It is pronounced to be ‘French work of the early part of the sixteenth century,’ but Lady Baillie-Hamilton observes that the scroll-work closely resembles the tooling on a book of Catherine de’ Medici, now in the British Museum. [Illustration: PLATE E CASKET SHOWING THE LOCK AND KEY FRONT OF CASKET SHOWING PLACE WHENCE THE LOCK HAS BEEN ‘STRICKEN UP’] Is the Hamilton Casket the historical Casket? It has the advantage of a fairly long pedigree in that character, as we have seen. But where are ‘the many Roman letters F set under a king’s crown,’ of Cecil’s description, which is almost literally copied in the memorandum added to the English edition of Buchanan’s ‘Detection’? Buchanan did not insert this memorandum, it is merely borrowed from Cecil’s description, a fact of which Lady Baillie-Hamilton was not aware. There is no room on the panel now occupied by the Duchess of Hamilton’s arms for _many_ crowned F’s. Only a cypher of two F’s interlaced and crowned could have found space on that panel. Conceivably F’s were attached in some way, and later removed, but there is no trace of them. We can hardly suppose that, as in the case of the coffer with a crimson cover, which was sent to Mary at Loch Leven, the crowned F’s were worked in gold on the covering velvet. Dr. Sepp, in 1884, published, in a small pamphlet, the document rediscovered by Lady Baillie-Hamilton. He was informed that there were small crowned F’s stamped on the bottom of the box, but these Lady Baillie-Hamilton accounts for as ‘the mark of a French silversmith, consisting of a distinctive sign surmounted by a fleur-de-lis and a crown.’ Thus for lack of any certainty about the ‘many or sundry’ crowned F’s, this beautiful piece of work shares in the doubt and mystery which seem inseparable from Mary Stuart. Very possibly the Hamilton Casket may be the other of the ‘twa silver cofferis’ seen by Hepburn of Bowton at Dunbar (see p. xvi). Tradition, knowing that the Casket had been Mary’s, would easily confuse it with the other more famous coffer, full of evils as the Casket of Pandora. APPENDIX A THE SUPPOSED BODY OF BOTHWELL Monsieur Jusserand, the well-known writer on English and Scottish literature, has kindly allowed me to print the following letter on the burial-place of Bothwell, and on the body which is traditionally regarded as his corpse. Légation de France, à Copenhague, December 26, 1900. MY DEAR LANG,--Our poor Queen’s last scoundrel lies low in a darksome place. The Faarvejle church is quite isolated on a little eminence formerly washed by the water of a fiord now dried up (the work of an agricultural company which expected great benefits and lost much money instead). There is no village around; the houses are scattered rather thinly throughout the country--a very frequent case in Denmark. [Illustration: FAARVEJLE CHURCH (ACTUAL STATE).