THE HISTORY OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.*
• r • Rinse, at Km, Queen of 4ents„ By n. 16.00anet Richard Bentley. Pan work, of which this is a translation, having already appeared before the public within a comparatively recent period, we shall satisfy ourselves on the present occasion with recalling the attention of our readers to the existing condition of the great Marian contro- versy, and with reminding them very briefly of what M. Mignet has done, and of what he has failed to do in the historical inquiry under- taken by him. There is nothing in his history of that part of Mary Stuart's life which she passed in Scotland newer than the date of Mr. Tytler, and, consequently all that has been said upon the evidence adduced by thisgentleman is equally applicable to M. Mignet. Of the conduct of Mary during her captivity in England, M. Mignet had as much to say that was new as could be gathered from her correspondence with Philip II., preserved in the Spanish archives, a source of information unexplored, as far as we are aware, by any of her previous biographers. It is unfortunate that neither M. Mignet nor his translator seem to have been aware of the masterly essay on this subject which the publication of Mr. Tytler's history drew from the pen of Lord Stan- hope. This article appeared in the Quarterly Review for March, 1841, and was reissued with his lordship's other " Historical Essays" some years afterwards. His lordship confined his criticisms to the one point of Mary's alleged participation in the murder of Darnley, a charge which, in common with almost all the others which disgrace her memory, Mr. Tytler steadfastly denies. But we are not aware that any subsequent writer, whether critic or historian, has succeeded in destroying the boundary line between her guilt and her innocence which Lord Stanhope drew. That she yielded to her passion for Bothwell before the death of her husband; that her marriage with Bothwell, knowing him to be her husband's murderer, was a wicked action ; that she did possess this knowledge, and that her marriage was perfectly voluntary, are points not disputed by his lordship. But in the evidence by which it is sought to convict many of complicity in the murder of Darnley, he sees not only many points which are just as consistent with her innocence as with her guilt, but many also which directly tend to prove the former. M. Mignet, however, has repeated all the old evidence, unconscious, apparently, of the con- struction placed upon it by Lord Stanhope. And we must, therefore, caution all our readers who may happen to meet with the present edition of his book, not to think of accepting the conclusion which it offers till they have enjoyed an opportunity of comparing it with Lord Stanhope's essay. The interview between Mary and Lettrington, in which Mary is supposed to have given proof that she was ready to con- nive at the assassination ; the attempt of Bothwell to obtain a written consent from Mary ; the return of kindness exhibited by Mary towards Darnley just before the crime was committed ; her conveyance of him from Glasgow to Edinburgh, as it were, into the hands of his enemies ; his lodging at Kirk Field, instead of being taken to Holyrood ; and the story of the velvet counterpane, whieh was taken away by Mary's order and replaced by one of less value, are pieces of evidence which are handled by Lord Stanhope with as much acuteness as moderation, and either assume in his hands a wholly innocuous complexion, or are turned into witnesses for the defence. Other points against the Queen of Scotland which depend upon the dying depositions of Both- well's valet, Paris, are shown to depend upon the least trustworthy of the two depositions which he made. And of the letters discovered in the famous silver casket which many persons have pronounced to be forgeries, Lord Mahon and Mr. Tytler, took the safer and more likely view, that they were genuine letters, but had been greatly garbled and interpolated before their production at Mary's trial. We must remember that they were in possession of Mary's enemies even before she left Scotland. And why, asks Lord Stanhope most per- tinently, were they not produced at once ? Why were they not pro_ dueed at the conference of York in 1568, immediately after Mary's flight into England? How are we to account for the two facts that Mary hesitated to disavow the letters, and that Murray hesitated to produce them? Mary, thinks Lord Stanhope, did not like to drive Murray into producing them by positively denying their existence, because she knew they did contain expressions of her guilty love for Bothwell.s Murray, on the other hand, did not like to make them public because they did not contain the wished-for proofs of her con- nexion with Darnley's murder. Of these letters, then, subsequently produced at Westminster, those portions which convict her of adultery, are, according to this hypothesis, to be received as genuine, while those which convict her of murder are to be rejected as inter- polations. Now the whole chain of reasoning which Mr. Tytler and Lord Stanhope, but principally the latter, have applied to the above question is utterly passed over by M. Mignet, who has seen Mr, Tytler's history if he has not seen Lord Stanhope's essay, and ought, therefore, to have been acquainted with this last argument relating to the letters. It is true that he gives his own version of Murray's hesitation in producing these letters, but it is not such a one as to deprive Lord Stanhope's of authority. He thinks that Murray was afraid, till driven to it, to take any step so decisive as the disclosure of documents which mast ruin the Queen of Scots for ever. This may have been so or may not. But the very ingenious argument of Mary's advocates on this particular point should not have been passed over in silence.
The various conspiracies which were formed for the purpose of re- leasing Mary from her English prison; the correspondence into which she was led with Philip II. after the death of the Duke of Norfolk and the destruction of her party among the English nobility ; and the base means employed by Elizabeth's ministers for entrapping their unhappy captive into some admission of a design against the life of Queen Elizabeth, are related by M. Mignet with average fair- ness and perspicuity. We observe little or nothing in this, the later, portion of his work with which we feel inclined to, and with a tribute of respect to the good English of Mr. Scoble, the translator, we take our leave of this volume.
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