linlithgow, whence, on January 29, ‘she wraytt to Bothwell.’ She had learned at Linlithgow, on January 28, by Hob Ormistoun, that Bothwell was on his way from Liddesdale.[375]Or (3) does the letter refer to Monday, April 21, when she was atStirling till Wednesday, April 23, when she went to Linlithgow, Bothwell being ‘at Haltoun hard by,’ and carrying her off on April 24?[376]
Taking first (1)—we find Mary acknowledging in this letter the receipt of Bothwell’s ‘marriage.’ If this is a contract, did Bothwell send it in the letter which, according to Paris, he wrote on January 24, accompanying it with a diamond? ‘Tell the Queen,’ said Bothwell, ‘that I send her this diamond, which you are to carry, and that if I had my heart I would send it willingly, but I have it not.’ The diamond, a ring probably, might be referred to in Bothwell’s letter as a marriage or betrothal ring (French,union). In return Mary would send her mourning ring; ‘the stone I compare to my heart.’
This looks well, but how could Mary, who,ex hypothesi, had just received a ring, a promise or contract of marriage, and a loving message, complain, as she does, of ‘the coldness of your letters,’ ‘your violated promise,’ ‘your forgetfulness,’ ‘your want of care for me’? Danger to Bothwell, in Liddesdale, she might fear, but these other complaints are absolutely inconsistent with the theory that Bothwell had just sent a letter, a ring, a promise of marriage, and a loving verbal message. We must therefore dismiss hypothesis 1.
(2) Did Mary send this Letter on January 29 from Linlithgow? She had no neglect to complain ofthere; for, according to her accusers, she was metby Hob Ormistoun, with a letter or message. Paris says this was at Callendar, where she slept on January 27.[377]In that case Bothwell was yet more prompt. Again, Mary had now no fear of danger to Bothwell’s person, as she had just learned that Bothwell had left perilous Liddesdale. Here, once more, there is no room, reason, or ground for her complaints. Again, in the Letter she says that she sends the mourning ring ‘by Paris.’ But, if we are to believe Paris, she did not do so. He gave her Bothwell’s letter, received from Bothwell’s messenger, at Callendar, January 27. She answered it at bedtime, gave it to Paris to be given to Bothwell’s messenger, enclosing a ring, and the messenger carried ring and letter to Bothwell. She could not write, ‘I have sent you by Paris’ the ring, if she did nothing of the sort. Later, according to Paris, she did send him, with the bracelets, from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, where he met Bothwell, just mounting to ride and join Mary and Darnley on their return. The Letter, then, does not fit the circumstances of one written either at Callendar, January 27 (Paris), or at Linlithgow, January 29 (‘Cecil’s Journal’).
(3) That the ring, and the lamentations, were carried, by Paris, from Linlithgow to the neighbouring house of Haltoun, where Bothwell lay, on the night of April 23, the night before he bore Mary off to Dunbar, is not credible. Nothing indicates her receipt oftoken or contract of marriage at that date. The danger to Bothwell was infinitesimal. He was not neglecting Mary, he was close to her, and only waiting for daylight to carry her off. He wrote in reply, Paris says, and verbally promised to meet her, ‘on the road, at the bridge.’[378]
To a man who was thus doing his best to please her, a man whom she was to meet next day, Mary could not be writing long, affected complaints and lamentations. She would write, if at all, on details of the business on hand. No ring was carried by Paris, according to his own deposition.
Thus the contents of the Letter do not fit into any recorded or alleged juncture in Mary’s relations with Bothwell, after January 21, 1567, when Paris (whom the Letter mentions) first entered her service. Laing places the Letter last in the series, and supposes that the ring and letter were sent from Linlithgow, to Bothwell hard by (at Haltoun), the night before the ‘ravishment.’ But he does not make it plain that the contents of the Letter are really consistent with its supposed occasion.[379]When was Bothwell absent from Mary, cold, forgetful, and in danger, between the return from Glasgow, and the abduction? The Letter does not help the case of the prosecution.
We have exhausted the three conceivable alternatives as to the date, occasion, and circumstances of thisLetter. Its contents fit none of these dates and occasions. Mr. Froude adds a fourth alternative. This Letter ‘was written just before the marriage’[380]when Bothwell (whose absence is complained of) was never out of Mary’s company.
There is not, in short, an obvious place for this Letter in the recorded circumstances of Mary’s history, though the lack of obviousness may arise from our ignorance of facts.
THE CASKET SONNETS
When the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan was first published, La Mothe Fénelon, French ambassador in England, writing to Charles IX., described the Sonnets as the worst, or most compromising, of all the evidence. They never allude to Darnley, and must have been written after his death. As is well known, Brantôme says that such of Mary’s verses as he had seen were entirely unlike the Casket Sonnets, which are ‘too rude and unpolished to be hers.’ Ronsard, he adds, was of the same opinion. Both men had seen verses written hastily by Mary, and still ‘unpolished,’ whether by her, or by Ronsard, who may have aided her, as Voltaire aided Frederick the Great. Both critics were, of course, prejudiced in favour of the beautiful Queen. Both were good judges, but neither had ever seen 160 lines of sonnet sequence written by her under the stress of a great passion, and amidst the toils of travel, of business, of intense anxiety, all in the space of two days, April 21 to April 23.
Plate A
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TWO SONNETS FROM THE CAMBRIDGE MS.
The hand somewhat resembles that of Mary in early youth,and that of Mary Beaton
The copyist is unknown
That the most fervent and hurried sonneteer should write eleven sonnets in such time and circumstances is hard to believe, but we must allow forMary’s sleepless nights, which she may have beguiled by versifying. It is known that a distinguished historian is occupied with a critical edition of these Sonnets. We may await his decision as to their relations with the few surviving poems of the Queen. My own comparison of these does not convince me that the favoured rhymes are especially characteristic of Mary. The topics of the Casket Sonnets, the author’s inability to remove the suspicions of the jealous Bothwell; her protestations of submission; her record of her sacrifices for him; her rather mean jealousy of Lady Bothwell, are also the frequent topics of the Casket Letters. The very phrases are occasionally the same: so much so as to suggest the suspicion that the Letters may have been modelled on the Sonnets, or the Sonnets on the Letters. If there be anything in this, the Sonnets are probably the real originals. Nothing is less likely than that a forger would think of such a task as forging verses by Mary: nor do we know any one among her enemies who could have produced the verses even if he had the will. To suspect Buchanan is grotesque. On the theory of a literary contest between Mary and Lady Bothwell for Bothwell’s affections, something is to be said in the following chapter. Meanwhile, I am obliged to share the opinion of La Mothe Fénelon, that, as proof of Mary’s passion for Bothwell, the Sonnets are stronger evidence than the Letters, and much less open to suspicion than some parts of the Letters.
CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS
A few words must be said as to a now obsolete difficulty, the question as to the language in which the Letters were originally written. That question need not be mooted: it is settled by Mr. Henderson’s ‘Casket Letters.’ The original language of the epistles was French.
I. The epistles shown at Westminster were certainly in French, which was not (except in the first one or two sentences) the French later published by the Huguenots.ThatFrench was translated from the Latin, which was translated from the Scots, which was translated from the original French. Voluminous linguistic criticisms by Goodall, Hosack, Skelton, and others have ceased, therefore, to be in point.
II. Many phrases, whether as mirrored in the Scots and English translations, or as extant in contemporary copies of the original French, can be paralleled from authentic letters of Mary’s. Bresslau proved this easily, but it was no less easily provedthat many of the phrases were conventional, and could be paralleled from the correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici and other contemporary ladies. A forger would have ample opportunities of knowing Mary’s phrasing and orthography. It would be easy for me to write a letter reproducing the phrasing and orthography, which is very distinctive, of Pickle the Spy. No argument against forgery can be based on imitations of peculiarities of phrase and spelling which the hypothetical forger was sure to know and reproduce.
But phrasing and spelling are not to be confounded with tone and style. Now the Letters, in tone, show considerable unity, except at one point. Throughout Mary is urging and spurring an indifferent half-hearted wooer to commit an abominable crime, and another treasonable act, her abduction. Really, to judge from the Letters, we might suppose Bothwell to be almost as indifferent and reluctant as Field-Marshal Keith was, when the Czarina Elizabeth offered him her hand. Keith put his foot down firmly, and refused, but the Bothwell who hesitated was lost. It is Mary who gives him no rest till he carries her off: we must blame Bothwell for not arranging the scheme before parting from Mary in Edinburgh; to be sure, Buchanan declares in his History that the schemewasarranged. In short, we become almost sorry for Bothwell, who had a lovely royal bride thrust on him against his will, and only ruined himself out of reluctance to disoblige alady. It is the old Irish tale of Diarmaid and Grainne over again.
But, on the other hand, Letter II. represents Mary as tortured by remorse and regret. Only to please Bothwell would she act as she does. Her heart bleeds at it. We must suppose that she not only grew accustomed to the situation, but revelled in it, and insisted on an abduction, which even Lethington could only explain by her knowledge of theapices juris, the sublimities of Scots law. A pardon for the abduction would, in Scots law, cover the murder.
Such is the chief difference in tone. In style, though the fact seems to have been little if at all noticed, there are two distinct species. There is the simple natural style of Letters I., II., and the rest, and there is the alembicated, tormented, precious, and affected style of Letters VIII. (III.) and IV. Have we any other examples, from Mary’s hand, of the obscure affectations of VIII. (III.) and IV.? Letter VIII., while it contains phrases which recur in the Casket ‘Sonnets,’ is really more contorted andsymbolistein manner than the verses. These ‘fond ballads’ contain, not infrequently, the same sentiments as the Letters, whether the Letters be in the direct or in the affected style. Thus, in Letter II., where Lady Bothwell and Mary’s jealousy of her are the theme, we read ‘Se not hir’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘quhais feinzeit teiris should not be sa mekle praisit or estemit as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk Isustene for to merite her place.’ Compare Sonnets ii. iii.:
Brief je feray de ma foy telle preuve,Qu’il cognoistra sans faulte ma constance,Non par mes pleurs ou fainte obeyssanceComme autres font, mais par divers espreuve.
In both passages the writer contrasts the ‘feigned tears,’ ‘feigned obedience’ of Bothwell’s wife with her own practical proofs of devotion: in the Sonnet using ‘them’ for ‘her’ as in Letter IV.
A possible, but unexpected explanation of the extraordinary diversity of the two styles, I proceed to give. We have briefly discussed the Sonnets, which (despite the opinion of Ronsard) carry a strong appearance of authenticity, though whether their repetitions of the matter and phrasing of the Letters be in favour of the hypothesis thatbothare authentic might be argued variously. Now from the Sonnets it appears that Lady Bothwell was endeavouring to secure her bridegroom’s heart in a rather unlooked-for manner: namely, by writing to him elaborately literary love letters in the artificial style of the age of the Pleiad. As the Sonnets say, she wooes him ‘par les escriptz tout fardez de sçavoir.’ But Mary maintains that Lady Bothwell is a mere plagiarist. Her ingenious letters, treasured by Bothwell, and the cause of his preference for her, are
empruntés de quelque autheur luisant!
We have already tried to show that Bothwell was not the mere ‘brave stupid strong-handed Border noble,’‘the rough ignorant moss-trooper,’ but a man of taste and culture. If the Sonnets be genuine, there was actually a contest in literary excellence between Bothwell’s wife and his royal mistress. This queer rivalry would account for the style of Letter VIII., in which Mary labours to prove to Bothwell, as it were, that she is as capable as his wife of writing a fashionable, contorted, literary style, if she chooses: in poetry, too, if she likes. We naturally feel sorry for a man of action who received, at a moment when decisive action was needful, such an epistle as Letter VIII., and we naturally suppose that he never read it, but tossed it into the Casket with an explosion of profane words. But it is just conceivable that Bothwell had a taste for the ‘precious,’ and that, to gratify this taste, and eclipse Lady Bothwell, Mary occasionally wrote in the manner of Letter VIII. or quoted Jason, Medea, and Creusa.
This hypothesis, far-fetched as it may seem, at all events is naturally suggested by Sonnet VI. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that a dexterous forger would sit down to elaborate, whether from genuine materials or not, anything so much out of keeping with his Letter II. as is his Letter VIII. Yet Letter VIII., as we saw, cannot be connected with any known moment of the intrigue.
While the Letters thus vary in style, in tone of sentiment they are all uniform, except Letter II. We are to believe that the forger deliberately laid down a theory of this strange wooing. The Queenthroughout is much more the pursuer than the pursued. Bothwell is cold, careless, breaks promises, is contemptuously negligent, does not write, is suspicious, prefers his wedded wife to his mistress. Contemporary gossip averred that this, in fact, was his attitude. Thus, after Mary had been sent to Loch Leven, Lethington told du Croc that ‘Bothwell had written several times to his first wife, Lady Bothwell, since he lay with the Queen, and in his letters assured Lady Bothwell that he regarded her as his wife, and the Queen as his concubine.’ Lethington reported this to Mary herself, who discredited the fact, but Lethington relied on the evidence of Bothwell’s letters.[381]How could he know anything about them? The belief in Bothwell’s preference of his wife was general, and, doubtless, it may be urged that this explains the line taken by the forger.
The passion, in the Letters, is all on the side of Mary. By her eternal protests of entire submission she recalls to us at once her eager service to Darnley in the first days of their marriage, and her constant promises of implicit obedience to Norfolk. To Norfolk, as to Bothwell (we have already shown), she expresses her hope that ‘you will mistrust me no more.’[382]‘If you be in the wrong I will submit me to you for so writing, and ax your pardon thereof.’ She will beg pardon, even if Norfolk is in the wrong! Precisely in the same tone does Mary (in LetterVIII.), after complaining of Bothwell’s forgetfulness, say, ‘But in spite of all I will not accuse you, either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, seeing that what pleases you pleases me.’
This woman, whose pride is said to be in contradiction with her submission, as expressed in the Casket Letters, writes even to Elizabeth, ‘Je me sousmetray à vos commandemants.’[383]In Letter VIII. Bothwell is congratulated on ‘votre victoire et mon agreable perte.’ To Elizabeth Mary writes ‘Vous aurés fayt une profitable conqueste de moy.’
That any forger should have known Mary so well as to place her, imaginatively, as regarded Bothwell, in the very attitude which we see that, on occasion, she chose later to adopt in fact, as regarded Norfolk, is perhaps beyond belief. It may be urged that she probably, in early days, wrote to Darnley in this very tone, that Darnley’s papers would fall into his father’s hands, and that Lennox would hand them over as materials to the forger. But ‘it is to consider too curiously to consider thus.’
Such are the arguments, for the defence and the attack, which may be drawn from internal evidence of style. To myself this testimony seems rather in favour of the authenticity of considerable and compromising portions of the papers.
Letter VIII. (intended to prove a contract of marriage with Bothwell) remains an enigma to me:the three Letters proving Mary’s eagerness for the abduction are not without suspicious traits. The epistle about bringing Lord Robert to kill Darnley in a quarrel is involved in the inconsistencies which we have shown to beset that affair. The note about the waiting-woman was hardly worth forging, compromising as it is. Letter I. seems to me certainly authentic, if we adopt the scheme of dates suggested, and reject that of ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ which appears to be official, and answers to Lennox’s demands for dates. It may be merely Lennoxian, but no other scheme of chronology is known to have been put in by the accusers. Letter I., if our dates are admitted, implies the existence of a letter answering to Letter II., which I have had to regard as, in some parts at least, genuine. If forgery and tampering were attempted (as I think they certainly were in the letter never produced, but described by Lennox and Moray, and perhaps in other cases), who was the criminal?
My reply will have been anticipated. Whoever held the pen of the forger, Lethington must have directed the scheme. This idea, based on we know not what information, though I shall offer a conjecture, occurred to Elizabeth, as soon as she heard the first whisper of the existence of the Letters, in June-July, 1567. On July 21, de Silva mentioned to her what he had heard—that the Lords held certain Letters ‘proving that the Queen had been cognisant of the murder of her husband. She told me it wasnot true, though Lethington had behaved badly in the matter.’[384]The person from whom Elizabeth thus early heard something connecting Lethington, in an evil way, with the affair must have been Robert Melville. His position was then peculiar. He was first accredited to Elizabeth, on June 5, 1567, by Mary, Bothwell, and Lethington.[385]Melville left Scotland, for Mary, on June 5, returned to Scotland, and again rode to London on June 21, as the envoy of some of her enemies. Now June 21 was the day of the opening of the Casket, and inspection of its contents. A meeting of the Privy Council was held on that day, but Lethington’s name is not among those of the nobles who attended it.[386]The minutes of the Council say not a word about the Casket, though the members attending Council were, with several others, present, so Morton declared, at the opening of the Casket. Though not at the Council, Lethington was at the Casket scene, according to Morton. And on that very day, Lethington wrote a letter to Cecil, the bearer being Robert Melville, who, says Lethington, is sent ‘onsuddendispatch.’[387]Melville, in addition to Lethington’s letter, carried a verbal message to Cecil, as the letter proves. We may glean the nature of the verbal message from the letter itself.
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. ‘Jhonea 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 towomen, 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 beenprivatelyshown 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, ifhecould 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 offeredthe 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 didnothold 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 tothe 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 owncountry’ for Bothwell.[393]
Compare, in the Lennox version of the letter never produced (p. 214)—
(a) The loss of her dowry inFrance.(b) Her titles to the crown ofEngland.(c) The crownof her realm.
(a) The loss of her dowry inFrance.
(b) Her titles to the crown ofEngland.
(c) The crownof 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.
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 followsa 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]
Randolph had been stirring the story of Lethington’s opening the coffer in a green cover, in the autumn of 1570. Charges and counter-charges as to the band for murdering Darnley had been flying about. On January 10, 1571, Cecil darkly writes to Kirkcaldy that of Lethington he ‘has heard such things as he dare not believe.’[395]This cannot refer to the declaration, by Paris, that Lethington was in the murder, forthatnews was stale fifteen months earlier.
As to the hand that may have done whatever unfair work was done, we can hope for no certainty. Robert Melville, in 1573, being taken out of the fallen Castle, and examined, stated that ‘he thinkis that the lard of Grange’ (Kirkcaldy) ‘counterfaitit the Regentis’ (Moray’s) ‘handwrite, that was sent to Alixr Hume that nycht.’ But we do not accuse Kirkcaldy.
There is another possible penman, Morton’s jackal,a Lord of Session, Archibald Douglas. That political forgery was deemed quite within the province of a Scottish Judge, or Lord of Session, in the age of the Reformation, we learn from his case. A kinsman of Morton, one of Darnley’s murderers, and present, according to Morton, at the first opening of the Casket, Archibald was accused by his elder brother, William Douglas of Whittingham, of forging letters from Bishop Lesley to Lennox, the favourite of James VI., and others (1580-1581).[396]Of course a Lord of Session might bear false witness against his brother in the flesh, and on the Bench. But perhaps Archibald himself, a forger of other letters, forged the Casket Letters; he had been in France, and may have known French. All things are conceivable about these Douglases.
It is enough to know that experts in forgery, real or reputed, were among Mary’s enemies. But, for what they are worth, the hints which we can still pick up, and have here put together, may raise a kind of presumption that, if falsification there was, the manager was Lethington. ‘The master wit of Lethington was there to shape the plot,’ said Sir John Skelton, though later he fell back on Morton, with his ‘dissolute lawyers and unfrocked priests’—like Archie Douglas.
I do not, it will be observed, profess to be certain,or even strongly inclined to believe, that there was any forgery of Mary’s writings, except in the case of the letter never produced. But, if forgery there was, our scraps and hints of evidence point to Lethington as manager of the plot.
Plate A B
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EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND
One of these two is, in part, not genuine, but imitated
Plate B A
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EXAMPLES OF MARY’S HAND
In one some parts are not genuine, but imitated
The text is Mary to Elizabeth, B. Museum, Calig. C.I. Number 421 in Bain. Calendar II. p. 659 (1900)
As to problems of handwriting, they are notoriously obscure, and the evidence of experts, in courts of justice, is apt to be conflicting. The testimony in the case of Captain Dreyfus cannot yet have been forgotten. In Plates BA, AB the reader will find a genuine letter of Mary to Elizabeth, and a copy in which some of the lines are not her own, but have been imitated for the purpose of showing what can be done in that way. ‘The puzzle is’ to discover which example is entirely by the Queen, and which is partly in imitation of her hand. In Plate F is an imitation of Mary’s hand, as it might have appeared in writing Letter VIII (Henderson’s Letter III.). An imitator as clever as Mr. F. Compton Price (who has kindly supplied these illustrations) would easily have deceived the crowd of Lords who were present at the comparison of the Casket Letters with genuine epistles of Mary to Elizabeth.
Scotland, in that age, was rich in ‘fause notaries’ who made a profession of falsification. In the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, just before Mary’s fall, we find a surgeon rewarded for healing two false notaries, whose right hands had been chopped off at the wrists. (Also for raising up a dead woman who had been buried for two days.) But these professionals wereprobably versed only in native forms of handwriting, whereas that of Mary, as of Bothwell, was the new ‘Roman’ hand. An example of Mary Beaton’s Roman hand is given in Plate C. Probably she had the same writing-master as her Queen, in France, but her hand is much neater and smaller than that of Mary, wearied with her vast correspondence. Probably Mary Beaton, if she chose, could imitate the Queen’s hand, especially as that hand was, before the Queen had written so much. The ‘Maries’ of Mary Stuart, Mary Beaton, and Mary Flemyng are all very similar. But to a layman, Mary Beaton’s hand seems rather akin to that of the copyist of the Sonnets in the Cambridge MSS. (Plate A). The aunts of Mary Beaton, Lady Reres and the Lady of Branxholme, were, after April 1567, on the worst terms with the Queen, railing at her both in talk and in letters. But that Mary Beaton forged the Casket Letters I utterly disbelieve.
Kirkcaldy, whose signature is given, could not have adapted fingers hardened by the sword-hilt to a lady’s Roman hand. Maitland of Lethington, whose signature follows Kirkcaldy’s, would have found the task less impossible, and, if there is any truth in Camden’s anecdote, may perhaps have been able to imitate the Queen’s writing. But if any forged letters or portions of letters were exhibited, some unheard-of underling is most likely to have been the actual culprit.
Plate C
Larger Image
HANDS OF MARY BEATON, KIRKCALDY, LETHINGTON, AND MARY FLEMING
LATER HISTORY OF CASKET AND LETTERS
The best official description of the famous Casket is in the Minutes of the Session of Commissioners at Westminster, on December 7, 1568. It was ‘a small gilt coffer, not fully one foot long, being garnished in many places with the Roman (Italic) letter F set under a king’s crown.’ This minute is in the hand of Cecil’s clerk, and is corrected by Cecil.[397]The Casket was obviously long in shape, not square, like a coffer decorated with Mary’s arms, as Dowager of France, with thistles and other badges, the property of M. Victor Luzarche, and described by him in ‘Un Coffret de Bijoux de Marie Stuart’ (Tours, 1868). Possibly the Casket was thepetite boyte d’argent, which Mary intended to bequeath to Margaret Carwood, if she herself died in childbed in 1566.[398]
The Casket with the Letters was in Morton’s hands till shortly before his death in 1581. On November 8, 1582, Bowes, Elizabeth’s envoy in Scotland, wrote to Walsingham about the Casket. He had learned from a bastard of Morton’s, the Prior (lay) of Pluscarden, that the box was now in the possession of Gowrie,son of the Ruthven of Riccio’s murder, and himself engaged in that deed. Gowrie was at this time master of James’s person. Bowes thought that Gowrie would not easily give up the Casket to Elizabeth, who desired it.[399]
After trying to get agents to steal the Casket, Bowes sought to induce Gowrie to give it up, with promises of ‘princely thanks and gratuity.’ Gowrie was not willing to admit the fact of possession, but Bowes proved that the coffer had reached him through Sandy Jordan, a servant of the late Earl of Morton. Gowrie then said that, without the leave of James, and of the nobles, who had dragged down Mary, he could not part with the treasure, as the Letters warranted their action—undertaken before they knew that such Letters existed! However, Gowrie promised to look for the Casket, and consider of the matter. On November 24, Bowes again wrote. Mary was giving out that the Letters ‘were counterfeited by her rebels,’ and was trying to procure them, or have them destroyed. To keep them would involve danger to Gowrie. Bowes would obtain the consent of the other lords interested, ‘a matter more easy to promise than to perform;’ finally Gowrie ought to give them to Elizabeth ‘for thesecrecyand benefit of the cause.’ Mary’s defenders may urge that this ‘secrecy’ is suspicious. Gowrie would think of it, but he must consult James, which, Bowes said, ‘should adventure great danger to the cause.’ OnDecember 2, Bowes wrote about another interview with Gowrie, who said that the Duke of Lennox (Stewart d’Aubigny, the banished and now dead favourite of James) had sought to get the Letters, and that James knew where they were, and nothing could be done without James’s consent.[400]
Plate D
SIDE OF CASKET WITH ARMS OF HAMILTON
RAISED WORK ON ROOF OF CASKET
Gowrie was executed for treason in May, 1584, and of the Casket no more is heard. Goodall, in 1754, supposed that the Earl of Angus got it as Morton’s ‘heir by tail,’ whereas we know that Gowrie succeeded Morton as custodian. In an anonymous writer of about 1660, Goodall found that ‘the box and letters were at that time to be seen with the Marquis of Douglas; and it is thought by some they are still in that family, though others say they have since been seen at Hamilton.’[401]In 1810, Malcolm Laing, the historian, corresponded on the subject with Mr. Alexander Young, apparently the factor, or chamberlain, of the Duke of Hamilton. He could hear nothing of the Letters, but appears to have been told about a silver casket at Hamilton, rather less than a foot in length. A reproduction of that casket, by the kindness of the Duke of Hamilton, is given in this book. Laing maintained that, without the F’s, crowned as mentioned in Cecil’s minute, the casket could not be Mary’s Casket. In any case it is a beautiful work of art, of Mary’s age, and has been well described by Lady Baillie-Hamilton in ‘A HistoricalRelic,’Macmillan’s Magazine.[402]Lady Baillie-Hamilton, when staying at Hamilton Palace, asked to be shown a ring which Mary bequeathed to Lord John Hamilton, created Marquis in 1599. The ring was produced from a silver box, which also contained papers. One of these, written probably about 1700-1715, gave the history of the box itself. It was ‘bought from a Papist’ by the Marchioness of Douglas, daughter of George (first Marquis of Huntly). In 1632 this lady became the second wife of William, first Marquis of Douglas. Her eldest son married Lady Anne Hamilton, heiress of James, first Duke of Hamilton, who later became Duchess of Hamilton in her own right, her husband (Lord William Douglas, later Earl of Selkirk) bearing the ducal title. The Marchioness of Douglas bought the box from a papist at an unknown date after 1632, the box being sold as the Casket. The Marchioness ‘put her own arms thereon,’ the box having previously borne ‘the Queen’s arms.’ The Marchioness bequeathed her plate to her son, Lord John Douglas, who sold it to a goldsmith. The daughter-in-law of the Marchioness, namely the Duchess of Hamilton, purchased the box from the goldsmith, as she had learned from the Marchioness that it was the historical Casket, and, by her husband’s desire, she effaced the arms of the Marchioness, and put on her own, as may be seen in Plate D. Only one key was obtained by the Duchess, and is shown lying beside the Casket. The lock hasbeen, at some time, ‘stricken up,’ as Morton says that the lock of the Casket was (see Plate E). The box is ‘not fully a foot long’; it measures eight inches in length. The scroll-work (Plate E) and bands have been gilded, but the whole piece has not been ‘overgilt,’ as in Morton’s description. That by the English Commissioners at York, ‘a little coffer of silver and gilt,’ better describes the relic. It is pronounced to be ‘French work of the early part of the sixteenth century,’ but Lady Baillie-Hamilton observes that the scroll-work closely resembles the tooling on a book of Catherine de’ Medici, now in the British Museum.
Plate E
CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY
FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN ‘STRICKEN UP’
Is the Hamilton Casket the historical Casket? It has the advantage of a fairly long pedigree in that character, as we have seen. But where are ‘the many Roman letters F set under a king’s crown,’ of Cecil’s description, which is almost literally copied in the memorandum added to the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection’? Buchanan did not insert this memorandum, it is merely borrowed from Cecil’s description, a fact of which Lady Baillie-Hamilton was not aware. There is no room on the panel now occupied by the Duchess of Hamilton’s arms formanycrowned F’s. Only a cypher of two F’s interlaced and crowned could have found space on that panel. Conceivably F’s were attached in some way, and later removed, but there is no trace of them. We can hardly suppose that, as in the case of the coffer with a crimson cover, which was sent toMary at Loch Leven, the crowned F’s were worked in gold on the covering velvet. Dr. Sepp, in 1884, published, in a small pamphlet, the document rediscovered by Lady Baillie-Hamilton. He was informed that there were small crowned F’s stamped on the bottom of the box, but these Lady Baillie-Hamilton accounts for as ‘the mark of a French silversmith, consisting of a distinctive sign surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and a crown.’ Thus for lack of any certainty about the ‘many or sundry’ crowned F’s, this beautiful piece of work shares in the doubt and mystery which seem inseparable from Mary Stuart.
Very possibly the Hamilton Casket may be the other of the ‘twa silver cofferis’ seen by Hepburn of Bowton at Dunbar (seep. xvi). Tradition, knowing that the Casket had been Mary’s, would easily confuse it with the other more famous coffer, full of evils as the Casket of Pandora.
THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL
Monsieur Jusserand, the well-known writer on English and Scottish literature, has kindly allowed me to print the following letter on the burial-place of Bothwell, and on the body which is traditionally regarded as his corpse.
Légation de France, à Copenhague, December 26, 1900.
My dear Lang,—Our poor Queen’s last scoundrel lies low in a darksome place.
The Faarvejle church is quite isolated on a little eminence formerly washed by the water of a fiord now dried up (the work of an agricultural company which expectedgreat benefits and lost much money instead). There is no village around; the houses are scattered rather thinly throughout the country—a very frequent case in Denmark.
Faarvejle Church (actual state).
(1) A side chapel used for burials, now attached to the Zytphen-Adeler family. ‘Bothwell’ was buried in it, and removed to the vault under the chancel when the Z.-A. family had some time adopted it.
(2) The entrance porch, with a fine oak door ornamented with iron work representing the dragons of ‘Drags’-holm.
This church is, however, the one from which the castle of Dragsholm has ever, ecclesiastically, depended. Castle and church are at some distance: about twenty miles drive.
The castle was formerly a royal one; it was so in Bothwellian times.[403]Little remains of the old building; it was burnt during the Swedish wars in the seventeenth century; and rebuilt by the Zytphen-Adeler family (of Dutch origin); it still belongs to them.
Only the walls have been preserved; they are of red brick; but the actual owner has caused them to be whitewashed throughout. The characteristic great tower it used to have in Hepburnian times has been destroyed. Almost no trace of any style is left, and the house, big as it is, is plain enough. The park around it is fine, with plenty of deer, hares, &c. The sea is near at hand and you see it from the walls.
As for the mummy, it lies in an oak coffin now preserved in a vault under the floor of the nave in the Faarvejle church. This vault is under the passage in the middle, near the step leading to the choir. The wooden planks on the floor are removed, a ladder is provided, and you find yourself in a subterranean chamber, with coffins piled on the top of one another, right and left. ‘Bothwell’s’ stands apart on the left; it is an oak chest; as it was in a bad state, the present Baron Zytphen-Adeler has caused it to be placed in another one, with a sheet of glass allowing the head to be seen. But he kindly allowed me to see the body complete. The man must have been rather tall, not very; the hands and feet havea very fine and aristocratic appearance; the mummifying process may have something to do with this appearance; yet I think some of it came from nature. The head is absolutely hairless; the face is close shaven; the skull has no hair. I noticed, however, on the top of it faint traces of reddish-brown hair, but extremely close cropped. Horace Marryat, who saw it in 1859, says (in the same innocent fashion as if he had been performing a pious rite) that he ‘severed a lock of his red and silver hair.’ If he really did so, he must have severed all that was left. (‘Residence in Jutland,’ 1860.)
The skin remains; the nose, very prominent and arched, is complete; the mouthverybroad. The jawbone is prominent (partly on account of the drying up of the flesh). The hind part of the skull is broad and deep. The arms are folded on the chest, below which the body is still wrapped in its winding sheet, only the feet emerging from it. The head lies on some white stuff which seems to be silk. All about the body is a quantity of vegetable remains, looking like broken sticks; they told me it was hops, supposed to have preserving qualities.
As for the authenticity of the relic, there is no absolute proof. It is probable and likely; not certain. That Bothwell died in Dragsholm and was buried in Faarvejle church is certain. The coffin has no mark, no inscription, no sign whatever allowing identification. But, if not Bothwell, who can this be—for thereitis? That careful embalming is not a usual process; the other people buried in the church either have their names on their coffins or are not of such importance as to justify such a costly process.
A careful burial and no name on the tomb tally rather well with the circumstances: for the man was a great man, the husband of a Queen; and yet what was to be done with his body? would he not be sent back to Scotland some day? what rites should be allowed him?Even before his death Bothwell had become, so to say, anonymous; and, to get rid of importunities, the Danish King, Fred. II., had allowed the rumour of his death to be spread several years before it happened.
The question remains an open one. J. J. A. Worsaae believed in the authenticity of the relic. The professor of anatomy, I. Ibsen, has also pronounced in its favour. Others have disagreed. Anatomici certant.
THE BURNING OF LYON KING OF ARMS
Among the mysteries of Mary’s reign, none is more obscure than the burning of Sir William Stewart, the Lyon King at Arms: at St. Andrews, in August, 1569. In 1560, Stewart was Ross Herald, and carried letters between Mary and Elizabeth.[404]On February 11, 1568, when Moray was Regent, we find Stewart sent on a mission to Denmark. He was to try to obtain the extradition of Bothwell, or, at least, to ask that he might be more strictly guarded.[405]Now we know that, according to Moray, Bothwell’s valet, Paris, did not arrive in Scotland from Denmark till June, 1569, though he was handed over to Captain Clark in October, 1568. Miss Strickland conjectured that Sir William Stewart, now Lyon Herald, brought back Paris from Denmark, learned from him that Mary was innocent, and Moray’s associates culpable, and so had to be put out of the way. But the Lyon Herald returned to Scotland without Paris, a year before Paris; for he was in Scotland by July, 1568, and Paris did not land till June, 1569.
On July 20, 1568, Drury informs Cecil that Moray‘has understanding who has determined to kill him,’ and has enlisted a bodyguard of thirty gentlemen. Drury adds—I cite him in his native orthography—
‘I send unto your h. herewt. some pease off the woorke that the conjurers that dyd vse theyre develysshe skyle dyd devyse above Edenborogh, the platte whereoff I sente you before paynted.[406]And so ajayne I humbly take my leave.
‘Some money they fownde. Will Stwart kyng off herauldee one off the parte players he that they judge schoold be the fynder off the threasure, schoold be the rejente.’
Here Drury speaks of ‘conjurers,’ who have played some prank involving discovery of a treasure. Stewart was one of the party, but what is meant by ‘he that they judge should be finder of the treasure, should be Regent’? There is, apparently, some connection between the treasure hunt and the plot to kill Moray, and Stewart is mixed up with the magic of the treasure hunters. We know that Napier of Merchistoun, inventor of Logarithms, was to assist Logan of Restalrig to find treasure, ‘by arts to him known,’ at a later date. Probably the divining rod was to be employed, as in a case cited by Scott.
But in 1568, Napier of the Logarithms was only a boy of eighteen.
Returning to the plot to kill Moray: on August 14, 1568, Patrick Hepburn, bastard of the Bishop of Moray, and cousin of Bothwell, was taken in Scone, by Ruthven and Lindsay, brought before Moray at Stirling, and thence taken to Edinburgh. He was examined, revealed the nature of the plot, and gave up the names of his accomplices.[407]
This Patrick Hepburn was parson of Kynmoir by simoniacal arrangement with his father, the Bishop. Itseems possible that Stewart met Bothwell, when he was in Denmark, in the spring of the year, and induced him to arrange a conspiracy with his cousin, Patrick Hepburn. Before Hepburn was taken, the Lyon Herald, on August 2, fled to Dumbarton, where he was safe under the protection of Lord Fleming, then holding Dumbarton Castle for Mary.[408]The Herald ‘was suspecte of conspiracy against the life of the Regent, the Earll of Moray.’ He lost his place as Lyon King at Arms, and Sir David Lindsay was appointed to the office, held under James V. by his poet namesake. On August 19, Sir William Stewart wrote, from Dumbarton, a letter to a lord, not named. This lord had written to ask Fleming to give up Stewart, who believes that he was instigated by some other. ‘For I cannot think that you can be so ingrate as to seek my innocent life and blood, considering that I have so favourably and so oft forewarned you of the great misery that you are like to fall into now, for not following my counsel and admonitions made oft and in due time.’ Here we see Stewart claiming foreknowledge of events. ‘Desist, I pray you, to seek further my blood, for as I shall answer to the eternal God, I never conspired or consented to the Earl of Moray’s death.... I fear you not, nor none of that monstrous faction, for, as God is the defender of innocents, so is he the just and severe punisher of cruel monsters and usurpers, who spare not to execute all kind of cruelty, under the pretext of religion and justice.... But there be some of his own secret Council that both directly and indirectly have sought that bloody usurper’s life, whom I shall name as occasion shall serve....’ Stewart again protests his own innocence, apparently with conviction. He ends ‘I pray you be favourable to the Parson of Kenmore’ (Patrick Hepburn), ‘and with such as have meddled with my apparel, bows, and books,to keep all well till meeting, which will be soon God willing....’[409]
This letter shows Stewart as a believer in foreknowledge of events, as one who hates Moray, ‘a bloody usurper,’ and as acquainted with a plot against Moray by his intimates. Lethington and Sir James Balfour were more or less at odds with Moray, about this time, but we have no evidence that they conspired to kill him.
How it happened we do not know, but Stewart was captured, despite the protection of Dumbarton Castle. On October 4, 1568, his reception there was one of the charges made, perhaps by John Wood, against Mary’s party, ‘Lord Fleming refusing his delivery.’[410]At all events, on August 5, 1569, we find Stewart imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, as also was Paris, who, says Moray, arrived at Leith in June of the year. On August 5, both men were taken to St. Andrews, ‘there to be punished according to their demerits.’[411]
On the same day, August 5, 1569, Stewart wrote from the Castle a piteous letter to ‘the most merciful Regent.’ He declared, as to the conspiracy of 1568, that he only knew of it by public talk. ‘The bruit of your Grace’s murder was tossed up and down at Edinburgh.’ Even if Stewart foreknew and concealed the plot, ‘yet till the principal devisers are tried and convicted, I cannot be accused.’ Stewart himself first heard of the conspiracy on July 21, 1568, from Patrick Hepburn. The comptroller (Tullibardine) had, on that day, ‘purged himself’ of the affair at Stirling. Now July 21 was the day after Drury gave his second notice of the treasure-hunt by magic, somehow involving a new regent, in which Stewart was concerned. Stewart cannot be accurate in referring his first hearsay knowledge of the conspiracy to July 21, 1568.
He goes on excusing himself. He could not believe that the persons implicated by Patrick Hepburn ever contemplated the murder of Moray, who knows their names. Moreover, there is some one who predicted many events to Stewart, such as Darnley’s murder, the fall of Bothwell, ‘the death of Lyon Herald, and my promotion, the Queen’s deliverance,’ Langside, ‘and other predictions which have proved true.’ This soothsayer said that Moray was only in danger from ‘domestical treason.’ Therefore, Stewart disbelieved wholly in Patrick Hepburn’s story of a plot, and so did not divulge it. As witness, he cites ‘a certain courtier’ to whom he had given the same reason for his scepticism, in the middle of July, 1568. He adds that he thinks it wrong, following St. Paul, to resist ‘tyrants and usurpers.’ He regarded Moray as a tyrant and usurper, we have seen, in August, 1568. He ends by offering disclosures, privately, and asking for mercy.[412]
On August 15, 1569, ‘William Stewart, being convictit for witcherie, was burnt, and the said Paris, convictit for ane of the slayaris of the King, wes hangit in Sanctandrois,’ says the ‘Diurnal.’
Now, why was Lyon Herald burned? If there was a conspiracy, in July, 1568, no others suffered for it. It was easy to convict Stewart for ‘witchery’: he confessed to dealings with a soothsayer, and the Kirk was beginning its campaign against witches. But what was the political or personal reason for Moray’s cruelty? Had he seen Stewart’s letter of August 19, 1568?
As to the soothsayer, he may have been a familiar spirit, but he may also have been the Laird of Merchistoun, Napier, the father of the inventor of Logarithms. One of his prophecies to Stewart dealt with Mary’s escape from Loch Leven. And Nau, Mary’s secretary, writes, ‘The Laird of Merchistoun, who had the reputation of beinga great wizard, made bets with several persons, to the amount of 500 crowns, that by the 5th of May, her Majesty would be out of Loch Leven.’[413]
Thus there were two wizard Lairds of Merchistoun, the scientific son (the treasure-hunter for the laird of Restalrig) and his father.
For the rest, the conspiracy against Moray, in July, 1568, and the secret as to the cause of Lyon Herald’s death, remain mysterious.[414]