‘... At twa hours in the morning, there come certain traitors to the
provost’s house [in the Kirk of Field], wherein was our sovereign’s
husband Henry, and ane servant of his, callit William Taylor, lying in
their naked beds; and there privily with wrang keys openit the doors,
and come in upon the said prince, and there without mercy worried him
and his said servant in their beds; and thereafter took him and his
servant furth of that house, and cuist him naked in ane yard beside
the Thief Raw, and syne come to the house again, and blew the house
in the air, sae that there remainit not ane stane upon ane other,
undestroyit.... At five hours, the said prince and his servant was
found lying dead in the said yard, and was ta’en into ane house in the
Kirk of Field, and laid while [till] they were buriet.’--_D. O._
Buchanan relates two ‘prodigies’ which happened in connection with the
death of Darnley. ‘One John Lundin, a gentleman of Fife, having long
been sick of a fever, the day before the king was killed, about noon,
raised himself a little in his bed, and, as if he had been astonished,
cried out to those that stood by him, with a loud voice, “to go help
the king, for the parricides were just then murdering him;” and a while
after he called out with a mournful tone, “Now it is too late to help
him; he is already murdered;” and he himself lived not long after he
had uttered these words.’ The other circumstance occurred just at the
time the murder happened. ‘Three of the familiar friends of the Earl
of Athole, the king’s cousin, men of reputation for valour and estate,
had their lodgings not far from the king’s. When they were asleep about
midnight, there was a certain man seemed to come to Dugald Stewart,
who lay next the wall, and to draw his hand gently over his beard and
cheek, so as to awake him, saying, “Arise, they are offering violence
to you.” He presently awaked, and was considering the apparition within
himself, when another of them cries out presently in the same bed, “Who
kicks me?” Dugald answered, “Perhaps it is a cat, which used to walk
about in the night;” upon which the third, who was not yet awake, rose
presently out of his bed, and stood upon the floor, demanding “who it
was that had given him a box on the ear?” As soon as he had spoken, a
person seemed to go out of the house by the door, and that not without
some noise. Whilst they were descanting on what they had heard and
seen, the noise of the blowing up of the king’s house put them into a
very terrible consternation.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1567.