While this event is connected with one of the most problematical points
in our own history, or that of any other nation, it chances that the
whole topography of the affair is very distinctly recorded. We know not
only the exact spot where the deed was perpetrated, but almost every
foot of the ground over which the perpetrators walked on their way to
execute it. It is chiefly by reason of the depositions and confessions
brought out by the legal proceedings against the inferior instruments
that this minute knowledge is attained.
The house in which the unfortunate victim resided at the time was one
called the Prebendaries’ Chamber, being part of the suite of domestic
buildings connected with the collegiate church of St-Mary-in-the-Fields
(usually called the _Kirk o’ Field_). Darnley was brought to lodge
here on the 30th of January 1566-7. He had contracted the smallpox
at Glasgow, and it was thought necessary, or pretended to be thought
necessary, to lodge him in this place for air, as also to guard against
infecting the infant prince, his son, who was lodged in Holyrood House.
The house, which then belonged, by gift, to a creature of the Earl
of Bothwell, has been described as so very mean as to excite general
surprise. Yet, speaking by comparison, it does not appear to have been
a bad temporary lodging for a person in Darnley’s circumstances. It
consisted of two stories, with a _turnpike_ or spiral staircase behind.
The gable adjoined to the town-wall, which there ran in a line east and
west, and the cellar had a postern opening through that wall. In the
upper floor were a chamber and closet, with a little gallery having a
window also through the town-wall.[217] Here Darnley was deposited
in an old purple travelling-bed. Underneath his room was an apartment
in which the queen slept for one or two nights before the murder took
place. On the night of Sunday, February 9, she was attending upon her
husband in his sick-room, when the servants of the Earl of Bothwell
deposited the powder in her room, immediately under the king’s bed. The
queen afterwards took her leave, in order to attend the wedding of two
of her servants at the palace.
It appears, from the confessions of the wretches executed for this
foul deed, that as they returned from depositing the powder they saw
‘the Queenes grace gangand before thame with licht torches up the
Black Frier Wynd.’ On their returning to Bothwell’s lodging at the
palace, that nobleman prepared himself for the deed by changing his
gay suit of ‘hose, stockit with black velvet, passemented with silver,
and doublett of black satin of the same maner,’ for ‘ane uther pair
of black hose,[218] and ane canvas doublet white, and tuke his syde
[long] riding-cloak about him, of sad English claith, callit the new
colour.’ He then went, attended by Paris, the queen’s servant, Powry,
his own porter, Pate Wilson, and George Dalgleish, ‘downe the turnepike
altogedder, and along the bak of the Queene’s garden, till you come to
the bak of the cunyie-house [mint], and the bak of the stabbillis, till
you come to the Canongate fornent the Abbey zett.’ After passing up
the Canongate, and gaining entry with some difficulty by the Netherbow
Port, ‘thai gaid up abone Bassentyne’s hous on the south side of
the gait,[219] and knockit at ane door beneath the sword slippers,
and callit for the laird of Ormistounes, and one within answerit he
was not thair; and thai passit down a cloiss beneath the Frier Wynd
[_apparently Toddrick’s Wynd_], and enterit in at the zett of the Black
Friers, till thay came to the back wall and dyke of the town-wall,
whair my lord and Paris past in over the wall.’ The explosion took
place soon after, about two in the morning. The earl then came back
to his attendants at this spot, and ‘thai past all away togidder out
at the Frier zett, and sinderit in the Cowgait.’ It is here evident
that the alley now called the High School Wynd was the avenue by which
the conspirators approached the scene of their atrocity. Bothwell
himself, with part of his attendants, went up the same wynd ‘be east
the Frier Wynd,’ and crossing the High Street, endeavoured to get out
of the city by leaping a broken part of the town-wall in Leith Wynd,
but finding it too high, was obliged to rouse once more the porter at
the Netherbow. They then passed—for every motion of the villains has a
strange interest—down St Mary’s Wynd, and along the south back of the
Canongate to the earl’s lodgings in the palace.
[Illustration: High School Wynd.]
The house itself, by this explosion, was destroyed, ‘_even_,’ as the
queen tells in a letter to her ambassador in France, ‘_to the very
grund-stane_.’ The bodies of the king and his servant were found next
morning in a garden or field on the outside of the town-wall. The
buildings connected with the Kirk o’ Field were afterwards converted
into the College of King James, now our Edinburgh University. The hall
of the Senatus in the new buildings occupies nearly the exact site
of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, the ruins of which are laid down in De
Witt’s map of 1648.