1

AN

HISTORICAL DISSERTATION

ON THE PARTICIPATION OF

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

IN THE

MURDER OF DARNLEY.

CHAPTER VII.

Judicial Depositions and Confessions.

THE and confessions re

VII.

sions diffe

HE judicial depositions and confessions re- CHAP. main. To these a general, preliminary objection has been made, that such of them as are an- The confes nexed to Buchanan's Detection, are different from rent from the judicial the originals still extant in the Cotton library, and depositions. that as they cannot both be genuine, the most obvious presumption is, that both are forged. It is the misfortune of this controversy, to be perplexed by writers, who accuse others of the most complicated and refined forgeries, when deficient themselves in reflexion and research. If the scurrilous Whitaker for instance, who brands VOL. II.

B

CHAP. Buchanan as a serpent, the second of all human forgers, and the first of slanderers', had consulted

VII..

"Buchanan published a train of confessions-all spurious; the creation of a genius that seems to have delighted itself in the boldness of its own falsehoods, and to have rioted in the luxury of its own forgeries. His spirit could not long confine itself within the bounds of harmlessness. The serpent may appear for a time playing in wanton curls upon the ground. It will soon, however, rise upon its spires, and shew its envenomed fangs. And Buchanan returned to his natural exercise of fictitious slander.-But this Leviathan of slander was not satisfied with taking such gentle pastime in forgery. He must raise a tempest for his recreation.-His malignity acted with all the force of a pestilential blast upon his discretion. The daring calumniator sunk into an impassioned idiot before it. And he stands on the pillar of infamy at present, for his Detection, his sonnets, and his depositions, the second of all human forgers, and the first of all human slanderers; but baffled in his forgeries, and defeated in his slanders by his very rage for both." Whitaker, iii. 192-3-4.

Such is the urbanity of this scurrilous disputant, who, in the preface to the first edition of his Vindication, styles Robertson "a disciple of the old school of slander," and in the Vindication itself calls him a liar repeatedly, and in the most explicit terms. For instance, to take a single volume, "The Doctor should in honesty have shewn that she knew of his illness." ii. 54. "If Dr. Robertson says true, the letters are the most impudent of liars. Or, if the letters are true, the Doctor must exchange situations with them." Id. 79. “With such gross disingenuity does the Doctor act concerning the letters. His judgment is not warped, but his probity is cor. rupted." Id. 185. "He treats them as papists treat their legends. He reveres them in general as true, yet he is obliged by the power of truth to leave them at one time. He is in

VII.

even the titles prefixed, he would have perceived CHAP. that those annexed to Buchanan's Detection are, "the Confessions of John Hepburn, Young Talla,

66

Dalgleish and Powrie, upon whom was justice

execute the iii. of January, 1567:" but that those preserved in the Cotton library, are their examinations and depositions before the privy council, produced and acknowledged on their trial in the justiciary court. If instead of adopting Goodall's wretched objections, he had examined Anderson's general preface, or the proceedings at Westminster, he would have found that the latter were the judicial examinations and depositions of the murderers produced to the English commissioners, December 8, 1568: but that the for. mer were their confessions at the place of execution, to which the minutes of the privy council, Decem

duced by the solicitations of slander to desert them at ano-
ther." Id. 207. Of Hume he observes, that "His zeal ope-
rates with all the force of a fever upon his brain.” Id. 401.
Of Robertson in another volume, that "Bedlam is no Bed-
lam to him;" i. 278. n.; and Knox he terms the “
son of
violence and barbarism, the religious SACHEM of religious
MOHAWKS." Id. 311. To multiply instances would be to
transcribe his pages; but these licensed outrages, he seriously
maintains, are as lawful in a controversy concerning Mary, as
blows and wounds are in civil wars. Id. pref. xv.
His po-
liteness towards Macpherson, whom he had really convicted of
misquotation and forgery, forms, as I have elsewhere observ-
ed, such a signal contrast to his scurrilous abuse of Hume and
Robertson, as can admit only of one explanation, that Whita-
ker concurred with Macpherson in the authenticity of Ossian.

VII.

CHAP. ber 15th, indisputably allude: "There was also "produced and read a writing of another depo"sition of Thomas Crawford upon his oath, ex"hibited before the commissioners the 13th De"cember, concerning certain answers made to "him by the foresaid John Hepburn and John Hay, upon the scaffold at Edinburgh." Had he candidly examined the confessions themselves, the least reflexion might have convinced him, that those annexed to Buchanan's Detection, are a summary or imperfect abstract, not from the judicial depositions produced on the 8th, but from the confessions exhibited at Westminster on the 7th, 10th, 12th, or 13th, of which the minutes are lost, with every other paper transmitted to the press. The confessions are filled as usual with religious reflections on the ways of Providence, the justice of their punishment, the assurance of mercy, the calls to repentance; none of which occur in the judicial depositions. "John (Hepburn) of "Bowton, speaking of the queen in the Tolbuith, "quho lives our deiths will be thought na newis:" and "Young (Hay of) Talla, in the Tolbuith,” (not, as absurdly supposed, in presence of the privy council or justiciary court, but in prison, before

2 Anderson, i. pref. 19. iv. 175. Goodall, i. pref. 15.

3 See in Anderson, iv. part ii. p. 171-5, references to proceedings on the 10th, 12th, and 13th of December, of which no minutes are preserved.