Note 148 — PREFACE
Reading edition
That is 1538-9, the year then being reckoned to commence on the 25th of March. But the actual date of their martyrdom, instead of the last day of February, seems to have been the 1st of March, according to an incidental notice in the Household Books of James the Fifth; as, in order to render the example more striking, the King himself was present:—
"1 Mar. 1539. Accusatio Hæreticorum et eorum Combustio, apud Edinburgh, Rege Presente."—(Archæologia, vol. xxii. p. 7.) The next day the King returned to Linlithgow. A corresponding notice is furnished by the Treasurer's Accounts, 1st of March 1539.
"Item, deliverit to Archibald Heriot messinger, to pas and search their goods who were abjured and declared heretics in Edinburgh and Stirling, xij s."