Note 669 — THE PREFACE (continued 2)

From the preceding note it will be seen that Queen Mary returned from her progress on the 29th of September; and that Knox has mistaken the date of her first entry into Edinburgh. It was on Tuesday the 2d September. A minute and interesting notice of it occurs in the Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 67, but the passage is too long for quotation. She rode through the town to the Castle, where she dined at 12 o'clock; and then returning, various pageants were represented in different parts of the town, as she proceeded, convoyed by the nobility and chief inhabitants, dressed in velvet gowns and bonnets, carrying a pall of fine purple velvet, with fringes of gold and silk. Upon reaching the Palace of Holyrood, she received a propyne, or gift of a cupboard, "quhilk was double our-gilt; the price thairof was 2000 merks." Randolph, in his letter to Cecil, on the 7th September, also mentions that part of the pageant to which Knox alludes. He says, "Upon Tuesday last the Queen made her entry. She dyned in the Castle. The fyrst syghte she sawe after she cam oute of the Castle, was a boye of six yeres of age, that cam, as it were, from heaven oute of a rounde globe, that presented unto hir a Bible and Psalter, and the keys of the gates, and spake unto her the verses which I send you. There, for the terrible sygnifications of the vengeance of God upon idolatrie, ther war burnt Coron, Dathan, and Abiram, in the tyme of thair sacrifice. Thei war mynded to have had a priest (that is, the representation of a priest) burned at the altar, at the elevation. The Erle of Huntlye stayed that pagent, but hath playde manye as wicked as that since he came hyther." (Wright's Queen Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 73.) The expenses attending the "Banquet" on the 31st August, and the "Triumph," on the 2d September, cost the inhabitants of Edinburgh the sum of 4000 merks, which it was resolved should be levied by a general stent or assessment.