A crimson and gold velvet bed with silver foil fringing lined with yellow satin with canopy suspended by chains from the ceiling. Headboard and embroidered satin lining of tester and cornice is original. Cornice with ostrich feathers. Possibly originally fitted with end-posts and certainly fitted in the later nineteenth century with eighteenth-century mahogany end-posts.

The bed was supplied in 1682 for the Duchess of Hamilton's use at Holyroodhouse by the London upholsterer John Ridge, at a total cost of £218 10s. It was described in the invoice as 'a crimson and gould velvett bed, loyned with satin with 8 chairs and velvet cases, a feather bed and bolster, quilts Japanned glass and stands a footstoll blankets ...'.

It was recorded in the 1684 inventory of the Duke of Hamilton's rooms at Holyroodhouse (following the departure in 1682 of James, Duke of York) thus 'In my Lady's Bedchamber One large bedstead with flowered Courtines of red and yellow with covervolet of taffetie three quilts .. A Japan painted table & two stands with ane looking glass conforme ... four armed chairs with four other chairs and a footstool all painted conforme to ye tables & stands' (Hamilton Papers 165/1/3). The bed remained for the specific use of the Duchess and was recorded as such in her rooms.

By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the Dukes of Hamilton rarely visited and the rooms fell into disuse. By the middle of the nineteenth century, when the Board of Works took over the care of the 'Historical Apartments', the Duchess's bed was placed in Queen Mary (of Scots) Reception room (directly below her Bedchamber, where the crimson damask bed was shown) and became known first as 'Charles I's Bed' and latterly, when the bed was soon after transferred to Darnley's apartments, as 'Lord Darnley's' Bed.

The bed was used by Charles Edward Stuart, 'The Young Pretender', before his defeat at Culloden in 1746.