About July 22, Mary’s confessor, Roche Mameret, a Dominican, had come to London. He was much grieved, he said to de Silva, by Mary’s marriage with Bothwell, which, as he had told her, was illegal. ‘He swore to me solemnly that, till the question of the marriage with Bothwell was raised, he never saw a woman of greater virtue, courage, and uprightness....’ Apparently he knew nothing of the guilty loves, and the Exchequer House scandal. ‘She swore to him that she had contracted the marriage’ with the object of settling religion by that means, though Bothwell was so stout a Protestant that he had twice married Catholic brides by Protestant rites! ‘As regarded the King’s murder, her confessor has told me’ (de Silva) ‘that she had no knowledge whatever of it.’ Now de Silva imparted this fact to Moray, when he visited London, as we saw, in the end of July, 1567, and after Moray had seen Elizabeth. He gave de Silva the impression that ‘although he always returned to his desire to help the Queen, this is not altogether his intention.’ Finally, Moray told de Silva ‘something that he had not even told this Queen, although she had given him many remote hints upon the subject.’ The secret was that Mary had been cognisant of Darnley’s murder. ‘This had been proved beyond doubt by a letter which the Queen had written to Bothwell, containing more than three double sheets (_pliegos_) of paper, written with her own hand and _signed_ with her name; in which she says in substance that he is not to delay putting into execution that which he had been ordered (_tenia ordenado_), because her husband used such fair words to deceive her, and bring her to his will, that she might be moved by them if the other thing were not done quickly. She said that she herself would go and fetch him [Darnley], and would stop at a house on the road where she would try to give him a draught; but if this could not be done, she would put him in the house _where the explosion was arranged for the night upon which one of her servants was to be married_. He, Bothwell, was to try to get rid of his wife either by putting her away or poisoning her, since he knew that she, the Queen, had risked all for him, her honour, her kingdom, her wealth, _which she had in France_, and her God; contenting herself with his person alone.... Moray said he had heard of this letter from a man who had read it....’[236] As to ‘hearing of’ this epistle, the reader may judge whether, when the Lords sent ‘Jhone a Forret’ (probably John Wood) to Moray, and also sent a packet of letters, they did not enclose copies of the Casket Letters as they then existed. Is it probable that they put Moray off with the mere hearsay of Jhone a Forret, who ‘knows all occurrents’? If so, Jhone, and Moray, and de Silva, as we shall prove, had wonderfully good verbal memories, like Chicot when he carried in his head the Latin letter of Henri III. to Henri of Navarre.