Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587; Queens -- Scotland -- Biography; Scotland -- History -- Mary Stuart, 1542-1567
I omit the many discrepant accounts of dying confessions accusing or
absolving the Queen. Buchanan says that Dalgleish, in the Tolbooth,
confessed the Exchequer House _fabliau_, and that this is duly recorded,
but it does not appear in his Dying Confession printed in the ‘Detection.’
In his, Bowton says that ‘the Queen’s mind was acknowledged thereto.’ The
Jesuits, in 1568, were informed that Bowton, at his trial, impeached
Morton and Balfour, and told Moray that he spared to accuse him, ‘because
of your dignity.’[174] These statements about dying confessions were
bandied, in contradictory sort, by both sides. The confession of Morton,
attested, and certainly not exaggerated, by two sympathetic Protestant
ministers, is of another species, and, as far as it goes, is evidence,
though Morton obviously does not tell all he knew. The part of Paris’s
statement about the crime ends by saying that Huntly came to Bothwell at
Holyrood, late on the fatal night, and whispered with him, as Bothwell
changed his evening dress, after the dance at Holyrood, for a cavalry
cloak and other clothes. Bothwell told Paris that Huntly had offered to
accompany him, but that he would not take him. Morton, in his dying
confession, declared that Archibald Douglas confessed that he and Huntly
were both present: contradicting Paris as to Huntly.
The declarations of Paris were never published at the time. On November 8,
1571, Dr. Wilson, who was apparently translating something--the
‘Detection’ of Buchanan, or the accompanying Oration (‘Actio’), into sham
Scots--wrote to Cecil, ‘desiring you to send unto me “Paris” closely
sealed, and it shall not be known from whence it cometh.’ Cecil was
secretly circulating libels on Mary, but ‘Paris’ was not used. His
declarations would have clashed with the ‘Detection’ as written when only
Bothwell and Mary were to be implicated. The truth, that there was a great
_political_ conspiracy, including some of Mary’s accusers, and perhaps
Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven (for so Paris makes Bothwell say), would have
come out. The fact that Moray ‘would neither help nor hinder,’ and sneaked
off, would have been uttered to the world. The glaring discrepancies would
have been patent to criticism. So Cecil withheld documents unsuited to his
purpose of discrediting Mary.[175]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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