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The affair of Sprot has an obvious bearing on that other mystery, the authenticity of the Casket Letters attributed to Queen Mary. As we know, she, though accused, was never allowed to see the letters alleged to be hers. We know that, in December 1568, these documents were laid before an assembly of English nobles at Hampton Court.
He could not give the question as originally put to Sprot, for that involved the publication of the fact that all the letters but one were forged. The others were in the hands of the Government. Hart, in his tract, veils these circumstances. The Government meant to put the letters to their own uses, on a later occasion, at the trial of the dead Logan.
He himself had seen Bower when he brought him Logan’s letter from London, take his son, Valentine, apart, and knew that Valentine read a letter to him. ‘It was a meikle letter,’ Matthew said, and, if Sprot tell truth, it contained three enclosures. Bower may have stopped his son from reading the melancholy and compromising epistle, and kept it to be read by Sprot.
Yet, according to Sprot, in his final confession, Logan let Bower keep the damning paper for months. If this be true, we can only say quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat. People do keep damning letters, constant experience proves the fact.
This document did not come into the hands of Government till after the Indictment, containing Sprot’s quotation of the letter from memory, was written, or, if it did, was kept back. All this has presently to be proved in detail. The Indictment or ‘dittay’ against Sprot, on August 12, 1608, is a public document, but not an honest one. It contains the following among other averments.
Is Letter IV in substance genuine? If not, why did Sprot keep it back till the rope was noosed for his neck?
We have now to track Sprot through the labyrinth of his confessions and evasions, as attested by the authentic reports of his private examinations between July 5 and the day of his death.
The two former were now preachers of the courtly party, the third received a pension of 500 marks from the King, after the posthumous trial of Logan , at which the five letters were produced, but this reward may have been a mere coincidence. Sprot now confesses that he knows he is to die, deposes that no man has promised him life, and that he has stated nothing in hope of life.
He himself, he said, had been ‘in the west,’ at the time of the Gowrie tragedy, and first heard of it at Falkirk. On August 6, Sprot was interrogated again. Only lay lords were present: there were no clergymen nor lawyers. He denied that he had received any promise of life or reward.
Alexis Nicholaevitch, once a Prince of Muscovy and now Mr. Alexander Nicholson of the rising firm of Sprot and Nicholson of Melbourne, had interest enough to prevent it. For it was clear that if Saskia was to be saved from persecution, her enemies must disappear without trace from the world, and no story be told of the wild venture which was their undoing.
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