But it escaped the notice of the accusers that all the world, or all whom Crawford chose to inform as to what Darnley told him about these conversations, might know the details of the talk even better than Mary herself. For the precise words would fade from Mary’s memory, whereas Crawford, as he swore, had written them down at once, as reported to him by Darnley, probably as soon as Mary left his sick-room. The written copy by Crawford must have preserved the words with fidelity beyond that of human memory, and the written words were in the custody of Crawford, or of Lennox, so long as they chose to keep the manuscript. This fact is proved on Crawford’s oath. On December 9, 1568, before the Commissioners, he swore that, when with Darnley, in Glasgow, in January, 1567, ‘he was secretly informed by the King of all things which had passed betwixt the said Queen and the King, ... to the intent that he should report the same to the Earl of Lennox, his Master, and that he did, _immediately at the same time, write the same word by word_ as near as he could possibly carry the same away.’ He was certain that his report of Mary’s words to himself, ‘the words now reported in his writing,’ ‘are the very same words, on his conscience, that were spoken,’ while Darnley’s reports of Mary’s talk (also contained in Crawford’s written deposition) are the same in effect, ‘though not percase in all parts the very words themselves.’[343] We do not know whether what Crawford now handed in on December 9, 1568, was an English version of his own written verbatim Scots report done in January, 1567; or a copy of it; or whether he copied it from Letter II., or whether he rewrote it from memory after nearly two years. The last alternative may be dismissed as impossible, owing to the verbal identity of Crawford’s report with that in the Scots version of the French Letter attributed to Mary. Another thing is doubtful: whether Lennox, at Chiswick, on June 11, 1568, did or did not possess the report which Crawford wrote for him in January, 1567. Lennox, on June 11, as we saw, wrote to Crawford asking ‘what purpose Crawford held with her’ (Mary) ‘at her coming to the town’ of Glasgow. He did not ask what conversation Mary then held with Darnley. Either he had that principal part of Crawford’s report, in writing, in his possession, or he knew nothing about it (which, if Crawford told truth, is impossible), or he forgot it, which is next to impossible. All he asked for on June 11 was Crawford’s recollection about what passed between himself and Mary ere she entered Glasgow, concerning which Crawford nowhere says that he made any written memorandum. Lennox, then, on June 11, 1568, wanted Crawford’s recollections of his own interview with the Queen, either to corroborate Letter II., if it then existed; or for secret purposes of Wood’s, who was with him.