This painting shows the Queen’s Bed Chamber, purportedly as it was when occupied by Mary, Queen of Scots.

Popular belief in the eighteenth century was that the queen's rooms had been preserved exactly as they were on the night of David Rizzio's murder on 9 March 1566. From as early as the second half of the eighteenth century, fascination with Mary's dramatically doomed reign sent visitors flocking to the site.  In 1760, Elizabeth, Baroness Percy visited the palace and wrote in her diary:

I went also to see Mary Queen of Scots' Bedchamber (a very small one it is) from whence David Rizzio was drag'd out and stab'd in the ante room where is some of his Blood which they can't get wash'd out.

Elizabeth, Baroness Percy