Death of James I        from History of Scotland John Hill Burton Historiographer-Royal for Scotland Vol II pages 408-409

It was on the evening of the 21th of February. The royal party had broken up, and the king, disrobed, and wrapped in what would now be called a dressing-gown, lingered before the fire of the reception-room, chatting with the queen and her ladies, when ominous sounds were heard. Three hundred of the wild Highlanders were breaking their way into the monastery. The ease with which they did so shows us how slight were the guards and protections surrounding royalty in that day. As the sounds approached, the party within looked to the fastenings of the doors, and found that they had been tampered with by treacherous hands within. The next glance was to the windows, but these were too well secured to permit escape. The king had none but women round him; and, praying these to hold the entrance as well as they could, he staved up a flag or board of the flooring, and descended into a vault below. The poor women could offer small resistance to the coming force.

It is recorded of one of them-a Douglas-that, finding the great bolt of the chamber-door gone, she thrust her arm through the staples. This poor impediment was easily crushed, and but served to give a touching addition to the traditions of feminine devotion.

The place into which the king had descended was a sewer. As fate would have it, there had been an opening to it by which he might have escaped, but this had, a few days earlier, been closed by his own order, because the balls by which he played at tennis were apt to fall into it.

The murderers rushed like a tempest through the buildings, and, not finding their victim, were vain to believe that he had escaped. There was one, however-the same, apparently, who had destroyed the fastenings-who suspected what had happened; and when the chamber of reception was examined, it was found that the floor had been newly broken. It was short work to tear open the flooring, and then their victim stood before them. When he spoke of mercy, Graham charged him as a cruel tyrant, who never showed mercy to others-nay, not to those of his own blood-and should now receive none. James was a strong man, and brave, like all his race. Though unarmed, he grappled with those who descended so fiercely that they bore the mark of his gripes to the scaffold. There were sixteen stabs in his body when -it was taken up.'

The poet Drummond tells us that " He was buried in the Charter-house of Perth, which he had founded, where the doublet in which he was slain was kept almost to our time as a relic, and with execrations seen of the people, every man thinking himself interested in his wrong.