the English court; and, as the author of the "Memorials of Edinburgh " says, "posted with such speed that he reached London on the fourth day thereafter, and spoiled her majesty's mirth for one night, at least, with the 'happy news.'"

The queen had dissembled her wrath at the murder of Rizzio, and weaned her imbecile husband from co-operating with the conspirators who had leagued with him to effect that barbarous deed. There is little doubt, however, that from that moment she resolved on taking vengeance on the perpetrators of the crime, and the conduct of Darnley was in no degree calculated to make her forget the part he had played in that gross outrage on her person, and on her rights as a sovereign, as well as on her character as a woman. He was a vain, weak, and unstable man, who by his folly alienated from him the interest and affections of every political party, and by his gross licentiousness rendered himself an object of disgust to the queen. His destruction had already been resolved on, when he was seized at Glasgow with a loathsome disease, described by some writers as smallpox. On his partial recovery he was removed to Edinburgh, and lodged in the mansion of the provost of the collegiate church of St. Mary-in-the-Field, as a salubrious place. This ancient church stood on the site of University Buildings, and the infirmary now occupies the ground of the provost's mansion where Darnley was lodged.

There he was frequently visited by the queen, and she spent the evening of the 9th of February, 1567, with him, leaving him at eleven o'clock to return to Holyrood Palace, where a banquet was to be given on occasion of the marriage of one of her servants. The most minute account of the proceedings of this night are preserved to us in the depositions afterwards taken in investigating into the murder which was then perpetrated; and one of Bothwell's servants states in his evidence, that when returning from the Kirk of Field to the lodging of his master, he saw the queen going before him with lighted torches, as he went up Blackfriars Wynd; so that it would appear the queen walked home with a few attendants, passing up the close, and proceeding by the Canongate to the palace, much as any ordinary citizen would have done.

About three hours after the queen's departure, a loud explosion, which shook the whole town, blew the lodging of Darnley into the air, and his body, with that of his servant, were found at some little distance, under circumstances which seemed to prove that they had been strangled before the explosion took place, and afterwards carried to the spot where they were found. The queen's implication in this dark deed has been the subject of much dispute, and there may perhaps still exist advocates to maintain her innocence; but her latest biographer, Mignet, who has many of the requisites for a candid and impartial

historian, entertains no doubt of her guilt; and her immediate intercourse and speedy marriage with Bothwell, the active agent in the murderous deed, unhappily furnishes such corroboration of the charge as cannot easily be set aside. But whether innocent or guilty, the murder of Darnley proved fatal to Mary queen of Scots. After the brief interval which transpired between that deed and her marriage with the murderer, she surrendered to the earl of Morton, at Carbery-hill, near Musselburgh, on the 15th of June, 1567; and late the same evening she entered her capital a prisoner in the hands of her captors.

Dark as it was, the captive queen was recognised as she passed along the streets, and was assailed with insulting cries by the rude populace. She was lodged for the night in an ancient building in the High-street, called the Black Turnpike, the town mansion of the provost, sir Simon Preston; and the following evening she quitted Edinburgh for the last time, on her way to the scene of her first captivity in the Castle of Lochleven. On that night, the 16th of June, 1567, the sceptre of Scotland passed away for ever from her grasp; and the historian of Edinburgh is no longer called upon to follow out the incidents of that sad and sorrowful career, which, by the wrongs and sufferings that were crowded into it, has served to cast into the shade those darker incidents which mark the period of her life from the marriage of Darnley to his sudden and violent death.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE KING'S AND QUEEN'S MEN.

THE defeat of queen Mary's small band of adherents, and the steps which followed on her forced abdication, placed the crown of Scotland nominally on the head of her infant son, James VI., and once more subjected the kingdom to the oft-experienced evils of a long minority. The residence of the young king was almost entirely at Stirling, and Edinburgh ceased to be enlivened with the presence of royalty. The successive regents, however, frequently abode there, and the councils of the nation continued to hold their chief deliberations within its walls. The queen still found adherents, and the country was divided into king's and queen's men, who were for the most part, in other words, Protestants and Roman Catholics. In England also, where the Scottish queen was held a prisoner, under circumstances strongly calculated to excite sympathy in her behalf, the Romish party plotted and secretly devised plans for the restoration of the old faith in her

name; and thus the interests of Elizabeth were closely linked with all the movements of the king's party in Scotland. One of the proceedings resulting from this, connected with the history of Edinburgh, was the famous siege of the castle in 1572.

When the regent Murray obtained possession of the fortress, after the defeat of queen Mary at Langside, he committed it to the care of the celebrated sir William Kirkaldy of Grange. Maitland of Lethington, however, the most subtle of all the Scottish statesmen of the period, was the secret and persevering agent of the queen's party both in England and Scotland; and under his influence the new governor of Edinburgh Castle was before long gained over to the cause of Mary. This was an important accession, securing as it did one of the chief fortresses of the kingdom for her adherents; and when, after the brief duration of Murray's regency, he fell by the hand of an assassin, in January, 1570, the queen's party once more acquired hope and courage. The citizens of Edinburgh were now placed, as it were, between two contending forces. The earl of Lennox having been appointed to the vacant regency, resolved to hold a parliament in Edinburgh: this the governor of the castle was bent on preventing, and for that purpose took possession of St. Giles's Church, and manned its tower with musketeers. The regent's adherents marched on the town in great force, erected batteries on the Calton, and other available points, and