This Letter merely concerns somebody’s distrust of a maid of Mary’s. The maid is about to be married, perhaps to Bastian, but there is nothing said that identifies either the girl, or the recipient of the letter. Its tone, however, is that of almost abjectly affectionate submission, and there is a note of a common end, to which the writer and the recipient are working, _ce à quoy nous tandons tous deux_. If Mary dismisses the maid, she, in revenge, may reveal her scheme. The writer deprecates the suspicions of her correspondent, and all these things mark the epistle as one in this series. As it proves nothing against Mary, beyond affection for somebody, a common aim with him, and fear that the maid may spoil the project, there could be no reason for forging the Letter. A transcript of the original French is in the Record Office.[363] The translators have blundered over an important phrase from ignorance of French.[364] LETTER V On the night of April 19, 1567, Bothwell obtained the signatures of many nobles to ‘Ainslie’s Band,’ as it is called, a document urging Mary to marry Bothwell.[365] On Monday, April 21, Mary went to Stirling, to see her child. She was suspected of intending to hand him over to Bothwell. If she meant to do this, her purpose was frustrated. On Wednesday, April 23, she went to Linlithgow, and on Thursday, April 24, was seized by Bothwell, near Edinburgh, and carried to Dunbar. This Letter, if genuine, proves her complicity; and is intended to prove it, if forged. On the face of it, the Letter was written at Stirling. Mary regrets Bothwell’s confidence in an unworthy person, Huntly, the brother of his wife. Huntly has visited her, and, instead of bringing news as to how and when the abduction is to managed, has thrown cold water on the plot. He has said that Mary can never marry a married man who abducts her, and that the Lords _se dédiroient_, which the Scots translator renders ‘the Lordis wald unsay themselves, and wald deny that they had said.’ The reference is to their acquiescence in the Ainslie band of April 19. Mary, as usual, displays jealousy of Bothwell, who has ‘two strings to his bow,’ herself and his wedded wife. The Letter implies that, for some reason, Mary and Bothwell had not arranged the details of the abduction before they separated. A transcript of the original French is at Hatfield; the English translation, also at Hatfield, is not from the French, but is a mere Anglicising of the Scots version. Oddly enough the French copy at Hatfield, unlike the rest, is in a Roman hand, such as Mary wrote. The hand resembles that of the copyist of the Casket Sonnets in the Cambridge (Lennox) MSS., and that of Mary Beaton, but it is not Mary Beaton’s hand. LETTER VI This Letter still deals with the manner of the _enlèvement_. Mary is now reconciled to the idea of trusting Huntly. She advises Bothwell as to his relations with the Lords. The passage follows:--