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Old and New Edinburgh Vol. III

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treyes beneath the Over Bow to be removit;? the meal market, &c., to be removed from the High Street to foot of James Aikman?s Close, and the ? grass market to the kirkyard foot ; twelve chief citizens were to be arrayed in velvet gowns ; the craftsmen to be arrayed in French cloth, with doublets of velvet, satin, and damask; thirty-seven citizens to be mounted with velvet foot-mantles and velvet gowns, and all the town officers to be To the inexpressible grief of James and the whole nation, Magdalene, then only in her seventeenth year, died of her insidious disease on the 10th of July. She was interred with great pomp in the royal vault, near the coffin of James II., and her untimely death was the occasion of the first general mourning ever worn in the kingdom. In the treasurer?s accounts are many entries of the ? Scots claith, French blak, Holland claith, and corsses upon the velvet.? On her coffin was inscribed in Saxon characters, ?? Magdalena Erancisci R&s Frank, Primogmifa Regina Sotie Sponsa Jacoh? K Regis, A. D. I 53 7, obiit.? Jarnes, however, was not long a widower, and in June, 1538, he brought to Scotland a new bride, Mary of Guise, the widow of the Duke de Longuevihe, who landed at Balcomie, escorted by an admiral of France, and the nuptials were celebrated with pomp at St. Andrews j and on St. Margaret?s Day in the same year, this new queendestined to enact so important a part in the future history of the realm-made her public entry into Edinburgh by the Port, and rode tw Holyrood Palace, while peat sports and gaiety says Pitscottie. Curious plays were made for her entertainment, and gold, spices, and wines were lavished upon her by the magistrates, who wellnigh exhausted the finances of the city. Amid the State turnoils and horrors that culminated in the rout of Solway, Jarnes V. held a council at Holyrood on the 3rd of November, 1542, when, according to Knox, a scroll was presented to him by Cardinal Beaton, containing the names of more than one hundred of the pnncipal nobles and gentry, including the Earl of Arran, then, by deaths in the royal family, next heir to the throne, who were undoubtedly in the pay of England, tainted with heresy, or in leagie with the then outlawed clan of Douglas,
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Kolyrood.] THE COFFIN OF JAMES V. 65 Appended to this scroll was a minute of thei possessions, with a hint of the pecuniary advantager to result from forfeiture. This dangerous policy James repelled by exclaiming, ?? Pack you, javels ! (knaves). Get you to your religious charges ; reform your lives, and be not instruments of discord between me and my nobles, or else I shall reform you, not as the King of Denmark does, by im prisonment, nor yet as the King of England does by hanging and heading, but by sharp swords, if I hear of such hotion of you again ! ? From this speech it has been suppqsed that Jxnes contemplated some reform in the then dissolute Church. But the rout at Solway followed; his heart was broken, and on learning the birth of his daughter Mary, he died in despair at Falkland, yet, says Pitscottie, holding up his hands to God, as he yielded his spirit. He was interred in the royal vault, in December, 1542, at Holyrood, where, according to a MS. in the Advocates? Library, his body was seen by the Earl of Forfar, the Lord Strathnaver, and others, who examined that vault in 1683. ?We viewed the body of James V. It lyeth within ane wodden coffin, and is coverit with ane lead coffin. There seemed to be hair upon the head still. The body was two lengths of my staff with twa inches more, which is twae inches and more above twae Scots elms, for I measured the staff with an ellwand afterward. The body was coloured black with ye balsam that preserved it, and which was lyke melted pitch. The Earl of Forfar took the measure with his staf lykewayes? On the coffin was the inscription, flhstris Scoturum, Rex Jacobus, gus Nominis E, with the dates of his age and death. The first regent after that event was James, second Earl of Arran (afterwards Duke of Chatelherault, who had been godfather to James, the little Duke of Rothesay, next heir to the crown, failing the issue of the infant Queen Mary), and in 1545 this high official was solemnly invested at Holyrood, together with the Earls of Angus, Huntly, and Argyle, with the collar and robes of St. Michael, sent by the King of France, and at the hands of the Lyon King of Arms. We have related how the Church suffered at the hands of English pillagers after Pinkie, in 1547. The Palace did not escape. Seacombe, in his ?? History of the House of Stanley,? mentions that Norns, of Speke Hall, Lancashire, an English commander at that battle, plundered from Holyrood all or most of the princely library of the deceased King of Scots, James V., ?particularly four large folios, said to contain the Records and Laws of Scotland at that time.? He also describes a grand piece of wainscot, now in Speke Hall, as having been brought from the palace, but this is considered, from its style, doubtful. During the turmoils and troubles that ensued after Mary of Guise assumed the regency, her proposal, on the suggestion of the French Court, to form a Scottish standing army like that of France, so exasperated the nobles and barons, that three hundred of them assembled at Holyrood in 1555, and after denouncing the measure in strong terms, deputed the Laird of Wemyss and Sir James Sandilands of Calder to remonstrate with her on the unconstitutional step she was meditating, urging that Scotland had never wanted brave defenders to fight her battles in time of peril, and that they would never submit to this innovation on their ancient customsc This spirited remonstrance from Holyrood had the desired effect, as the regent abandoned her pro-- ject. She came, after an absence, to the palace in the November of the following year, when the magistrates presented her with a quantity of new wine, and dismissed McCalzean, an assessor of the city, who spoke to her insultingly in the palace on the affairs of Edinburgh; and in the following February she received and entertained the ambassador of the Duke of Muscovy, who had been shipwrecked on his way to England, whither she sent him, escorted by 500 lances, under the Lord Home. After the death of Mary of Guise and the arrival of her daughter to assume the crown of her ancestors, the most stirring scenes in the history of the palace pass in review.
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