Scotland, in that age, was rich in ‘fause notaries’ who made a profession of falsification. In the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, just before Mary’s fall, we find a surgeon rewarded for healing two false notaries, whose right hands had been chopped off at the wrists. (Also for raising up a dead woman who had been buried for two days.) But these professionals were probably versed only in native forms of handwriting, whereas that of Mary, as of Bothwell, was the new ‘Roman’ hand. An example of Mary Beaton’s Roman hand is given in Plate C. Probably she had the same writing-master as her Queen, in France, but her hand is much neater and smaller than that of Mary, wearied with her vast correspondence. Probably Mary Beaton, if she chose, could imitate the Queen’s hand, especially as that hand was, before the Queen had written so much. The ‘Maries’ of Mary Stuart, Mary Beaton, and Mary Flemyng are all very similar. But to a layman, Mary Beaton’s hand seems rather akin to that of the copyist of the Sonnets in the Cambridge MSS. (Plate A). The aunts of Mary Beaton, Lady Reres and the Lady of Branxholme, were, after April 1567, on the worst terms with the Queen, railing at her both in talk and in letters. But that Mary Beaton forged the Casket Letters I utterly disbelieve.
Kirkcaldy, whose signature is given, could not have adapted fingers hardened by the sword-hilt to a lady’s Roman hand. Maitland of Lethington, whose signature follows Kirkcaldy’s, would have found the task less impossible, and, if there is any truth in Camden’s anecdote, may perhaps have been able to imitate the Queen’s writing. But if any forged letters or portions of letters were exhibited, some unheard-of underling is most likely to have been the actual culprit.
HANDS OF MARY BEATON, KIRKCALDY, LETHINGTON, AND MARY FLEMING]
The best official description of the famous Casket is in the Minutes of the Session of Commissioners at Westminster, on December 7, 1568. It was ‘a small gilt coffer, not fully one foot long, being garnished in many places with the Roman (_Italic_) letter F set under a king’s crown.’ This minute is in the hand of Cecil’s clerk, and is corrected by Cecil.[397] The Casket was obviously long in shape, not square, like a coffer decorated with Mary’s arms, as Dowager of France, with thistles and other badges, the property of M. Victor Luzarche, and described by him in ‘Un Coffret de Bijoux de Marie Stuart’ (Tours, 1868). Possibly the Casket was the _petite boyte d’argent_, which Mary intended to bequeath to Margaret Carwood, if she herself died in childbed in 1566.[398]