Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Murder of Lord Darnley

by Alison Weir

  In another part of the palace, Bothwell, Huntly and Atholl were having supper. Hearing some commotion and the war cry, “A Douglas! A Douglas!”40 they took their servants and went to investigate, but, after an armed confrontation with Morton and his men, Bothwell and Huntly were forced, through the intervention of Ruthven, to return to Bothwell’s apartment. Here, Ruthven told them that vengeance had been taken upon Rizzio at the King’s own command, and that their enemy Moray was expected in Edinburgh on the morrow. As soon as Ruthven had gone off to reassure Atholl, Bothwell and Huntly, realising that danger threatened them from all sides, escaped through a low back window to “the little garden where the lions were lodged”41and rode like the wind for Dunbar Castle. Prior to their departure, they had left with Huntly’s mother a message for the Queen that they intended to rescue her. Their escape was to prove crucial.

  Some time that evening, the Lords who had been in attendance on Mary prior to the supper party—Atholl, Tullibardine, Maitland, Fleming, Livingston, Balfour and the Bishop of Ross—were permitted to leave the palace, all “in great fear of their lives.”42Mary later told Archbishop Beaton that the conspirators had intended to hang Balfour because he had worked to keep Moray in exile; Ruthven, however, states that Balfour sought and obtained leave from the King to depart peacefully from Holyrood; it is unlikely that Darnley would have sanctioned the murder of one of his most influential supporters.

  Before the evening was out, Mary knew that the Lords meant to hold her in captivity and that she was potentially in great danger. She had also been informed that Moray was on his way back to Edinburgh, and had wondered aloud why Ruthven had been conspiring with this former enemy, only to be told that the King was willing to remit the exiles’ offences.43

  That night, she was confined to her rooms, attended only by the Dowager Countess of Huntly and a few female servants,44 with eighty Douglas men standing guard outside the palace gates and her bedchamber door, preventing her from communicating with the rest of her household. In command of them was one of Ruthven’s followers, Thomas Scott, a lawyer and Under-Sheriff of Perth. Effectively, martial law had been established.

  In desperation, and contrary to what she had said earlier, Mary had asked Darnley to spend the night with her, but Ruthven had made him go to his own rooms on the floor below. The Queen could not sleep, but spent the dark hours pacing up and down, consumed with rage and sorrow.45 She was certain that the murder “had appeared to be done to destroy both her and her child.”46Any illusions she had retained about Darnley had been destroyed. Her most faithful servant had been murdered. Her Catholic policy was in ruins. The conspirators had emerged victorious, and she could expect little from them but imprisonment or worse. At best, they would use her as their puppet, to lend a semblance of legality to their rule. She had only one faint hope: that Bothwell would help her escape. She had received the message left with Lady Huntly, but the odds against it seemed overwhelming.

  In Darnley’s apartments, the conspirators, joined by Lennox, were discussing what to do with the Queen. It was proposed that she “be sent to Stirling under safe-keeping, there to give birth to her child. Lord Lindsay remarked that she would have plenty of pastime there in nursing her baby, singing it to sleep, shooting with her bow in the garden, and doing fancy work. In the meantime, the King could manage the affairs of state along with the nobles.”47 Ruthven added brutally, “If any raise the least difficulty, or cause any uproar by attempting to release her, we will throw her to them piecemeal, from the top of the terrace.” Someone reminded him that the Queen’s confinement was approaching.

  “I feel certain,” he said, “and I will stake my life on it, that the baby is only a girl, and there will be no danger. But on this matter we will take counsel with Lords Moray and Rothes, for without them we will do nothing.” He and the other Lords warned Darnley: “If you wish to obtain what we have promised you, you must needs follow our advice, as well for your own safety as for ours. If you do otherwise, we will take care of ourselves, cost what it may.” They then turned aside and whispered together, “which put the King and his father in great terror, for they did not think their lives safe, and all the more so when, as they were breaking up, they told him that now he must not talk with the Queen save in their presence. They removed his own attendants and left a guard near his chamber.”48

  Darnley now realised, too late, that the Lords had no intention of placing him in authority over them and that they regarded him as expendable; they had clearly “made use of him, only that they might involve him in the disgrace and infamy of an act of such atrocity.” “Moved by these considerations and terrors, [he] came up that night by a private stair to the Queen’s bedroom. Finding the door locked, he most urgently entreated her to open it, for he had something to tell her which much concerned their mutual safety. But he was not permitted to enter until the next morning,”49by which time Mary had realised that she had every chance of drawing him over to her side. As the father of the unborn heir, she could not afford to abandon him before he had recognised the newborn infant as his own, for fear of compromising its legitimacy. She resolved therefore to conceal her distaste and, summoning up her courage, determined to save herself and the child in her womb.

  Early the next morning, Mary admitted a contrite and frightened Darnley to her bedchamber. He had “passed that night in perplexity, in terror for his own life,”50and now, in tears, he sank to his knees and confessed that he had failed in his duty towards her, having signed a bond with the conspirators in order to procure the Crown Matrimonial.51 He excused himself, however, on the grounds that he was young and imprudent, blinded by ambition, and had been the dupe of wicked traitors. Taking God to witness that he “never could have thought nor expected that they would have gone to such lengths, and that the murder of Rizzio had never been intended by him. He asked her to take pity on him, their child and herself, begging her for help, because otherwise they would all be speedily ruined.” He then handed her a copy of the Bond he had signed with Moray, “telling her that if it were ever known that he had done so, he would be a dead man”—strangely significant words, given the fate that lay in store for him. “Nevertheless, he wished to free his conscience from this burden.”52

  Mary answered severely, “Sire, within the last 24 hours you have done me such a wrong that neither the recollection of our early friendship nor all the hope you can give me of the future can ever make me forget it. I think you may never be able to undo what you have done. You say you are sorry, and this gives me some comfort. Yet I cannot but think that you are driven to it rather by necessity than led by any sentiment of true and sincere affection.”53 Greatly chastened, Darnley “disclosed all that he knew of any man”54 in the plot. Mary told him, “Since you have placed us both on the brink of the precipice, you must now deliberate how we shall escape the peril.”55

  When he revealed to her the conspirators’ plan to imprison her at Stirling until she died,56Mary realised that she must avoid leaving Holyrood at all costs. One way was to feign labour. She outlined her plan to Darnley. His part would be to have the guards removed. He, in turn, urged her to pretend to be reconciled to the conspirators, and to promise them pardons if they asked for them. Mary refused, saying her conscience would never allow her “to promise what I do not mean to perform. However, if you think it good, you can promise them whatever you please in my name.” Darnley agreed to do this, and quietly left her chamber, undetected.57

  The traditional theory, accepted by many writers, is that Mary had to use all her powers of persuasion to detach Darnley from the conspirators, yet it is clear that, even before she had a chance to voice any arguments, he had himself become aware that he was in danger from them and approached her first for help against them. It has also been argued that, in inducing Darnley to abandon the conspirators, Mary knew that she was condemning him to a bloody revenge, but we have seen that Darnley had already decided to dissociate himself from them, so the responsibility for any reprisals rests
with him alone.

  On the morning of 10 March, Darnley, having agreed to pretend to the conspirators that he was still working with them, issued a proclamation in his own name dissolving Parliament, whose members were ordered to leave Edinburgh within three hours or else face treason charges. The immediate threat to the exiled Lords had now been removed, and they could return with impunity.

  Early that afternoon, when Darnley again visited Mary, she “made as though she would part with her child.”58 Given what she had gone through, a premature labour would not be unexpected, and Morton and Ruthven had no choice but to accede to Darnley’s demand that a midwife and the Queen’s French physician be sent for. After examining her, they insisted that she be released from captivity for the sake of her health. The Lords grudgingly agreed to remove some of her guards, and allowed her ladies and other servants to attend her as usual.

  Lady Huntly, who was grateful to Mary for restoring her son to his earldom and “right glad to have her revenge on Moray,”59 had received a message for the Queen from Huntly, in which he suggested that she escape from her window down a rope ladder, which his mother would smuggle in under the cover of a dinner plate. Mary rejected this idea, not only because of her condition, but also because guards were watching out from the room above. Instead, she gave Lady Huntly a letter to Bothwell and Huntly, telling them that, if they and their men would wait for her near Seton, she would try to find a means to join them there on Monday night; she also asked them to warn Mar to hold Edinburgh Castle for her. In the meantime, she would pretend to be ill. As they were talking, Mary was relieving herself upon her close stool, but at that moment a suspicious Lindsay burst in, with no regard for the Queen’s privacy, and told the Dowager she was dismissed. As she left, she was perfunctorily searched, but the Queen’s letter, concealed under her chemise, remained undetected.60

  Mary had touched no food since the supper party the previous evening; it was not until 4 p.m. on Sunday that she was able to eat something, but the thuggish Lindsay was again hovering and insisted on inspecting the dishes sent to her in case messages were concealed in them.61

  All that day, Mary refused to see Morton and Ruthven, but she was willing enough to receive Moray and the other exiled Lords without delay. She intended, if she could, to enlist their support against the conspirators.

  Moray, Rothes and Kirkcaldy of Grange had arrived in Edinburgh shortly before Rizzio’s murder, but had remained “in hiding in different parts of the town”62 until the King’s proclamation had been issued. Then they could emerge without fear of arrest and, after being “thankfully received” by Darnley at Holyrood,63they went to dine at Morton’s house off the Canongate. Whilst at table, Moray received a summons from the Queen64and hastened to court, arriving at dusk.

  His meeting with Mary was an emotional one: she embraced and kissed him, and, weeping, cried, “Oh, my brother, if you had been here I should not have been so uncourteously handled.” At this, Moray wept too,65 “moved with natural affection” towards her.66 On his knees, he “excused himself to her very earnestly from the charge of having been the chief promoter” of the recent “atrocities,”67 and expressed shock over Rizzio’s murder, which can surely have been no surprise to him; he assured her he had played no part in it, but had come only to do her service. Mary told him that, had it not been for Darnley, she would have recalled him long ago.68 However, although she accepted his protestations of innocence and promised to “remit all,”69 when he asked her to pardon the conspirators, she refused. He did not immediately press the point.

  Mary did accede to Moray’s request that she be reconciled to Darnley, with whom she was still ostensibly on bad terms. She agreed at length to spend the night with him, which aroused the alarm of the Lords, who, perceiving that Darnley “grew effeminate again” under the Queen’s influence, feared that he would betray them. Without his nominal authority, their coup would be divested of all semblance of legality and they would be exposed as common traitors. Darnley, however, failed to arrive in Mary’s room. At midnight, George Douglas took Ruthven into the King’s bedchamber to show him Darnley lying across his own bed in a drunken stupor.70

  In the morning, Darnley came to Mary’s chamber and sat beside her for an hour while she slept. When she awoke, he apologised for not having come to her bed, and tried to caress her. She shook him off, saying she felt sick. He seems to have been deluding himself that, if Mary pardoned the conspirators, all would be well again, and his optimism appeared justified when he asked if she was ready to do so and found her evidently amenable. Naïvely, he hastened off to tell the conspirators the good news. They, however, warned him not to believe her, “by reason she had been trained up from her youth in the court of France, and well in the affairs of intrigue.”71

  That morning, Moray, Rothes and Grange met with Morton, Ruthven and Lindsay, who declared, as Mary later informed Archbishop Beaton, “they thought it most expedient that we should be warded in our castle of Stirling, there to remain till we had approved in Parliament all their wicked enterprises, established their religion and given to the King the Crown Matrimonial and all the whole government of our realm”; if she refused, they were prepared “to put us to death or to detain us in perpetual captivity.” Moray apparently gave tacit consent to these measures, but his real agenda was to reestablish himself in power.

  The Lords apparently informed Darnley of the meeting, and it seems he went straight to Mary to tell her of their resolve. She spoke sternly to him, “certifying him how miserably he would be handled if he permitted the Lords to prevail.” He needed little convincing that his life too was in danger, and was easily persuaded to fall in with Mary’s plan to escape, with the help of Bothwell and Huntly, to Dunbar Castle,72a secure royal fortress on the coast, twenty-five miles from Edinburgh.

  Later that morning, Darnley met with Moray, Morton and Ruthven, and told them that he “had obtained of Her Majesty that the Earls and Lords should come into her presence and she would forgive all things past and bury them out of her mind.”73None of them believed him.

  They were still arguing about it when, after dinner, the Queen’s midwife and her French physician came to urge that, in order to avoid a miscarriage, their mistress should be moved “to some sweeter and pleasanter air.” The Lords grumbled that this was “but craft and policy,” but Darnley insisted that his wife was “a true princess, and that thing she promised he would set his life by the same.”74 He asked Moray to bring them to her later that afternoon.

  Towards evening,75 Mary and Darnley received Moray and the three chief rebel Lords, Morton, Ruthven and Lindsay, in her presence chamber. They all knelt before the Queen, but Moray arose quickly, leaving the rest on their knees, grudgingly begging for pardon. Morton, who was kneeling on the spot where Rizzio had died, noticed that his knee was bloodstained, and observed, “The loss of one mean man is of less consequence than the ruin of many Lords and gentlemen.” Mary ignored this, and said she could not forgive them just yet, at which Moray began lecturing her on the merits of clemency. She tartly replied that her subjects had so far given her many opportunities to exercise that virtue; however, if, by their good conduct in the future, these Lords helped “to blot out the past,” she would try to forget what they had done.76

  At this point, the Queen, “fearing that she might be compelled to go further than she intended, made as though she had been suddenly taken ill and was in great pain, as if childbirth was at hand.” Calling for the midwife, she retired to her bedchamber in great haste and asked Darnley “to tell the nobles what her intentions were, as had been arranged between them.”77 He informed the suspicious Lords that the Queen had in fact agreed to “put all things in oblivion as if they had never been”78and asked them to have their pardons formally drawn up in writing, ready for her signature. They thought this was a trick, but, having questioned the midwife, whom they themselves had appointed, and having been assured that Mary’s life was indeed in danger, they proceeded to have the requisite documen
ts drawn up.79Ruthven claimed later that, while this was being done, Mary was walking up and down the presence chamber hand in hand with Darnley and Moray for an hour, but she was more likely to have been still in her bedchamber, feigning a threatened miscarriage.80

  Moray’s behaviour suggests that he was not acting in tandem with Morton and the rest. Melville states that it was clear to the conspirators that Moray was “not so frank for them as they expected.” His overriding concern was the restoration of his own power, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that the best way to achieve that would be with the co-operation of Mary, who had shown herself pleasantly disposed to him. He could not risk being associated with men whom she regarded as traitors, and as Darnley was apparently playing a double game and might well leave them exposed to charges of treason, he deemed it wise to distance himself from them. That they had gambled all to bring about his return was of little consequence in the face of his ambition, his desire to remain in the good graces of Queen Elizabeth, and perhaps his vision for the future of Scotland.

  After supper, Darnley came to collect the written pardons from Morton and Ruthven, saying that the Queen was too ill at present to read anything, but promising to return the documents the next day with her signature. He then insisted that they remove their remaining guards from the palace and leave her in his charge, which they consented to do, realising that “it would not avail them in law if there were the least appearance of restraint upon her.”81Maitland may have advised them of this, since Randolph claims he had taken pity on Mary and, on her personal plea, agreed to persuade the Lords to remove the guards.