MARY

MARY. By comparing different proclamations of the rebels with the several despatches of Throgmorton, who was then Elizabeth's resident in Scotland, Mr Whitaker has made it appear in the highest degree probable, that Dalgleish was not seized till the 17th of July; that he was then, in consequence of an order issued by the court of session, apprehended, together with Powrie, another of Bothwell's servants, in that nobleman's lodgings in the palace of Holyroodhouse; and that therefore he could not be the bearer of the letters intercepted by the earl of Morton on the 20th of June. What adds greatly to this probability is the account which the rebels themselves give of his examination. A few days after he was taken, he was examined, say they, judicially, in a council where the earls of Morton and Athol are marked as present. It was natural upon this occasion to make inquiries about the casket and the papers. No questions, however, were put to him on that subject. He was not confronted with Sir James Balfour, from whom he had received the casket; nor with the domestics of the earl of Morton, by whom it was said that he had been apprehended. He was kept in prison many months after this examination; and during a period when the rebels were infinitely pressed to apologize for their violence against the queen, there were opportunities without number of bringing him to a confession. These opportunities, however, were avoided; and there exists not the slightest evidence that the casket and the papers had ever been in his possession. Is it then to be supposed, that if the casket and the papers had really been discovered with him, the establishment of a fact so important would have been neglected by the adversaries of the queen? No! they would have established it by the most complete evidence; which they were so far from attempting to do, that the earliest account which they give of their pretended seizure of the letters is dated fifteen months after the event itself, and nearly nine months after the death of Dalgleish. To have blazoned their discovery at the time they pretend it was made, might have been attended with very disagreeable consequences: for Dalgleish, who at his execution, asserted the innocence of the queen, and actually charged the earls of Murray and Morton as the contrivers of the murder, might have found proof that the casket could not possibly have been intercepted in his custody.

The 20th of June 1567 is fixed as the era of the discovery of the letters. If this discovery had been real, the triumph of the enemies of the queen would have been infinite. They would not have delayed one moment to proclaim their joy, and to reveal to her indignant subjects the fulness and the infamy of her guilt. They preserved, however, a long and a profound silence. It was not till the 4th of December 1567 that the papers received their first mark of notice or distinction; nor till the 16th of September 1568, that the earl of Morton was said to have intercepted them with Dalgleish. From the 20th day of June to the 4th day of December, many transactions and events of the highest importance had taken place, and the most powerful motives that have influence with men had called upon them to publish their discovery.

Mary. covery. They yet made no production of the papers, and ventured not to appeal to them. In the proclamation which they issued for apprehending Bothwell, they inveigh against his guilt, and express an anxious desire to punish the regicides: yet though this deed was posterior to the 20th of June, there is no assertion in it to the dishonour of the queen; and it contains no mention of the box and the letters. An ambassador arrived in this interval from France, to inquire into the rebellion and the imprisonment of the queen; yet they apologized not for their conduct by communicating to him the contents of the casket. To Throgmorton, who had instructions to act with Mary as well as with her adversaries, they denied the liberty of waiting upon her at Lochleven, where she was detained a close prisoner; and they were earnest to impress him with the idea that her love of Bothwell was incurable. He pressed them on the subject of their behaviour to her. At different times they attempted formally to vindicate themselves; and they were uniformly vehement on the topic of the love which she bore to that nobleman. Yet they abstained from producing the letters to him. "They even spoke of her to him with respect and reverence," which surely they could not possibly have done had they been then in possession of the letters. They were solicitous to divide the faction of the nobles who adhered to the queen; and there could not have been a measure so effectual for this end as the production of the casket and its contents; yet they called no convention of her friends, to surprise and disunite them with this fatal discovery. They flattered the Protestant clergy, attended assemblies of the church, instilled into them a belief of the queen's being guilty of murder and adultery, and incited Mr Knox to "inveigh against her vehemently in his sermons, to persuade extremities towards her, and (as Throgmorton continues) to threaten the great plague of God against the whole country and nation if she should be spared from her condign punishment;" but they ventured not to excite the fury of these ghostly fathers by exhibiting to them the box and the letters. They compelled the queen to subscribe a resignation of her crown; and they had the strongest reason to be solicitous to justify this daring transaction. The box and the letters would have served as a complete vindication of them; yet they neglected to take any notice of these important vouchers; and were contented with resting on the wild and frivolous pretence that the queen, from sickness and fatigue, was disgusted with the care of her kingdom.

To the irrefragable proof of the forgery of the letters arising from their having been so long concealed, it has been replied, that the rebels could not produce them sooner with any regard to their own safety. "A considerable number of their fellow subjects, headed by some of the most powerful noblemen in the kingdom, was combined against them. This combination they could not hope to break or to vanquish without aid either from France or England. In the former kingdom, Mary's uncles, the duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine, were at that period all-powerful, and the king himself was devotedly attached to her. The loading the queen, therefore, with the imputation of being accessory to the murder of her

husband, would be deemed such an inexpiable crime by the court of France, as must cut off every hope of countenance or aid from that quarter. From England, with which the principal confederates had been long and intimately connected, they had many reasons to expect more effectual support; but to their astonishment, Elizabeth condemned their proceedings with asperity. Her high notions of royal authority, and of the submission due by subjects, induced her on this occasion to exert herself in behalf of Mary, not only with sincerity but with zeal: she negotiated, she solicited, she threatened. From all these circumstances, the confederates had every reason to apprehend that Mary would soon obtain her liberty, and by some accommodation be restored to the whole, or at least to a considerable portion, of her authority as sovereign; and therefore they were afraid of the consequences of accusing her publicly of crimes so atrocious as adultery and murder."

This apology for the rebels consists of assertions for which there is no evidence, and of arguments which are wholly untenable. There is no evidence that Elizabeth exerted herself in behalf of Mary with sincerity and with zeal. If she had, she would have done more than threaten. An English army of 3000 men, aided by the Scottish combination which continued faithful to the queen, would have overturned the rebel government in the space of a month. It is inconceivable that the rebels were prevented by any apprehension of the queen's restoration from accusing her of the crimes of murder and adultery; for we learn from a despatch of Throgmorton's, dated the 19th of July 1567, that "men of good regard did then boldly and overtly by their speech, utter great rigour and extremity against their sovereign; saving, it shall not be in the power of any within this realm, neither without, to keep her from condign punishment for her notorious crimes." From another despatch of the same ambassador's, dated five days after the former, we learn, that through him they actually did accuse her to Elizabeth of "incontinency, as well with the earl of Bothwell as with others, and likewise of the murder of her husband, of which, they said, they had as apparent proof against her as might be; as well by the testimony of her own hand writing, which they had recovered, as also by sufficient witnesses." This testimony, however, was not produced till more than four months afterwards; a certain proof, that though it was now in the hands of the manufacturers, it was not yet ready for inspection.

But let us take the facts of this ablest antagonist of Mary as he has stated them, and consider the argument which they are made to support. It is apparent, from the last quoted despatch of Throgmorton*, that it could not be unknown, either to the court of France or the court of England, that the rebels were at all events determined to crown the prince, and either to put the queen to death or to keep her a close prisoner for life. These desperate enterprises, however, could not, it seems, be carried into effect without the countenance and aid of Elizabeth or Charles: but Elizabeth's notions of regal authority, and of the submission due by subjects, were high; and the French king was devotedly attached to the dethroned queen. If this was so, common sense says, that the business of the confederates, since they expected aid from these princes,

Mary. princes, was to charge Mary at once with the murder and adultery, and support the charge with the most convincing evidence which they had to produce. No! says this apologist of theirs, Charles IX. would have considered such conduct as a crime inexpiable, though he might reasonably be expected to give them his countenance in putting to death, or keeping in perpetual prison, for a comparatively venial offence, the queen to whom he was devotedly attached! This is strange reasoning; but it seems not to have occurred to the rebels themselves. The letters made their first appearance in a secret council assembled by the earl of Murray on the 4th of December 1567; and the reason there assigned by the confederates for their unwillingness to produce them was, "That luf they beare unto hir person, wha sometime was theire soveraine, and for the reverance of his majestie, whais moder she is, as alsa thay mony gude and excellent gifts and vertues quherewith God sometimes indowit hir." And they proceed to say, that they would not have produced them at all, "gif otherwise the sinceritie of their intentions and proceedings from the beginninge myht be known to forrein nacion and the inhabitants of this ile (of whom mony yet remains in suspence in judgement) satisfiet and resolvit of the richtness of theire quarrel, and the securitie of them and their posteritie be ony other meane might be providit and established." So far were they from dreaming that the production of the letters would injure their cause in the court of France, that we see they frankly acknowledged that the sincerity and rectitude of their proceedings could not otherwise be manifested to foreign nations. In this instance they think and talk like reasonable men; but they do not long preserve the same consistency.

In this act of council the rebels discover the greatest anxiety for their pardon and security: And "the matter being largelie and with gude deliberacion ressonit at great length, and upon sundry daies; at last all the said lords, barrones, and others above expremit, can find no other way or moyen how to find or make the said securitie but be oppyngyne and reveling of the truth and grunde of the hail matter fre the beginninge, plainlie and uprightlie, &c. Therefore the lords of secrete council, &c. desires it to be found and declaret be the estates and haill body of the parliament, that the cause and occasion of the tacking of the queen's person upon the 15th daie of Junii, last by past, and holding and detaininge of the same within the hous and place of Lochlevin continewallie sensync, presentlie, and in all tymes comyng; and generally all others things inventit, spoken, writtin, or donne be them or onny of them, sen the tent daie of February last by past unto the daie and date heirof, towiching the said queen hir person: that caus, and all things depending theiron or that onie wise maie apperteine theiron, &c. was in the said queen's awin default, in as far as be DIVERS HER PRIVIE LETTERS WRITTEN AND SUBSCRIVIT WITH HER AWIN HAND, and sent by her to James Erll Bothwell, &c—and be her ungodlie and dishonourable procedinge in a privait marriage, soddanlie and unprovistly, it is most certain, that she was previe, art and part, and of the actual devise and deid of the for-mencionit mother of the king, her laweful husband, our soveraigne lord's

father, committit be the said James Erll Bothwell, &c."

Had the letters been really genuine, into the absurdity of this declaration no man of common sense could possibly have fallen. Truth is always consistent with itself: but in a series of forgeries contradictions are scarcely avoidable. The confederates rose in rebellion against the queen on the 10th of June: they faced her in rebellion at Carberry hill on the 15th; they sent her away into prison on the 16th: yet they afterwards justified all that they had done since the tenth of February by letters, which, they said, they had not till the twentieth of June! "This (says Mr Whitaker) if we consider it as folly, is one of the most striking and eminent acts of folly that the world has ever beheld. But it ought to be considered in a light much more dishonourable to the rebels; and as knavery, it is one of the rankest that has ever been attempted to be imposed upon the sons of men." On the 4th of December, it must be remembered that they had not fixed any day for the discovery of the letters. The story of the seizure of Dalgleish with the casket was not thought of till near a year afterwards; and when it was invented, they had certainly forgotten the date of their act of council. In that act, therefore, they were free to rove at large; but they roved very uncautiously. By grounding upon the letters, proceedings prior to the 10th of June, they plainly declare the discovery of these fatal papers to have been antecedent to the twentieth. By grounding upon them their secret messages for sedition, their private conventions for rebellion, and "every thing inventit, spoken, written, or done, be them, or onny of them, respecting the queen, Bothwell, or Darnley, sen the tent daie of February last by past," they even intimate the discovery to have been previous to the murder of the king; and yet by their own accounts some of the letters were then actually unwritten. This is astonishing; and shows the extreme difficulty of carrying to any length a consistent series of falsehoods. Even Murray, Morton, and Lethington, could not do it. They knocked down one ninepin in endeavouring to set up another; and they finally threw down all, by making them mutually and successively to strike one another.

We have not yet done with this act of council. It was with a view to the approaching convention of the estates that it had been formed and managed. It was a preparation for the parliament in which the conspirators had secured their fullest sway, and where they proposed to effectuate their pardon and security, and to establish the letters as decisive vouchers against the queen. Accordingly, upon the 15th day of December 1567, the three estates were assembled. The conspirators invited no candid or regular investigation. The friends of the nation and of the queen were overawed. Every thing proceeded in conformity to the act of council, the conspirators, by a parliamentary decree, received a full approbation of all the severities which they had exercised against the queen. A pardon by anticipation was even accorded to them for any future cruelty they might be induced to inflict upon her.—The letters were mentioned as the cause of this singular law; and this new appeal to them may be termed the second mark of their distinction. But, amidst the plenitude

Mary. plenitude of their power, the conspirators called not the estates to a free and honest examination of them. This, indeed, had the letters been genuine, would have annihilated for ever all the consequence of the queen. Upon this measure, however, they ventured not. The letters were merely produced in parliament, and an act founded on them; but the queen was not brought from her confinement to defend herself, nor was any advocate permitted to speak for her. We learn from a paper of unquestionable authenticity*, that "sindrie nobilmen that was her Grace's favouraris then present, huir with all (the rebel proceedings in this parliament), maist principellie for safety of hir Grace's lyfe, quhilk, or thair coming to parliament, was concludit and subscribyt be ane greit part of hir takeris, to be taken frae hir in meist crewel manner, as is notourlie known." By the power of this magic, the friends of Mary were bound fast. They durst not venture to question publicly the authenticity of the letters, from the dread of exposing the queen to the dagger of the assassin. The parliament, therefore, sustained these forgeries as vouchers of her guilt, without scrutiny or debate of any kind. The conspirators, who were themselves the criminals, were her accusers and her judges, and passed a law exactly in the terms in which the act of secret council had before drawn it up.

It was necessary to describe the letters both in the act of council and in the ordination of parliament; and these deeds having fortunately descended to posterity, it is apparent, from a comparison of them, that between the 4th and the 15th days of December, the letters must have undergone very essential alterations under the management of the conspirators. In the act of council the letters are described expressly as "written and subscribed with the queen's awin hand;" but in the act of parliament they are said to be only "written helilie with hir awin hand," and there is no intimation that they were subscribed by her. Whence arises this difference? From a blunder in the clerk penning the act of council, says one: From a habit contracted by the same clerk, which made him mechanically add subscribed to written, says another: From the carelessness of the writer who transcribed the copy of the act of council which has descended to us, says a third. These subterfuges have been exposed in all their weakness by Messrs Tytler and Whitaker: but in this abstract it is sufficient to observe, that they are mere suppositions, supported by no evidence; and that the copy of the act of council which we have was given to the ministers of Elizabeth by the leaders of the faction, who were neither blundering clerks, nor under the habit of mechanically adding subscribed to written. Under one form, therefore, the letters were certainly exhibited before the council, and under another form they were produced in parliament; but had they been genuine, they would have appeared uniformly with the same face. The clerk of the council was Alexander Hay, a notary public accustomed to draw up writings and to attest them; and what puts his accuracy with respect to the letters beyond all possibility of doubt, his description of them is authenticated in the fullest manner by the signatures of Murray, Morton, and a long train of others who formed the secret council. The letters, therefore, were actually presented to the

secret council with the customary appendage of subscription to them. But when these artificers of fraud came to reflect more closely on the approach of parliament, and to prepare their letters for the inspection of the friends of Mary, they began to shrink at the thoughts of what they had done. To substantiate the charge by letters under her own hand, they had naturally annexed her own subscription, a letter unsubscribed being a solecism in evidence. But most unfortunately for the cause of complete forgery, Mary was still in possession of her own seal, and he who fabricated the letters was not an engraver. For this reason, "the allegit writings in form of missive letters or epistles," says the bishop of Ross, in an address to Elizabeth, "are not sellit or signetit." They were neither attested by her subscription at the bottom, nor secured by her seal on the outside. In the secret council, where all were equally embarked in rebellion, these omissions were of no importance. But that letters containing intimations of adultery and of murder, should be sent by the queen to the earl of Bothwell, with her subscription to them, and yet without any guard of a seal upon them, so far exceeds all the bounds of credibility, that they could not expect it to gain the belief of parliament. They were struck with the absurdity of their plan, and dreaded a detection. They were under the necessity of altering it; but they could not supply the defect of the seal. They, therefore, wrote over the letters anew, and withheld the subscription.

These letters were now as complete as the conspirators wished them; yet in this state, while they were unsubscribed and unsealed, they wanted other formalities which are usual in despatches. They were without directions, and they had no dates. They must, therefore, have been sent by the queen to Bothwell as open and loose papers; yet they contained evidence against herself, and against him, of the most horrid wickedness; and Nicholas Hubert, the person who is said to have carried most of them, was of the lowest condition, and, as Dr Robertson characterizes him, "a foolish talkative fellow." He would, therefore, surely read those papers, which are polluted from end to end with open and uncovered adultery, and as surely report their contents to others. These are most incredible circumstances, on the supposition that the letters are authentic, unless the queen was, what none of her enemies ever represented her, an absolute idiot.

The letters in their composition bear no resemblance to the other writings of the queen. They have a vulgarity, an indelicacy, and a coarseness of expression and manner, that by no means apply to her. They breathe nothing of the passion of love besides the impulses of the sensual appetite; and they represent a queen, highly accomplished, in love with one of her subjects, as acting with all the sneaking humility of a cottager to a peer*. A few instances will show this. "The devil sinder us," she is made to exclaim, "and God knit us togidder for ever for the maist faithful coupill that ever he unitit: this is my faith; I will die in it." "I am," she says in another place, "varrey glad to write unto you zow quhen the rest are sleipand; fen I cannot sleip as they do, and as I wold desyre, that is, in your arms, my dear lufe." "Seeing to obey zow, my dear lufe, I spare nouthar honour, conscience, hasarde,

Mary. hazarde, nor greatness quhatsumever; tak it, I pray zow, in gude part, as from the maist faithful lüifer that ever ze had, or ever sall have." Se not hir (his wife), quhais fenzeit teires suld not be sa mikle preisit nor estemit as the trew and faithful trevellis quhilk I sustine for to merite her place." "God give zow, my only lufe, the hap and prosperitie quilk your humble and faithful lufe desyres unto zow, who hopis to be shortly another thing to you for the reward of my irksome travels." "When I will put you out of dout, and cleir myselfe, refuse it not, my dear lufe; and suffer me to mak zow some prufe be my obedience, my faithfulness, constancie, and voluntary subjection, quhilk I tak for the plezandest gude that I might resseif, if ze will except it." "Such (says Mr Whitaker) was the coarse kirtle, and the homely necktie, in which these wretched representers of Mary dressed themselves up, for the exhibition of a queen dignified, refined, and elegant;—a queen whom, according to their own account, "God had indowt with mony gude and excellent gifts and virtues."

Stuart. The evidence which points to the forgery of the letters is profuse and instructive. In its separate parts, it is powerful and satisfactory*. When taken together, and in the union of its parts, it is invincible. But, amidst all its cogency and strength, there is a circumstance most peculiarly in its favour, and of which it required no aid or assistance. By this peculiarity, it is eased completely in steel, and armed at every point. The letters have come down to us in the French, the Scottish, and the Latin languages. Now, the conspirators affirmed, that they were written by the queen in the French language. But by a critical examination of them in these different languages, Mr Goodall demonstrated, that the pretended French originals are a translation from the Latin of Buchanan, which is itself a version from the Scotch. This is indeed acknowledged by Dr Robertson, the ablest and most persevering of all Mary's enemies, who pretends, that, so far as he knows, it never was denied. Determined, however, to support the authenticity of the letters at all events, the same elegant and ingenious writer supposes†, that the French originals are now lost, but that two or three sentences of each of those originals were retained, and prefixed to the Scottish translation; and that the French editor observing this, foolishly concluded, that the letters had been written partly in French and partly in Scottish. In support of this singular hypothesis, he proceeds to affirm, that "if we carefully consider those few French sentences of each letter which still remain, and apply to them that species of criticism by which Mr Goodall examined the whole, a clear proof will arise, that there was a French copy, not translated from the Latin, but which was itself the original from which both the Latin and Scottish have been translated." He accordingly applies this species of criticism, points out a few variations of meaning between what he calls the remaining sentences of the original French and the present Latin; and thinks, that in the former he has discovered a spirit of elegance which neither the Latin nor the Scottish have retained. His critical observations have been examined by Mr Whitaker; who makes it apparent as the noon-day sun, that the doctor has occasionally mistaken the sense of the Latin, the French,

and even the Scotch; and that he has forgotten to point out either the elegance or the spirit of any particular clauses in his pretended originals. The same masterly vindicator of Mary then turns his antagonist's artillery against himself; and demonstrates, that such variations as he has thought sufficient to prove the existence of a former French copy, are not confined to the first sentence of each of the three first letters, but are extended to other sentences, and diffused over all the letters. Hence he observes, that this mode of proving will demonstrate the present French, and every sentence in it, to be that very original, which it primarily pretended to be, which Mr Goodall has so powerfully proved it not to be, and which even the doctor himself dares not assert it is. Our limits will not admit of our transcribing the observations of these two illustrious critics; nor is it necessary that we should transcribe them. By acknowledging that "Buchanan made his translation, not from the French but from the Scottish copy (of which he justly observes, that, were it necessary, several critical proofs might be brought)," Dr Robertson, in effect, gives up his cause. Had there been any other French letters than the present†, what occasion had Buchanan for the

Scotch, when he himself must have had possession of the originals? It is evident from Mr Anderson's account, that those letters were translated by Buchanan at London during the time of the conferences. He was one of the assistants appointed to the rebel commissioners, and intrusted with the whole conduct of the process against the queen. By him, with Lethington, Macgill, and Wood, the original letters were exhibited, and their contents explained to the English commissioners; and we know from the authentic history of those papers, that they were neither lost nor mislaid for many years afterwards. It cannot be pretended that Buchanan did not understand the French; for he past most of his life in that country, and taught a school there. He was, indeed, a daring zealot of rebellion; but, with all its audacity, he must have felt the task in which he was engaged a very ungracious one. When he sat down to defame, in the eyes of all Europe, a queen to whom he owed not only allegiance but also personal gratitude, it is not conceivable that he could have translated from a Scotch translation, had he known any thing of a French original; and if the rebel commissioners, who were said to produce them, knew nothing of such originals, certainly nobody else ever did: if they existed not with Buchanan, they existed nowhere.

Mary. made it as apparent as any thing can be, that the whole eight were turned into Latin for the use of the French translator, who, by his own account, understood not the Scotch. He has made it in the highest degree probable, that this translator was one Camuz, a French refugee; and he has demonstrated, that the translation was made in London under the eye of Buchanan himself. We do not quote his arguments, because they consist of a great number of observations which cannot be abridged; and because the translator himself confesses every thing which is of importance to the cause maintained by Mr Goodall. "Au reste (he tells us) epistres misas sur la sin," which were all but the eighth, "avaient esté escrites par la Royne, partie en François, partie en Escossois; et depuis traductes ENTIEREMENT en LATIN: mais n'ayant cognoissance de la langue Escossoise, j'ay mieux aimé exprimer TOUT ce, que j'ay trouve en LATIN, que, &c." This confession (says Mr Whitaker) takes a comprehensive sweep. It makes all the seven letters at least, and the whole of each, to have been translated into Latin, and from thence to have been rendered into French. It starts no piddling objections about sentences or half sentences, at the head or at the tail of any. It embraces all within its wide-spread arms. And it proves the fancied existence of a French copy at the time to be all a fairy vision; the creation of minds that have subjected their judgments to their imaginations; the invited dreams of self-delusion.

The letters, so weak on every side, and so incapable of sustaining any scrutiny, give the marks of suspicion and guilt in all the stages of their progress. Even with the parliamentary sanction afforded to them by the three estates, which the earl of Murray assembled upon the 15th day of December 1567, he felt the delicacy and the danger of employing them openly to the purposes for which they were invented. For while he was scheming with Elizabeth his accusation of the queen of Scots, he took the precaution to submit privately the letters to that princess by the agency of his secretary Mr Wood. The object of this secret transaction, which took place early in the month of June 1568, was most flagitious, and presses not only against the integrity of Murray, but also against that of the English queen. Before he would advance with his charge, he solicited from her an assurance that the judges to be appointed in the trial of Mary would hold the letters to be true and probative.

By the encouragement of Elizabeth, the earl of Murray was prevailed upon to prefer his accusation*. He was soon to depart for England upon this business. A privy council was held by him at Edinburgh. He took up in it with formality the letters of the queen from the earl of Morton, and gave a receipt for them to that nobleman. That receipt is remarkable and interesting. It is dated upon the 16th of September 1568, and contains the first mention that appears in history of the discovery of the letters as in the actual possession of Dalgleish upon the 20th of June 1567. This, as we have already noticed, is a very suspicious circumstance; but it is not the only suspicious circumstance which is recorded in the receipt. In the act of secret council, and in the ordination of parliament, in December 1567, when the earl of Murray and his associates were infinite-

ly anxious to establish the criminality of the queen, the only vouchers of her guilt to which they appealed were the letters; and at that time, doubtless, they had prepared no other papers to which they could allude. But in Murray's receipt in September 1568 there is mention of other vouchers beside the letters. He acknowledges, that he also received from the earl of Morton contracts or obligations, and sonnets or love verses. These remarkable papers, though said to have been found upon the 20th of June 1567, appeared not till September 1568; and this difficulty is not to be solved by those who conceive them to be genuine. The general arguments which affect the authenticity of the letters apply to them in full force; only it must be observed, that as the original letters were undoubtedly in Scotch, the original sonnets were as certainly written in French. This has been completely proved by Dr Robertson, and is fully admitted by Mr Whitaker, who has made it in the highest degree probable that Lethington forged the letters and Buchanan the sonnets. Be this as it may, the sonnets have every external and internal evidence of forgery in common with the letters, and they have some marks of this kind peculiar to themselves. In particular, they make the love of Mary still more grovelling than the letters made it; and with a degree of meanness, of which the soul of Lethington was probably incapable, the author of the sonnets has made the queen consider it as "na lytill honour to be maistres of her subjects gudis!" In this the dignified princess is totally lost in "the maid Marien" of her pretended imitators; and Buchanan, who in his commerce with the sex was a mere sensualist, forgot on this occasion that he was personating a lady and a queen.

There is, however, in these sonnets, one passage of singular importance, which we must not pass wholly unnoticed. The queen is made to say,

Pour luy aussi j'oy jetté mainte larme
Premier qu'il fust de ce corps possesseur,
Duquel alors il n'avoit pas le cœur.
Puis me donna un autre dur alarme,
Quand il versa de son sang mainte dragme.

For him also I powrit out moay teiris,
First quhen he made himself possessor of this body,
Of the quilk then he had not the heart.
Efter he did give me an uther hard charge,
Quhen he bled of his blude great quantitie, &c.

If these sonnets could be supposed to be genuine, this passage would overthrow at once all the letters and both the contracts which were produced; and would prove, with the force of demonstration, that the seizure of Mary by Bothwell was not with her own consent; that he actually committed a rape upon her; that she had for him no love: and that she married him merely as a refuge to her injured honour. The sonnets, however, are undoubtedly spurious; but, considered in this light, the verses before us prove with equal force the full conviction in the minds of the rebels of what in an unguarded moment they actually confessed to Throgmorton, and was manifest to all the world; viz. that "the queen their sovereign was led captive, and by FEAR, FORCE, and (as by many conjectures may be well suspected) others EXTRAORDINARY and more

Mary. NOTE UNLAWFUL means COMPELLED to become bed-fellow to another wife's husband." They prove likewise, that after the rape, finding Mary highly indignant at the brutality done her, Bothwell actually stabbed himself; not, we may believe, with any intention to take away his own life, but merely that by shedding many a "drachm" of blood he might mollify the heart of the queen.

But we mean not to pursue the history of the sonnets any farther. Though they were undoubtedly invented in aid of the letters, to prove that fundamental principle of the conspirators,—that the love of Mary to Bothwell was inordinate; yet they are so incompatible with history, and with one another, that they demonstrate the spuriousness of themselves, and of the evidence which they were intended to corroborate. By thus endeavouring to give an air of nature and probability to their monstrous fictions, the rebels at once betrayed the fabrication of the whole. They have themselves supplied us with a long and particular journal, to show the true dates of facts; and by that journal have their letters and their sonnets been demonstrated to be spurious. "The makers of these papers (says Mr Whitaker) have broken through all the barrier of their own history. They have started aside from the orbit of their own chronology. They have taken a flight beyond the bounds of their own creation, and have there placed themselves conspicuous in the PARADISE OF FOOLS."

This mass of forgery was clandestinely shown to Elizabeth's commissioners during the conferences at York: (See SCOTLAND). It was shown again to the same commissioners and others during the conferences at Westminster. But neither Mary nor her commissioners could ever procure a sight of a single letter or a single sonnet. By the bishop of Ross and the lord Herries, she repeatedly demanded to see the papers said to be written by her; but that request, in itself so reasonable, Elizabeth, with an audacity of injustice of which the history of mankind can hardly furnish a parallel, thought fit to refuse. Mary then instructed her commissioners to demand copies of the letters and sonnets; and offered even from these to demonstrate in the presence of the English queen and parliament, and the ambassadors of foreign princes, that the pretended originals were palpable forgeries. Even this demand was denied her; and there is undoubted evidence still existing, that neither she nor her commissioners had so much as a copy of these criminal papers till after those important conferences had for some time been at an end. This last demand perplexed Elizabeth; the conferences were suddenly broken up; Murray was dismissed with his box to Scotland; and the letters were seen no more!

But the letters, we are told, were at Westminster compared with letters of the queen's, and found to be in the same Roman hand. They were indeed compared with other writings; but with what writings? This question let Elizabeth's commissioners themselves answer. They collated them, they say, "with others her letters, which were showed yesternight, and avowed by THEM (the rebel commissioners) to be written by the said queen." This was such a collation as must have pronounced them to be idiots*, if we had not known them to be otherwise; and such as must pronounce them to be knaves, as we know them to

have been men of sense. Like persons totally incompetent to the management of business, but in truth acting ministerially in the work of profligacy, they compared the letters produced, NOT with letters furnished by Mary's commissioners, NOT with letters furnished even by indifferent persons, BUT with letters presented by the producers themselves.—"This (says Mr Whitaker) is such an instance of imposition upon Mary and the world, as can scarcely be paralleled in the annals of knavery. Many instances of imposition, indeed, occur in the wretched history of our race; but we can hardly find one, in which the imposition was so gross, so formal, so important, and so clear. It was very gross, because it has not a shred of artifice to cover its ugly nakedness. It was very formal, because it was done by men some of whom were of the first character in their country; and all were bound by honour, and tied down by oaths, to act uprightly in the business. It was very important, because no less than the reputation of a queen, and the continuance of an usurpation, depended upon it. And it is very clear, because we have the fact related to us by the commissioners themselves, recorded to their shame in their own journal, and transmitted by their own hands to posterity with everlasting infamy on their heads."

When Tytler's Inquiry into the Evidence produced by the Earls of Murray and Morton against Mary Queen of Scots was first published, it was reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine by Dr Johnson. The review, which consists of a brief analysis of the work, with reflections interspersed on the force of the evidence, concludes thus:—"That the letters were forged is now made so probable, that perhaps they will never more be cited as testimonies." Subsequent experience has shown, that the great critic's knowledge of human nature had not deserted him when he guarded his prediction with the word perhaps. Few authors possess the magnanimity of Fenelon: and it is not to be expected that he who has once maintained the letters to be genuine, should by reasoning or criticism be compelled to relinquish them: but we are persuaded, that, after the present generation of writers shall be extinct, these letters and sonnets will never be cited as evidence, except of the profligacy of those by whom they were fabricated.

Such is a view (partial it may be deemed by some) of this remarkable controversy previous to the publication of Mr Laing's History of Scotland. But, in opposition to all these arguments against the genuineness and authenticity of the letters and sonnets attributed to Mary, this historian observes that it is impossible to fix the supposed forgery on any one of the different persons to whom it has been ascribed, which, if true, renders it abundantly evident, that they must have been the genuine productions of the ill-fated Mary. According to Mr Laing, it was necessary for Mary to disavow the letters; and consequently her commissioners were instructed to affirm that they were forged, and that there were diverse of each sex in Scotland, particularly of those in company with her adversaries, who could counterfeit and write the queen's hand, as well as herself. This strange assertion, so apparently false, is repeated in Lesly's memorial to Elizabeth; but of those who could write and counterfeit the queen's hand, none were ever named, even in his defence of her honour; and the supposed forgery could

Mary be fixed on no particular person during Mary's life, which, it must be confessed, renders their forgery extremely suspicious. The writings suppressed in England were Lesly's and other anonymous vindications of Mary, in which there is no intimation whatever, of Lethington's confession, that he had frequently forged the queen's hand. The letters are those in the Cecil collection, and the Cotton library, which are equally silent; and we must conclude, that the author, whether Cotton, James, or Camden, improving on Norfolk's apology, that Lethington moved him to consider the queen as not guilty, asserted gratuitously that Lethington acknowledged the whole forgery, as he had already done, that Buchanan frequently repented on his deathbed, of those calumnies which he reprinted in his history, at that time in the press. He who examines with care, Camden's mutilated account of the conferences in England, must be satisfied that the evidence of the Cecil and Cotton papers, which he confessedly examined, has been suppressed in his annals, in which Norfolk's letters from York are industriously concealed. Mr Laing is of opinion, that the sonnets ascribed to Mary, are as certainly the productions of her pen, and that the grossness of some of them can only be a prevailing argument for their forgery with those who are ignorant of the grossness of the age, or foolish enough to believe with Goodall, that Mary never once betrayed a single foible from the cradle to the grave.

As to the three contracts of marriage between the queen and Bothwell, reckoned forgeries by some authors, Mr Laing is also of opinion that they are the genuine productions of Mary, who was glad to get rid of a husband whose dissolute manners had rendered him odious in her eyes; and she expressed no genuine sorrow after his extraordinary and atrocious murder. He thinks that there is not to be found in any authentic history of those times, a single convincing argument of their being forgeries. In a word, after much ingenious criticism on the merits of the contracts, he concludes by saying, that the private, instead of being a copy or abstract from the public contract, is evidently the original from which the latter was formed; and it is observable that the two first contracts written by Mary, or under her inspection, are far superior in delicacy to the last: a circumstance in vain imputed to the art of the forgers, who, in fact, were more desirous to aggravate than to extenuate the grossness of her guilt (B.)

She wrote, 1. Poems on various occasions, in the Latin, French, and Scotch languages. One of her poems is printed among those of A. Blackwood; another in Brantome's Dames illustres, written on the

death of her first husband Francis. 2. Consolation of her long imprisonment, and royal advice to her son. 3. A copy of verses, in French, sent with a diamond ring to Queen Elizabeth. There is a translation of these verses among the Latin poems of Sir Thomas Chaloner. 4. Genuine Letters of Mary Queen of Scots, to James earl of Bothwell; translated from the French, by E. Simmonds, 1726. There are, besides, many other of her epistles to Queen Elizabeth, Secretary Cecil, Mild-may, &c. which are preserved in the Cottonian, Ashmolean, and other libraries.