A distinguished Scottish writer has summed up the question thus: "That Mary and Darnley should have held a long private conversation on many topics of no particular importance; that after Mary was gone Darnley should have repeated the whole conversation to Crawfurd; that Crawfurd either then or eighteen months later should have written out a report in Scots of what Darnley had said; that Mary should have written within twenty-four hours a letter in French in which she also reported the conversation; that Mary’s letter should have been afterwards translated into Scots; and that the Scots translation of Mary’s letter should have been found to agree, word for word, with Crawfurd’s report,--this series of marvels is more than the most devout credulity can stomach." (John Skelton, C.B., LL.D.) Seventh. The history of these letters makes it tolerably clear that it was many months after they were said to have been discovered by Morton, before they took definite form; in other words, that they were being concocted, at least, to use the words of the loyal nobility, "in some principal and substantial clauses." Even as late as the month of August, 1567, the rebel lords reiterated that Bothwell had laid violent hands on the Queen, and that they had risen up to rescue her from his thraldom. But on December 4th, the same lords declared, as we read in the Act of the Secret Counsel, that they had taken arms against her because she was an accomplice of Bothwell’s in the murder of her husband, as shown "be divers hir previe lettres written and subscrivit with hir awen hand, and sent by hir to James Erll Boithwell." This flat contradiction between the statements of the same parties arouses the strongest suspicion of treachery. Nor will it avail to say that in their excessive charity, they had for a time chosen to make liars of themselves rather than unnecessarily reveal the vices of their former Queen; for, according to the deposition of Morton, at least according to what Mary’s adversaries claim to be Morton’s deposition, the Casket containing the incriminating documents was taken from a servant of Bothwell’s on June 20th--nearly two weeks after the Confederate lords had taken up arms. Again, the minutes of the Secret Counsel describe the letters as "written and subscrit with hir (Mary’s) awen hand, and sent by hir to James Erll Boithwell." Yet the letters exhibited at Hampton Court nearly a year later, were neither signed by Mary, nor addressed to Bothwell.