HISTORY.
The Indictment of Mary Queen of Scots. By Major-General R. H. Mahon. (Cambridge University Press. 5s. net.)
General Mahon has printed for the first time a paper, written in the Scots vernacular, which sets forth the case against Mary Queen of Scots as an adulteress and a murderess. The paper is among the Lennox MSS., which probably belonged at one time to Lauderdale and descended to him from Maitland of Lethington, the Queen's truest friend in Scotland. It is a copy, General Mahon thinks, of a draft made by George Buchanan himself for the " Book of Articles " which was submitted to the Commission that sat at Westminster in December, 1568, to consider the case of the captive Queen. The editor's comparison of the paper with other relevant documents and with the Detectio, the pamphlet in which the case against Queen Mary was made public, will interest the many special students of that most famous historical tragedy. General Mahon's warm sympathies are not disguised, but his notes and comments are quite fair. It may be observed that, though the indictment was obviously coloured by bitter personal and religious prejudice, and though the Casket Letters " may have been doctored " or even forged as a whole, the case against Mary rests on her actions rather than on any documents. Elizabeth's reluctance to put a fellow- sovereign and a kinswoman on her trial for crimes committed in another country is easily comprehensible ; but it does not follow that Elizabeth's Ministers had no evidence to justify a conviction. The murder of Darnley at Kirk o' Field, followed by Mary's marriage to Bothwell, cannot indeed be explained away.
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