My point, however, is that, in 1609, Sprot’s forgeries were clever enough to baffle witnesses of unblemished honour, very familiar with the genuine handwriting of Logan. The Rev. Alexander Watson, minister of the Kirk of Coldinghame (where Logan was wont to attend), alleged that ‘_the character of every letter_ resembles perfectly Robert’s handwrit, _every way_.’ The spelling, which was peculiar, was also Logan’s as a rule. Mr. Watson produced three genuine letters by Logan, before the Lords of the Articles (who were very sceptical), and satisfied them that the plot-letters were the laird’s. Mr. Alexander Smith, minister of Chirnside, was tutor to Logan’s younger children; he gave identical evidence. Sir John Arnott, Provost of Edinburgh, a man of distinction and eminence, produced four genuine letters by the Laird, ‘agreeing perfectly in spelling and character with the plot-letters. The sheriff clerk of Berwick, William Home, in Aytoun Mill (a guest, I think, at Logan’s ‘great Yules’), and John Home, notary in Eyemouth, coincided. The minister of Aytoun, Mr. William Hogg, produced a letter of Logan to the Laird of Aytoun, but was not absolutely so certain as the other witnesses. ‘He thinks them’ (the plot-letters) ‘like [to be] his writing, and that the same appear to be very like his write, by the conformity of letters and spelling.’ {243a} Thus, at the examination of Logan’s real and forged letters, as at the examination of Queen Mary’s real and Casket letters, in spelling and handwriting ‘no difference was found.’ Yet the plot-letters were all forged, and Mr. Anderson shows that, though ‘no difference was _found_,’ many differences existed. Logan had a better chance of acquittal than Mary. The Lords of the Articles, writes Sir Thomas Hamilton to the King (June 21, 1609), ‘had preconceived hard opinions of Restalrig’s process.’ {243b} Yet they were convinced by the evidence of the witnesses, and by their own eyes. From the error of the Lords of the Articles, in 1609, it obviously follows that the English Lords, at Hampton Court, in 1568, may have been unable to detect proofs of forgery in the Casket Letters, which, if the Casket Letters could now be compared with those of Mary, would be at once discovered by modern experts. In short, the evidence as to Mary’s handwriting, even if as unanimously accepted, by the English Lords, as Cecil declares, is not worth a ‘hardhead,’ a debased copper Scottish coin. It is worth no more than the opinion of the Lords of the Articles in the case of the letters attributed to Restalrig. APPENDICES APPENDIX A. THE FRONTISPIECE _Gowrie’s Arms and Ambitions_