Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley

• 1. Introduction

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  Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley was found dead in the orchard of Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, on the morning of the 10th of February 1567. His valet, William Taylor, lay beside him. Around two in the morning, two explosions had rocked the foundations of the house where they slept. Darnley wore only his nightshirt. His body showed no visible marks of strangulation or violence. A post-mortem revealed internal injuries. He had been smothered.

  At the time of his death, Darnley was king consort of Scotland, husband to Mary, Queen of Scots. Their son, born barely eight months earlier, would go on to rule both Scotland and England as James VI and I. How this young English lord of royal blood came to die half-dressed in a churchyard orchard demands explanation. That explanation begins not with his marriage but with the dynasty that produced him.

• 2. A Dangerous Bloodline

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  Darnley's father, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, stood third in line to the Scottish throne. His mother, Margaret Douglas, was a niece of Henry VIII and held a potential claim to the English throne. Through his maternal grandmother, Queen Margaret Tudor, Darnley could claim a place in the succession for both crowns. Margaret Tudor was a daughter of King Henry VII of England and had been the widow of King James IV of Scotland.

  In 1545, Matthew Stewart was found guilty of treason in Scotland for siding with the English in the War of the Rough Wooing. His Scottish estates were forfeited. He spent twenty-two years in English exile, returning to Scotland only in 1564. Margaret Douglas had herself left Scotland in 1528. As Roman Catholics in a landscape shifting toward Protestantism, the Lennoxes attracted those who hoped for a Catholic succession to the Protestant Elizabeth.

  The death of Henry II of France in July 1559 opened a new avenue. Lennox's brother John, 5th Sieur d'Aubigny, rose at the French court as a relative of the new queen, Mary of Scots. Through his uncle's position, Darnley was dispatched to congratulate Mary and Francis II on Francis's accession to the French throne. Mary gave Darnley 1,000 crowns and invited him to her coronation. She did not, however, restore Lennox to his Scottish earldom.

  Francis Yaxley, a Catholic spy uncovered in 1562, had placed informants inside the Lennox household at Settrington as far back as November 1560. Under interrogation at the Tower of London in February 1562, Yaxley admitted that his missions were intended to arrange the marriage of the Queen of Scots with Darnley. The Lennox family was arrested. Elizabeth chose not to prosecute them for treason. They were released in February 1563. Sarah Macauley later argued that Elizabeth's decision served three purposes. It complicated Catherine Grey's claim to the succession and offered some appeasement to English Catholics. Most crucially, it placed an obstacle between the Queen of Scots and the English throne. In September 1564, the Scottish Parliament formally restored Matthew Stewart as Earl of Lennox, and Darnley's path to the Scottish court was at last open.

• 3. The Long Lad

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  Darnley was born at Temple Newsam in Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 1546. His tutors included John Elder, a Scottish scholar who advocated Anglo-Scottish union through the marriage of Mary and Edward, Prince of Wales. Elder's 1543 advice to Henry VIII on this subject was known as the Advice of a Redshank. Another schoolmaster, Arthur Lallart, would later be interrogated in London for having gone to Scotland in 1562.

  A letter Darnley wrote to Mary I of England in March 1554, from Temple Newsam, survives. He describes making a map he called the Utopia Nova, and expressed the wish that 'every haire in my heade for to be a wourthy souldiour.' He was known to be strong, athletic, skilled in horsemanship and weaponry, and devoted to hunting and hawking. Darnley authored at least two poems printed in the Bannatyne Manuscript, compiled around 1570: 'Darnley's Ballet' and 'Gife langour makis men licht.' A third poem, 'Quhair luve is kendlit confortless,' carries an uncertain attribution. In Scotland, a gift that particularly delighted him was an English Water Spaniel, presented by the courtier James Melville of Halhill.

  On the 3rd of February 1565, Darnley left London for Scotland. By the 12th of February he was in Edinburgh. On the 17th of February he presented himself to Mary at Wemyss Castle in Fife. The two had met before: in 1560, his parents had sent him to France to offer condolences on the death of Mary's first husband. At Wemyss Castle, the encounter had a different quality. James Melville reported that Mary said Darnley was 'the lustiest and best proportioned long man that she had seen.' Elizabeth I noted in her writings that Darnley stood over six feet tall, roughly 1.80 metres. Mary fell immediately in love with what she called her 'long lad.'

  After a brief visit to his father at Dunkeld, Darnley returned with Mary and the court to Holyrood on the 24th of February. The next day he heard John Knox preach, and that evening danced a galliard with Mary. He was in her company almost constantly from that point on. On the 15th of May 1565, he was knighted and made Lord of Ardmanoch and Earl of Ross at Stirling Castle. An entourage of fifteen men were made knights alongside him. On the 22nd of July he was made Duke of Albany at Holyrood Abbey, and the banns of marriage were read in the parish of Canongate. A proclamation at the Cross of Edinburgh on the 28th of July placed government in their joint names. A silver ryal was struck bearing both their names. The wedding took place on the 29th of July 1565, by Roman Catholic rites, in Mary's private chapel at Holyrood.

  Darnley refused to accompany Mary to the nuptial Mass after the ceremony. John Knox recorded that Darnley went hawking while Mary attended. Knox also wrote that the dancing and banqueting lasted three or four days. Elizabeth was furious at the marriage. She sent the diplomat John Tamworth to convey her grievances to Mary. When no satisfactory response came, she ordered the imprisonment of Darnley's mother, Margaret Douglas, in the Tower of London. Margaret remained there until shortly after her son's murder. A Protestant rebellion, the Chaseabout Raid, followed, led by Mary's half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray. The earls of Argyll, Glencairn, and Rothes joined him. Royal forces defeated the rebellion, and Moray fled to England. Rome's dispensation for the marriage, required because the couple were first cousins, was not issued by the Holy See until the 25th of September 1565.

• 4. The Crown Matrimonial

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  By August 1565, William Cecil in London had received reports that Darnley's insolence had already driven his own father from the Scottish court. Mary refused to grant Darnley the Crown Matrimonial, the title that would have made him her successor if she died childless. He was disliked by the nobility, and his drinking made a violent streak worse. On the 28th of August 1565, the Scottish court sent a pair of diplomatic letters to the King of Denmark. One was signed by Mary, the other by Darnley. This appears to have been an attempt to confirm his royal status.

  In February 1566, Charles IX of France sent the ambassador Nicolas d'Angennes, seigneur de Rambouillet, to invest Darnley in the Order of Saint Michael. Mary, Darnley, and her private secretary David Rizzio joined a costly masque with seven other dancers in rich attire to welcome Rambouillet. Darnley's costume for the chapel ceremony at Holyroodhouse was satin guarded with black velvet, sewn with aglets of gold. It was afterward given to a French herald as a customary perquisite.

  On the 9th of March 1566, Rizzio was stabbed fifty-seven times by Darnley and a group of Protestant Scottish nobles. The queen was present and was six months pregnant at the time. Rizzio had been rumoured to be the father of her unborn child. Thomas Randolph, Elizabeth I's ambassador to Scotland, later wrote in a despatch that Darnley and Rizzio 'would lie sometimes in one bed together.' At Elizabeth's court, Darnley had separately been described as 'a great cock chick.' According to Randolph and the Earl of Bedford, the murder was part of Darnley's bid to force Mary to cede the Crown Matrimonial. The Spanish Ambassador in Paris learned of the killing. The reported headline was that Darnley 'had murdered his wife, admitted the exiled heretics, and seized the kingdom.' On the 20th of March, Darnley issued a public declaration denying all knowledge of or involvement in the murder. The Earl of Morton and Lord Ruthven wrote to Cecil on the 27th of March. Both had been present at the killing before fleeing to England. They claimed Darnley had initiated the plot, driven by his 'heich quarrel' and 'deadly hatred' of Rizzio. In May 1566, Darnley wrote to Catherine de' Medici to insist he was innocent of the 'horrible crime.'

  Mary and Darnley's son James was born on the 19th of June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle. A hunting trip to Cramalt Tower in the Ettrick Forest in August did not repair the marriage. The child was baptised Charles James on the 17th of December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England, and Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she called 'a pocky priest,' spit in the child's mouth, as the custom then required. The entertainment, devised by Bastian Pagez, featured men dancing as satyrs. The English guests took offence, believing the performance was directed at them. The French ambassador reported that Darnley, lodged at the castle, never left his rooms. Sensing the extent of his fall from favour, the ambassador himself declined to meet with him. In November 1566, Mary had met with advisors at Craigmillar Castle to discuss options for removing Darnley. Her preferred solution was divorce, but divorce carried the risk of making James illegitimate.

• 5. Kirk o' Field

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  In the weeks before his death, Darnley was recovering from smallpox while staying with his family in Glasgow. He was described as having deformed pocks across his face and body; one contemporary source speculates the illness may instead have been syphilis. Mary brought him to recuperate at the Old Provost's lodging at Kirk o' Field. The house was a two-storey building set within a church quadrangle, a short walk from Holyrood. While he stayed there, Mary attended the wedding of Bastian Pagez, one of her closest servants, at Holyrood.

  Two barrels of gunpowder had been placed in a small room directly beneath Darnley's sleeping quarters. Around the bodies in the orchard lay a cloak, a dagger, a chair, and a coat. John Knox publicly disputed the surgeons' findings and insisted Darnley had been strangled. All contemporary sources agreed there were no marks on the body. Knox's contemporaries saw no reason for the surgeons to misrepresent their findings, since the murder was not in doubt either way. Suspicion fell immediately on James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, and on Mary herself.

• 6. A Stolen Skull

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  The shoes of Archibald Douglas, Parson of Douglas, were found at the scene at Kirk o' Field. Bothwell had long been suspected of designs on the Scottish throne. His close relationship with the queen gave rise to rumours of a sexual affair. This was seen as a motive for arranging Darnley's murder, with apparent support from among the nobility. A soldier under Bothwell's pay, Captain William Blackadder of the Clan Blackadder, happened upon the scene shortly after the murders. Treated as a suspect, he was convicted and executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered. His limbs were nailed to the gates of four different Scottish towns. Bothwell was put on trial in Edinburgh and found not guilty.

  Mary and Bothwell left Edinburgh together shortly after Darnley's death. One account holds that Bothwell kidnapped the queen, took her to Dunbar Castle, and raped her. In the other account, Mary participated willingly, and the story of rape was invented to protect her honour before marrying a man suspected of murder. Mary later miscarried twins by Bothwell while a prisoner at Lochleven Castle. Her enemies captured her at the battle of Carberry Hill. In 1568, conferences at York and Westminster examined her possible involvement in Darnley's death and reached no definitive findings.

  The Casket Letters were produced as evidence against Mary, alleged to have been written by her and suggesting support for the killing. James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, said he had found them in a silver box engraved with the letter 'F,' standing for Francis II. The box also contained the Mary-Bothwell marriage certificate. Before Morton's own execution in 1581, he admitted knowing the murder plot in advance and named Bothwell and Archibald Douglas as the 'chief actors.' Mary fled to England, was kept in captivity, was implicated in the Babington Plot against Elizabeth, and was convicted of treason and executed.

  Darnley was buried in 1567 in the Royal Vault at Holyrood Abbey. He was interred alongside King James II, Madeleine of Valois, King James V, and other royals. In 1668, the vault was opened by mobs. Between 1776 and 1778, it was raided and Darnley's skull was stolen. In 1928, Karl Pearson published research exploring whether a skull at the Royal College of Surgeons' museum could be Darnley's. In 2016, the University of Edinburgh requested a study of a second skull once held in Edinburgh's collection. That skull had been destroyed in the Blitz. Emma Price at the University of Dundee compared both skulls against portraits of Darnley, using photographs from 1928 of the Edinburgh skull. Her conclusion was that the Edinburgh skull could not be his. The Royal College of Surgeons' skull, she found, was a good match. A historical facial reconstruction was subsequently produced.