href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45766@[email protected]#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[44]

In common with her father, who took great pains to introduce "ratches" or greyhounds and bloodhounds into Scotland, and with her great-grandson, Charles II, who gave his name to a breed of spaniels, Mary Stuart shared a great fondness for dogs. In her happier days she always possessed several, which she entrusted to the keeping of one Anthone Guedio and a boy. These canine pets were provided with a daily ration of two loaves, and wore blue velvet collars as a distinguishing badge.[45] During her captivity, her dogs were amongst her most faithful companions. Writing from Sheffield to Beton, Archbishop of Glasgow, she said: "If my uncle, the Cardinal of Guise, has gone to Lyons, I am sure he will send me a couple of pretty little dogs, and you will buy me as many more; for, except reading and working, my only pleasure is in all the little animals that I can get. They must be sent in baskets well-packed, so as to keep them warm."[46] The fidelity of one of these dumb friends adds to the pathos of the last scene of her sad history. "One of the executioners," says a contemporary report, "pulling off her clothes, espied her little dog which was crept under her clothes, which would not be gotten forth but by force, and afterwards would not depart from the dead body, but came and lay betwixt her head and shoulders, a thing diligently noted."[47]

In recording one of his interviews with Queen Mary, Knox gives us information concerning another of the sports with which she beguiled her time, for he tells us that it was at the hawking near Kinross that she appointed him to meet her.[48] Archery, too, seems to have been a favourite amusement. She had butts both at Holyrood and St. Andrews. Writing to Cecil in 1562, and again in 1567, Randolph informs him that the Queen and the Master of Lindsay shot against Mary Livingston and the Earl of Murray; and that, in another match, the Queen and Bothwell won a dinner at Tranent from the Earl of Huntley and Lord Seton.[49] Neither did she neglect the "royal game", for one of the charges brought against her and embodied in the articles given in by the Earl of Murray to Queen Elizabeth's commissioners at Westminster, stated that a few days after Darnley's murder "she past to Seytoun, exercing hir one day richt oppinlie at the feildis with the pallmall and goif".

To sketch Mary's character further would be trenching on debatable ground and overstepping the limits which we have imposed upon ourselves. There is one trait, however, which may be recorded on the authority even of her enemies—her personal courage. Randolph represents her as riding at the head of her troops "with a steel bonnet on her head, and a pistol at her saddle-bow; regretting that she was not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and a knapscull, a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword". The author of the poem preserved in the Record Office, to which we have already made reference, allows that "no enemy could appal her, no travail daunt her intent", that she "dreaded no danger of death", that "no stormy blasts could make her retire", and he likens her to Tomiris: