Mary, under pretence of defending it. And there were numbers, I equally knew, both in England and in Scotland, but especially in the latter; who had been bred up in the bofom of political and religious prejudice against Mary, had been taught to abhor her with a wild credulity of spirit, and would not easily bear to fee her placed, by mine or by any hand, triumphant on the throne of honour. Some of thefe, but especially Lord Hailes and Dr. Robertson, I expected to come forward in oppofition to my work. I therefore prepared to receive them vigouroufly. I went over a part of my old ground again. I even extended my range of inveftigation. I thus formed a number of remarks, fome corrective of the old in fubordinate circumftances, fome confirmatory of them in important points, many entirely new in themselves, and all uniting to serve the interests of Mary and of truth usefully. And thus to prepare for oppofition in the very moments of publication, I now fee, was the likelieft way to ensure fuccess under it. Dr. Robertfon had particularly shown me by his very recent conduct, that he ftill adhered to almoft all his numerous errours in his Hiftory 6 History of Mary, About five weeks before I published, just as the whole work was printed, and in May 1787; he fent out a new edition of his History, with fome additions to it, that were principally calculated to obviate a few of the arguments, which had preffed hard upon the Doctor and his caufe. Having preserved a ftrange filence for feven and twenty years, to the objections which Mr. Tytler had begun, and Dr. Stuart had pursued, against his Hiftory; he spoke out at laft, to notice three of them. But he noticed not even thefe, till the more formidable of his two antagonists, his rival hiftorian, and his formal challenger, had nine months before funk in early life into the grave. Then it was, that the Doctor had confidence enough in his courage, to step out upon the stage, and to produce his counterreasons. He accordingly replied to the strong argument, derived from the perpetual fuppreffion of Melvill's letter by the rebels; and to the stronger, from their fuppreffion of the famous eight letters, and from their plain declarations indeed that they had them not, for nearly fix months after they pofteriourly pretended to have had them. And he replied alfo to the ftill ftronger argument, from the violent a 3 violent contradiction of the two records, the Act of Council and the Act of Parliament, in their respective defcriptions of the letters. All this naturally claimed my attention firft. I examined it all. Those two replies I had already precluded, I found, by the correfpondent parts of my work; and I had only to fubjoin a note to each, in order to show that I had. But this laft, as being entirely new, required a diftinct and formal confideration. I therefore gave it one. And I have inferted in Nos. I. and II. of the Appendix, what I think a compleat refutation of it. Having done this, I was induced to examine a multiplicity of points more in my own work. In vol. iii. p. 38, I had afserted the copy of the treaty with the Scotch rebels in 1560, to be all a forgery. This was a bold pufh at the grand charter of political prefbyterianifm in Scotland. The boldness induced me to look over the whole, with a more comprehensive attention than I had paid it before. And the refult was a large differtation, which now forms No. XIV. of the Appendix, and brings in new evidences of the forgery additional to the old. I was then led to confider, what appeared to me as fome other forgeries, |