Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/541

I56/.] THE MURDER OF DARNLE.Y. 521 iii the English service for the day that was dawning. True or false, such was the tale at the time ; and the words have a terrible appropriateness. ' Hear my prayer, Lord, and hide not thyself from my petition. ' My heart is disquieted within me, and the fear of death is fallen upon me. ' Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me. 'It is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it. ' It was even thou, my companion, my guide, and my own familiar friend/ Forlorn victim of a cruel age ! Twenty-one years old no more. At the end of an hour he went to bed, with his page at his side. An hour later they two were lying dead in the garden beyond the wall. The exact facts of the murder were never known only at two o'clock that Monday morning, a ' crack * was heard which made the drowsy citizens of Edinburgh turn in their sleep, and brought down all that side of Balfour's house of Kirk-a-Field in a confused heap of dust and ruin. Nelson, the sole survivor, went to bed and slept when he left his master, and ' knew nothing till he found the house falling about him ; ' Edward Seymour was blown in pieces; but Darnley and his page were found forty yards away under a tree, with hours before his death.' Drury to Cecil, March 1567 : Border MSS. Rdls House.']