The suite of apartments occupied by Queen Mary are still left, with a portion of the old furniture and hangings. As we wander through the rooms, we can, in fancy, see Mary in the audience chamber, in one of her distressing interviews with the leaders of the Reformation,—when most unjustifiable demands were made on her that, against conscience and conviction, she should renounce the faith in which she had been nurtured,—should change her religion to accommodate the popular change. Or, in the private supper-room, see her and her ladies at their needlework; or hear one of these ladies sing an old Scots ballad of loves gone astray, and with a sad ending. Then Rizzio’s rich baritone rises in an Italian strain; and then there is on these stairs the trampling of armed men, and foul murder is done before the eyes of a queen and an expectant mother; and her life is never the same again. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE, THE REGENT MORAY’S HOUSE ADJOINING THE PALACE, ON THE NORTH, THE ROYAL GARDENS AND ANCIENT HOROLOGE. (_From a drawing by Blore, published in 1826._) ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Little more than this wing of the palace was left by a fire, in 1650, when Cromwell’s soldiers were quartered in the building. All the newer portion was built in the reign of Charles II. The picture gallery is 150 feet long, and contains portraits (?) of 106 ancient Scottish kings. Here, in the autumn of 1745, Prince Charles Edward held his mimic court. At every general parliamentary election the sixteen representative Scottish peers are chosen in this hall. James VI. repaired and embellished the church, providing it with an organ, a throne, and twelve stalls for the Knights of the Thistle. The roof fell in in 1768, and the fine eastern window yielded to a violent tempest in 1795. Since then the church—the sepulchre of Scottish kings and queens—has been allowed to become a ruin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: INTERIOR OF HOLYROOD CHURCH, LOOKING EAST.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Offences and their Punishment in the Sixteenth Century. The century which included the Reformation, and the long minorities of three sovereigns,—James V., his daughter Mary, and her son, James VI.,— all periods of strife and unsettledness, was for Scotland, governmentally and politically, a turbulent one. The state was often in confusion; but the burghs were little states, acting by their own laws, under properly constituted magistrates.