[53] Miss Benger, vol. ii. p. 313.
[54] Sanderson’s Life of Mary, p. 48.—Freebairn, p. 113.
[55] Knox, p. 404.
[56] Keith, p. 365.
[57] Melville, p. 174.
[58] The notion that the powder, with which the Kirk-of-Field was blown up, had been placed in a mine, dug for the purpose, was for a while very prevalent. Mary, of course, never suspected that it had been put into her own bedroom; but the truth came out as soon as the depositions of Bothwell’s accomplices were published. Why Whittaker should still have continued to believe that a mine had been excavated, it is difficult to understand. Laing very justly ridicules the absurdity of such a belief.
[59] There is a sincere piety in this rejection of the word “chance.” Mary was steadily religious all her life, and certainly nothing but a pure and upright spirit could have induced her, on the present occasion, to appeal to her Creator, and say, “It was not chance, but God.”
[60] Keith, Preface, p. viii.
[61] Anderson, vol. i. p. 36.
[62] Lesley in Anderson, vol. i. p. 23.