We live in an age in which there is much talk of independance, of private judgment, of liberty of thought, and liberty of press. Our clamorous praises of liberty sufficiently prove that we enjoy it; and if by liberty nothing else be meant, than security from the persecutions of power, it is so fully possessed by us that little more is to be desired, except that one should talk of it less, and use it better.

But a social being can scarcely rise to complete independance; he that has any wants, which others can supply, must study the gratification of them whose assistance he expects; this is equally true, whether his wants be wants of nature or of vanity. The writers of the present time are not always candidates for preferment, nor often the hirelings of a patron. They profess to serve no interest, and speak with loud contempt of sycophants and slaves.

There is, however, a power from whose influence neither they nor their predecessors have ever been free. Those who have set greatness at defiance have yet been the slaves of fashion. When an opinion has once become popular, very few are willing to oppose it. Idleness is more willing to credit than enquire; cowardice is afraid of controversy, and vanity of answer; and he that writes merely for sale is tempted to court purchasers by flattering the prejudices of the publick.

It has now been fashionable for near half a century to defame and vilify the house of Stuart, and to exalt and magnify the reign of Elizabeth.1 The Stuarts have found few apologists, for the dead cannot pay for praise; and who will, without reward, oppose the tide of popularity? Yet there remains still among us, not wholly extinguished, a zeal for truth, a desire of establishing right, in opposition to fashion. The author, whose work is now before us, has attempted a vindication of Mary of Scotland, whose name has for some years been generally resigned to infamy, and who has been considered as the murderer of her husband, and condemned by her own letters.

Of these letters, the author of this vindication confesses the importance to be such, that “if they be genuine the Queen was guilty, and if they be spurious she was innocent.”2 He has therefore undertaken to prove them spurious, and divided his treatise into six parts.

In the first is contained the history of the letters from their discovery by the earl of Morton,3 their being produced against Q. Mary, and their several appearances in England before Q. Elizabeth and her commissioners, untill they were finally delivered back again to the earl of Morton.4

The second contains a short abstract of Mr. Goodall’s arguments for proving the letters to be spurious and forged;5 and of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume’s objections by way of answer to Mr. Goodall,6 with critical observations on these authors.

The third contains an examination of the arguments of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume, in support of the authenticity of the letters.

The fourth contains an examination of the confession of Nicholas Hubert, commonly called French Paris, with observations shewing the same to be a forgery.7

The fifth contains a short recapitulation or summary of the arguments on both sides of the question. And,

The last is an historical collection of the direct or positive evidence still on record, tending to show what part the earls of Murray,8 and Morton, and secretary Lethington9 had in the murder of the lord Darnley.

The author apologises for the length of this book, by observing, that it necessarily comprises a great number of particulars, which could not easily be contracted:1 the same plea may be made for the imperfection of our extract, which will naturally fall below the force of the book, because we can only select parts of that evidence, which owes its strength to its concatenation, and which will be weakened whenever it is disjoined.

The account of the seizure of these controverted letters is thus given by the queen’s enemies.

The papers in the box were said to be eight letters in French, some love sonnets in French also, and a promise of marriage by the Queen to Bothwell.

To the reality of these letters our author makes some considerable objections, from the nature of things, but as such arguments do not always convince we will pass to the evidence of the facts.

On June 15, 1567, the queen delivered herself to Morton, and his party, who imprisoned her.3

June 20, 1567, Dalgleish was seized, and six days after was examined by Morton; his examination is still extant, and there is no mention of this fatal box.4

Dec. 4, 1567, Murray’s secret council published an act, in which is the first mention of these letters, & in which they are said to be “written and subscrivit with her awin hand.”5 Ten days after Murray’s first parliament met, and passed an act, in which they mention “previe letters written halelie [wholly] with her awin hand.”6 The difference between “written and subscribed,” and “wholly written,” gives the author just reason to suspect, first, a forgery, and then a variation of the forgery. It is indeed very remarkable, that the first account asserts more than the second, though the second contains all the truth, for the letters, whether written by the queen or not, were not subscribed. Had the second account differed from the first only by something added, the first might have contained truth, though not all the truth, but as the second corrects the first by diminution, the first cannot be cleared from falshood.7

In October 1568, these letters were shewn at York to Elizabeth’s commissioners, by the agents of Murray, but not in their publick character as commissioners, but by way of private information, and were not therefore exposed to Mary’s commissioners. Mary, however, hearing that some letters were intended to be produced against her, directed her commissioners to require them for her inspection, and, in the mean time, to declare them “false and feigned, forged and invented,”8 observing that there were many that could counterfeit her hand.

To counterfeit a name is easy, to counterfeit a hand through eight letters very difficult. But it does not appear that the letters were ever shewn to those who would desire to detect them, and to the English commissioners a rude and remote imitation might be sufficient, since they were not shewn as judicial proofs; and why they were not shewn as proofs no other reason can be given than they must have then been examined and that examination would have detected the forgery.

These letters, thus timorously and suspiciously communicated, were all the evidence against Mary; for the servants of Bothwell,9 executed for the murder of the king, acquitted the Queen at the hour of death. These letters were so necessary to Murray, that he alledges them as the reason of the queen’s imprisonment, tho’ he imprisoned her on the 16th,1 and pretended not to have intercepted the letters before the 20th of June.

Of these letters, on which the fate of princes and kingdoms was suspended, the authority should have been put out of doubt, yet that such letters were ever found, there is no witness but Morton, who accused the queen, and Crawfurd,2 a dependant on Lennox,3 another of her accusers. Dalgleigh, the bearer, was hanged without any interrogatories concerning them, & Hulet,4 mentioned in them, tho’ then in prison, was never called to authenticate them, nor was his confession produced against Mary till death had left him no power to disown it.

Elizabeth, indeed, was easily satisfied, she declared herself ready to receive the proofs against Mary, and absolutely refused Mary the liberty of confronting her accusers, and making her defence. Before such a judge a very little proof would be sufficient. She gave the accusers of Mary leave to go to Scotland, and the box and letters were seen no more. They have been since lost, and the discovery, which comparison of writing might have made, is now no longer possible. Hume has, however, endeavoured to palliate the conduct of Elizabeth, but “his account,” says our author, “is contradicted almost in every sentence by the records, which, it appears, he has himself perused.”5

In the next part, the authenticity of the letters is examined, and it seems to be proved beyond contradiction, that the French letters, supposed to have been written by Mary, are translated from the Scotch copy, and, if originals, which it was so much the interest of such numbers to preserve, are wanting, it is much more likely that they never existed, than that they have been lost.

The arguments, used by Dr. Robertson, to prove the genuineness of the letters are next examined. Robertson makes use principally of what he calls the “internal evidence,” which, amounting at most to conjecture, is opposed by conjecture equally probable.

In examining the confession of Nicholas Hubert, or French Paris, this new apologist of Mary seems to gain ground upon her accuser. Paris is mentioned in the letters, as the bearer of them to Bothwell; when the rest of Bothwell’s servants were executed, clearing the queen in the last moment, Paris, instead of suffering his trial with the rest at Edinburgh, was conveyed to St. Andrews, where Murray was absolute, put into a dungeon of Murray’s citadel, and two years after condemned by Murray himself nobody knew how. Several months after his death, a confession in his name, without the regular testifications,6 was sent to Cecil, at what exact time nobody can tell.7

Of this confession, Lesly, bishop of Ross, openly denied the genuineness, in a book printed at London, and suppressed by Elizabeth;8 and another historian of that time declares that Paris died without any confession; and the confession itself was never shewn to Mary, or to Mary’s commissioners. The author makes this reflection:

Mr. Hume, indeed, observes, “It is in vain at present to seek for improbabilities in Nicholas Hubert’s dying confession, and to magnify the smallest difficulties into a contradiction. It was certainly a regular judicial paper, given in regularly and judicially, and ought to have been canvassed at the time, if the persons, whom it concerned, had been assured of their innocence.”1—To which our author makes a reply, which cannot be shortened without weakening it:

The state of the evidence relating to the letters is this:

Morton affirms that they were taken in the hands of Dalgleish. The examination of Dalgleish is still extant, and he appears never to have been once interrogated concerning the letters.

Morton and Murray affirm that they were written by the queen’s hand; they were carefully concealed from Mary and her commissioners, and were never collated by one man, who could desire to disprove them.

Several of the incidents mentioned in the letters are confirmed by the oath of Crawfurd, one of Lennox’s defendants, and some of the incidents are so minute as that they could scarcely be thought on by a forger. Crawfurd’s testimony is not without suspicion. Whoever practices forgery endeavours to make truth the vehicle of falshood. Of a prince’s life very minute incidents are known, and if any are too slight to be remarked, they may be safely feigned, for they are likewise too slight to be contradicted. But there are still more reasons for doubting the genuinness of these letters. They had no date of time or place, no seal, no direction, no superscription.3

The only evidences that could prove their authenticity were Dalgleish, and Paris, of which Dalgleish, at his tryal, was never questioned about them, Paris was never publicly tried, tho’ he was kept alive thro’ the time of the conference.

The servants of Bothwell, who were put to death for the king’s murder, cleared Mary with their last words.

The letters were first declared to be subscribed, and were then produced without subscription.

They were shewn during the conferences at York privately to the English commissioners, but were concealed from the commissioners of Mary.

Mary always sollicited the perusal of these letters, and was always denied it.

She demanded to be heard in person by Elizabeth, before the nobles of England, and the ambassadors of other princes, and was refused.

When Mary persisted in demanding copies of the letters, her commissioners were dismissed with their box to Scotland, and the letters were seen no more.

The French letters, which for almost two centuries have been considered as originals, by the enemies of Mary’s memory, are now discovered to be forgeries, and acknowledged to be translations, and perhaps French translations of a Latin translation. And the modern accusers of Mary are forced to infer from these letters, which now exist, that other letters existed formerly, which have been lost in spite of curiosity, malice, and interest.

The rest of this treatise is employed in an endeavour to prove that Mary’s accusers were the murderersa of Darnley; thro’ this enquiry it is not necessary to follow him, only let it be observed, that, if these letters were forged by them, they may easily be thought capable of other crimes. That the letters were forged is now made so probable, that perhaps they will never more be cited as testimonies.