Casket letters

The Casket letters were eight letters and some sonnets said to have been written by Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Earl of Bothwell, between January and April 1567. They were produced as evidence against Queen Mary by the Scottish lords who opposed her rule. The texts were thought to imply that Queen Mary colluded with Bothwell in the murder of her husband, Lord Darnley. Mary's contemporary supporters, including Adam Blackwood, dismissed the letters as complete forgeries or letters written by the Queen's servant Mary Beaton. The authenticity of the letters, now known only by copies, continues to be debated. Some historians argue that they were concocted as forgeries to discredit Queen Mary.

Mary's's husband, Lord Darnley, was killed in mysterious circumstances at the Kirk o'Field in Edinburgh on 10 February 1567, and she married the Earl of Bothwell on 15 May 1567. Bothwell was widely thought to be the main suspect for Darnley's murder. The Earl of Moray, Mary's half-brother, and the 'Confederate Lords' rebelled against Queen Mary and raised an army in Edinburgh.

Mary surrendered at the Battle of Carberry Hill on 15 June 1567 and was imprisoned at Lochleven Castle. On 24 July 1567 abdicated. Her infant son was crowned as James VI of Scotland on 29 July 1567 and Moray was made Regent of Scotland. At this time rumours spread that Mary had abdicated because of the discovery of letters which incriminated her. At the end of July 1567, the Earl of Moray, who was in London, told Guzman de Silva, Spanish ambassador to England, that he had heard of the finding of a letter in Mary's own handwriting to Bothwell which implicated her in the murder of Lord Darnley. He had not revealed this to Queen Elizabeth.

The casket of letters was said to have been in Edinburgh Castle, and given by the keeper John Balfour to Bothwell's messenger Thomas Hepburn of Auldamstocks. It was then obtained by Mary's political opponents. By the end of August 1567, Edmund Grindal, Bishop of London, had heard that letters in Mary's handwriting urging Bothwell to hurry up with the killing of Darnley had been found in a box of Bothwell's papers, and the Bishop sent this news to the Reformer Henry Bullinger in Geneva.

According to the document called "Hay's Book of Articles," compiled by Alexander Hay for the Confederate Lords in November 1568, which narrates events from Darnley's murder to Moray's Regency, the casket and letters were found and made known before Queen Mary agreed to abdicate, and public opinion after their discovery had brought her to that decision. The articles state that the Earl of Bothwell while planning his escape from Scotland, sent his servant, or "chalmerchild" George Dalgleish, to fetch the letters from Edinburgh Castle, so that the "ground of the cause should never come to light". However, after recovering the letters, Dalgleish was captured by Mary's enemies, among them James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton.

Morton testified in December 1568 that on 20 June 1567, Dalgleish offered, under the threat of torture, to take his captors to a house in Potterrow, Edinburgh. Under a bed, they found a silver box engraved with an "F" (perhaps for Francis II of France), containing the Casket letters and a number of other documents, including the Mary-Bothwell marriage certificate. Morton passed the casket and letters into the keeping of Regent Moray on 16 September 1568. Morton declared he had not altered the contents and Moray promised to kept them intact and available to Morton and the Confederate Lords in order that they could explain their actions in future; "quhen-so-evir thai sal haif to do thair-with, for manifesting of the ground and equitie of their procedingis."

Moray convened his Privy Council on 4 December 1567. They made and signed a statement in preparation for the Parliament to enact Mary's abdication, which stated the letters demonstrated Mary's involvement in the murder;

in so far as by diverse her previe letters writtin and subscrivit with hir awin hand and sent by hir to James erll Boithvile chief executor of the said horrible murthour, ... it is maist certain that sche wes previe, art and part (complicit) and of the actuale devise (plot) and deid of the foir-nemmit murther of her lawful husband the King our sovereign lord's father.