e
historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged
because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very
great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which
seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more
than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant
reader. The following sentences from Buchanan's "_Admonition direct to
the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice_" will throw some light on the
latter question, the difference between the written speech of the two
different kingdoms, which one writer tells us would have made it easier
for Queen Elizabeth to read letters in French than Scots:--

"It may seme to zour lordshippis," says Buchanan, "yat I, melling
with heich materis of governing of comoun welthis do pass myne
estait, being of sa meane qualitie, or forgetting my dewtie geveing
counsal to ye wysest of yis realme. Not the les seeing the miserie
sa greit appeiring, and the calamitie sa neir approching, I thocht
it les fault to incur the cryme of surmounting my private estait
than the blame of neglecting the publict danger."

From this the reader will be able to judge what extraordinary difficulty
there was in the Scotch to an English reader of those days. The use of z
instead of y, of y instead of th, are matters very easily mastered; and
it is surely the utmost folly to suppose that Queen Elizabeth could have
found the slightest difficulty in deciphering this northern version of
the common tongue.

The document quoted above is a very powerful and no doubt also violent
assault upon the Hamiltons, especially called forth by the murder of the
Regent Murray, the slackness of the succeeding Government in the
punishment of his assassin, and the powerful reasons there were for
destroying--a measure which Buchanan thought imperative both for the
safety of the realm and the child-king--that powerful family, the head
of which was next in succession to the Scotch Crown, and had been
popularly believed to be ready for any crime to obtain it. Now that
there was nothing but the life of a child between the Hamiltons and this
elevation, Buchanan lifted up his testimony against the supineness which
left the race undisturbed to carry out its evil designs. Murray had been
murdered in the beginning of 1570, and the _Admonition_ was printed at
Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that