Note 185 — Chapter VII

Wynton, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 96, who says that Ethelred took advantage of a mist to convey the body of his mother out of the west gate before her death was generally known. The good prior was as ignorant of any divine agency on this occasion as Turgot was unconscious of any pretentions on the part of his royal mistress to supernatural gifts; but in the account of Fordun, l. 5, c. 26, the body of Margaret is conveyed through the host of Donald Bane under cover of a miraculous mist “That a mist on the Firth of Forth should be held miraculous,” remarks Lord Hailes, “must appear to the inhabitants of the Lothians a strange example of prepossession and credulity.”