e Queen to
Elizabeth, and Cecil tells us that 'no difference was found.' It was a
rapid examination, by many persons, on a brief winter day, partly
occupied by other business. If experts existed, we are not informed that
they were present. The Casket Letters have disappeared since the death
of the elder Gowrie, in 1584. From him, Elizabeth had vainly sought to
purchase them. They were indispensable, said Bowes, her ambassador, to
'the secrecy of the cause.' Gowrie would not be tempted, and it is not
improbable that he carried so valuable a treasure with him, when, in
April 1584, he retired to Dundee, to escape by sea if the Angus
conspiracy failed.

At Dundee he was captured, after defending the house in which he was
residing. That house was pulled down recently; nothing was discovered.
But fable runs that, at the destruction of another ancient house in
Dundee, 'Lady Wark's Stairs,' _a packet of old letters in French_ was
found in a hiding hole contrived within a chimney. The letters were not
examined by any competent person, and nobody knows what became of them.
Romance relates that they were the Casket Letters, entrusted by Gowrie to
a friend. It is equally probable that he yielded them to the King, when
he procured his remission for the Raid of Ruthven. In any case, they are
lost.

Consequently we cannot compare the Casket Letters with genuine letters by
Mary. On the other hand, as I chanced to notice that genuine letters of
Logan's exist at Hatfield, I was enabled, by the kindness of the Marquis
of Salisbury, and of Sir Stair Agnew, to have both the Hatfield Logan
letters, and the alleged Logan letters produced in 1609, photographed and
compared, at Hatfield and at the General Register House in Edinburgh. By
good fortune, the Earl of Haddington also possesses (what we could not
expect to find in the case of the Casket Letters) documents in the
ordinary handwriting of George Sprot, the confessed forger of the
plot-letters attributed to Logan. The result of comparison has been to
convince Mr. Gunton at Hatfield, Mr. Anderson in Edinburgh, Professor
Hume Brown, and other gentlemen of experience, that Sprot forged all the
plot-letters. Their reasons for holding this opinion entirely satisfy
me, and have been drawn up by Mr. Anderson, in a convincing report. To
put the matter briefly, the forged letters present the marked
peculiarities of Logan's orthography, noted by the witnesses in 1609.
But they also