Casket Letters

ENGLISH HISTORY

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Casket Letters, the eight letters and a series of irregular sonnets asserted by James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, to have been found by his servants in a silver casket in the possession of a retainer of James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, on June 20, 1567, six days after the surrender of Mary, Queen of Scots, to her rebels at Carberry Hill. If they are genuine—particularly Letter II, or the Glasgow letter—they prove Mary’s full complicity with Bothwell in the murder of her husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, in the preceding February./.../