For what it is worth, Lesley’s tale to this effect has some shadowy corroboration. At Norfolk’s Trial for Treason (1571), Serjeant Barham alleged that Lethington ‘stole away the Letters, and kept them one night, and caused his wife to write them out.’ _That_ story Barham took from Lesley’s confession. But he added, from what source we know not, ‘Howbeit the same were but copies, translated out of French into Scots: which, when Lethington’s wife had written them out, he caused to be sent to the Scottish Queen. She laboured to translate them again into French, as near as she could to the originals wherein she wrote them, but that was not possible to do, but there was some variance in the phrase, by which variance, as God would, the subtlety of that practice came to light.’ ‘What if all this be true? What is this to the matter?’ asked the Duke.[269] What indeed? Mary had not kept copies of her letters to Bothwell, if she wrote them. She was short of paper when she wrote Letter II., if she wrote it, and certainly could make no copy: the idea is grotesque. What ‘subtlety of practice’ could she intend?[270] Conceivably, if Lethington sent her copies of both French and Scots (which is denied), she may have tried whether she could do the Scots into the French idioms attributed to her, and, if she could not, might advance the argument that the French was none of hers. Barham avers that she received no French copies. But did Lesley say, with truth, that she received any copies? Here, confession for confession, that of Robert Melville gives the lie to Lesley’s. Melville (who, years later, had been captured with Lethington and Kirkcaldy of Grange in the Castle) was examined at Holyrood, on October 19, 1573.[271] According to Lesley, Melville rode to Bolton with Lethington’s letters from Fast Castle, _before_ the meeting of Commissioners at York. But Melville denies this: his account runs thus: ‘Inquirit quhat moved him to ryde to the quene in England the tyme that the erll of morey Regent was thair, he not being privie therto? Answeris it wes to get a discharge of sic thingis as she had gotten from him. And that the Regent wes privie to the same and grantit him licence to follow efter. Bot wald not let him pas in company wt him. _And denys that he past first to bolton bot come first to York._’ If Melville told truth, then he did not secretly visit Mary before the Conference, and she did not deal then with Lethington, or receive copies of the Casket Letters, or bid any one ‘stay these rigorous accusations and travail with the Duke of Norfolk in her favour,’ as Lesley confessed.[272] The persons who examined Melville, in 1573, were acquainted with Lesley’s confession of 1571, and Melville is deliberately and consciously contradicting the evidence of Lesley. Both confessed when in perilous circumstances. Which of the two can we believe?