excesses of popular feeling, and had no reason otherwise to complain of any want of loyalty. All the public way through which she passed was adorned with splendid hangings and devices, and she was entertained by the magistrates at a public banquet, given in the ancient archiepiscopal palace, which still stands--a strangely faded memorial of such olden timesin the Cowgate of Edinburgh.

Queen Mary was at this time, we may observe, guided almost entirely by her brother the lord James's counsel, and she pursued a wise and conciliating policy to all. At this period, as we learn from various public documents, the ancient Tolbooth, or Hotel de Ville of Edinburgh, where the Scottish parliaments usually assembled, and the courts of justice were held, had become ruinous; and, in accordance with a royal letter issued by the queen, it was removed, and the building erected in its stead which became famous in later days under its more popular name of the "Heart of Midlothian." During the progress of the new erection, accommodation was provided for the meetings of the council and the court of session in one of the transepts of St. Giles's Church, known as the Holy Blood Aisle; a sufficiently significant name, suggestive of one of the favourite miraculous relics of the Romish church.

The arms of the city of Edinburgh appear, up to this date, to have been the insignia of the patron saint, St. Giles, who is usually represented,

in accordance with the old legend of the Romish church, with a fawn beside him. This, however, could no longer be tolerated, when all other emblems and memorials of superstition were being swept away. An act of the town council of the year 1562, accordingly, orders the idol to be cut out of the town's standard, and a thistle to be put in its room. The latter was afterwards replaced by a more regular specimen of the herald's pictorial art, and the saint's fawn alone now appears as one of the supporters of the city arms.

CHAPTER XIII.

MURDER OF RIZZIO AND DARNLEY.

A BRIEF period of peace, succeeded by another of resolute triumph over her opponents, marked the first years of queen Mary's reign, and then followed the terrible incidents which to this day confer a singular interest on Edinburgh to the eye of strangers. The opposition of the citizens to any toleration of the mass, however privately celebrated, continued unabated. During the queen's absence at Stirling, her private chapel at Holyrood was broken into, and the queen's domestics, as well as the officiating priest, threatened with the terrors of the law for conducting and abetting the Romish services.

A still more serious display of zeal was manifested at Easter, in 1565, when sir James Tarbet, a Roman Catholic priest, was seized by an Edinburgh mob, headed by one of the bailies, as he was riding home from celebrating mass. He was imprisoned in the Tolbooth, along with several of his assailants; but this by no means satisfied the populace, who broke

into the prison, brought him forth, and clothing him in his sacerdotal robes, set him up in the pillory at the Market Cross, where he was exposed for an hour to the pelting of the mob. He was then brought to trial, and again condemned to the pillory for having celebrated mass contrary to law. On this second occasion, the common hangman was appointed to preside at the pillory, and so rudely was the poor priest maltreated by the rabble, that he was reported to be dead. Such proceedings could not fail to exasperate the queen, and from this time forward she became more and more alienated from the Protestant party.

On the 28th of July, 1565, Darnley was proclaimed king at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, and on the following day he was married to the queen in the chapel of Holyrood, by the dean of Restalrig. Lord Henry Darnley, the son of the earl of Lennox, a member of the royal house of Stuart, and of lady Margaret Douglas, the granddaughter of Henry VII. of England through Margaret Tudor, the widow of James IV., was as suitable a marriage as the queen could make among the subjects of Scotland or England, and mutual affection seemed at the time to give promise of the happiest results. But reasonable and auspicious as it appeared, this was a fatal union. Politically, it awoke the jealousy of England, and excited fresh fears in the minds of Mary's Protestant subjects; while Darnley himself proved a weak, vain, ambitious youth, who became the tool of his

own and his wife's opponents, and involved both in misery and ruin.

On the 9th of March, 1566, the queen was at supper in her cabinet at Holyrood Palace, in company with the countess of Argyle and lord Robert Stuart, her natural sister and brother, and other members of the court, among whom was her private secretary, David Rizzio, when her husband Darnley admitted a body of armed assassins into his apartments in the north-west tower of the palace, immediately below those of the queen, and communicating with them by a private staircase. The chief

conspirators included lords Morton and Lindsay, who, with a body of about two hundred armed men, occupied the court-yard, and seized the gates of the palace; while lord Ruthven, Ker of Fawdonside, Patrick Bellenden, and George Douglas, followed Darnley to execute the bloody purpose for which they were assembled. Darnley himself first ascended the stair, and throwing back the tapestry, which is still shown, concealing the secret door, he entered the small apartment in the north-west turret where the queen and her friends were seated at supper. On entering, he took his seat behind the queen, who turned towards him and embraced him affectionately. A minute had scarcely elapsed when lord Ruthven, clad in complete armour, and pale and haggard from disease, stalked into the room. He was followed immediately by the other conspirators, armed with pistols and daggers; and the queen, who