Then there are the blood stains on the floor at the outer door of the Queen’s apartments in Holyrood Palace, where Rizzio was murdered.  Sir Walter Scott has made these blood marks the subject of a jocular passage in his introduction to the “Chronicles of the Canongate,” where a Cockney traveller is represented as trying to efface them with the patent scouring drops which it was his mission to introduce into use in Scotland.  In another of his novels—­“The Abbot”—­Sir Walter Scott alludes to the Rizzio blood stains, and in his “Tales of a Grandfather” he deliberately states that the floor at the head of the stair still bears visible marks of the blood of the unhappy victim.  In support of these blood stains, it has been urged that “the floor is very ancient, manifestly much more so than the late floor of the neighbouring gallery, which dated from the reign of Charles ii.  It is in all likelihood the very floor upon which Mary and her courtiers trod.  The stain has been shown there since a time long antecedent to that extreme modern curiosity regarding historical matters which might have induced an imposture, for it is alluded to by the son of Evelyn as being exhibited in the year 1722."[27]

At Condover Hall, Shropshire, there is supposed to be a blood stain which has been there since the time of Henry VIII., and cannot be effaced.  According to a local tradition, which has long been current in the neighbourhood, it is the blood of Lord Knevett—­the owner of the hall and estate at this period—­who was treacherously slain by his son.  But unfortunately this piece of romance, which is utterly at variance with facts bearing on the history of Condover and its owners in years gone by, must be classed among the legendary tales of the locality.  One room in Clayton Old Hall, Lancashire, has for years past been knicknamed “The Bloody Chamber,” from some supposed stains of human gore on the oaken floor planks.  Numerous stories have, at different times, been started to account for these blood-tokens, which have gained all the more importance from the mansion having, from time immemorial, been the favourite haunt of a mischievious boggart until laid by the parson, and now—­

    Whilst ivy climbs and holly is green
    Clayton Hall boggart shall no more be seen.

In Lincoln Cathedral there are two fine rose windows, one made by a master workman, and the other by his apprentice, out of the pieces of stained glass the former had thrown aside.  The apprentice’s window was declared to be the more magnificent, when the master, in a fit of chagrin, threw himself from the gallery beneath his boasted chef d’oeuvre, and was killed upon the spot.  But his blood-stains on the floor are declared to be indelible.  At Cothele, a mansion on the banks of the Tamar, the marks are still visible of the blood spilt by the lord of the manor when, for supposed treachery, he slew the warder of the drawbridge; but these are only to be seen on a wet day.