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

by Alison Weir

  Buchanan states that, “after the Queen had gone away, the King talked over the events of the day with the few servants who remained” and recalled “a few words which somewhat spoiled his enjoyment,” namely Mary’s reminder “that it was about that time last year that David Rizzio had been murdered.” Buchanan is here embroidering the almost certainly apocryphal story in Lennox’s Narrative.

  Darnley was planning an early start and did not sit up for more than an hour.87An account of his last hours appears in Lennox’s Narrative, and is apparently based on information supplied by Thomas Nelson, who survived the explosion and was later taken into Lennox’s service. Darnley summoned an unnamed servant—who was probably Sandy Durham, as Darnley bade him farewell afterwards—and called for wine. He then “commanded that his great horses should be in readiness by five of the clock in the morning,” when he planned to depart for either Holyrood or, more probably, Seton, to join Mary.

  Darnley then said to his servant, “Let us go merrily to bed in singing a song before,” but declined to accompany them on the lute, saying, “My hand is not inclined to the lute this night.” The servant had a book of psalms to hand, and Darnley decided they would all sing the 5th Psalm: “Give ear to my words, O Lord. Hearken unto the voice of my cry: . . . for unto Thee will I pray . . . The Lord will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy.” The rest is a prayer to God to destroy the Psalmist’s enemies. It was a highly appropriate text for Lennox’s “innocent lamb” to recite in the circumstances, and some writers have wondered if the grieving father deliberately inserted it into his account for good effect, and if Darnley and his servant in fact did sing their “merry song.” Drury incorrectly reported to Cecil that Darnley had recited the 55th Psalm,88which was even more apposite, and read: “Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me . . . It is not an open enemy that has done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it. It was even thou, my companion, my guide, and my own familiar friend.”

  Once the singing was done, the King “drank to his servant, bidding him farewell for that night, and so went to bed.”89After snuffing out the candles, Taylor lay down to rest on a “pallet” bed in Darnley’s room. Nelson, Symonds and “Taylor’s boy” retired to the gallery that led off the bedchamber, while the two grooms, McCaig and Glen, were to spend the night downstairs.90

  All was quiet. In a window of the Duke’s House, where Archbishop Hamilton was residing, a single light burned, which could be seen “from the highest parts of the town.”91The raven was still perched on the roof of Darnley’s lodging; during the day, portentously, it had “croaked for a very long time upon the house.”92

  16

  “MOST CRUEL MURDER”

  SHORTLY BEFORE 2 A.M. ON MONDAY, 10 February 1567, a Mrs. Barbara Merton, who lived in Blackfriars Wynd, a street that rose from the Cowgate to the High Street, was awakened by running footsteps; she looked out and counted thirteen armed men, who had emerged from the gate of the abandoned Blackfriars monastery to the south and were now hastening up to the High Street.1Around the same time, some women lodging near the south garden and orchard of Kirk o’Field, “perhaps even in one of the cottages where the ambush was set,” heard a man’s voice crying desperately, “Pity me, kinsmen, for the love of Him who had pity on all the world!” Then there was silence.2

  Suddenly, “at about two hours after midnight”3the air was rent with the crash of a massive explosion that, according to Buchanan, “shook the whole town” and was followed by “fearful outcries and the confused cries of the people.” “The King’s lodging was, even from the very foundation, blown up in the air. Several neighbouring houses were shaken, and people who slept in the furthermost parts of the town were awakened, bewildered and alarmed.”4 The Queen later wrote that the house was blown up “in one instant.”5Sebastian Davelourt, Keeper of the Ordnance, afterwards likened the sound of the explosion to thunder, while the Seigneur de Clernault reported that the “tremendous noise” was equal to a volley of 25 or 30 cannon, “so that everyone awoke.”6Paris later deposed that, on hearing the “crack,” every hair on his head had stood on end,7and Herries recorded that “the blast was fearful to all about, and many rose from their beds at the noise.”

  The Lords of the Council, in a letter to Catherine de’ Medici written later that day,8concluded that the Old Provost’s Lodging and the Prebendaries’ Chamber had been “blown into the air by the force of powder, as one might judge by the noise and the terrible and sudden event, which was so vehement that, of a salle, two bedrooms, cabinet and garderobe, nothing remains which was not carried far away and reduced to powder, not only the roof and floors, but also the walls to the foundation, so that not one stone rests on another.” In a letter to Archbishop Beaton, also written probably on the 10th, Mary confirmed this, adding that all was “either carried far away or dashed in dross to the very groundstone. It must have been done by the force of powder, and appears to have been a mine.”9It was said that “great stones, of the length of ten foot and of breadth of four foot, were found blown from the house far away.”10Clernault reported that the King’s lodging was “totally razed.”11

  Just after the explosion, Mrs. Merton and her neighbour, Mrs. Mary Stirling (née Crocket), saw eleven men emerge from Blackfriars gate and run up Blackfriars Wynd. Two of them wore light-coloured clothing. As they passed, Mrs. Merton called after them, “Traitors! You have been at some evil turn!” Mrs. Stirling laid hold of one man by his silk cloak and asked him where the explosion had occurred, but he merely shook her off. She watched as the men split up into two groups: four of them went north towards the High Street, while the other five hastened towards the Cowgate Port in the city wall.12

  Members of the night watch were soon on the scene at Kirk o’Field, and the first man they saw there was Captain William Blackadder, Bothwell’s man, who had conveyed Mary to Alloa after the Prince’s birth. Concluding that his presence in the vicinity was suspicious, they promptly arrested him, ignoring his protests that he had been drinking at a friend’s house nearby and had come out to see what had caused the explosion. This was probably true, for there is no evidence that he had been a party to the murder plot.

  Soon, local people and citizens from further afield, some in their night-clothes, some carrying lanterns, were hurrying towards Kirk o’Field, where they were confronted by a scene of devastation where the south range of the quadrangle had once stood. Their eyes were immediately drawn to the blackened figure of Thomas Nelson, swaying on the top of the Flodden Wall and crying out for help. He had luckily been thrown clear by the blast, and had suffered only superficial injuries. Once he had been rescued, people started digging frantically in the smoking rubble, many with their bare hands, looking for other survivors or bodies. Their search was hampered by the darkness, the biting cold and intermittent falls of snow. But many people were aware that the King had been staying in the house, and they were determined to find him. Soon, there were large crowds at the scene.

  Few noticed that, just after the explosion occurred, the candle in the window of the Duke’s House had been extinguished.13Buchanan placed great emphasis on this, but it could have happened naturally with the force of the blast. But Buchanan, a Lennox man, intended his readers to conclude that Archbishop Hamilton was implicated in Darnley’s murder.

  At Holyrood, Mary was also awakened by the noise of the explosion, and, thinking it was cannon fire, sent messengers to find out what was happening.14Elsewhere in the palace, people were running and screaming in panic, and the royal sentries were asking each other, “What crack was that?” The Queen’s messengers “followed the crowd until they came to the King’s residence, which they found to be entirely overthrown.”15The news was quickly conveyed to the palace.

  Bothwell was Sheriff of Edinburgh, and it was his responsibility to investigate any crime that was committed there. Since he had not emerged from his lodgings, his se
rvant, George Halket,16was sent to wake him up and inform him that Darnley’s house had been blown up and that the King was believed killed. Bothwell shot up in bed, crying, “Fie! Treason!”17then ordered his own men to go to the scene of the disaster to discover what had happened to the King and the cause of the explosion. That done, he went back to bed with his wife18to await news.

  Meanwhile, at Kirk o’Field, two mutilated bodies were being uncovered amidst the debris. One of them was Andrew McCaig.19The Lords informed Catherine de’ Medici that “some” were killed “and some, at God’s pleasure, preserved,” while Robert Melville informed de Silva that five servants escaped, “who only knew that they had heard the noise.”20This cannot be correct, since there were six servants in the house at the time of the explosion, and three are known to have died. It is possible that Symonds and Taylor’s boy, who were in the gallery with Nelson, also survived, and likely that Glen, who was sleeping on the ground floor with McCaig, was the other man found dead in the rubble. The Lords and Melville may have counted among the survivors guards who are not mentioned elsewhere. There was as yet no sign of Darnley.

  At last, at 5 a.m., three hours after the explosion, someone thought to look in the south garden and orchard, beyond the Flodden Wall, and it was there that they found the bodies of the twenty-year-old King and his valet, Taylor, lying “sixty to eighty steps from the house.”21Both were nearly naked, being clad in short nightshirts, and neither body had a mark on it. Darnley was stretched out on his back, under a pear tree, with one hand draped modestly over his genitals,22while Taylor lay a yard or two away, curled up, with his nightshirt rucked up around his waist and his head resting face down on his crossed arms; he had on a nightbonnet and one slipper. Clernault says that the body of “a young page” was also found in the garden, but this is not corroborated by other accounts, nor is a third body shown in the drawing of the scene that is now in the Public Record Office.

  Those who saw the bodies were at a loss to know how they had died, for it did not look as if they had perished in the explosion. There were no burns,23 no marks of strangulation or violence, and “no fracture, wound or bruise.”24 “The people ran to behold the spectacle and, wondering thereat, some judged one thing, some another.”25

  Near to the bodies lay a chair, a length of rope, a dagger, Darnley’s furred nightgown and what could have been a quilt or cloak. “The clothes lying near were not only not burned or marked with the powder, but seemed to have been put there, not by force or chance, but by hand.”26A backless velvet shoe or “mule” was also found in the garden near the corpses; it was later alleged to have belonged to Archibald Douglas, although, as will be seen, he was to deny that it was his.27

  As soon as the bodies were found, Francisco de Busso, an Italian from Mary’s household, hastened to the house of John Pitcairn, a surgeon, who lived in Blackfriars Wynd, and “cried on” him “to come to his master,” which Pitcairn did, remaining with Darnley’s body for about six hours.28

  Soon after the discovery of the bodies, Mary was informed of her husband’s death. It is not known who brought her the news,29but, according to Nau, “when the Queen was told what had occurred, she was in great grief, and kept her chamber all that day.” Bothwell, still in bed with his wife, was told by Huntly of the discovery of the King’s body. “I was very distressed at the news, as were many others with me,” Bothwell wrote later.30Hastily, he dressed, then he and Huntly, together with Argyll, Atholl, Maitland and the Countesses of Atholl and Mar, went to the Queen’s room to console her. There, “while the monstrous chance was telling, everyone wondered at the thing.”31

  There is plenty of evidence for Mary’s reaction to Darnley’s death. The Book of Articles states “she was little altered or abashed,” but Bothwell told Melville he had found her “sorrowful and quiet” and recalled in his memoirs that she “was greatly affected by it all.”32Mary herself stated she felt so “grievous and tormented” that she was unable to attend to any business or correspondence, and other sources bear this out. Clernault wrote, “One may imagine the distress and agony of this poor princess at such a misfortune, chancing when Her Majesty and the King were on such good terms.” Some writers have suggested that he was drawing conclusions without having seen the Queen, but he also wrote that, when he left her, she was “so much afflicted as to be one of the most unfortunate queens in the world.”33This is corroborated by Moretta, who reported that he left the Queen deeply afflicted and in great fear of a worse fate.34There is no doubt that Darnley’s murder left Mary grief-stricken, emotionally shattered and fearful for her own safety. For several months afterwards, she seems not to have functioned normally, and her judgement, never very good at the best of times, utterly failed her.

  Scotland was now faced with a major political scandal. At Huntly’s suggestion, to which the Queen agreed, fifteen members of the Privy Council met in emergency session at Holyrood to discuss how best to deal with this latest crisis and “deliberate about the means of apprehending the traitors who committed the deed.”35

  At the Queen’s command, Bothwell took a company of soldiers to Kirk o’Field “to make a diligent search for the traitors and apprehend them.”36Argyll accompanied them. Bothwell had Darnley’s body carried into “the next house”37—the New Provost’s Lodging—and placed in the care of Sandy Durham, “under a guard of honour.”38Bothwell also ordered a thorough search of the area, and he and his men, “in our fury, apprehended some persons suspected of the deed and put them under arrest, until they should render to us a sure account of the place they had been when the murder was committed. Nor did I ever cease making strict search that I might get at the bottom of the whole,” Bothwell added, “for I could not imagine that I could ever be suspected.”39He also “found a barrel or cask in which the powder had been, which we preserved, having taken note of the mark on it.”40This mark, which is nowhere described, was presumably thought to be a means of identifying the maker or owner of the barrel. It has been suggested by several writers that this barrel was planted at Kirk o’Field with the deliberate intention of incriminating someone.

  One of Cecil’s agents had already arrived on the scene and begun sketching a plan of the site, including the events of the day as he saw them unfold.41 His drawing still survives. In it, the pile of rubble marking the area of the demolished buildings can clearly be seen. Darnley and Taylor lie in the orchard to the south, near the items found next to the bodies. To the west, Darnley’s body is carried towards the New Provost’s Lodging as a crowd of onlookers watch. Further south, Taylor’s body is buried, apparently in the churchyard of the ruined St. Mary’s Kirk. In the top left-hand corner of the drawing, Prince James sits up in his bed, his hands raised in prayer, and from his mouth there issue the words, “Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord.” The drawing was sent to Cecil in London.

  According to Buchanan, before dawn broke, someone—the implication is that it was Mary and Bothwell—had sent messengers into England to spread rumours “that the Earls of Moray and Morton were doers of that slaughter.” This passage does not appear in the English edition of the Detectio. Thomas Wilson also refers to the spreading of slanders, but names no names. If such rumours were actually spread, and that is by no means certain, they may have been the only means available of attaching suspicion to men who had been clever enough to cover their traces.

  News of the King’s murder spread quickly throughout Edinburgh.42People were soon grouping on the streets, fearfully speculating as to the assassins and their motives, then dispersing. They were more startled by the tidings of Darnley’s death than they had been by the blast, “whilst the manner of it was no less various censured than reported.”43Wild rumours began circulating. One was that Lennox had been killed in the explosion,44which was, of course, untrue.

  Back at Holyrood, the Queen had proclaimed a period of court mourning and ordered black serge from Florence for a mourning gown, cloak, mules and shoes.45She had chosen to follow the French royal custom, whereby a wido
wed queen remained in mourning for forty days, secluded in her black-draped chambers, which no daylight was allowed to penetrate.46Leslie later recalled that she “bemoaned” her husband “a notable time, using none other than candle-light,” but Buchanan claimed that Mary’s grief was a pretence calculated to “ingratiate herself with the people,” and alleged that, whilst she withdrew into seclusion, “the ceremony was evil observed,” and “such was her joy that, though she shut the doors, she opened the windows.” Paris was among those in attendance in Mary’s bedchamber on the morning after Darnley’s murder, and he saw that it was already shrouded in black.

  The Queen was breakfasting in bed, being waited on by her French governess and other ladies and servants, when Bothwell returned from Kirk o’Field. Paris watched as the Earl entered her room and whispered something in her ear. Buchanan, however, says that Mary only retired to her bedchamber after Bothwell had made his report, at which she “feigned amazement.”

  A little later, Sir James Melville came to the door of the Queen’s apartments to see how she was. Bothwell came out and told him she was “sorrowful and quiet, which occasioned him to come forth.” He then privately expressed to Melville his opinion that Darnley’s death had been an accident, “the strangest that ever chanced, to wit, the thunder [sic] came out of the sky and had burnt the King’s house.” This certainly would have been strange, as there had been no storm that night. Bothwell urged Melville to go and see the King’s body, expressing surprise that there had, inexplicably, been no marks on it, whereupon Melville dutifully set off for Kirk o’Field.47