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All the mighty fuss and preparation aforesaid sufficed only to make Tutbury barely habitable. The airy, pleasant impressions of the French Ambassador were literally castles in the air compared with the fastness itself to which Mary of Scotland travelled. To begin with, her retinue numbered sixty persons, and Heaven knows where they all slept that first night. Mary’s own rooms were small enough, and she complained bitterly of them and of the condition of the whole building. Here is her description in a subsequent letter:—

“I am in a walled enclosure, on the top of a hill, exposed to all the winds and inclemencies of heaven. Within the said enclosure, resembling that of the wood of Vincennes, there is a very old hunting lodge, built of timber and plaster, cracked in all parts, the plaster adhering nowhere to the woodwork and broken in numberless places; the said lodge distant three fathoms or thereabouts from the walls, and situated so low that the rampart of earth which is behind the wall is on a level with the highest point of the building, so that the sun can never shine upon it on that side, nor any fresh air come to it; for which reason it is so damp, that you cannot put any piece of furniture in that part without its being in four days completely covered with mould. I leave you to think how this must act upon the human body; and, in short, the greater part of it is rather a dungeon for base and abject criminals than the habitation fit for a person of my quality, or even of a much lower.... The only apartments that I have for my own person consist—and for the truth of this I can appeal to all those that have been here—of two little rooms, so excessively cold, especially at night, that, but for the ramparts and entrenchments of curtains and tapestry which I have had made, it would not be possible for me to stay in them in the daytime; and out of those who have sat up with me at night during my illnesses, scarcely one has escaped without fluxion, cold, or some disorder.”