David Rizzio

• 1. Introduction

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  David Rizzio died on the 9th of March 1566, inside the Palace of Holyroodhouse, killed by a group of armed men who burst into a supper room where he sat with the Queen. He was Mary, Queen of Scots' private secretary, an Italian who had arrived in Scotland as a musician barely five years before.

  By the night of his murder, lords and Protestant nobles considered him too dangerous to let live. Some said he had seduced the Queen. Others said powerful men had manufactured her husband's jealousy to eliminate a rival. His murder set off a chain of events that helped unravel Mary's reign.

  Who was Rizzio before the legends formed? How did a singer from Piedmont climb so far inside one of Europe's most contested courts? And what did his death reveal about the conspiracies coiling around Mary in the winter of 1566?

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• 2. From Pancalieri to Edinburgh

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  Rizzio was born in Pancalieri, close to Turin. His family were ancient Piedmontese nobles, the Riccio Counts of San Paolo e Solbrito. His early career took him to the court of the Duke of Savoy, then based at Nice. Finding no opportunities for advancement there, he looked further north.

  In 1561, Carlo Ubertino Solaro, Count of Moretta, was assembling an embassy to Scotland. Rizzio secured a place in the Count's retinue through his connections with Gerolamo della Rovere and Jean Morel. Morel would later become the recipient of the only surviving letter in Rizzio's hand. When the Count arrived in Scotland, he found no use for Rizzio and dismissed him.

  What Rizzio found instead was a group of musicians who had come with Mary from France. He was admitted among them because of a specific gap in the royal ensemble. As James Melville later explained, the Queen's chamber already had three valets who sang three parts; it still needed a bass for the fourth. Rizzio had a bass voice. He was taken on as a valet of the chamber, alongside Adrian Lefeau, John Adesoun the lutist, and James Lauder. Mary bought matching clothes for three of her lute players in February 1562, and Rizzio was now inside the Scottish court.

  The royal accounts referred to Rizzio as the queen's "chamber child," a title that understated how far he had already begun to rise.

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• 3. Secretary and Courtier

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  John Lesley, writing about Mary's court, called Rizzio "a very able man of business," employed to write private letters in French, Italian, and Latin. Towards the end of 1564, he had replaced Augustine Raullet as the queen's secretary for relations with France. He was no longer a valet of the chamber; he was the queen's conduit to the French court.

  Rizzio controlled access to Mary and, by his own understanding, functioned almost as a Secretary of State. Other courtiers resented this. They felt that as a Catholic and a foreigner he was too close to the queen. His annual salary for the valet post had been £75 Scots, paid from the Thirds of Benefices rather than the treasury's standard accounts.

  In 1565, he received £80 Scots in four installments, paid by George Wishart of Drymme. Another £80 followed as his pension in 1566. Mary gave him gifts of rich fabric from her wardrobe, including black velvet figured with gold and five pieces of gold cloth figured with scales. It was said that he took bribes. William Douglas of Lochleven offered him £5,000 to prevent the forfeiture of the Earl of Moray. Rizzio refused, saying he would not act even for £20,000. In January 1566, Mary gave him £200 to refurnish his chamber at Holyrood Palace.

  In February 1566, he took part in a costumed masque for the arrival of Nicolas d'Angennes, seigneur de Rambouillet. Rambouillet had brought Darnley the Order of Saint Michael. On the night of his death, he wore a rich jewel at his neck, a satin doublet, and a furred damask night gown. After his murder, inventories showed he had £2,000 Sterling in gold coins and 18 pairs of velvet hose. His chamber was stocked with an arsenal: daggs, pistolets, arquebuses, and 22 swords. Rizzio's involvement in distributing pardons to the Chaseabout rebels had also stirred Darnley's envy, and that resentment would compound through the winter of 1565-66.

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• 4. A Dangerous Familiarity

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  Before Mary and Darnley's wedding, Rizzio had actively helped arrange the match. George Buchanan recorded how Rizzio worked to gain Darnley's favour. As their closeness grew, Rizzio was admitted to Darnley's chamber and bed. David Calderwood later wrote that the two men "would lie some times in one bed together." Rizzio was also present when Mary and Darnley walked together in disguise on Edinburgh's High Street before the July 1565 ceremony.

  After the July 1565 wedding, Darnley began to find specific causes for suspicion. A report circulating in 1568 described Mary as treating Rizzio "more like a lover than a servant, forsaking her husband's bed." The French diplomat Paul de Foix reported another incident. Darnley found Rizzio in the closet of Mary's bedchamber at Holyroodhouse at midnight, dressed only in a fur gown over his shirt. George Buchanan described yet another: Darnley held a key to a secondary door to Mary's bedchamber but found it locked against him. In Ruthven's Relation, Darnley complained to Mary that she had stopped her daily visits to his chamber. He told her that after supper she now sat at cards with Rizzio "till one or two of the clock after midnight."

  The chronicle account known as the Historie of James the Sext offered a different explanation. It claimed that William Maitland of Lethington, the queen's own secretary, was jealous of Rizzio's growing power. According to this account, Maitland deliberately stirred Darnley's suspicions, hoping that the naive king-consort would eliminate his rival. Whether the jealousy was genuine or manufactured, by early 1566 it had hardened into a conspiracy. Patrick Ruthven, 3rd Lord Ruthven, led the confederate nobles, and Darnley agreed to join them.

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• 5. The Supper Room

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  At 8 o'clock that Saturday, the royal guards at the Palace of Holyroodhouse were overpowered. Thomas Randolph and Francis, Earl of Bedford, described the supper room as "a cabinet about XII foot square." Inside was a low bed and a table, and the walls had been decorated by Mary's servant Servais de Condé. Mary sat at the table with Rizzio, Jean Stewart Countess of Argyll, Robert Beaton of Creich, and Arthur Erskine. Darnley leaned against Mary's chair.

  As the rebels burst in, led by Lord Ruthven and George Douglas, the Earls of Bothwell and Huntly escaped. They jumped from a window into what James Melville later called "the little garden where the lions are lodged." The Queen was six months pregnant with the future James VI. The rebels demanded Rizzio be handed over. Mary refused. Rizzio moved behind her, or held her about the waist.

  Mary later alleged that Patrick Bellenden pointed his gun at her pregnant belly and that Andrew Ker of Faldonside threatened to stab her. Anthony Standen said he disarmed Bellenden himself. Another intruder had a snaphance pistol that failed to fire. Rizzio was dragged from the supper room through the bedchamber and into the adjacent audience chamber. He was stabbed 57 times. His body was thrown down a nearby staircase and stripped of his jewels and fine clothes.

  He was first buried in the Holyrood Abbey cemetery. Mary later ordered his body moved to the tomb of her father James V and Madeleine of France within the same abbey. In the Audience Chamber, a small plaque marks the location of the murder. A red mark on the floorboards is said to date from that night. Mary's decision to move Rizzio's body to the royal tomb only deepened the rumours about their relationship.

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• 6. Aftermath and Memory

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  Immediately after the murder, Mary managed to speak to Darnley and may have persuaded him they were both in danger inside the palace. The guard around her was relaxed. At midnight the following night, they escaped together. Mary rode behind Arthur Erskine of Blackgrange, master of her stable, first to Seton Palace and then to safety at Dunbar Castle. Anthony Standen, an English servant of Darnley, later claimed to have accompanied her with John Stewart of Traquair and his brother William Stewart. Mary returned to Edinburgh and took up lodgings on the Royal Mile. On the 21st of March, she had Darnley publicly declared innocent of the murder.

  Among those who fled were Morton, Lord Ruthven, Lord Lindsay, William Maitland of Lethington, and John Bellenden the Lord Justice Clerk. Robert Melville arrived from London and reported to Elizabeth I and William Cecil on the aftermath. Mary wrote to Elizabeth asking that Ruthven, Morton, and their accomplices be returned from Newcastle. Elizabeth instructed Sir John Forster to tell them to find refuge outside England.

  Joseph Rizzio, David's brother, arrived in Scotland with the French diplomat Michel de Castelnau. He was appointed secretary in David's place by the 25th of April 1566. Joseph and an Italian colleague, Joseph Lutyni, ran into trouble over coins taken from the queen's purse. In April 1567, Joseph was accused of involvement in Darnley's murder and acquitted alongside Bothwell. Castelnau also wrote to Catherine de' Medici, asserting that the king-consort was innocent of the "horrible crime."

  George Buchanan, writing in 1581, argued that the manner of Rizzio's burial had reflected badly on the Queen. A friend, James Melville, tried to persuade Buchanan to soften the passage while the book was still at the printers. Buchanan consulted his cousin Thomas Buchanan, a schoolmaster in Stirling, who confirmed the story was true. The passage stayed in, and the account was published.

  Henry IV of France later made a pointed remark at the expense of James VI, saying he hoped James "was not David the fiddler's son." According to the Master of Gray, James wept with his friend Cuthbert Armourer over those rumours. The murder attracted novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers for nearly two centuries. The 1830 play Maria Stuart by Juliusz Słowacki used the killing and Darnley's downfall as its main subject. Arthur Conan Doyle drew on the murder for his 1908 story "The Silver Mirror." Caleb Carr's Sherlock Holmes novella The Italian Secretary features Holmes dismissing the idea that Rizzio was ever anything more than entertainment. Denise Mina published a novella simply titled "Rizzio" in 2021. On screen, John Carradine played him in a 1936 RKO production and Ian Holm in 1971. Ismael Cruz Córdova took the role in the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots.

  John Carmichael of Meadowflat, later Captain of Crawford, received a formal pardon in 1574 for his role in detaining Mary at Holyroodhouse. The detention had lasted from the 9th to the 11th of March 1566, eight years before that pardon came.

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