been found. LETTER VII This Letter purports to follow on another, ‘sen my letter writtin,’ and may be of Tuesday, April 22, as Mary reports that Huntly is anxious about what he is to do ‘after to-morrow.’ She speaks of Huntly as ‘your brother-in-law that _was_,’ whereas Huntly, Bothwell not being divorced, was still his brother-in-law. Huntly is afraid that Mary’s people, and especially the Earl of Sutherland, will die rather than let her be carried off. We do not know, from other sources, that Sutherland was present. Mary implores Bothwell to bring an overpowering force. No transcript of the original French, nor any English translation, is known. Mary must have written two of these letters (and apparently eleven sonnets also) while ill, anxious, and busy, on the 22nd, at Stirling, with the third on the 23rd, either at Stirling or Linlithgow. She could hardly get answers to anything written as late as the 22nd, before Bothwell arrived at Haltoun, near Linlithgow, on the night of April 23. LETTER VIII (III IN HENDERSON) There are differences of opinion as to the date of this curious Letter, and as to its place in the series. The contemporary transcript, made probably for the Commissioners on December 9, 1568, is in the Record Office. I translate the Letter afresh, since it must be read before any inference as to its date and importance can be drawn. ‘Sir,--If regret for your absence, the pain caused by your forgetfulness, and by fear of the danger which every one predicts to your beloved person, can console me, I leave it to you to judge; considering the ill fortune which my cruel fate and constant trouble have promised me, in the sequel of sorrows and terrors recent and long passed; all which you well know. But, in spite of all, I will not accuse you either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, or of the coldness of your letters, I being so much your own that what pleases you pleases me. And my thoughts are so eagerly subject to yours that I am fain to suppose that whatsoever comes from you arises not from any of the aforesaid causes, but from such as are just and reasonable, and desired by myself. Which is the final order that you have promised me to take for the safety[369] and honourable service of the sole support of my life, for whom alone I wish to preserve it, and without which I desire only instant death. And to show you how humbly I submit me to your commands, I send you, by Paris, in sign of homage, the ornament’ (her hair) ‘of the head, the guide of the other members, thereby signifying that, in investing you with the spoil of what is principal, the rest must be subject to you with the heart’s consent. In place of which heart, since I have already abandoned it to you, I send you a sepulchre, of hard stone, painted black, _semé_ with tears and bones.[370] I compare it to my heart, which, like it, is graven into a secure tomb or receptacle of your commands, and