procedure under which the deposition was taken at St. Andrew's; and in any case Hay's name, inasmuch as he was notoriously a mere creature of the Regent's, could lend but little weight to the deposition even had it been taken in his presence.

Thirdly, the confession, we have seen, was drawn from Paris only by the torture. As soon as this purpose had been effected he was hurried off to execution; and thus, when Elizabeth's demand for his production was received, it was no longer possible to test this irregular and suspicious deposition by a fitting judicial interrogatory.

Fourthly, these suspicions are still further deepened by the fact that Bishop Leslie, in his defence of the Queen, asserts that Paris, when on the scaffold, declared her entire innocence, and thus reaffirmed the first deposition to the same effect which he had made on the 9th of July, and from which he had only been induced to depart by the torture upon the following day.

Fifthly, so plainly unreliable was Paris's second deposition that Buchanan in his "Detection," which was published but two years later, and which heaps together every available fragment tending to criminate the Queen, not only abstained from publishing it in extenso, but does not even allude to its existence.

Many of these particulars have been discussed by us on former occasions, in considering the general bearings of the history of the Queen of Scots; but we have found it impossible to avoid recurring to them in connection with the special question of the external evidence of the genuineness of the letters. The last occasion on which we referred to the subject was in criticizing Mr. Froude's account of Queen Mary, in his seventh and eighth volumes, founded as we saw on the assumption of the genuineness of these letters-an assumption the proof of which was postponed to a later volume. It will be necessary therefore to consider the arguments by which Mr. Froude has sought to justify that assumption; and it happens conveniently for the arrangement of the subject which we have been hitherto following, that the evidence on which Mr. Froude here relies belongs almost entirely to that class of external evidence which is now under consideration. We shall transcribe the entire argument, which occurs in one of the notes of vol. ix. : :

I accept them [the Casket papers] as genuine because, as will be seen, they were submitted to almost the entire English peerage, and especially to those among the peers who were most interested in discovering them to be forged, and by them admitted to be indisputably in the handwriting of the Queen of Scots; because the letters in the text [those from Stirling] especially refer to conversations with Lord Huntly, who was then and

always one of Mary Stuart's truest friends-conversations which he would have denied had they been false, and which he never did deny; because their contents were confirmed in every particular unfavourable to the Queen by a Catholic informant of the Spanish ambassador, who hurried to London immediately after the final catastrophe, for which they prepared the way; and lastly, because there is no ground whatever to doubt the genuineness of the letters, except such as arises from the hardy and long-continued but entirely baseless denial of interested or sentimental parties.

Mr. Froude's arguments here detailed are four in number: (1) That the papers were submitted to almost the entire English peerage, and especially to those most interested in detecting the forgery, and by them admitted to be indisputably in the Queen's hand; (2) that they refer to a conversation with Lord Huntly which he would have denied had he been able, but never did deny; (3) that they were confirmed in every unfavourable particular by a Catholic informant of the Spanish ambassador; and (4) that there is no real ground for doubting their genuineness except the denial of interested or weakly sentimental partisans. Some of these arguments we have already discussed in our former notices, but we shall allude very briefly to them all in order.

First, the papers, Mr. Froude asserts, were submitted to almost the entire English peerage, and especially to those most interested in detecting the forgery, and were by them admitted to be indisputably in the Queen's handwriting.

We must refer the reader to our former notice of Mr. Froude for a history of the professed examination of the papers by the Commission at York and at Westminster, which was so scandalously unfair as almost in itself to stamp the papers with the brand of forgery. The story is told in full detail by Mr. Hosack, and also by Mr. Caird, to whose pages, as well as to our own former strictures on Mr. Froude,t we must refer the reader for this part of the subject.

Confining ourselves, at present, to the new argument of Mr. Froude, we shall only say that, even after the many examples of reckless assertion which we have found it necessary to point out in Mr. Froude, we were hardly prepared for so enormous an exaggeration as that by which he represents the Casket papers as having been " submitted to almost the entire English peerage." The transaction to which he refers is a curious one, the history of which Mr. Hosack has very fully elucidated. We can only find room to state that, after

Froude's History of England, xx. 58-9.

+ DUBLIN REWIEW, vol. iii. (New Series), pp. 113-4.

Mary and her commissioners had vainly demanded to be permitted an inspection of the letters; after Murray had refused even to the English commissioners more than a passing inspection of the originals, chiefly for the purpose of collation with the mere copies which he left in their hands; after Mary's commissioners (all their most reasonable and just demands made in her name having been refused) had retired from the commission; after it had been proposed that the whole case should be brought before the Parliament,-it was at length determined that the results of the conferences should be laid before six noblemen of high rank, the Earls of Northumberland, Westmoreland, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Huntingdon, and Warwick. These six noblemen Mr. Froude magnifies into "almost the entire peerage!"

The only accounts which are preserved of the procedure are in the handwriting of Cecil, and contain alterations and erasures by his hand. It was held in the presence of the Privy Council, and Mary's commissioners also were present; but, although Mr. Froude does not hesitate, without the smallest warrant in the text, to aver in his positive and reckless way that the letters were "long and minutely examined by each and every of the lords who were present," even Cecil's account of the proceeding would show that the examination was neither "long nor minute," but must on the contrary have been hasty and irregular. Cecil expressly states that "it is to be noted that at the time of the producing, and hearing, and reading of all the said letters, there was no special choice of nor regard had to the order of the producing thereof; but the whole writings, lying all together upon the council-table, the same were one after another shown rather by hap as the same did lie on the table, than with any choice made as by the nature thereof, as if time had so served might have been." And this is what Mr. Froude calls a "long and minute" examination! They were compared, Cecil states "for the manner of writing and fashion of orthography, with sundry other letters long since heretofore written and sent by the said Queen of Scots to the Queen's Majesty; on collation of which no difference was found." But, on the one hand, it must be remembered that the letters of Mary which were made the standard of comparison were themselves produced by Cecil, and are open to the possible suspicion of having been specially selected to support the imposture; and upon the other, that, according to the theory which Mr. Hosack and Mr. Caird, with every show of probability, adopt, three of the Casket letters were genuine letters of the Queen;

* Goodall, ii. 258. Hosack, 448-9.

addressed, however, not to Bothwell, but to Darnley, and mixed up with the forged letters in order at once to support the forgery, and at the same time, by the expressions of endearment which they contain, to establish the guilty love of Mary for Bothwell. One thing at least is certain, that this collation of the latter was afterwards challenged as open, not merely to suspicion, but to positive impeachment. "You will peradventure answer," says Leslie in his Defence, anticipating some future Froude, "that due collation was made." And though Leslie was one of the Queen's commissioners at this "long and minute" examination, he dismisses, contemptuously, the idea of its sufficiency or fairness. "O perfect and worthy collation!" he ironically exclaims, "O most apt and meritorious for such a purpose! As though it is not notoriously known throughout the world that you are her most mortal enemies!" Yet of these very men Mr. Froude ventures to say that they were especially interested in detecting the forgery!

Nor is Mr. Froude justified in saying that the English noblemen who were present at the examination of the papers, such as it was, were agreed in admitting them to be "indisputably in the handwriting of the Queen of Scots." Even if Cecil's account of the proceedings deserved to be received with implicit belief, Mr. Froude, as usual, goes far beyond what its letter will warrant. The utmost that Cecil says is, that "on collation no difference was found;" which need not imply anything more than that no positive proof of forgery was established. But we learn expressly from the Spanish ambassador that, whatever may have been Cecil's representation on the subject, the lords before whom the papers were collated did not acquiesce in the views which he sought to have carried. Their opposition, indeed, according to the Simancas despatch, quoted by Lingard,* irritated Cecil exceedingly; and the opinion which they expressed, so far from justifying Mr. Froude's sweeping declaration as to their admitting the letters to be "indisputably in the Queen's handwriting," was guarded in the extreme, and was limited by the express reservation "as the case now stands," intended to provide for an opportunity of reply on Mary's part.

Mr. Froude's second argument for the genuineness of the letters, from Lord Huntly's not having denied the conversations which he is reported to have held with tht Queen about her collusive seizure by Bothwell on her return from Stirling, is equally infelicitous.

* VI. 94.

In the first place, there is no evidence whatever that the particular letter which contains the allusion to this conversation was ever brought under Huntly's notice. The only occasion on which the letters appear to have been alluded to in his presence, and on which he might be supposed to have obtained any direct cognizance even of their general tenor was in the Parliament of December, 1567. Now on this occasion the reference made to the letters was of the most general kind; and from the excessive reserve which Murray practised, even when he was called on before the English commissioners, we cannot hesitate to infer decisively that no opportunity of minute examination of the several letters in detail was afforded to the Scottish Parliament or to the individual peers.

Moreover the allusion to Huntly, it must be remembered, occurs in one of the Stirling letters-a document of comparatively little importance when contrasted with the terrible revelations of the Glasgow letter. Nothing is more probable than that it should altogether escape his notice; but even if it were certain that the allusion to himself had been known to him, we might content ourselves with the reply of Mr. Caird that "this perilling of the case on the testimony of Huntly and Argyll is singularly unfortunate for Mr. Froude. 'Huntly' and Argyll' are the foremost signatures to the solemn declaration of thirty-five peers and prelates of Scotland in regard to these papers, that the same are devised by themselves (the Queen's accusers) in some principal and substantious clauses.'"

We must say, however, that Mr. Froude's third argument is the most startling of all, in its reckless disregard of even the appearance of plausibility.

He accepts the Casket letters because "their contents were confirmed in every particular unfavourable to the Queen by a Catholic informant of the Spanish ambassador." The reader has seen how numerous and minute are the incidents, conversations, and allusions contained in these letters; and he will naturally turn with some curiosity to the correspondingly, as he may expect, lengthy despatch of the ambassador, containing the report of this fatal communication from his Catholic informant, confirming the Casket revelations "in every particular unfavourable to the Queen." Will it be believed that the whole authority for this sweeping assertion is one short and vague sentence, which does not contain a single distinct fact, incident, conversation, or allnsion? Will it further be believed that the Catholic informant of the ambassador never alludes to the Casket letters or their contents, whether in general or

*Caird's "Mary Stuart," Preface to second edition, p. xxvi.