MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

Southland Times, Issue 20174, 10 May 1927, Page 2

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

INNOCENCE ESTABLISHED. FORGERY DISCOVERED AFTER 300 YEARS. The famous “casket” letters which sent Mary Queen of Scots to the scaffold for treason to Elizabeth in 1587 were never written by her at all. This definite conclusion has been come to —three hundred and fifty years afterwards—by Mr Ainsworth Mitchell, the Home Office expert on documents, who has spent a number of years collecting and examining the original records and the actual documents. Ink, parchment, seals, details of handwriting—all have been taken into consideration, coldly and logically, just as if this were a case in which Mary Stuart was still on trial to-day. Mr Mitchell describes his investigations in the June number of Discovery, and declares that Mary Queen of Scots could not have written the letters. He adduces evidence that would i to-day bring William Maitland, of Lethington—Mary’s secretary and her betrayer—into the dock. Letter by letter photography and research show the identity between the casket letters and letters in Maitland’s own hand.