The books and pamphlets written in attack or defence of Mary would of themselves form a library. For the attack, the key-note is to be found in Cecil's avowed principle concerning the treatment of the dethroned queen, that _their purpose could not be obtained without disgracing her_. Hence, the silver-casket letters, and the so-called confessions of Paris. Hence, the issue, during every year of her long imprisonment of eighteen years, of some vile pamphlet, under Cecil's instructions, calculated to blast her character. Two men in particular powerfully contributed to defame the Queen of Scots--John Knox and George Buchanan. Knox by his sermons, in which, says Russel, (_History of the Reformation_, vol. i. p. 292,) "lying strives with rage;" Buchanan, by his writings, which have been made by Mary's enemies one of the sources of history. Buchanan was an apostate monk, saved from the gallows by Mary, and loaded with her favors. An eye-witness of her dignity, her goodness, and her purity, he afterward described her as the vilest of women. He sold his pen to Elizabeth, and has been properly described as "unrivalled in baseness, peerless in falsehood, supreme in ingratitude." His _Detection_ was published (1570) in Latin, and copies were immediately sent by Cecil to Elizabeth's ambassador in Paris with instructions to circulate them; "_for they will come to good effect to disgrace her, which must be done before other purposes can be obtained_." This shameful work has been the inspiration of most of the portraits drawn of Mary. De Thou in France, Spotiswoode, Jebb, and many others in England, have all followed him. Holinshed too was deceived by Buchanan; but it is doubtful if he dared write otherwise than he did, between the terrors of Cecil's spies and Elizabeth's mace. An English translation of Buchanan was first published in 1690, being called forth by the revolution of 1688. Jebb's two folio volumes appeared in 1725.