268 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April investigation has demonstrated that the captive queen did not actually make a will disinheriting James in favour of Philip as is here assumed ; 1 after all Mary was French, and it was to the French king that her last letter was directed. To James our author does less than justice. He accuses him, quite rightly, of duplicity; but when he shows us that James hated presby- terianism, and feared Spain, he might have gone on to lay more stress upon the advances made by James — through Ogilvie of Powrie and others — to the pope, and to other catholic, but anti-Spanish powers. Instead he is drawn away to tell once more, in narrative form, the story of Philip's delays and disappointments — a story already told by Knox, Kretzschmar, A. 0. Meyer, Martin Hume, and Graves Law. Little new evidence is used, and such of the existing evidence as has been employed has not been well grouped. The author has followed his secondary authorities far too closely, and none of them were discussing the counter-reformation from a specifically Scottish point of view. The result is that Dr. Elder's own point of view tends to vary ; in chapter iii, for example, the action centres round Persons. Scotland itself is beheld through alien eyes and we are introduced to such forms as Dalgaty (for Dalgety 2 ) and 'Lord Balgarys' or 'Lord Walter Lindsay'. 3 Walter Lindsay was not a lord ; he was laird of Balgavies near Forfar. The importance of this busy intriguer lies in the fact that he was a brother of John Lindsay, ' the Parson of Menmuir ', one of those ' Octavians ', who, as our author rightly tells us (p. 240), were suspected of Catholicism. It almost seems that Dr. Elder had approached his original sources through the medium of his secondary authorities. On pp. 250 and 251 occurs a quotation from a letter written by the duke of Feria. The citation given, ' Tierney, vol. iv, p. 53 ', is quite wrong, but it is the exact citation given by Graves Law in quoting the same passage. The real reference is to Tierney's edition of Dodd's Church History, vol. iii, appendix, pp. liii, liv, and lv, where the original Spanish appears along with a very loose transla- tion, which should hardly have satisfied a Spanish scholar. In another passage (p. 247) James is represented as asking the pope for 2,000 crowns a month ; the reference is given to ' Col. S. P., Scotland, Elizabeth, vol. ii, p. 721 '. The calendar, however, mentions no sum at all, and the original document in the Record Office reads 20,000, and not 2,000. Curiously enough, Graves Law, who refers to the original document (and not the calendar), has made one of his rare slips on this occasion, and written 2,000 for 20,000. The whole episode of Ogilvie of Powrie is badly treated. Dr. Elder's account is based partly on Graves Law 4 and partly on Martin Hume's Treason and Plot. He does not seem to have used the docu- ments from which Hume was working, though they are published in Birch's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth, or to be aware that contemporary 1 p. 141. But see Scottish Historical Review, xi. 338, and Mary's last letter, sold at Sotheby's 14 December 1917 and purchased for the nation. 2 p. 88. The spelling Dalgaty is adopted by Father Barrett. 3 pp. 225 and 232. The spelling Balgarys is used by Martin Hume in Treason and Plot. 4 Graves Law, ' Documents illustrating Catholic Policy' (Scottish History Society, xv. 6, 18).
