THE CHINA MAIL, OCTOBER 26, 1939
TO-DAY'S STRANGE STORY OF REAL PEOPLE
MARY STUART AND THE
1
SILVER CASKET
BY VINCENT: TOWNE "Farewell, France, farewell! I shall never see thee more!"
A beautiful girl of 19, esconsed upon a couch, wistfully viewed the French coast from the deck of a vessel which was bearing her back to her native Scotland.
ENSCONCED UPON A COUCH ON DECK
...
She was Mary Stuart, who, upon the death of her father, James V, had been crowned Queen of Scots when a child of only ten months, and who, after having been special- ly education in France for a marri- age with the Dauphin had wedded that princeling when she was only 16. A year later her husband had ascended the French throne, but
This crime but increased the Edinburgh Castle, who in revenge for her reign as Queen of France had Queen's contempt for her consort, a later slight had allowed one of in another year been cut short by and thereafter her friendship with Murray's henchmen to intercept them. his untimely death. And now this
the Earl of Bothwell became the By those who have believed Mary spirited girl, still in her teens, was subject of comment.
guilty it has been argued that Mur- both Dowager Queen of the French As Bothwell aided Mary Stuart ray would not have staked his suc- and reigning Queen of Scotland. when all others seemed to desert cess on forgeries destined to pass
The depression which Queen Mary her she had clung to his strong muster before
many shrewd inves- suffered on seeing her beloved urm. But unfortunately for them gators; that the verbosity of the France fade from her sight was a both, the young King was just at letters proved their genuineness; that shadow cast upon her by coming this precarious time blown up with they contained particulars which no- events. Immediately upon landing gunpowder while in a lone house. body else would have thought to in- In Scotland she became involved Bothwell, after having been tried vent; that they detailed a conversa- in" quarrels with her people because and acquitted of this murder, was tion between Mary and the murdered of her adherence to the Catholic recommended by the nobility for King that was afterward recalled by faith, in which she had been reared. the Queen's husband, but, throwing And she was drawn into a dispute ceremony to the winds, he was with her cousin, Queen Elizabeth of returning with her suite to Edin- England, whose legitimacy was dis-burgh and like Lochinvar, he car- puted for the young Queen of Scots. ried her by force to his castle But Queen Mary's worst troubles Dunbar. Then obtaining a hurried began when her uncles set about divorce from his wife, he married to find for her a second husband Queen Mary a few days afterward. After divers nobles had been sûg-Thereupon the Scotch nobles, out- gested to her, she was finally per- raged by the adventure, raised a re- suaded to share her throne with bellion against their Queen and Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of locked her up in Lochlevin Castle. Lennox, but after their marriage | But she escaped to England to seek she discovered him to be a vicious the protection of her cousin Eliza- weakling, and her justified con- beth. tempt for him aroused his bitter jealousy. Suspecting her attach- ment for David Rizzlo, her French secretary, the King had the for- eigner assassinated under her eyes.
13
witty
(Zalorand by The 241 Byndicats. (209)
very
Some of the gaga on the air ars so ancient that, when ons tunes in on them they stand at attention out of respect for old age.
at
Her abduction. having been forc- ed, her evil half-brother. James Stuart, Earl of Murray, illegitimate son of King James, was now made regent for her infant son. · But by escaping into England Mary Stuart had but fallen from the frying pan into the fire. Elizabeth, still smart- ing from her cousins' former claim to the English throne, decided that she must investigate certain charge that Mary had conspired with Both- well to assassinate her second hus- band-charges that had been made by the Earl of Murray, who, of course, wished to retain her throne. As proof of her guilt, Murray placed before a commission of inquiry a silver casket alleged to have been given to Mary by her first husband, the young. King of France, and to have been given by her to Bothwell. It contained love
been written in her own hand to that
a gentleman as having been related to him by the king, and that the Duke of Norfolk was fully convinced of her guilt.
:
On the other hand, it seemed absurd that any one so shrewd as Mary Stuart should have confided such in- discretions to paper; that any one so wily as Bothwell should have pre served incriminating evidence against himself, and that the Duke of Nor- folk, if convinced of her having mur- dered her second husband, would have later so zealously tried to be come her fourth consort. Further more, investigation of charters other deeds signed by Queen M, showed that she was not in the planes::: mentioned in the famous letters on the days assigned therein.
Moreover, Mary was a clever poat and the sonnets credited to her wire crude and inelegant. She was a wo- man of refinement-who Conducted even her amours as a lady and the letters attributed to her were to the last degree, indecent as well as writ- ten in a crude style to which she never could have descended.
Later the casket letters mysterious- ly disappeared. Some said that they were destroyed by friends of her son, the boy King James, that every evi- dence of his mother's supposed in- discretions might be erased.
Whether genuine or not, the "casket letters" certainly helped to
pave Queen Mary's way to the scaffold.
The truth concerning them will never be known.
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The letters, if genuine, contained incontestable proofs of a criminal correspondence between Mary and Bothwell, of her consent to the King's murder and of her concurrence In Bothwell's plot to kidnap her and carry her off. Claiming this evidence to have been forged, Mary instructed her commissioners to ignore it. And since then. Great Britain has a CANTON: 10, British Conosion, Shameen. divided into two camps, those belles-
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ing that she wrote the celebrated fal, 1879, V. E. Ferrier, Special Representative. -“casket letters" - and those believing SWATÓW genes! Aponim: Mosses. Carr Bamsey. 'them to have been spurious. Although these letters had enjoined Böthwell to burn them, he had”, foolishly committeed custody of the deputy
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