“When the measure was laid before Parliament, Lord Herries, with one or two others, protested, not against the truth of the charges, but ‘against an act which was prejudicial to the honor, power, and estate of the Queen.’ But their objections were overruled. The acts were passed; the last and most important declaring that ‘the taking of arms by the lords and barons, the apprehension of the queen’s person, and generally all other things spoken and done by them to that effect, since the 10th of February last period, were caused by the said queen’s own default.’ It was most certain, from divers her privy letters, written wholly with her own hand, to the Earl of Bothwell, and by her ungodly and dishonorable proceeding to a pretended marriage with him, that she was privy art and part of the device and deed of the murder, and therefore justly deserved whatever had been done to her. Indirect counsel and means had been used to hold back the knowledge of the truth, yet all men were fully persuaded in their hearts of the authors and devisers of the fact. The nobility perceiving the queen so thrall and so blindly affectionate to the tyrant, and perceiving also that both he and she had conspired together such horrible cruelty, they had at length taken up arms to punish them.” Surely both of these acts of Parliament cannot be trustworthy. Froude refers to Anderson’s Collection as his authority; Miss Strickland, to the register-house, Edinburgh, where the act may be seen in the original Latin. According to one, Mary, Queen of Scots is most clearly proven innocent; according to the other, Mary is most clearly proven guilty. The question therefore rests on the validity of the two acts. The reader may choose between them. Regarding the famous “Silver-casket Letters,” these two English authorities thus comment. Miss Strickland says: “Several hundreds of Mary Stuart’s genuine letters are now before the public, commencing with those she wrote to her mother in her artless childhood. Not one of these bears the slightest analogy, either in style, sentiment or diction, with the eight suspicious documents she is alleged to have written. But argument is rendered unnecessary by the fact that the discovery of letters so discrepant with anything ever written, ever said or done, by Mary Stuart, rests solely on the testimony of Morton, one of the conspirators in the murder of Darnley. Prince Labanoff, who has devoted his life to the collection and verification of Mary Stuart’s letters, rejects this supposititious series, because, as he briefly observes, ‘there is nothing to prove their authenticity’; while the elder Tytler, who, as a lord of session, or judge, had been accustomed to study and collate evidences in the criminal courts of Scotland, has written two able volumes to expose their fallacies, under the title of ‘A Critical Enquiry into the Evidences.’”