Of His Kingdom
For Ever.”
But interesting as is this ancient abbey, the palace is of more attraction to visitors. Ill-fated James IV. founded it, and it was no sooner completed than he brought his bride to live therein. They were married and she was crowned in the chapel royal. Here also came the fair French princess Magdalene, first queen of James V., received with every indication of joy and affection, blooming in youth and beauty, only to be laid in the earth forty days after her arrival. The second queen of James and mother of Mary Stuart, Mary of Guise, was also crowned in the chapel. But of the multitude of famous women who have swept in the glory of their pride and beauty through the halls of this palace, the most thrilling interest clusters round the name of the ill-starred Mary Stuart. Here occurred those events which will forever link the name of Holyrood with that of the unfortunate “White Queen.”
To Holyrood she came first after her arrival from “her pleasant land of France” she loved so much; here she married the inferior and dissolute Darnley, and her Rizzio was foully murdered before her eyes; in the council chamber of the palace she married “Black Bothwell,” and her last night before being sent a captive to Lochleven was spent within these walls.
That part of the palace built by Charles II. is of quadrangular shape, having a court in the center. It was while passing through this court that we met a pompous, overdressed woman who was saying in a loud voice to her companion, “Well, what of it? What if Mary Stuart did live here? What does that amount to?”
The great picture gallery is in this part of the palace. It is one hundred and fifty feet in length and is hung round with portraits of a hundred Scotch kings. This room is of historical interest, for “Bonnie Prince Charlie” used it for a ball room, while he was staying at Holyrood. Readers of “Waverley” will remember the description in that book of the great ball given in this room. From this vast room the visitor may enter Lord Darnley’s apartments, which are soon scanned, for one is more eager to see Queen Mary’s room. At last we mount a gloomy stairway and enter what is perhaps the most famous and sadly interesting suite of rooms in all Europe.
The queen’s audience chamber is a large room lighted by two windows. The walls are draped with faded and time-worn tapestry. Here stands the bed upon which two other unfortunate Stuarts laid their uneasy heads, Charles I. and the Pretender, and after “Culloden’s bloody field, dark source o’ mony a tear” the conqueror of the latter, the Duke of Cumberland, slept upon the same pillow. It was in this room that Mary had those stormy scenes with Knox, the Scottish reformer.
In the bedroom still stand her chairs, her bed with its faded hangings, and the basket which Elizabeth sent her filled with baby linen. There is also a bit of her embroidery, carefully preserved in a glass case. On the walls hang the sadly tarnished mirror which has so often reflected her lovely face, her portrait and those of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, given her by the Virgin Queen, “her sister and her foe.”
Poor, unhappy queen! How she must have pined for her sunny France, among those cold, northern people. How often has she stood at these very windows and turned her beautiful eyes, filled with tears, toward those great mountains which shut her in. Whatever she was, good or vile, an abused, suffering woman, or an unprincipled, intriguing queen, we can think of her only with pity. But the most famous room is that little chamber, no larger than a good sized closet, where Rizzio was so cruelly murdered. Into this little room rushed the conspirators, overturning the table and putting out the lights, dragging their victim from Mary’s feet out through her bedroom, audience chamber, and into the hall beyond, stabbing him at every step and leaving him at last with fifty-six wounds in his body. And to this room the brutal Ruthven returned and demanded a cup of wine, and in the frightened queen’s presence tossed it off with wine red hand. Could it have been imagination only that loaded the air of that dark, damp, silent palace with heavy sighs? that caused one to look behind, at sound of footsteps and the sweeping of robes? that peopled those empty rooms with tenants of air, troubled ghosts of the illustrious dead?
Each old ruin has a charm all its own. Under these ivy-grown battlements how many fair women and brave men have lived, eaten, drunken, danced, sorrowed, loved and died; within these gray old walls what heartaches, ambitions, loves and hates have been nurtured, all to end at last and leave only silence and decay.