1559, are not proved, and the attempts to prove them are
of a nature which need not be qualified. But it is necessary to state
the following facts as tending to show that the Regent was capable of
procuring a forgery against the Duke of Chatelherault. A letter
attributed to him exists in the French Archives, {280a} dated Glasgow,
January 25, 1560, in which the Duke curries favour with Francis II., and
encloses his blank bond, un blanc scelle, offering to send his children
to France. {280b} _On January_ 28, the Regent writes from Scotland to de
Noailles, then the French Ambassador to England, bidding him to mention
this submission to Elizabeth, and even show the Duke's letter and blank
bond, that Elizabeth may see how little he is to be trusted. Now how
could the Regent, on January 28, have a letter sent by the Duke to France
on January 25? She must have intercepted it in Scotland. {280c} Next,
on March 15, 1560, the Duke, writing to Norfolk, denies the letter
attributed to him by the French. {280d} He said that any one of a
hundred Hamiltons would fight M. de Seurre (the French Ambassador who, in
February, succeeded de Noailles) on this quarrel. {280e}

There exists a document, in the cipher of Throckmorton, English
Ambassador in France, purporting to be a copy of a letter from the Regent
to the Duc and Cardinal de Guise, dated Edinburgh, March 27, 1560. {280f}
The Regent, at that date, was in Leith, not in Edinburgh Castle, where
she went on April 1. In that letter she is made to say that de Seurre
has "very evil misunderstood" the affair of the letter attributed to
Chatelherault. She had procured "blanks" of his "by one of her servants
here" (at Leith) "to the late Bishop of Ross"; the Duke's alleged letter
and submission of January 25 had been "filled up" on a "blank," the Duke
knowing nothing of the matter.

This letter of the Regent, then, must also, if authentic, have been
somehow intercepted or procured by Throckmorton, in France. It is
certain that Throckmorton sometimes, by bribery, did obtain copies of
secret French papers, but I have not found him reporting to Cecil or
Queen Elizabeth this letter of the Regent's. The reader must estimate
for himself the value of that document. I have stated the case as fairly
as I can, and though the evidence against the Regent, as it stands, would
scarcely satisfy a jury, I believe that, corrupted by the evil example of
the Congregation, the Regent, in January 15