Mary, Queen of Scots, was barely one week old when she succeeded to the
throne in 1542. The murder 25 years later of Henry Lord Darnley, her consort
and the father of the infant who would become King James I of England and James
VI of Scotland, remains one of history's most notorious unsolved crimes. On a
Sunday morning in February 1567 Darnley lay sleeping on the upper floor of an
Edinburgh house known as Kirk o' Field. For weeks he had rested there,
convalescing from either smallpox or syphilis. Across the city Queen Mary and
the baby prince were safely ensconced at Holyrood House. Unknown to Darnley and
perhaps unknown to Mary, miscreants had for some time been packing the
cellars of Kirk o' Field with enough gunpowder to blow the structure to
smithereens. Around two am the building exploded, a blast heard and felt
throughout Edinburgh.
According to Scottish historian Magnus Magnusson, nothing was left of the
building, but in an adjoining garden beside a pear tree, townsmen found
Darnley's nightgown-clad corpse. Curiously, he appeared not to have been killed
by the explosion but by strangulation. Magnusson speculates that Darnley had
tried to escape just before the blast but had been intercepted by his murderer
before he could flee.
Complying with royal protocol, Queen Mary observed 40 days of official
mourning for her husband. But rumors circulated that Mary's widow weeds were
woven discordantly with threads of insincerity. With Darnley's death she had,
in fact, become a widow for the second time. If her two-year marriage to
Darnley had been brief, so too was her earlier marriage to the Dauphin of
France, a union that lasted two and a half years before the Dauphin, who had
become King Francis II upon his father's death in 1559, died at age 16 from
complications of an ear infection.
Mary was 18 when she returned to her homeland from France, her youthfulness
belying the royal ambition that consumed her. If, when shipped off to France
some years earlier, she had been nothing more than an innocent political pawn
in the game of royal power grabbing, she returned with her own shrewd agenda
for Scotland.
Predictably, the religious issue of Mary being a Catholic in a Protestant
kingdom became an obstacle in Mary's reign, and she recognized immediately that
in order to avoid rebellion she would reconcile the interests of her Catholic
and Protestant nobles. Though she continued to practice her Catholic religion
privately, she scrupulously showed no favors to her fellow Catholics. She did
not ratify the Reformation Act of 1560, but she made no attempt to revoke it.
Following her return, the royal court was once again, according to
Magnusson, the focus of the cultural life of the kingdom, 'a glittering,
cosmopolitan Renaissance court in the style of … Mary's French in-laws. It was
crowded with scholars, poets, artists, and musicians. There was much dancing
and merry-making, much playing of billiards, cards and dice late into the
night, and much riding and hunting during the day.' Magnusson imparts, too,
that Mary's life was not all frivolous. She read poetry, history, and theology
in several languages. And like most noble women of her time, she busied herself
with embroidery and played the lute and the virginal.
For a time Queen Mary seemed in control of her realm, circumspection and
intelligence consistently informing her royal decisions. Yet when it was time
to remarry she made a costly mistake in her choice of a mate, settling on her
first cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, son of the formidable Earl of Lennox.
Both Mary and Darnley were great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England, and
they both had Tudor and Stuart blood in their veins. Darnley, indeed, was close
in line to the thrones of both England and Scotland.
It was not only, however, his impeccable royal lineage that made him
attractive to Mary; she had fallen in love. Sir Walter Scott gives us a
realistic portrait of the object of Mary's affection:
Young Darnley was remarkably tall and handsome, perfect in all external
and showy accomplishments, but unhappily destitute of sagacity, prudence,
steadiness of character, and exhibiting only doubtful courage, though extremely
violent in his passions.
Time would prove to Mary that Darnley's beauty and courtly accomplishments
were only skin deep. At the core he was, vain, weak, indolent, selfish,
arrogant, vindictive and irremediably spoiled.' In addition, he was a Lennox, a
family with countless enemies both in Scotland and England.
Against the advice of her nobles and in spite of Queen Elizabeth's expressed
displeasure, Mary wed Darnley in July 1565. But as predicted, the bridegroom's
dissolute lifestyle soon angered her, causing her, of course, to second guess
her decision. Most nights he roamed the streets of Edinburgh with low-life
companions in search of women. He failed to participate in the business of the
royal court.
Less than a year after the wedding, Darnley, unhinged by immature jealousy,
became involved in the murder of David Rizzio, his wife's private secretary.
Rizzio had come to Scotland from Italy some years previously on a diplomatic
mission but remained at the Scottish court as a lute player, singer, and
subsequently, as Mary's assistant. The more outraged Mary became over her
husband's stupidity and lewd behavior, the more she looked to Rizzio for
consolation. At the time she and Rizzio were close, many Scottish Protestant
lords were discontent with Mary's rule. Some of the nobles claimed that Rizzio
was a secret agent of the Pope and had usurped their proper places beside the
Queen. They easily cajoled the gullible Darnley into believing that Mary and
Rizzio were sexual partners, an accusation that historians have found implausible.
(At the time, Mary was six months pregnant with Darnley's child.) They
persuaded him to take part in a plot to murder the Italian.
On the night of Saturday, 9th March 1566, Rizzio was dragged screaming from
Queen Mary's side at her supper table in Holyrood House and stabbed some 56
times before life drained from his struggling limbs. It is unclear whether
Darnley himself did the dragging or the stabbing or whether one of his henchmen
performed the actual slaughter.
Amazingly, Mary forgave–or at least pretended to forgive–Darnley and
cleverly managed to sever him from the group of treasonous nobles who had
masterminded the Rizzio assassination. With Rizzio still fresh in the minds of
the court, another threat to Darnley's fragile self-esteem soon took centre
stage. James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell (a committed Protestant himself),
rushed to Mary's aid in putting down a rebellion of Protestant conspirators.
Bothwell was Lord Admiral of Scotland, and although he possessed a
reputation for bravery, he was also known to be lecherous, brutal, and power
hungry. Mary regarded him as her savior, and he quickly became her most trusted
advisor.
By the time Mary gave birth to Lord Darnley's son in June 1566, her husband
had backslid into a life of debauchery, neglecting his royal duties and
displaying a sullen resentment towards Mary's relationship with Bothwell. His
disappearance from court prompted talk of a possible annulment of the royal
marriage. But when the Queen learned he was seriously ill in Glasgow, she
travelled to his bedside and later arranged for a horse-litter to carry him
back to Edinburgh to convalesce at Kirk o' Field. For months Mary had spoken of
her husband with nothing but contempt, and the gesture was out of character.
While there is no definite answer to the question of who murdered Lord
Darnley, most historians agree that Bothwell–with or without Mary's
complicity–concocted the plot. A house explosion, which gave the crime such
flagrant overtones and which scandalized all of Europe, was significant; a
disintegrated building would cover tracks, making it impossible to prove
anything. To be sure there was no direct evidence establishing Bothwell as the
murderer, but for those associated with the royal court it was only too easy to
guess. Bothwell was a ruthless opportunist aiming at nothing less than the
kingship of Scotland.
Typical of the era, the events following Darnley's murder were dramatic,
ruthless, and bloody. Bothwell kidnapped, raped (so Mary claimed), and married
the Queen. Predictably, within days of the wedding Mary was reduced to suicidal
despair by Bothwell's abuse. Yet her willingness to marry Bothwell was not as
absurd as it might seem. In spite of all she had been through, Mary remained
politically astute. In the political power game playing out around her, she
needed a strong ally to protect her from rebellious noblemen. Indeed, Bothwell
notwithstanding, less than a year after Darnley's death the Scottish lords
forced Mary to abdicate and flee to England. For the next two decades she was
held prisoner by Queen Elizabeth I and finally executed in England at
Fotheringhay Castle in 1587.
