I have not alluded in the text to the story, generally repeated by historians, that Elizabeth urged Paulet and Drury to murder Mary privately. There is no doubt that, after the signature of the warrant, Walsingham and Davison, by Elizabeth’s direction, urged Paulet and Drury to put Mary to death, and that they refused. But was it a private murder that was meant or a public execution without delivery of the warrant? There is nothing in any of Davison’s statements inconsistent with the latter and far more probable explanation. The blacker charge is founded solely on the two letters which are generally accepted as being those which passed between the secretaries and Paulet, but which may be confidently set down as impudent forgeries. They were first given to the world in 1722 by Dr. George Mackenzie, a violent Marian, who says that _a copy_ of them was sent him by Mr. Urry of Christ Church, Oxford, and that they had been found among Paulet’s papers. Two years later they were printed by Hearne, an Oxford Jacobite and Nonjuror, who says he got them from _a copy_ furnished him by a friend unnamed (Urry?), who told him he had _copied_ them in 1717 from a MS. letter-book of Paulet’s. There is also a MS. _copy_ in the Harleian collection, which contains erasures and emendations--an extraordinary thing in a copy. It is said to be in the handwriting of the Earl of Oxford himself. There is nothing to show whence he copied it. No one has ever seen the originals of these letters. Neither has any one, except Hearne’s unnamed friend, seen the “letter-book” into which Paulet is supposed to have copied them. Where had this “letter-book” been before 1717? Where was it in 1717? What became of it after 1717? To none of these questions is there any answer. The most rational conclusion is that the “letter-book” never existed, and that the letters were fabricated in the reign of George I. by some Oxford Jacobite, who thought it easier and more prudent to circulate _copies_ than to attempt an imitation of Paulet’s well-known handwriting, with all the other difficulties involved in forging a manuscript. But it may be said, Do not the letters fit in with Davison’s narrative? Of course they do. It was for the very purpose of putting an odious meaning on that narrative that they were fabricated. It was known that letters about putting Mary to death had passed. The real letters had never been seen, and had doubtless been destroyed. Here therefore was a fine opportunity for manufacturing spurious ones. CHAPTER X WAR WITH SPAIN: 1587-1603