Popular feeling.
Mary's proclamation.
It was true. She was again a queen. Popular feeling ebbs and flows with prodigious force, and the change from one state to the other depends, sometimes, on very accidental causes. The news of Mary's escape spread rapidly over the land. Her friends were encouraged and emboldened. Sympathies, long dormant and inert, were awakened in her favor. She issued a proclamation, declaring that her abdication had been forced upon her, and, as such, was null and void. She summoned Murray to surrender his powers as regent, and to come and receive orders from her. She called upon all her faithful subjects to take up arms and gather around her standard. Murray refused to obey, but large masses of the people gave in their adhesion to their liberated queen, and flocked to Hamilton to enter into her service. In a week Mary found herself at the head of an army of six thousand men.
Ruins of Loch Leven Castle.
Ruins of Loch Leven Castle.
The octagonal tower.
Visitors.
The Castle of Loch Leven is now a solitary ruin. The waters of the loch have been lowered by means of an excavation of the outlet, and a portion of land has been left bare around the walls, which the proprietor has planted with trees. Visitors are taken from Kinross in a boat to view the scene. The square tower, though roofless and desolate, still stands. The window in the second story, which served as the entrance, and the one above, where the chain was worked, with the deep furrows in the sill cut by its friction, are shown by the guide. The court-yard is overgrown with weeds, and encumbered with fallen stones and old foundations. The chapel is gone, though its outline may be still traced in the ruins of its walls. The octagonal tower which Mary occupied remains, and the visitors, climbing up by the narrow stone stairs in the wall, look out at the window over the waters of the loch and the distant hills, and try to recreate in imagination the scene which the apartment presented when the unhappy captive was there.