Series 1 > Papal negotiations with Mary Queen of Scots during her reign in Scotland, 1561-1567

cxxviii PAPAL NEGOTIATIONS WITH MARY
judgment was based. The letters of Hay and du Croc to him
were probably written under the impression that Laureo knew
of the abduction; whereas, through the accidental loss of a
letter from the Bishop of Dunblane, which ought to have
conveyed the news, he had not heard of it. When, after this,
Laureo seems to be making a very remarkable prognostication,
he may in reality be doing nothing more than re-echoing the
dark allusions of Hay and du Croc to a fact of which they
thought him already informed.
A fortnight later (July 1) a new mail had come in with the
account from Father Hay (now happily recovered, p. 394),
of the marriage with Bothwell. 4 She has not been able to
restrain the undue affection which she bears to the Earl of
Bothwell. With this last act, so dishonourable to God and to
herself, the propriety of sending her any sort of envoy ceases.
One cannot, as a rule, expect much from those who are subject
to their pleasures ’ (p. 394).
The Pope’s next message on July 2—based upon other and
later news besides that communicated by Laureo—is more
severe still. 4 His Holiness has never hitherto dissembled about
anything, he will not begin to do so now, especially in this all-
important matter of religion. Therefore with regard to the
Queen of Scots in particular, it is not his intention to have any
further communication with her, unless, indeed, in times to
come he shall see some better sign of her life and religion than
he has witnessed in the past ’ (p. 397).1
1 This and some of the preceding citations were first published by me in The
Month for June 1898, p. 587. That article has recently been made the subject
of strange comments by Mr. S. Cowan, Mary Queen of Scots, and Who wrote
the Casket Letters? London, 1901, i. 218, etc. Suffice it here to say that the
author states in his Preface : ‘ From the murder of Darnley to the assassination
of Moray, it is very doubtful if any of the records can be relied upon5 (p. vi).
Consistently with this he declares that the above original, signed and sealed
letter, which he has never seen, is perhaps ‘a forgery’ (p. 220). He then
confuses Edmund Hay the Jesuit with Edmund Hay the Protestant lawyer, and
Laureo with de Gouda (p. 222), and blames me because the summary I give
of a letter, to which I refer correctly, does not correspond with another letter
which I was not quoting at all! (ibid.).