The Letters are not remarked on again till after Mary’s escape from Loch Leven, and flight into England (May 16, 1568), when Moray writes about them on June 22, 1568. Wood, in May, as we saw, had carried with him into England copies of the Letters translated into our language: so says the instruction given by Elizabeth’s Government to Middlemore. Moray understood that Elizabeth intended to ‘take trial’ of Mary’s case, ‘with great ceremony and solemnities.’ He is ‘most loth’ to accuse Mary, though, privately or publicly, his party had done so incessantly, for a whole year. Now he asks that those who are to judge the case shall read the Scots translations of the Letters in Wood’s possession (why in Scots, not in the original French?), and shall say whether, if the French originals coincide, the evidence will be deemed sufficient. Whatever we may think of the fairness of this proposal, it is clear that the French texts, genuine or forged, as they then stood, were already in accordance with the Scots texts, to be displayed by Wood. If the mysterious letter was in Wood’s hands in Scots, doubtless Moray had a forged French version of it. Any important difference in the French texts, when they came to be shown, would have been fatal. But, apparently, they were not shown at this time to Elizabeth. It is unnecessary to enter on the complicated negotiations which preceded the meeting of Elizabeth’s Commissioners, at York (October, 1568), with Mary’s representatives, and with Moray (who carried the Casket with him) and his allies, Buchanan, Wood, Makgill, Lethington, and others. Mary had the best promises from Elizabeth. She claimed the right of confronting her accusers, from the first. If the worst came to the worst, if the Letters were produced, she believed that she had valid evidence of the guilt of Morton and Lethington, at least. In a Lennox Paper, of 1569, we read: ‘Whereas the Queen said, when she was in Loch Leven, that she had that in black and white that would cause Lethington to hang by the neck, which Letter, if it be possible, it were very needful to be had.’ Nau says that Bothwell, on leaving Mary at Carberry, gave her a band for Darnley’s murder, signed by Morton, Lethington, Balfour, and others, ‘and told her to take good care of that paper.’ Some such document, implicating Lethington at least, Mary probably possessed ‘in black and white.’ The fact was known to her accusers, she had warned Lethington as we saw (p. 189), and their knowledge influenced their policy. When Wood wrote to Moray, from Greenwich, on June 12, 1568, as to Scottish Commissioners to meet Elizabeth’s, and discuss Mary’s case, he said that it was much doubted, in England, whether Lethington should be one of them. To Lethington he said that he had expected Mary to approve of his coming, ‘but was then surely informed she had not only written and accused him, and my Lord of Morton as privy to the King’s murder, but affirmed she had