privately displayed the Casket Letters, he secretly intrigued for her at York. Even his final accession (1569) to her party, and his death in her cause, did not win her forgiveness. She dated from Carberry Hill her certain knowledge of his guilt in the murder, which she always held in reserve for a favourable opportunity. But, as she neither was allowed to see the Casket Letters, nor to appear in person before the Peers, that opportunity never came. To conclude this part of the inquiry: Mary’s attitude, as regards the Letters, was less that of conscious innocence, than of a player who has strong cards in her hand and awaits the chance of bringing out her trumps. XIV _INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE LETTERS_ LETTER I This Letter, usually printed as Letter I., was the first of the Casket Letters which Mary’s accusers laid before the Commission of Inquiry at Westminster (December 7, 1568).[332] It does not follow that the accusers regarded this Letter as first in order of composition. There exists a contemporary copy of an English translation, hurriedly made from the French; the handwriting is that of Cecil’s clerk. The endorsing is, as usual, by a Scot, and runs, ‘Ane short Lettre from Glasco to the Erle Bothwell. Prufes her disdaign against her husband.’ Possibly this Letter, then, was put in _first_, to prove Mary’s hatred of Darnley, and so to lead up to Letter II., which distinctly means murder. If the accusers, however, regarded this piece (Letter I.) as first in order of composition, they did not understand the meaning and drift of the papers which they had seized.[333] Letter I., so called, must be, in order of composition, a sequel to Letter II. The sequence of events would run as follows: if we reject the chronology as given in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ a chronological summary handed to Cecil, we know not by whom, and supply the prosecution with a feasible scheme of time. ‘Cecil’s Journal’ makes Mary leave Edinburgh on January 21, stay at Lord Livingstone’s house of Callendar (not Callander in Perthshire) till January 23, and then enter Glasgow. If this is right, Letters I. and II. are forgeries, for II. could not, by internal evidence, have been finished before Mary’s second night, at least, in Glasgow, which, if she arrived on January 23, would be January 24. Consequently it could not (as in the statement of Paris, the alleged bearer) reach Bothwell the day before his departure for Liddesdale, which ‘Cecil’s Journal’ dates on January 24. Moreover, on the scheme of dates presented in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ Mary must have written and dispatched Letter I. on the morning of January 25 to Bothwell, whom it could not reach (for he was then making a raid on the Elliots, in Liddesdale), and Mary must, at the same time, have been labouring at the long Letter II. All this, with other necessary inferences from the scheme of dates, is frankly absurd.[334]