[4] Keith, p. 68.—Knox’s History, p. 94-6.
[5] M’Crie’s Life of Knox, vol. i. p. 222.
[6] M’Crie’s Life of Knox, vol. ii. p. 206.
[7] The Biographer of Knox goes perhaps a little too far, when he proposes to alleviate the sorrow felt for the loss of these architectural monuments of superstition, by reminding the antiquarian that Ruins inspire more lively sentiments of the sublime and beautiful than more perfect remains. This is a piece of ingenuity, but not of sound reasoning. It is rather a curious doctrine, that a Cathedral or Monastery does not look best with all its walls standing.—M’Crie’s Life of Knox, vol. I. p. 271.
[8] It is worth while observing with what a total want of all Christian charity Knox speaks of the death of Mary of Guise. Alluding to her burial, he says:—“The question was moved of her burial: the preachers boldly gainstood that any superstitious rites should be used within that realm, which God of his mercy had begun to purge; and so was she clapped in a coffin of lead, and kept in the Castle from the 9th of June until the 19th of October, when she, by Pinyours, was carried to a ship, and so carried to France. What pomp was used there, we neither hear nor yet regard; but in it we see that she, that delighted that others lay without burial, got it neither so soon as she herself (if she had been of the counsel in her life) would have required it, neither yet so honourable in this realm as sometimes she looked for. It may perchance be a pronosticon, that the Guisean blood cannot have any rest within this realm.” Elsewhere he says—“Within few days after, began her belly and loathsome legs to swell, and so continued till that God did execute his judgment upon her.” And again—“God, for his mercy’s sake, rid us of the rest of the Guisean blood. Amen.” As Keith remarks, it was not by this spirit that the Apostles converted the world.—Keith, p. 129.
[9] M’Crie’s Life of Knox, Vol. 1. p. 323.
[10] By the kindness of Mr Brown of Glasgow, the ingenious delineator of the Royal Palaces of Scotland, we are enabled to give, as the vignette to the present Volume, a view of this Palace, exhibiting the window of the very room where Mary was born, which is the large window on the first floor, immediately under the flight of birds.
[11] Sadler’s State Papers and Letters, vol. i. p. 263.
[12] Whittaker, vol. iv. p. 144.
[13] Mezeray, Histoire de France, tom. iii. p. 50.