Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 204, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 August 1910 — LETTERS OF GREAT [ARTICLE]

LETTERS OF GREAT

Relics of Queen Mary and Catherine de Medici to Be Sold. Notable Original Paper* Written by Royal Hands or Bearing on Hlatoric Matters Will Be Put Up at Public Auction. London.—Royal letters and state documents, as well as holograph and Rutograph letters of various celebrities, ranging in date from 1417 to 1904, will be sold by public auction at Sotheby’s soon. - — — . The collection Includes letters from Mary Queen of Scots, as well as from her cousin and rival, Queen Elizabeth, and an important treaty, deciding the future destiny of Mary Queen of Scots, ! means of which Mary of Guise, her mother, Cardinal Beaton and Lord Lennox rendered void • the English treaty, as also the contract for Mary’s projected marriage with the future Edw;frd VI. Twenty-seven years later Mary was in prison at Chatsworth and from there addressed an appeal to her brother-in-law', Charles IX. of France, imploring him to intercede With Elizabeth. This letter is accompanied by Elizabeth’s original order for the payment of “the blood money,” £IOO, to Sir John Popham, the cfowd prosecutor, who conducted the fatal trial at Fotheringay. There is also the only letter remaining In private possession written by Mary I. of England; it is dated 1554 end is a recommendation of Symon Raynard, Charles V.’s ambassador, and the principal negotiator of the Spanish match. Documents relating to the Field of the Cloth of Gold have their place in this collection, including a mandate signed “Francois” and dated September 8, 1520, being “an order to the treasurer and receiver general to pay certain sums for the reimbursement of expenses incurred in the month of June last past during the journey we made to the town of Andres and its neighborhood in the matter of the ■visit, meeting, and parliament between us and our very dear and good brother and ally, the king of England, and for the feasts, banquets and other similar expenses that we there incurred/* The catalogue comprises some rare holograph letters from Catherine de Medici written to her daughter Elizabeth, queen of Spain, between 1560 and 1570. One of them contains the following: “And so my daughter, my dear, commend yourself to God, for you have seen me as happy as yourself, never expecting to have any other sorrow, except that of not being sufficiently loved by the king, your father (Henry II.), who honored me more than I deserved; but I loved him so much that I was always afraid, as you know, that he did not love me enough. And God has taken him from me, and not content with that has left me with three little children, and in a strange kingdom, not having a soul

there whom I can trust who has not some special ax to grind.” Other letters from Catherine mention the hostility of the Guises after the death of her eldest son, Francis 11., husband of Mary Qyeen of Scots, and the intrigues of Admiral Coligny, and the attempts of the Due de Nemours to carry off the Due d.'Orleans (afterward Henry III.) and set him up against his brother, Charles IX. There Is likewise a mass of Huguenot correspondence. Charles 1., Charles 11. and James 11. of England are well represented in this collection, and among the- state documents there is the grant to Canterbury of a mint and assay office made by Edward VI., and signed by

him, as well as by Cranmer and Thomas Lord Seymour. There are also two of Cromwell’s black letter proclamations, prohibiting horse racing for six and eight months respectively. Owing to their being pasted up these proclamations were soon destroyed and the two present specimens are consequently almost unique. There are twelve letters written by Mme. de Maintenon and an inventory—the original manuscript—-of the effects left by Mme. de Pompadour at her death. There is likewise a manuscript dated 1721 embodying the “Remembrances for Order and Decency to be kept in the Upper House of Parliament by the Lords, when his Majesty is not there.”