Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. MEETING WITH DARNLEY--MARRIAGE. Rossend Castle--The Poet Chatelard--St. Andrews--West Wemyss and the Coming of Darnley--Marriage--Crookston Tower and the Honeymoon--Jedburgh--Hermitage Castle. Rossend Castle. Close to the port of Burntisland, in Fifeshire, stands the Castle of Rossend, a baronial mansion, little changed, yet full of tbe life of our times. Towering high on a rocky promontory above the waters of the Firth of Forth, embowered in trees, and enshrouded in clambering ivy, it is in all ways charming. It has been restored, where restoration was needed, in the style and manner of its builders. Here Chatelard, for the second time, hid himself in the bedchamber of the Queen, a room which still exists much as it was at that time. There is the same canopied bed, and there is the place where the stairway ran down through the walls, by which the infatuated man effected his entrance, gaining access to the Castle, it is traditionally said, M through a secret passage from the shore. The existence of this passage has been quite recently substantiated. To the left of the bed is the little corner cupboard where he hid himself, and where he was discovered. The Queen would have had him put to death at once, but Moray's calmer judgment prevailing, he was executed some ten days later. Some authorities state that Chatelard expiated his folly at St. Andrews, whither the Queen at that time was journeying; others that the trial and execution took place at Edinburgh. Lamartine, who with a loving pen sketches the history of the tragedy-fraught Queen, depicts with good effect the last moments of Chatelard, which he places as at Edinburgh. "Ascending the scaffold erected before the windows of Holyrood, the theatre of his madness and the...
