Chapter XVI: Letter II: Henderson prefers the hypothesis that Lennox had lost

Crawford's notes; and that the identities are explained by the "remarkably good memories of Crawford and Mary, or by the more likely supposition that Crawford, before preparing his declaration for the conference" (at Westminster, December 1568) "refreshed his memory by the letter." (Letter II., _Mary Queen of Scots_, p. 650.)

Mary did not need a particularly good memory; if she wrote, she wrote unchecked her recollections of the day's talk. But no human memory of a conversation reported on the 22nd of January 1567, could be so nearly "word perfect" as Crawford's must have been two years later. If Crawford "refreshed his memory by the letter," he exposed himself, and the entire case, by copying whole passages, often with few verbal changes. If he had access to his original notes of the 21st and 22nd of January 1567, then he was safe--that is, if Darnley's memory of the conversations tallied so exactly with Mary's. Whether that could be, Darnley dictating while still hot from the exciting interchange of words which he meant to report, is a question for psychologists. Experiments made by a person who possesses a good memory seem to show that the thing is very possible, especially if Darnley revised Crawford's notes.

Thus the probabilities are delicately balanced. But if any one compares Crawford's whole declaration with Letter II. in Scots, he will find that Crawford has sources of information not yielded by Letter II.; while