The History Of Scotland - Volume 7: From The Early 17th Century To The Bishops' War

THE CASKET LETTERS

 

THE letters which Mary is said to have written to Bothwell, before Darnley's murder, and before her own abduction, were the only direct proof which her brother and (if she really was guilty) her accomplices could bring against her. When Mary surrendered at Carberry (June 15, 1567), and when the Lords had shut her up in Loch Leven Castle, utterly immured from the world, they needed something to justify their conduct in the eyes of Christian princes. What they needed they got with almost miraculous promptitude. On June 19 a servant of Bothwell's, named George Dalgleish, was sent by his master from Dunbar to Edinburgh Castle. Bothwell had stored his title-deeds and other objects of value in the castle, and had entrusted the command of the fortress to his creature and accomplice, Sir James Balfour, an elder of the Kirk, and, of old (1547), a fellowcaptive of Knox in France. But, even before Carberry, Balfour had been won over from the cause of Bothwell and Mary by Lethington, who deserted Mary's cause just after she had saved his life from Bothwell. On the arrival of Dalgleish to remove Bothwell's property from the castle, information was sent to Morton, who was at dinner with Lethington. Then, according to Morton's sworn declaration, search was made for Dalgleish; he was found, was examined, and, on threat of torture, gave up a small silver-gilt coffer or casket, bearing the crown and cypher (F, in the new "Italian" hand) of Francis, Mary's first husband. On June 21 the box was broken open in the presence of Morton, Lethington, and various members of the Privy Council. A messenger, George Douglas, one of Riccio's murderers, was at once sent to carry a letter of Lethington's to Cecil, and a verbal narrative "to Robert Melville, then representing both Mary and her opponents, at the Court of Elizabeth.

 

It is impossible to doubt that the verbal message was a report on the contents of the silver casket, which, on June 21, had been inspected by the persons who opened it. No reference is made to the subject in the minutes of the Privy Council of June 21, and no inventory of the contents of the casket was made, or, at all events, was produced. We have only Morton's word for the nature and number of the papers found, and for the fact that he preserved them without adding or taking away any article. At a later date, Randolph (October 15, 1570) avers that Lethington and Balfour opened a small coffer, "covered with green " (cloth or velvet) in the castle, and removed the band for Darnley's murder, and Drury mentions (in October 28, 1567) the same abstraction. This was done, if Randolph is right, in the castle, before the casket reached the hands of Morton, supposing it to be the same casket. The contents, as described by Morton, and as exhibited to the English Commissioners at York and Westminster in 1568, were eight unsigned and undated and unaddressed letters, averred to be from Mary to Both well, two marriage contracts between them, and a sequence of love poems, more or less in the form of the sonnet. The Spanish ambassador in London, de Silva, heard from the French ambassador that, in June-July 1567, copies of the papers were given to du Croc (the French envoy with Mary) to take to France. Of these, no more is known; they have not been found in French archives, nor are they cited in French despatches. When versions of some of the letters were published abroad with Buchanan's 'Detection ' (1571-1573) we never hear that the French Government made any allusion to the copies carried in July 1567 by du Croc. This must be remembered when it is suggested that, in 1568, a letter may have been shown, which differed from a letter alleged to have existed in 1567.

 

In July 1567, Throckmorton, then in Scotland, was informed by the Lords that they had evidence of Mary's guilt in her own handwriting. Again, de Silva, the Spanish ambassador, in July 1567, elicited from Elizabeth the statement that she did not believe in the letters, and that, in her opinion, " Lethington had behaved badly in that matter." I suspect that Robert Melville, who was much attached to Mary (though he was acting for the Lords), may have suggested these ideas to Elizabeth, on the first receipt of the news about the casket. It is plain that the Lords had really discovered the casket and some papers. The only apparent opportunity for tampering with them in any way, before they were seen by Morton on June 21, was that enjoyed by Sir James Balfour and Lethington, while the casket was still in the castle. Afterwards, of course, the Lords could do as they pleased, till May-June 1568, when Murray sent John Wood, with Scots translations of the letters, to Elizabeth. Whether she and Cecil, or others, saw these translations does not appear to be certain. If Cecil and Elizabeth did see these Scots translations, in the summer of 1568, and if these versions varied from those later produced, the reader must estimate for himself the chances that the English Queen and her minister would draw attention to the differences. In December 1567 the Scottish Parliament was informed that the Lords possessed guilty letters of Mary's " written and subscribed with her own hand." As the extant copies of the letters are not "subscribed " or signed, much has been built on this point by Mary's defenders. In the Act of Parliament the phrase " signed " or "subscribed" is withdrawn. The point is not worth wrangling about; the former statement, that the letters are " subscribed," is probably a mere misdescription. There was no difficulty in forging Mary's signature, had that been thought advisable by her accusers. It is not absolutely clear that the letters were inspected in this Parliament. We might gather that this was done from a later protest of the Lords of Mary's party (September 12, 1568). They speak of "her Majesty's writing produced in Parliament," and then go on to say that no "plain mention " of Darnley's murder is made in the letters, even if written by Mary's hand, which they are not. Moreover, "some principal and substantial clauses " have been garbled by the accusers. This is very obscure. The letters are not in Mary's hand, yet, if only some clauses are garbled, the substance, though not in the Queen's hand, is apparently admitted to be of her composition. The argument seems to be that the accusers, possessing genuine letters of Mary's, have had the substance copied in imitation of her writing, with additions and alterations. The Lords, it seems, could only assert all this, if they had seen and read the letters, in Parliament. If they did, and if, when the letters were published in 1571-1573, they varied from the letters read in Parliament, we might expect Mary's friends to point to the variations as a proof of dishonest usage. We do not find that this was done. But it is conceivable that the protest of Mary's Lords, in September 1568, was worded by Lesley, Bishop of Ross.

 

Mary had denied the authorship of the letters, and asserted that there were men and women in Scotland, " and principally such as are in company with themselves," who could counterfeit her hand. Her Lords may have put forth their plea without having inspected the letters closely, but the letters were certainly produced in Parliament, whether studied there or not. And there is no later trace of any hint, on Mary's side, that either the copies given to du Croc, or those produced in Parliament, were not identical with the letters afterwards printed and published. Lesley, or any other pamphleteer on Mary's side, if in possession of copies of the letters as produced in Parliament in 1567 (which he may not have been), ought to have insisted on any changes in the letters as later published. That this was never done is a powerful though perhaps not necessarily a conclusive argument against a theory now to be mentioned. There are traces of the existence, in 1567 and 1568, of a letter attributed to Mary by her enemies, at that time, but never produced by them.

 

This curious matter stands thus: Murray was in France at the time of the discovery of the casket June 20-21, 1567. On July 8, 1567, Robert Melville, who had returned to Scotland, sent one John a Ferret to Cecil. John is to go on to Murray, and a packet of letters for Murray is to be forwarded " with the greatest diligence that may be." It once occurred to me that John a Forret might be John Wood, a great ally of Murray, but more probably he was Forret of Forret in Fifeshire. Murray arrived from France into England on July 23. He saw de Silva, the Spanish ambassador, who on August 2 wrote to Philip of Spain. De Silva says that Murray told him something that he had not told even " this Queen " (Elizabeth). Mary, he said, was certainly cognisant of Darnley's murder. Murray then cited what, he declared, he had heard about a letter of Mary's " from a man who had read it." Here we have only de Silva's report of Murray's oral version of an oral account of a letter of Mary, as given by a man who "had read it." One might suppose that in the packet of letters sent to Murray from Scotland, on July 9, would be transcripts of the Casket Letters opened on June 21. To send to Murray a mere oral report in a messenger's memory seems a strange proceeding. However, de Silva's account of Murray's repetition of the other unnamed man's version of a letter which he " had read " exactly answers, in essentials, to Lennox's account, written in 1568, of the same letter.

 

It is not likely to be denied that Lennox, in 1568 (say July or August), and Murray, in July 1567, have a common source for their description of a letter never produced...