The Mystery of Mary Stuart

Compare, in the Lennox version of the letter never produced (p. 214) —

(a) The loss of her dowry in France.

(b) Her titles to the crown of England.

(c) The crown of 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 follows a 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 - As to Randolph’s dark hint, Chalmers says, ‘he means their participation in Darnley’s murder’ (ii. 487). But that, from Randolph’s point of view, was no offence against Mary, and Kirkcaldy was not one of Darnley’s murderers.]

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 - Cal. For. Eliz. ix. 390.] This cannot refer to the declaration, by Paris, that Lethington was in the murder, for that news 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 - See Hosack, ii. 217, 218. Bowes to Walsingham, March 25, 1581. Bowes Papers, 174. Ogilvie to Archibald Beaton. Hosack, ii. 550, 551.] 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.

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 were probably 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.

XVIII

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 - Bain, ii. 569.] 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 the petite boyte d’argent, which Mary intended to bequeath to Margaret Carwood, if she herself died in childbed in 1566.[398 - Robertson Inventories, 124.]

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 - Bowes Correspondence, 236.]

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 the secrecy and 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.’ On December 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 - Bowes, 265.]

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 - Goodall, i. 35, 36.] 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 Historical Relic,’ Macmillan’s Magazine.[402 - Vol. lxxx. 131, et seq.] 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 has been, 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.

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 for many crowned 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 to Mary 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 (see p. xvi (#Page_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.

APPENDIX A

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 expected great 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 - Before the Reformation it belonged to the Bishops of Roskilde, and was confiscated from them, Henry VIII.’s fashion.] 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 have a 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 mouth very broad. 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 there it is? 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.

APPENDIX B

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 - Bain, ii. 250.] 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 - Cal. For. Eliz. viii. 413, 414.] 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 - This picture seems to be lost.] 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 - Diurnal, p. 134.]