After the length at which we argued these questions on a recent occasion, our readers will no doubt be better pleased if we do not take them again over the same ground. We shall now advert only to another controverted point, which appears to us of considerable interest.

Prince Labanoff admits,* without hesitation, the statement that Queen Mary, when sent to the castle of Lochleven, in June, 1567, was with child by Bothwell, and that in February, 1568, she gave birth to a daughter, who was immediately removed to France, and became a nun at the convent of Notre Dame at Soissons.

Considering the marriage of Mary to Bothwell, in May, 1567, it is obvious that her character is in no way affected by this tale, whether true or false. On this point, therefore, Prince Labanoff's prepossessions in her favour have no force, and the judgment of so well-informed and laborious an inquirer deserves, as we think, the greatest weight. His assent to this tale has led us to inquire the grounds on which it rests; and we shall now state what appear the testimonies in its favour, as well as the negative presumptions which may be raised against it.

The statement rests mainly on the direct assertion of Le Laboureur in his additions to the Mémoires de Castelnau, and will be found at vol. i. p. 673, of the edition of 1659. Le Laboureur himself is a writer of great research and accuracy. He is described by M. Weiss in the Biographie Universelle as 'l'un des écrivains qui ont le plus contribué à éclaircir l'histoire de France.' And as Prince Labanoff reminds us, he held a post of high confidence at the Court of France (Conseiller et Aumônier du Roi), and might become acquainted with many, until then very secret transactions. But if we believe, as appears most probably the case, that Le Laboureur derived the story from the MS. notes and papers left behind by Castelnau, the evidence in its favour will appear stronger still. Michel de Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissière (by which latter name he was commonly known during his life), had accompanied Mary as French Ambassador to Scotland. In 1575 he was appointed French Ambassador in England; and, as appears from Prince Labanoff's collection, became one of Mary's most frequent and most trusted correspondents. He says himself in his Memoirs, 'Elle est encore prisonnière sans pouvoir trouver moyen d'en sortir qu'à l'instant il ne survienne quelques nouvelles difficultés, lesquelles ont pour la plupart passé par mes mains.'†

It appears also that in the course of his diplomatic and poli

* Vol. ii. p. 63, note.

↑ Vol. xxxiii. p. 357, in the collection of Petitot.

tical services he had occasion to make many journeys through the north of France, and he might not improbably in one of them have seen himself, at Soissons, the unhappy offspring of a most ill-omened and most guilty marriage.

There is, however, a remarkable confirmation of Le Laboureur's story, wholly unknown to Le Laboureur when he wrote, and not published until a century afterwards. It is contained in a secret despatch from Throckmorton, the English Ambassador in Scotland, to his Queen, and will be found in the Appendix to Robertson's History, under the date of July 18th, 1567. It appears that the Ambassador had transmitted by a secret channel a proposal to Mary at Lochleven, that she should renounce Bothwell for her husband. But he adds in his report to Elizabeth, 'She hath sent me word that she will rather dye, grounding herself upon thys reason that takynge herself to be seven weekes gon with chylde, by renouncynge Bothwell she should acknowledge herselfe to be with chylde of a bastard, and to have forfayted her honoure, which she will not do to dye for it.'

Nor can it, on examination of the circumstances, be maintained that this answer was only a device of Mary to evade compliance. She must have foreseen that, as really happened, the renouncing of Bothwell would be again and again pressed upon her, and that if her first reason against it should, after some short interval, appear to be invalid, she would then be unable to take a stand on any other ground.

The concurrence of two such testimonies as Le Laboureur's in France and Throckmorton's in Scotland-each entitled to high confidence, and each without the slightest knowledge of the other -would probably on most questions be considered as decisive. In this case, however, we have to set against them a strong primâ facie presumption on the other side-the utter silence as to this child at Soissons in all the correspondence of the period-the utter silence, first, of Mary herself; secondly, of all her friends; and thirdly, of all her opponents.

We propose to consider, under each of these heads, whether any sufficient ground for such silence can be assigned.

1. Mary herself had few opportunities of writing from her prison of Lochleven. Even the industry of Prince Labanoff is compelled to leave an utter blank between Sept. 3rd, 1567, when Mary wrote to Sir Robert Melville, desiring him to send stuffs for clothes for herself and my maidens, for they are naked;' and March 31st, 1568, when we find two notes, one to Catherine de' Medici and the other to the Archbishop of Glasgow, entreating speedy succour, and adding, 'je n'ose écrire davantage.' There are two other short notes from Lochleven, on the day preceding

her

her escape, one to Catherine de' Medici, and one to Elizabeth. In none of these could we expect to find any allusion to her pregnancy or to the birth of her child.

There is no letter at all from Mary during the hurried fortnight which elapsed between her escape from Lochleven and her arrival in England, except a few lines of doubtful authenticity, dated from Dundrennan, and addressed to Queen Elizabeth, which we think Prince Labanoff has too hastily admitted.* This note, however, in no degree bears upon the present question.

Within a very few weeks of her captivity in England, Mary became convinced of the horror with which her union with Bothwell was universally regarded. She consented, at the conferences of York, that steps should be taken for the dissolution of her marriage and for the contracting of another with the Duke of Norfolk. From that time forward, therefore, we need not wonder that her letters should contain no allusion to the pledge of an alliance which that pledge might, if known, render more difficult to dissolve, and which she knew was most hateful to all her well-wishers, whether in France, in England, or in Scotland.

2. The same horror of this alliance and of its results may be thought an adequate motive for silence in such few of Mary's relatives or friends in France as must be supposed cognizant of the birth and existence of her daughter.

3. Of Mary's enemies, the first in power at this period was her illegitimate brother, the Earl of Murray, the Regent of Scotland. During a long time he professed a tender regard for his sister's reputation, and several times warned her against urging him to the public accusation, which he made at last on December 8th, 1568. It is therefore perfectly consistent with his professions and with his position, that he should in February, 1568, have taken steps for the concealment of Mary's childbirth, and the sending of the infant to her relatives in France. After December, 1568, there could no longer indeed be the slightest pretence to personal kindness and regard. But surely the chances of the Royal succession would then supply him with another and much stronger motive for concealment. In case the life of James VI. -a boy not yet three years old-should fail, Mary's daughter, if the marriage with Bothwell were legitimate, would become the next heir to the Crown. A most perplexing question as to the strict validity of that marriage, and as to the rights of the true heir, would then arise. It seems probable, therefore, that in such

*The authority he cites for it is only Marie Stuart, Nouvelle Historique,' Paris, 1674. Moreover, the note from Dundrennan is not alluded to in the, certainly authentic, letter which Mary addressed to Elizabeth from Workington only two days afterwards.

a contingency

a contingency Murray and his associates in the secret had resolved to deny absolutely the fact of the birth or the existence of the infant. The same motive for the greatest possible secrecy would have weight all through the life of the nun at Soissons, but would cease at her death. And thus the same consideration would serve to explain both the silence observed during so many years, and the disclosure at last in Le Laboureur's annotation— always supposing the secret to have been confined, both in Scotland and in France, to extremely few and trusty persons.

We offer these conjectures, as in our minds greatly diminishing, though not, we admit, entirely removing, the force of the objections against the story. And on the whole, looking to the positive testimonies in its favour, we certainly incline, with Prince Labanoff, to a belief in its truth.

There is nothing new in these volumes relative to the deathbed declaration of Bothwell. The discovery of the original, or of an authentic copy, is still among the desiderata of literature: of its real existence, as we have elsewhere stated, we do not entertain a doubt. We looked for some information on this subject in the 8th volume of Mr. Tytler's History, published since our review of his 7th, but to our great surprise he gives no account whatever, so far as we can find, of the end of Bothwell. We know not how to explain such an omission in so minute a history and so careful a writer. Of Mr. Laing's Dissertation no passage is more open to reply than the one in which he cavils at the Earl's dying confession. These names,' he says, are apparently fictitious. I believe there is no such town or castle as Malmay either in Norway or in Denmark.'* This is literally true. But was it quite candid to omit the equally certain fact that, in 1575, the province of Scania, on the continent of Sweden, was an appendage of the Danish Crown, and that the citadel of Malmay or Malmoe, not indeed in Denmark Proper, but in Scania, nearly opposite the coast of Copenhagen, was the place where Bothwell was confined?

We may add that we have doubts whether Bothwell's confinement in Denmark was so strict and rigorous as most histories allege. Such a statement appears scarcely compatible with the following expressions of a letter from Queen Elizabeth to the King of Denmark in 1570:

'De Bodovellio vero nos antea ad Serenitatem vestram, ut de certissimo Regis sui interfectore, scripsimus Quare confidimus quidem certe (quod tamen a Serenitate Vestrâ iterum atque iterum summopere rogamus) Comitem tanti facinoris reum in carcere et vinculis arcte custodiri, vel certe quod malumus, magisque petimus, e

* History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 338, note, ed. 1819.

carcere

carcere ad judicium subeundum, ad eum locum in quo scelus admissum sit missum iri; neque enim certe Regi honorificum esse potest Regis interfectorem solute et libere vagari et impune vivere.'*

Nor are we by any means confident in the common story that Bothwell on his imprisonment became insane. We suspect that this tale may have been devised with the view of discrediting his deathbed confession; at least, so far as we remember, it is not mentioned by any writer until several years after Bothwell's death, and until the discrediting his statement had become a party object: yet so remarkable a fact as his insanity, which would be commonly held forth as a special judgment of Providence against an atrocious criminal, was not very likely, even in his lifetime, to remain unnoticed.

We shall now quit this thorny field of controversy, and enable our readers to judge for themselves of the merits of Prince Labanoff's Collection, by laying before them some of the letters it contains. Of those which we insert in French, we shall give the words exactly according to the originals, but shall endeavour to render them more easily intelligible by substituting the modern for the quaint old-fashioned form of spelling.

The following is a report of Le Croc, the French ambassador in Scotland, to Queen Catherine de' Medici: it is dated Sunday, May 18th, 1567, and the preceding Thursday to which he refers, was the very day of Mary's marriage to Bothwell :

'Madame, les lettres que j'écris à V. M. par le dit Evêque (de Dunblane) sont pour être lues; vous pouvez penser que je ne me fie à lui. Quoique je vous écrive, Vos Majestés ne sauraient mieux faire que de lui faire mauvaise chère et trouver bien mauvais le mariage, car il est très-malheureux, et déjà l'on n'est pas à s'en repentir. Jeudi Sa Majesté m'envoya quérir, où je m'aperçus d'une étrange façon entre elle et son mari: ce qu'elle me veut excuser, disant que si je la voyais triste, c'était parce qu'elle ne voulait se réjouir, comme elle dit ne le faire jamais, ne désirant que la mort. Hier, étant renfermés tous deux dedans un cabinet avec le Comte de Bothwell, elle cria tout haut que on lui baillât un couteau pour se tuer. Ceux qui étaient dedans la chambret l'entendirent; ils pensent que si Dieu ne lui aide qu'elle se désespérera. Je l'ai conseillée et comfortée de mieux que j'ai pu ces trois fois que l'ai vue. Son mari ne la fera pas longue, car il est trop haï en ce royaume, et puis l'on ne cessera jamais que la mort du Roi ne soit sue. Il n'y a ici pas un seul seigneur de nom, que le dit Comte de Bothwell et le Comte de Craffort; les autres sont mandés, et ne veulent point venir. Elle a envoyé qu'ils s'assemblent en quelque lieu nommé et que je les aille trouver pour leur parler au nom du Roi, et voir si j'y pourrai faire

Appendix to M. Laing's Dissertation, vol. ii. No. xxix.

Daus la pièce qui précédait le cabinet.'

VOL. LXXVII. NO. CLIII.

L

quelque