On January 22, 1567, the Queen visited her husband, who was ill at
Glasgow, and proposed to remove him to Craigmillar castle, where he
would have the benefit of medicinal baths; but instead of this resort he
was conveyed on the last day of the month to the lonely and squalid
shelter of the residence which was soon to be made memorable by his
murder. Between the ruins of two sacred buildings, with the town hall to
the south and a suburban hamlet known to ill-fame as the Thieves' Row to
the north of it, a lodging was prepared for the titular King of
Scotland, and fitted up with tapestries taken from the Gordons after the
battle of Corrichie. On the evening of Sunday, February 9th, Mary took
her last leave of the miserable boy who had so often and so mortally
outraged her as consort and as queen. That night the whole city was
shaken out of sleep by an explosion of gunpowder which shattered to
fragments the building in which he should have slept and perished; and
next morning the bodies of Darnley and a page were found strangled in a
garden adjoining it, whither they had apparently escaped over a wall, to
be despatched by the hands of Bothwell's attendant confederates.
Upon the view which may be taken of Mary's conduct during the next three
months depends the whole debatable question of her character.
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