[127] Calderwood.
[128] Melville’s Diary.
[129] He states that David Riccio was buried by the queen in the royal vault, ‘almost in the arms of Magdalene Valois,’ and thence draws a shameful inference against the chastity of Mary. To dedicate to the young king a book in which he endeavoured to prove his mother an adulteress, and the murderer of her husband, gives a strange idea of the sense of that age regarding the rules of good taste, to say nothing more.
[130] On this occasion Captain Lammie was killed. Sir Walter Scott, in relating the incident in the Border Minstrelsy, expresses a hope that he was ‘the same miscreant who, in the day of Queen Mary’s distress, “his ensign being of white taffety, had painted on it the cruel murder of King Henry, and laid down before her majesty, at what time she presented herself as prisoner to the Lords.”—Birrel’s Diary.’ It was very probably so, as we find that he then, as well as now, was a hired soldier of the government. As his painted ensign makes rather a conspicuous appearance in Scottish history, it may be not unworthy of notice that the following entry occurs in the Lord Treasurer’s books, under March 18, 1567-8, nine months after the incident in question: ‘To Captain Andro Lambie for his expenses passand of Glasgow to Edinburgh to uplift certain men of weir, and to mak ane Handsenyie of white taffety, £25.’ He was then acting for the Regent Moray. It seems probable that, having spoiled his ensign by the picture of the king’s murder, he was now gratified with a new one at the expense of his employer.
[131] In the parish of Carluke, Lanarkshire.
[132] He remained at this fine old castle twelve days, attended by Arran, Sir Robert Melville, Secretary Maitland, Ferniehirst, Colonel Stuart, and the Master of Gray; and regaled with ‘the play of Robin Hood.’ ‘After the banquet was ended, Arran fell deadly sick.’—Cal.
[133] History of King James VI.
[134] Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 484.
[135] Note in Maitland Club Miscellany, iv. 123.
[136] Gregory’s History of the Western Highlands and Isles, p. 234.