On the same day, Norfolk wrote separately to Pembroke, Leicester, and Cecil. He excused the delays of the Scots: ‘they stand for their lives, lands, goods, and they are not ignorant, if they would, for it is every day told them, that, as long as they abstain from touching their Queen’s honour, she will make with them what reasonable end they can devise....’ In fact, as Melville has told us, he himself was their go-between for the compromise. Norfolk adds that there are two ways, by justice public and condign, ‘if the fact shall be thought as detestable and manifest to you, as, for aught we can perceive, it seemeth here to us,’ or, if Elizabeth prefer it, ‘to make such composition as in so broken a cause may be.’ Norfolk seems in exactly the mind of an honourable man, horrified by Mary’s guilt, and anxious for her punishment. He either dissembled, or was a mere weathercock of sentiment, or, presently, he found reason to doubt the authenticity of what he had been shown. Lethington, we saw, showed the letters, unofficially, on October 11. On October 12, Knollys had a talk with Mary. ‘When,’ asked she, ‘will they proceed to their odious accusations, or will they stay and be reconciled to me, or what will my good sister do for me?’ Surely an innocent lady would have said, ‘Let them do their worst: I shall answer them. A reconciliation with dastardly rebels I refuse.’ That was not Mary’s posture: ‘But,’ she said, ‘if they will fall to extremities they shall be answered roundly, and at the full, and then are we past all reconciliations.’ So wrote Knollys to Norfolk, on October 14.[288] Mary would fall back on her ‘something in black and white.’ On October 13, Lesley and Boyd rode to Bolton, says Knollys, and told Mary what Lethington had done: his privy disclosure of her Letters. He himself was doubtless their informant, his plan being to coerce her into a compromise. Of all things, it now seemed most unlikely that Norfolk would veer round to Mary’s side, and desire to marry her. But this instantly occurred, and the question is, had he seen reason to doubt the authenticity of the letter which so horrified him? Had Lethington told him something on that long ride which they took together, on Saturday, October 16?[289] As shall be shown, in our chapter on the Possible Forgers, this may be what Lethington had done, and over-done. He had shaken Norfolk’s belief in the Letter, so much that Norfolk presently forbade Mary to accept a compromise! The evidence of Lesley is here, as usual, at cross purposes. In his confession (November 6, 1571) he says that Robert Melville took him to Lethington’s lodgings, _after_ Lethington had secretly shown the Letters. ‘We talked almost a whole night.’ Lethington said that Norfolk favoured Mary, and wished Moray to drop the charges and arrange a compromise.