THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCES.--It was on the 20th of June 1567, that Dalgleish was seized, with the box and writings. The official account given by Buchanan is,--"That in the Castle of Edinburgh there was left by the Earl Bothwell, before his flying away, and was sent for by one George Dalgleish, his servant, who was taken by the Earl of Morton, a small gilt coffer, not fully a foot long, being garnished in sundry places with the Roman letter F, under a king's crown, wherein were certain letters and writings well known, and by oaths, to be affirmed to have been written with the Queen of Scots own hand, to the Earl of Bothwell."[211] The question to be decided is, whether these letters and writings are genuine, or whether they can be proved to be fabrications? That the latter is the correct conclusion, appears on the following grounds. _First_, The conduct of Murray, Morton, and others of the Scottish nobility, on various occasions, proves that ambition was the ruling passion of their lives. Murray's iniquitous extermination of the Gordons in 1562, the influence he afterwards exercised in Mary's councils, and his unjustifiable opposition to her marriage with Darnley, carried even the length of open rebellion, illustrate his character no less clearly, than the share he had in the murder of Rizzio, and his proceedings after the meeting at Carberry Hill, do that of Morton. A train of events, arising out of the audacious machinations of Bothwell, placed Mary at the disposal of men thus devoted to the attainment of power. Yielding to their irresistible desire to secure its possession, they first imprisoned, and then dethroned their sovereign. She escaped from their hands, and, though driven from the country, threatened to return with foreign aid, to place herself at the head of her own party, which was still powerful, and to force from them their usurped authority. The urgency of the case called for a bold and decisive remedy. If Mary could prove, as there was no doubt she could, that, according to all the facts yet before the world, she had suffered severely and unjustly, they must either fall upon some means to vindicate their own actions, or be ruined for ever. Nothing would more naturally suggest itself than the expedient they adopted. The circumstance of Mary having been actually married to the man who murdered her former husband, opened a door to the very worst suspicions; and if they could artfully conceal the events which led to the marriage, and which not only justified it, but made it a matter of necessity, they hoped still to retain possession of the government. They were aware, indeed, that by their own proclamations and acts of council, they had acknowledged Mary's innocence, and pointed out the real cause of her connection with Bothwell; and it was now not enough, after they had involved themselves in deeper responsibility, merely to retract their former allegations. They were