Mary Queen of Scots: Makers of HistoryAbbott, Jacob
History
Mary Queen of Scots: Makers of History
Abbott, Jacob
Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542-1587
Henry, finding that he could not induce the Scotch government to
accede to these plans, gave them up at last, and made a treaty of
marriage between his son and Mary, with the agreement that she might
remain in Scotland until she was ten years old, and that _then_ she
should come to England and be under his care.
All this time, while these grand negotiations were pending between
two mighty nations about her marriage, little Mary was unconscious
of it all, sometimes reposing quietly in Janet Sinclair's arms,
sometimes looking out of the windows of the Castle of Linlithgow to
see the swans swim upon the lake, and sometimes, perhaps, creeping
about upon the palace floor, where the earls and barons who came to
visit her mother, clad in armor of steel, looked upon her with pride
and pleasure. The palace where she lived was beautifully situated, as
has been before remarked, on the borders of a lake. It was arranged
somewhat in the following manner:
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE PALACE OF LINLITHGOW.
_a._ Room where Mary was born. _b._ Entrance through great gates.
_c._ Bow-window projecting toward the water. _d._ Den where they kept
a lion. _t.t._ Trees.]
There was a beautiful fountain in the center of the court-yard, where
water spouted out from the mouths of carved images, and fell into
marble basins below. The ruins of this fountain and of the images
remain there still. The den at _d_ was a round pit, like a well,
which you could look down into from above: it was about ten feet
deep. They used to keep lions in such dens near the palaces and
castles in those days. A lion in a den was a sort of plaything in
former times, as a parrot or a pet lamb is now: this was in keeping
with the fierce and warlike spirit of the age. If they had a lion
there in Mary's time, Janet often, doubtless, took her little charge
out to see it, and let her throw down food to it from above. The den
is there now. You approach it upon the top of a broad embankment,
which is as high as the depth of the den, so that the bottom of the
den is level with the surface of the ground, which makes it always
dry. There is a hole, too, at the bottom, through the wall, where
they used to put the lion in.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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