[Next day, Mary's Commissioners protested and again demanded "copies of the pretended writings given in." On the 13th they repeated their demand, and received a promise "that she {Elizabeth} will not refuse unto the Queen, her good sister, to give the doubles of all that was produced." (Goodall.) The copies not being forthcoming, Mary applied to the French ambassador, La Mothe Fénélon, for help. Elizabeth promised that they should be produced immediately, but, when Fénélon again approached her on the subject, he was informed that Mary had, in a letter, accused the English Queen of partiality. (Fénélon, i. 133 and 162.) The matter was forgotten in the negotiations for Mary's marriage with the Duke of Norfolk, and in the conspiracy which followed.] SECTION VII THE DOCUMENTS _CONTENTS_ 1. The Contents of the Casket. (_a_) The Letters. (_b_) The Sonnets. (_c_) The Contracts of Marriage. 2. The Deposition of Thomas Nelson. 3. The Deposition of Thomas Crawford. 4. Murray's Journal. 5. The Depositions of Paris. 6. The Confession of Ormiston. 7. The Confession of the Earl of Morton. 8. Letter from Mr. Archibald Douglas to the Queen of Scots. THE CASKET LETTERS. [The following eight letters are the principal contents of the famous Silver Casket (_cf._ pp. 125 and 132-161). A long and bitter controversy has been waged in connection with the question of their authenticity. Every recorded production of them has been the subject of debate. Their discovery is related on pp. 203-207. Their appearance at York is described in the letter to Queen Elizabeth on pp. 138-143. It is evident that, at York, they were produced in Scots, and there has been considerable controversy as to whether they were there stated to be originals or translations. At Westminster, they were shown to the Commissioners in French. Within a few years after the Westminster Conference, we lose all trace of the original documents. Translations of them into Scots, English, and Latin and French versions, which we now know (at least in the case of some of the Letters) not to have been those produced at Westminster, were published soon after the Conference closed. In 1571, Latin translations of Nos. I., II., and IV. were printed in the Latin edition of Buchanan's "Detectio," and, in the same year, a Scots translation was published in London, containing the sonnets in French and Scots (reprinted in Anderson's "Collections," Vol. II.). Prefixed to each of the Scots versions was the first sentence of each letter, in French (_see_ pp. 194-5). In 1572 another Scots version was published at St. Andrews, and, in 1573, a French translation of the "Detectio" appeared, with the imprimatur "Edinburgh." To it, French versions of all the letters, except No. III., were appended, with a version of the sonnets, varying