The one valuable part of Paris’s declarations concerns the carrying of a Glasgow letter. And that is only valuable if we supply the accusers with possible dates, in place of their own impossible chronology, and if we treat as false their tale[176] that Bothwell ‘lodged in the town’ when he returned from Calendar to Edinburgh. The earlier confessions, especially those of Tala, were certainly mutilated, as we have seen, and only what suited the Lords came out. That of Paris was a tool to use against Lethington, but, as it also implicated Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven, with Argyll and Huntly, who might become friends of Morton and Moray, Paris’s declaration was a two-edged sword, and, probably, was little known in Scotland. In England it was judiciously withheld from the public eye. Goodall writes (1754): ‘I well remember that one of our late criminal judges, of high character for knowledge and integrity, was, by reading it [Paris’s statement], induced to believe every scandal that had been thrown out against the Queen.’ A criminal judge ought to be a good judge of evidence, yet the statements of Paris rather fail, when closely inspected, to carry conviction. Darnley, in fact, was probably strangled by murderers of the Douglas and Lethington branches of the conspiracy. On the whole, it seems more probable that the powder was placed in Mary’s room than not, though all contemporary accounts of its effects make against this theory. As touching Mary, the confessions are of the very slightest value. The published statements, under examination, of Powrie, Dalgleish, Tala, and Bowton do not implicate her. That of Bowton rather clears her than otherwise. Thus: the theory of the accusers, supported by the declaration of Paris, was that, when the powder was ‘fair in field,’ properly lodged in Mary’s room, under that of Darnley, Paris was to enter Darnley’s room as a signal that all was prepared. Mary then left the room, in the time required ‘to say a paternoster.’ But Bowton affirmed that, as he and his fellows stored the powder, Bothwell ‘bade them make haste, before the Queen came forth of the King’s house, for if she came forth before they were ready, they would not find such commodity.’ This, for what it is worth, implies that no signal, such as the entrance of Paris, had been arranged for the Queen’s departure. The self-contradictory statements of Paris can be torn to shreds in cross-examination, whatever element of truth they may contain. The ‘dying confessions’ are contradictorily reported, and all the reports are worthless. The guilt of some Lords, and their alliance with the other accusers, made it impossible for the Prosecution to produce a sound case. As their case stands, as it is presented by them, a jury, however convinced, on other grounds, of Mary’s guilt, would feel constrained to acquit the Queen of Scots. VIII _MARY’S CONDUCT AFTER THE MURDER_