2"* S. No 68., Mar. 14. '67.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



201 



LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH U, 1857. 

 roCALIXr OF the abduction of queen MARY. 



A paper on this debated point was lately read 

 before the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland 

 by Mr. R. Chambers. The question is, whether 

 the Queen was seized by Bothwell at the Almond 

 River, seven miles from Edinburgh, or at the 

 suburb of Fountainbridge (formerly called Foul- 

 briggs), close to the city : it has been thought by 

 the cavalier writers, Crawford, Goodall, and 

 Agnes Strickland, that if the latter locality could 

 be established, collusion between Bothwell and 

 Mary would appear much less likely than in the 

 other case. 



Mr. Chambers showed that all contemporary 

 writers placed the occurrence at the Almond 

 River, which Mary had to cross on her way from 

 Linlithgow to the capital. Buchanan says, 

 " Bothwell waited for her at the Almond Bridge, 

 as they had agreed, and took her, not against her 

 will, to Dunbar." Lord Herries, a partizan of 

 the Queen, says, "He stayed at the Almond 

 Bridge till she came up." Robert Birrell, a citizen 

 of Edinburgh, speaks in his Diary of the occur- 

 rence taking place " at the bridge of Cramond," 

 which is a bridge across the Almond, though not 

 on the Linlithgow road. Sir James Melville,, 

 who was in the Queen's company on the occasion, 

 only says, " in her back-coming, betwixt Linlith- 

 gow and Edinburgh," a phrase manifestly suitable 

 to a spot nearly midway between the two places, 

 but not to one close to the termination of the 

 journey. An anonymous Chronicle of the Kings 

 of Scotland, printed by the Maitland Club, gives 

 "the brig of Awmont" as the place. There is 

 also a Diary of Occurrents printed by the same 

 club — the work of a well-informed contemporary 

 — and here the locality is very clearly laid down, 

 " between Kirkliston and Edinburgh, at ane place 

 callit the Briggs." As there is still a place called 

 the Briggs close to the Bridge of Almond on the 

 Linlithgow road, it becomes evident that the last 

 writer contemplated the same spot with Buchanan, 

 Lord Herries, and the author of the Chronicle 

 above-mentioned ; only stating it more precisely. 



This spot was described by Mr. Chambers as 

 very suitable for the purpose. It is in a tongue 

 of land formed by the junction of the Gogar water 

 with the Almond ; so that Bothwell, coming from 

 Hatton, where he spent the previous night, had 

 the Queen and her little party at a great advan- 

 tage, as she could not escape in the other direction 

 without the risk of drowning in one or other of 

 these two streams. The place, moreover, was so 

 marshy as to be till lately called the Foulmyre. 

 The Queen could not have left the narrow cause- 



way forming the road, without being stuck in a 

 bog. 



Most writers of Scottish history have been con- 

 tent to follow the contemporary authors above 

 quoted. On what grounds, it will be asked, have 

 Crawford, Goodall, and Strickland, set forth a 

 different locality? The single dictum of the 

 Latin act of parliament for Bothwell's forfeiture, 

 which states the event as having happened "«</ 

 pontes vulgo vocatos foulbriggis." The western 

 suburb of Edinburgh was called Foulbriggs in the 

 last century ; and it is, without hesitation, as- 

 sumed as the place referred to by the statute, 

 which Miss Strickland triumphantly declares to be 

 a document paramount to all others. 



In Mr. Chambers's paper, the words of the act 

 of parliament were read in conformity with all the 

 other contemporary authorities. Pontes is simply 

 the Latin, according to the style of that day, for 

 Briggs, the place on the Almond. In the same 

 style, a Latin description of Lothian of Charles I.'s 

 time was quoted by Mr. Chambers as stating 

 that the Gogar joins the Almond " a pontibus 

 orientalibus," that is, at Easter Briggs, one of the 

 farm-houses at the place. The vulgar name of 

 Foulbriggs he holds as casual, with reference to 

 the former condition of the ground, and as still 

 shadowed in the term Foulmyre. Such names are 

 very liable to be repeated in Scotland, and it is 

 not therefore surprising to find that it was applied, 

 a century and a half later, to a dirty suburb of 

 Edinburgh, notwithstanding that it Is a place 

 without bridges. The pretensions of that Foul- 

 briggs to be the scene of the abduction are the less 

 plausible from the fact that it is not situated upon 

 the road from Linlithgow, and could not be 

 reached by a party travelling on that road, with- 

 out their turning back from a certain point by a 

 different route. 



AVhat Mr. Chambers held as fixing the Almond 

 locality beyond question was a quotation he ad- 

 duced from a document equally authoritative with 

 the act of parliament, namely, a remission under 

 the Privy Seal, granted on the 1st of October, 

 1567 (five months after the event), to Andrew 

 Redpath, in Deringtowne, for " art and part of 

 treasonably coming in company with James Earl 

 of Bothwell, and umbesetting the Queen's way on 

 her return from the burgh of Stirling to the burgh 

 of Edinburgh, near the ivater of Almond." With 

 a contemporary state document of such a cha- 

 racter speaking so clearly on the point, and to the 

 same purport with all contemporary writers, 

 friends as well as enemies of the Queen, the act of 

 parliament may well be interpreted to the same 

 purport, if It can feasibly be done, as Mr. Cham- 

 bers has shown to be the case. 



It would therefore appear that this attempt to 

 make a point in favour of Queen Mary is for the 

 mean time a failure. Anon. 



