Anecdotes of the women of Edinburgh are mainly of the eighteenth century. The events of an earlier period are too tragic for a trivial story or they come under other heads. Is it an anecdote to tell how, on the night of Rizzio’s murder (9th March 1566), the conspirators upset the supper table, and unless Jane, Countess of Argyll, had caught at a falling candle the rest of the tragedy had been played in total darkness? And it is only an unusual fact about this same countess that when she came to die she was enclosed in the richest coffin ever seen in Scotland; the compartments and inscriptions being all set in solid gold. The chroniclers ought to have some curious anecdotes as to the subsequent fate of that coffin, but they have not, it vanishes unaccountably from history. The tragedies of the Covenant have stories of female heroism; the women were not less constant than the men, nay, that learned but malicious gossip, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, insinuates that the husband might have given in at the last minute, ay, when the rope was round his neck at the Cross or the Grassmarket, but the wife urged him to be true to the death. The wives of the persecutors had not seldom a strong sympathy with the persecuted. The Duchess of Rothes, as Lady Ann Lindsay became, sheltered the Covenanters. Her husband dropped a friendly hint, “My hawks will be out to-night, my Lady, so you had better take care of your blackbirds.” It was natural that a sorely tried and oppressed nation should paint the oppressor in the blackest of colours. You are pleased with an anecdote like the above, showing that a gleam of pity sometimes crossed those truculent faces. The Duke of York (afterwards James VII.) at Holyrood had his playful and humane hour. There was a sort of informal theatre at the palace. In one of the pieces the Princess Anne lay dead upon the stage—such was her part. Mumper, her own and her father’s favourite dog, was not persuaded, he jumped and fawned on her; she laughed, the audience loyally obeyed and the tragedy became a farce. “Her Majesty had _sticked_ the part,” said Morrison of Prestongrange gruffly. The Duke was shipwrecked on the return voyage to Scotland and Mumper was drowned. A courtier uttered some suavely sympathetic words about the dog. “How, sir, can you speak of _him_, when so many fine fellows went to the bottom?” rejoined His Royal Highness.