Series 3 > Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington plot

cxlviii MARY STUART AND THE BABINGTON PLOT
Nau says that he composed letters to the Archbishop of
Glasgow, to Mendoza, and to Charles Paget with these
headings before him. But, as Lingard says, this cannot
be considered an adequate explanation of them, for none
of the letters indicated are written strictly on these lines,
though they all have recollections of them.
‘ Curll delivered the letters first written in French by
the Scottish Queen unto the same Queen again, and did
put that which himself had Englished into cipher by the
Scottish Queen’s commandment, and that which was
Englished \i.e. his English translation] this examinate did
put into a trunk that was in the Scottish Queen’s cabinet
under lock and key.’ 1
Thus was the fatal packet completed. The letters to
Paget, Englefield, and Mendoza were all intended to assist
in procuring aid from abroad, without which Mary recog¬
nised that the attempt for freedom must be in vain. Had
not her yearning for liberty impaired the balance of her
mind ; had not her long retirement, and her recent entire
estrangement from politics weakened her otherwise strong
powers of judgment, she might have known beforehand
how altogether vain and illusory was the support, on which
she now leant. There seems little doubt that she actually
1 B.M., Caligula, C. ix. 382. It appears from Nau’s later paper (B.M.,
Caligula, B. v. 233) that Mrs. Curll kept the key, and that Nau thought
too much was preserved. He thought Mary trusted too much to her
friends about the court, beheving that they would warn her in case her
coffers were to be searched.
In the Hardwicke Papers, ii. p. 237-50, there is a paper entitled,
Evidence against the Queen of Scots. It is a popular ‘ report,’ a vulgarised
statement, not copied precisely from documents, and in this the official
document, just quoted, is misrepresented as follows: ‘ He saith also, she
willed him to burn the English copy of the letters sent to Babington.'
This alteration is made in order to make this deposition agree with the
erroneous account there given at pp. 249-50 of the proceedings on 24
October, in which Curll is said to have affirmed that ‘ as well the letter
which B[abington] did write as the drafts of her answer to the same were
both burnt at her command.’ See p. 147 below.