66 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Holyrood.
CHAPTER X,
HOLYKOOD PALACE (continued).
.Queen Mary?s Apartments-Her Amval in Edinburgh-Riot in the Chapel Royal-? The Queen?s Maries ?-Interview with Knox-Mary?s
Marriage with Darnley-The Position of Rizzio-The Murder of Rurio-Burial of Darnley-Marriage of Mary and Bothwell-Mary?s Last
Visit to Holyrood-James VI. and the ? Mad? Earl of Bothwcll-Baptism of the Queen of Bohemia and Charles I.-Taylor the Water-poet
at Holyrood-Charles I.?s Imprisonment-Palace Burned and Re-built-The Palace before 1 6 5 T h e Present Palace-The Quadranglb
The Gallery of the Kings-The Tapestry-The Audience-Chamber.
A WINDING stair in the Tower of James V. gives
access to the oldest portion of the palace, known
.as ? I Queen Mary?s Apartments,? on the third floor,
and forming the most interesting portion of the
whole edifice, To the visitor, in Mary?s bedchamber
there seems a solemn gloom which even
the summer sunshine cannot brighten, ruddy
though the glare may be which streams through
that tall window, where we can see the imperial
crown upon its octagon turret. The light seems
only to lay too bare the fibres of the old oak
floor and all the mouldering finery ; a sense of the
pathetic, with something of horror and much of
sadness, mingles in the thoughtful mind; and
much of this was felt even by Dr. Johnson, when he
stood there with Boswell on the 15th of August,
r773.?
With canopy and counterpane, dark and in
shadow, there stands the old pillared bed, with its
crimson silk and satin faded into orange, wherein
slept, and doubtless too often wept, the fair
young Queen of Scotland-she who spent her
happy teens at the Bourbon court, her passionate
youth so sorrowfully in grim grey Scotland, and
who gave up her soul to God at Fotheringay, in
premature old age, and with a calm grandeur that
never saint surpassed.
On the wall there hangs the arras wrought with
the fall of Phaeton, now green and amber-tinted,
revealing the gloomy little door through which
pale Ruthven and stern Darnley burst with their
daring associates, and close by is the supper-room
from whence the shrieking Rizzio was dragged,
and done to death with many a mortal wound.
To the imaginative Scottish mind the whole place
conjures up scenes and events that can never die.
The day on which the queen arrived at Leith,
after a thirteen years? absence from her native land,
was, as Knox tells us, the most dull and gloomy in
the memory of man. She had come ten days
before she was expected, and such preparations as
the now impoverished people made-impoverished
by foreign and domestic strife since Pinkie had been
lost-were far from complete. The ship containing
her horses and favourite palfrey had been
lawlessly captured by an English admiral ; but
her brother, Lord James Stuart, supplied steeds ;
and Mary, who was accompanied by her uncles,
the Dukes d?Aumale, Guise, Nemours, the Cardinal
of Lorraine, the Grand Prior, the Marquis d?Elbauf,
and others, could not restrain her tears of mortification
at the gloom and general poverty that appeared
on every hand.
She made her public entry into the city on the
1st of September, and her reception, though
homely, was sincere and cordial, for the Scots
of old had a devotion to their native monarchs
that bordered on the sublime ; and now the youth
and beauty of Mary, and the whole peculiarity
of her position, were calculated to engage the
interest and affection of her people.
The twelve citizens who bore a canopy over
her head were apparelled in black velvet gowns
and doublets of crimson satin, with velvet bonnets
and hose. All citizens in the procession had
black silk gowns faced with velvet and satin
doublets, while the young craftsmen, who marched
in front, wore taffeta. The Upper and Salt Trons,
Tolbooth, and Netherbow were all decorated with
banners and garlands as she proceeded to Holyrood.
The apartments she first occupied were on the
ground floor, and BrantBme gives an amusing
account of the manner in which the citizens
endeavoured to provide for her amusement for
several nights, to the grievous annoyance of her
refined French atteqdants. There came under
her windows,? says he, ? five or six hundred citizens,
who gave her a concert of the vilest fiddles
and little rebecs, which are as bad as they can
be in that country, and accompanied them with
singing psalms, but so wretchedly out of tune
and concord that nothing could be worse.
what melody it was ! what a lullaby for the night ! ?
?They were a company of honest men,? according
to Knox, ?who with instruments of music
gave her their salutations at her chamber window.??
Mary, with policy, expressed her thanks, but removed
to a part of the palace beyond the reach
of this terrible minstrelsy.
She was only nineteen, with few advisers and
none on whom she could rely, and was ignorant
of the people over whom she had been called to
govern. Protestantism was now the only legal
Ah !?
