Casket Letters - The Copy Letters

The Copy Letters

Four copies were preserved by the descendents of William Cecil. The copies do not reproduce signatures or dates, and they contain endorsements made by the copyist that indicate how the letters were to be used against Queen Mary. Versions of some of the letters and sonnets were printed in George Buchanan's polemic Detectio Mariæ Reginæ and Dectectioun, and reprinted by James Anderson in 1727. Walter Goodall, in 1754, printed parallel English, French, and Latin versions without the clerk's endorsements.

Four other copy letters and other copy documents were preserved in the English state papers and the Cotton Collection. These were printed in the Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, Volume 2.

The French sonnets, said to have been found in the casket, were printed in Anderson's Collections, Volume 2, with Scottish translations. Walter Goodall reprinted the twelve poems in Examination, Volume 2. The sonnets can be evaluated as French literature.