On August 15, 1569, ‘William Stewart, being convictit for witcherie, was burnt, and the said Paris, convictit for ane of the slayaris of the King, wes hangit in Sanctandrois,’ says the ‘Diurnal.’
Now, why was Lyon Herald burned? If there was a conspiracy, in July, 1568, no others suffered for it. It was easy to convict Stewart for ‘witchery’: he confessed to dealings with a soothsayer, and the Kirk was beginning its campaign against witches. But what was the political or personal reason for Moray’s cruelty? Had he seen Stewart’s letter of August 19, 1568?
As to the soothsayer, he may have been a familiar spirit, but he may also have been the Laird of Merchistoun, Napier, the father of the inventor of Logarithms. One of his prophecies to Stewart dealt with Mary’s escape from Loch Leven. And Nau, Mary’s secretary, writes, ‘The Laird of Merchistoun, who had the reputation of being a great wizard, made bets with several persons, to the amount of 500 crowns, that by the 5th of May, her Majesty would be out of Loch Leven.’[413]
Thus there were two wizard Lairds of Merchistoun, the scientific son (the treasure-hunter for the laird of Restalrig) and his father.
For the rest, the conspiracy against Moray, in July, 1568, and the secret as to the cause of Lyon Herald’s death, remain mysterious.[414]
The question of the possibility that Letter II. may be authentic turns on dates. If the Lords are right in declaring, in ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ that Mary left Edinburgh on January 21, 1567, and arrived in Glasgow on January 23, then the evidence of the Letter is incompatible with that of Paris, and one or both testimonies must be abandoned. They fare no better if we accept the statement of Drury, writing from Berwick, that Mary entered Glasgow on January 22. It is shown in the text that, if we accept the date as given in Birrel’s ‘Diary,’ and also in the ‘Diurnal of Occurrents’: if we make Mary leave Edinburgh on January 20, and (contrary to Drury and ‘Cecil’s Journal’) make her enter Glasgow on January 21, then the Letter may be brought into harmony with the statement of Paris.
Of course it may be argued that the ‘Diurnal’ and Birrel’s ‘Diary’ coincide in an error of date. The ‘Diary’ of Birrel describes itself as extending from 1532 to 1605. One man cannot have kept a daily note of events for seventy-three years. The ‘Diary,’ in fact, is _not_ a daily record. There is but one entry for 1561, one for 1562, one for 1565, ten for 1566, and twenty-four for 1567; up to Mary’s surrender at Carberry (June 15). The ‘Diurnal,’ for our period, is more copious, and is by a contemporary, though probably he did not always write his remarks on the day of the occurrence noted.