The next day, 9th December, while Mary’s commissioners made renewed attempts to withdraw from the conference, which had for them become a travesty of justice, since they were not even admitted to the proceedings, the tribunal continued to examine the copies of the letters they had taken and the sonnets ‘written in French, being duly translated into English’. Morton made a further official declaration about the finding of the casket, and the evidence of Darnley’s servant Nelson, and one of Lennox’s servants, Thomas Crawford, was also produced. It was now decided to enlarge the tribunal still further with other leading English nobles including Northumberland, Westmorland and Shrewsbury. On 14th December the new tribunal was given a résumé of proceedings up to date. In the meantime Elizabeth gave Mary at Bolton three choices: she could answer the accusations through her own commissioners, in writing herself, or personally to some English nobles sent expressly to Bolton for that purpose. To all these alternatives Mary returned an indignant negative: she could hardly be expected to answer accusations based on evidence she was not allowed to see, or surrender the traditional right of the prisoner to face her accusers. But Elizabeth said that if Mary refused these three alternatives ‘it will be thought as much as she were culpable’.7
At last Mary was beginning to have some inkling of the treacherous nature of the quagmire into which she had so unwarily walked. Her frantic state of mind at this point, cut off at Bolton, dependent on slow-moving letters for news from London, may be judged from her letter to the earl of Mar in Scotland, in which she begs him to guard the infant James well at Stirling, and not allow him to be either brought by agreement to England, or snatched away from him by surprise: Mary adds a postscript in her own hand, reminding Mar that when she handed her son over to him, ‘comme mon plus cher joiau’, he promised never to hand him over to another without the queen’s consent.8 On 19th December she belatedly drew up her own Eik for the accusation of Moray, presented on 25th December. Naturally she waxed especially furious over the accusation that she had planned the death of her own child to follow that of his father: the nobles ‘cover themselves thereanent with a wet sack; and that calumny should suffice for proof and inquisition of all the rest; for the natural love of a mother towards her bairn confounds them’. Beyond that Mary dwelt on her previous troubles with the lords – the murder of Riccio when they would have ‘slain the mother and the bairn both when he was in our womb’, and the manifest illegality of Moray’s regency.9
Despite Mary’s counter-accusations, and despite her continued requests to be shown the writings which were said to arraign her, the conference at Westminster was officially ended by Elizabeth on 11th January without either Mary or her commissioners being allowed to glimpse these debatable documents. The verdict of the tribunal was indeed as ambivalent as the rest of the proceedings: it was decided that neither party had had anything sufficiently proved against them. Mary had not proved that her nobles had rebelled against her – ‘there has been nothing deduced against them as yet that may impair their honour and allegiances’. But on the other hand, all the prolonged inspection of the so-called Casket Letters had not apparently convinced the tribunal of the guilt of the Scottish queen. Elizabeth pronounced on the subject of the evidence brought forward by the Scottish nobles that ‘there had been nothing sufficiently produced nor shewn by them against the Queen their sovereign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or take any evil opinion of the Queen her good sister, for anything yet seen’.10 In short, neither side was adjudged guilty at the end of the ‘trial’, the only difference being that whereas Moray was now allowed to depart for Scotland, after a personal interview with Elizabeth – and incidentally with a £5000 subsidy in his pocket – Mary was still held at Bolton, with preparations afoot to move her to a still more secure prison.
Now at last Elizabeth offered to let Mary have copies of the writings produced against her, provided she would promise to answer them. (The originals had of course gone back to Scotland with Moray.) But at this point Mary’s commissioners, who all along had shown themselves so little match for the English politicians, rallied sufficiently to point out that since Moray had by now left England for Scotland, and the conference had no other judicial basis except in so far as it was supposed to judge between Mary and Moray, it was far too late for Mary to answer Moray’s accusations. Mary’s commissioners were themselves allowed to return to Scotland on 31st January. Thus ended what was surely one of the strangest judicial proceedings in the history of the British Isles, with a verdict of not proven given to both parties, yet one plaintiff allowed to return freely to rule in the place of the other plaintiff, who in the meantime continued to be held a prisoner.
It is time to consider the Casket Letters themselves, those debatable documents, and see how much if anything they genuinely prove against the moral character of Mary Stuart – her adulterous liaison with Bothwell before the death of Darnley, and her guilty foreknowledge of his murder. It is an interesting point that Mary Stuart’s contemporaries apparently attached a great deal less importance to the Casket Letters than has been given to them ever since by the studies of historians. In the four hundred years since their appearance, more ink has been spilt on the subject – textual difficulties, language difficulties, theories of authorship, theories of interpolation – than on almost any other textual mystery. Yet at the time when the actual letters were exhibited it has been seen that not only Norfolk took a sufficiently dégagé view of the whole matter to pursue marriage to Mary ardently thereafter, but Sussex, another Englishman, was of the opinion that as proofs, the letters alone would never be sufficient to condemn the Scottish queen. Subsequently, due to yet another revolution in Scottish internal politics, Maitland himself became one of Queen Mary’s most ardent champions in Scotland, apparently undismayed by the depths of villainy she was said to have revealed in the letters. Despite this contemporary reaction, succeeding generations of historians have attempted to do what Elizabeth’s tribunal specifically did not do, and give a verdict on Mary’s character based on these letters. Yet every modern argument concerning the Casket Letters, and indeed every argument on the subject since the conference of Westminster in 1568, has of necessity to leave out of account the most important consideration in any discussion of letters said to be forged – the question of handwriting – for the Casket Letters now disappeared from sight as mysteriously as they had appeared.
In January 1569, they were taken to Scotland by Moray, to whom they had been redelivered by the tribunal. On 22nd January, 1571, they were handed over once more to Morton, although what should have been twenty-two documents (eight letters, two marriage contracts and twelve sonnets making up one poem) had mysteriously become only twenty-one, raising a doubt that one document might have been left behind in England. Copies were once more made, but these copies vanished immediately and have never been seen since. After Morton’s execution, the letters passed to the earl of Gowrie, who was executed in turn in 1584, after which the original letters were never seen again from that day to this, despite repeated efforts on the part of Elizabeth to get hold of them, ranging from bribery to suggestions of theft.*
Today, in order to consider the authenticity of the Casket Letters, we are dependent on two sources: firstly those contemporary copies made by the clerks at Westminster which have survived. Some of these copies are in the original French, others in the English translation made for the use of the tribunal; all of these contemporary copies (with the exception of one) are in the Elizabethan ‘secretary’ hand in marked contrast to Mary’s infinitely more legible Roman or Italian hand. There are four of these contemporary copies in the Public Record Office, and four others among the Cecil Papers at Hatfield House; a contemporary copy of one of the marriage contracts is among the Cotton MSS at the British Museum.13 These are the only ‘original’ manuscripts available for the study of the Casket Letters – all of them purporting to be only contemporary copies. Otherwise we are dependent on the secondary published sources – and in the cas
e of two of the letters, the twelve sonnets, and one of the marriage contracts, for all of which not even a contemporary copy survives totally dependent on them. The contemporary published versions consist of Buchanan’s Latin ‘Detection’ which appeared in 1571, and gave three of the letters; in the same year a Scottish version of the ‘Detection’ also appeared, giving all eight letters, with the first sentence in the original French; the next year an Anglicized version of the Scottish translation appeared, following the same principle. In 1573 a French edition was published giving seven of the letters; this was not the original French (as can be seen by comparing it with the contemporary manuscript copies) – merely a French version retranslated out of the Scots or English. This retranslation leads to considerable differences between the two French versions.
Quite apart from the lack of originals, the situation over the letters is complicated by the fact that none of them has any dates attached to it and none has any proper beginning or ending or signature; the fact that none is signed by the queen makes the letters particularly remarkable, compared to the rest of Mary’s correspondence, since Mary, in all her other letters, always took especial trouble with her endings, and the individual phrase before the characteristic signature MARIE was always carefully suited to the recipient. Furthermore there is not one letter which does not have some internal problem of its own, either of dating or of sheer sense, so far as one can judge from the copy. As forgeries, then, if forgeries they were, these were no smooth and expert job, but botched up – even patched up – efforts, done in a hurry by men who were trying to prove something, and because they had to prove it quickly, were not too particular about details, so long as the broad facts of the case appeared as they wished. These are of course exactly the sort of results which might be expected to emerge from the events of the summer of 1568 – Queen Mary’s unexpected flight to England, Moray’s desperate need to keep her there, his anguished inquiries to the English as to what sort of evidence they would accept, and his final secretive, deliberately ‘unofficial’ production of the letters at York to Norfolk. The Casket Letters were to be regarded then as a collection of accusing briefs in a trial: in this context it is significant that the contemporary copies are all endorsed at the top in an English hand, sometimes that of Cecil himself, with a sentence giving the exact point they were said by the lords to prove. But regarded as a bundle of love letters, the Casket Letters are not only quite incomprehensible, but also in places manifestly absurd when applied to the relationship possible between Queen Mary and Bothwell.
Letter I,14 of which no contemporary French copy survives, only a contemporary English translation, is marked at the top ‘proves her disdain against her husband’. It is, however, not a love letter, but a calm and practical communication, from its style evidently written by Queen Mary herself at some point, although not necessarily ‘From Glasgow this Saturday morning’, as it states at the head of the letter – a phrase easily added. In it, Queen Mary refers to ‘the man’ who is ‘the merriest that ever you saw, and doth remember unto me all that he can to make me believe that he loveth me. To conclude: you would say that he maketh love to me, wherein I take so much pleasure that I never come in there but the pain of my side doth take me.’ This ‘man’ is to be brought by Mary to Craigmillar on Wednesday. From the endorsement, it is clear that the lords maintained this ‘man’ was Darnley whose advances at Glasgow, when Mary went to fetch him towards the end of January, were causing Mary a pain in her side. But the dates do not fit with Darnley’s journey: he could never have expected to reach Craigmillar on the Wednesday; the person whom Mary did take on a journey also in January from Stirling to Edinburgh, arriving there on Wednesday, 15th January, was her son James. And it has been pointed out that Mary’s language makes it at least possible she was talking of her baby son, ‘the merriest that ever you saw … you would say that he maketh love to me …’; just as the term ‘the man’ makes more sense as a mother’s fanciful term for a little boy, than as Mary’s description of Darnley, to whom in all other letters even to her most intimate relative she refers impersonally as ‘the King’. However, these details were not likely to bother the English tribunal. At a rough inspection, prodded on by the Scottish lords’ explanations, such a letter could easily be held to prove the queen’s disdain of Darnley at Glasgow nearly two years back. It was easy to add the phrase ‘From Glasgow …’ at the head of the letter to give verisimilitude; and a phrase about Paris being commanded to bring back medicine was probably interpolated in the middle of the letter for good measure – Paris being by now a notorious guilt-inferring name in the history of Mary–Bothwell relations. But of course, in the absence even of a French contemporary copy of this letter, it is impossible to be certain about this.
Letter II,15 the famous ‘Long Casket Letter’, is an extraordinary document which must have baffled the English judges if they had ever considered it in detail almost as much as it has baffled historians ever since.* Once again, no contemporary French copy survives to guide us, only the contemporary English copy and the Scottish version later published by Buchanan. The English copy was endorsed by the clerk: ‘The long letter written from Glasgow from the Queen of Scots to the Earl Bothwell.’ This letter is susceptible of almost any interpretation except that of being one single letter, written on a single occasion from Mary Stuart to Bothwell. It is extremely long – over 2000 words altogether. The contemporary English copy runs to seven pages of manuscript with a long unexplained gap on the fifth page. As before, it begins without any salutation: ‘Being gone from the place where I had left my heart; it may be easily judged what my countenance was …’, but after these first few affectionate but not amorous sentences, it turns into a long account of Mary’s journey to Glasgow to fetch Darnley, her meeting with a gentleman of Lennox’s, and other meetings en route with James Hamilton and the laird of Luss. The letter now gives a long intimate account of Mary’s interview and relations with Darnley while at Glasgow: Darnley pleads with Mary to lodge ‘nigh’ unto him, blames his sickness for Mary being ‘so strange unto him’, and attacks Mary for her cruelty who will not accept his ‘offers and repentance’. These phrases ring very true of what is already known of Darnley’s character, and Mary’s relations with him, especially when he begs Mary to forgive him on grounds of his youth and inexperience; ‘May not a man of my age, for want of council, fail twice or thrice, and miss of promise, and at the last repent and rebuke himself by his experience …’ The words echo the phrases, related by Nau, which Darnley used to Mary after the death of Riccio.
Mary now taxes Darnley with his plans to depart in an English ship, and the rumours of his plotting spread by Hiegate – matters which we know from her letter to Beaton just before she left for Glasgow were very much on her mind. The conversation ends with Darnley pleading with Mary to spend the night in his lodging, and with her refusing to do so until he is ‘purged’ of his disease; Mary then offers to bring Darnley to Craigmillar where he can be cured, and she can be near her son – an offer which we know did take place. She also promises to resume physical relations after he is cured. To this Darnley asserts that he knows Mary will never harm him, and as for the others, he will sell his life dear enough – sentiments which again fit neatly with Darnley’s character and with his continued trust of Mary, proved by the fact he did accompany her to Edinburgh. Up to now it is evident that we are receiving from Mary a frank report on her relations with Darnley at Glasgow, written to some close confidante. But in the next phrases the tenor of the letter changes and the sense becomes more obscure. Mary writes of Darnley’s attempts to win her: ‘Fear not, for the place shall continue till death. Remember also in recompense thereof not to suffer yours [Bothwell’s heart] to be won by that false race that would do no less to us both …’ Later she writes: ‘We are tied to two false races; the goodyeere untie us from them. God forgive me, and God knit us together for ever for the most faithful couple that ever he did knit together. This is my faith. I will die in it.’
r /> These phrases which, on quick reading, seem to show that Mary was cold-bloodedly planning Darnley’s murder with Bothwell, her lover, with a view to marrying him, make no sense on a second reading, if applied to the Mary–Bothwell relationship. Who was the ‘false race’ which might win Bothwell’s heart, and to which he was tied, to the exclusion of Mary? Not the Gordons surely, who were now among Mary’s most faithful adherents; Huntly, Bothwell’s brother-in-law, had been Mary’s loyal supporter over the Chaseabout Raid, and the Riccio murder, and was to continue as such throughout his sister’s divorce proceedings (to which he agreed with alacrity) up to and beyond Carberry Hill. As for the rest of his family, after July 1565 Mary had no more devoted adherents; his mother was one of her chief ladies; his sister Jean allowed herself to be divorced with incredible speed in order that Bothwell might marry the queen. Yet throughout the rest of the letter, there is a theme of constant, agonizing jealousy on the part of the writer for some other woman in Bothwell’s life, who from the angry references to Huntly as ‘your false brother-in-law’ is clearly Bothwell’s wife Jean Gordon. This ‘false brother-in-law’ is making mischief between the writer and Bothwell, and is to be given no credit ‘against the most faithful lover that ever you had or shall have’, to please whom the writer will ‘spare neither honour, conscience, nor hazard nor greatness’. It would have been quite impossible in January 1567, or indeed at any other date, for Mary to have referred to Huntly in those terms.