January 4, 2010 • 23 mins
In February of 1567, Lord Darnley lay sleeping in a house called Kirk o'Field when it exploded. He was certainly dead, but when his body was discovered it seemed that he died of strangulation ... and here the mystery began. Learn more in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And recently Katie
and I have been talking about the Tutors and the Stuarts,
which is one of our favorite times in history, and
(00:22):
we couldn't move on from that though, before we talked
about this one last great story, and that is the
death of Lord Darnley, which was under very mysterious circumstances.
He's the indolent, arrogant, drunken, sythletic, jealous, plotting husband of Mary,
Queen of Scott's and he's murdered. In fact, the house
that he's staying in blows up in the middle of
(00:45):
the night and his nearly nude body is found nearby
in an orchard. And this murder leads to the forced
abdication of Mary, her decades long imprisonment in England by
her cousin Elizabeth, and ultimately her execution. So our question
today is who did it and why? And our main
suspects are Mary, a group of Scottish nobles, and Darnley himself.
(01:10):
So why are there so many opinions about this murder.
That's what we have to talk about before we can
get into it. Um, what's the historical perception of Mary
that so excused the evidence surrounding this murder? And that's
the thing, because historical perceptions of Mary are very subjective,
and they've also changed over time. Scottish Calvinists saw her
(01:32):
as an adulterous and murderous, while Catholics and Loyalists saw
her as a long queen and later a martyr. She
obviously becomes the hope of the counter Reformation against Elizabeth.
After her death, her son, who is now the King
of Scotland and the King of England UM, tries to
refurbish her image a little bit, as well as that
of his father, Lord Darnley UM. By the eighteenth century,
(01:55):
she's almost seen as a victim of her own passions,
that she was brought up in this of all is
French court and just didn't know how to behave herself.
That Anthonia Fraser published a definitive biography of her in
nineteen sixty nine, which is on my Amazon wish list
if you'd like to buy it for me, that put
her in a much more favorable light, saying that she
(02:15):
was a victim of the ruthless men around her. So
that's what we have to deal with, going into this
murder and seeing how it's been handled by contemporaries and
by historians over the years. But central to the guilt,
at least um during Mary's time where the casket letters,
and it was eight letters in a series of irregular
(02:35):
sonnets that if real, would make Mary guilty as sin.
But they've long been argued to be a mix of
forgeries combined with real letters of Mary's that have been manipulated,
and they were also lost of Mary long don't happen anymore.
They disappeared sometime during James's rule, once again when he's
trying to clean up the image of his parents a
(02:57):
little bit. Something happens to these letters. So most of
our evidence comes from hostile later sources, so again not
so trustworthy. But we should give you a little background.
We gave you some in our podcast on Mary and
her cousin, Queen Elizabeth the First, but basically she's the
widowed Queen consort of France and Queen of Scotland and
her own right. When she returns to Scotland, she falls
(03:20):
in love with her handsome young cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley,
who's a fellow claimant to the British throne. His father,
Matthew Stewart, the fourth Earl of Lennox, actually had a
pretension to the Scottish throne, while his mother, Margaret Douglas,
has a claim to the English throne because she's the
granddaughter of Henry the seventh. So he's got some interesting
(03:43):
claims in his own right right. And as far as
Elizabeth and the English Privy Council are concerned, the union
between the two of them would be dangerous to the
common amity of the country. Yeah, Elizabeth doesn't want um
tutor claimants uniting their causes. But nevertheless, on July they
(04:04):
are married by Catholic rights, which starts off offending people
from the very beginning, especially the Scottish Protestant ministry. And Darnley,
who you know, I guess when you first meet him,
must seem very handsome and sloth and personable. Yeah, it
turns out to be just indolent and drunk and arrogant
(04:25):
and very jealous of Mary's somewhat unseemly relationship with her secretary.
It's unlikely that Mary and David Ruzzio, her Italian secretary,
were having an affair, but it didn't look good and
Darnley really didn't like it, and so he comes up
with this plan, which again we mentioned in the Other
(04:45):
Mary Queen of Scott's podcast, to murder Rizzio in front
of pregnant Mary, hoping that she will become sick, maybe
even die, that she'll miss carry and that while she's
out of commission he can take the crown matrimony. And
even these hardened Scottish nobles who are always plotting or
trying to kill somebody, are kind of shocked that he
(05:07):
wants to do this in front of her, but degree,
and they even promise him the crown matrimonial, which is
what he wants the whole time, and it's unrealistic. That's
never gonna happen. Um. Mary finds out pretty quickly from
him that he was involved in the plot. He names
all his co conspirators. She can't ever really trust him
(05:28):
again after this. But um, despite you know, this awful
event in their already bad relationship, they kind of have
to make nice for the baby that's on the way, right,
and Mary draws up a will upon entering her confinement
during her pregnancy, and she leaves everything but very specific
bequests to her unborn child. Most of those requests are
(05:50):
to her husband, Lord Darnley. Lots of jewelry, including her
red enameled diamond wedding ring, so she's probably trying to
make sure that he'll be secure in the future should
anything happen to her, which isn't the kind of thing
you're doing. If you're trying to kill some you're gonna
kill somebody down the road. Um. And she does openly
leave some nice stuff though, to the future suspected murder
(06:14):
of Darnley, James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, including
a mermaids that in Diamonds and I love this detail,
But back then a mermaid often meant a siren, and
it was kind of synonymous with a prostitute, and Mary
is not likely to have referred to herself as a
prostitute in her own final will, so maybe this is
(06:37):
a warning to Bothwell about his involvement with women other
than his wife. But Mary does give birth to the
child James, and most important at this time, she has
to get Darnley to publicly recognize this child as his
And this is so embarrassing, right and not say read
Cio is like he has to say in front of witnesses,
and so does she that this is his child. She
(06:59):
really has to spell it out. Darnley kisses the child
and she has to go even further than getting that
recognition from him, and says, and I am desirous that
all here bear witness, for he is so much your
son that I fear it will be the worse for
him hereafter, which is a sad premonition from Mary on
the birth of her her son and heir that she's
(07:19):
already feeling this bad. And Darnley's behavior doesn't improve after
James's birth. He goes out very late at night carousing
and they have to open the gates for him, which
of course puts everyone at the castle at risk, including
Mary and James. James, Yeah, and he goes off by
himself to bathe in the secluded places. He's such a
strange guy and this is exposing him to all these
(07:42):
lords who are not a fan of him. Um, he's English,
he's pretentious, and he's um exposed. All his co conspirators
in the Rucio plot so he's just putting himself out
there where he could get killed, and Mary begs him
not to put himself so indiscriminately into the power of
his enemies. And that's a quote. Um. She she's worried
(08:04):
about him too, not just for him, right. She thinks
maybe his conspiracies haven't quite ended, and that he's possibly
plotting against her, that he wants to kidnap the child.
So she keeps James in a cradle beside her own bed,
which is very unusual. Usually you would establish um a
household for James. Um. Darnley at one point even threatens
(08:27):
to leave the country, which would be absolutely humiliating for Mary.
It would imply that either he had done something wrong
or she had done something wrong. And she's just horrified
by this prospect, and she gets really, really sick and
wants to make sure that the throne will pass to James,
not Darnley makes that very clear, and Um even slips
(08:49):
into a coma and goes stiff. At one point, everybody
thinks she's dead, and the truth is, at the time,
she almost wishes she were dead because things are so
hopeless in her marriage. So she has to figure out
the problem of Lord Darnley. How can she end this
marriage because a nulment based on consanguinity than being related
(09:09):
would seriously have questioned the legitimacy of James, which is
something she absolutely doesn't want to do, and divorce would
have had each of them acknowledging the validity of a
Protestant divorce, and as she is very Catholic and this
is important to her, she doesn't want to do that either.
And a Catholic Church sanctioned separation based on Darnley's carousing
his infidelities would have had them both still united in
(09:33):
the eyes of God and unable to remarry. So here
is Mary faced with the prospect of um having this
husband for the rest of her life. He's actually a
few years younger than her, so it's very likely that
he would survive her, and he is terrible, and there's
no good way to get rid of him. Um. There
(09:53):
is the suggestion that she could arrest Darnley and charge
him with treason, because even though he's her lord as
her husband, she's his queen. And the only problem with
this is there's a catch in Scottish law that makes
it impossible for the King of Scotland which even though
(10:13):
Darnley is is not the crown matrimonial, he's just kind
of a figurehead king. Um, he can't be charged with treason.
So also, even if he could be, how embarrassing is
it to um charge the father of your child with
treason just as all these foreign diploments are coming into
the country to witness the baptism and have this great celebration.
(10:35):
So she doesn't have any good options here now, So
she and her advisers come together at the Craig Miller
conference to discuss again the problem of Darnley, and Mary
expresses that she's worried about the effect divorce would have
on James's legitimate name, and her chief advisor, William Maitland,
(10:55):
who is a longtime supporter of Mary but also not
afraid to call her out, um, tells her, Madam, fancy
you not. We are here of the principle of your
Grace's nobility and counsel that shall find the means that
your majesty should be quit of him without prejudice of
your son. So that sounds like a bunch of gobbledegook,
and it is. It's roundabout language, and it's like, wait, okay,
(11:18):
are we talking about divorce here or are you talking
about something else? Is this tricky language to to suggest
a murder? And Mary must have understood Maitland's meaning right.
She catches his drift, and she says, I will that
you do nothing by which any spot may be laid
to my honor or conscience. And therefore I pray you
rather let the matter be in the estate as it
(11:39):
is abiding un till God and his Goodness put remedy
there too, than you, believing to do me service, may
possibly turn to my heart and displeasure. So this is
basically saying, don't do anything, just let's see what God does.
Let's wait until Darnley died, and it would hurt and
displease me if you did anything like, oh, I don't know,
(12:00):
murder my husband, don't do it. And when Katie and
I were talking about this earlier, I think you rightly suggested, well,
was she just playing along here? You know, like, oh,
don't do anything, you know, wink wink. But I think
that one thing we can't afford to lose sight of
here is that Mary isn't a private citizen who can
make these choices based on love or revenge or just
(12:23):
I've got to get rid of this guy. She's an
anointed queen whose lifelong ambition is to have the English
succession settled on her, and she's not likely to lose
sight of that lifelong goal just in this moment of panic. Right,
But regardless of what she wanted, the Lord's draw up
a bond for Darnley's murder. So the stage is set here.
(12:47):
Darnley is in trouble and he already knows he is
because the exiled lords, the co conspirators who he betrayed
to Mary during the Rutso murder, returned to Scotland. Darnley
is not a very smart guy, but he's smart enough
to get out of Edinburgh. He returns to the Lennox
home base in Glasgow. His family's his family's strong, you know,
(13:10):
strong home base. And on the way there he falls
ill with smallpox. Supposedly in quotes, it's really syphilis, which
he probably caught in France as a young teen. And
when his body was exhumed, examination in his skull was
examined and showed pitting caused by syphilis. And Mary must
(13:31):
have understood what this was, and I'm sure that really
didn't help her revulsion. So not only has your husband
murdered somebody in front of you, he's got syphilis. That's
just grand um. And so we know already from the
Craig Miller conference. Mary knows about the plotting of the
lords against Darnley, but she also gets when that Darnley
(13:51):
is continuing to plot against her past the Zio murder um,
and she can't bear the suspense anymore of having him
is slated down in Glasgow, where he's got more support
than anywhere else in Scotland. So she goes down to
visit him. He's sick, try to bring him back to Edinburgh,
and this is often a charge leveled against her that
(14:13):
she's luring him back to his death in Edinburgh. And okay,
on the one hand, yeah, in Edinburgh he's closer to
all these angry lords who want to kill him. But
on the other hand he wants to kill her, right,
So keep your enemies closer, and she does. She gets
Darnley back where she wants him and sees him installed
in kirk Afield at the old Provost lodging. She's just
(14:35):
a short walk away from him, about ten minutes, and
it's Darnley who wants to be at kirk Afield, a
collegiate church. She wanted him at a more fortified location,
but he said no. And they're always these um kind
of amazing superstitious type things surrounding Darnley in our podcast,
but a raven accompanies them back from Glasgow and was
(14:55):
seen perched on the roof of the old Provost lodging
where Darnley staying. He did not say nevermore as far
as we know, but it seems like relations between the
two are improving while he's there. She visits him daily,
they sit up late talking, She even stays over a
couple of nights. And while it's not likely that she's
rediscovered her love for him or anything, she's at least
(15:18):
trying to make a peace with him or make sure
he's not a threat to her anymore, to to demilitarize
him almost and um bring him back over to her side,
or at least just kind of calm him down so
he's not causing all this trouble. And also he's he's
an important part of her claim to the English succession.
(15:39):
A lot of um English parliament actually think that he
has a better claim than she does, so making nice
with him, especially when they have this one year old
son is a good idea, right, both personally and politically,
And as far as he goes, things are starting to
seem okay with the Lord's to they even come and
(16:00):
visit him even bothwell, ye, another charge leveled against her
is this all fake just to make her look good
when he's murdered. So as far as the night of
the murder itself goes, Mary is visiting Darnley, but she's
supposed to go to the wedding festivities of one of
her maids of honor, so she leaves um and she
(16:22):
is clear that she's not returning to the house later
at night. Darnley, I think, is a little upset about that,
but she'll be staying at holy Rood House because she
has to get up early in the morning, So after
the wedding festivities she's not going to be back. Later
that night, the house explodes and Darnley is found dead
of strangulation or maybe post explosive asphyxiation. So who are
(16:46):
our suspects in this murder, Katie, Well, we're starting off
with Darnley himself, So maybe Darnley wanted to murder some
of the lords and the Queen all in one go
and steal baby James and rule as some regent. But
the flaw in this plan is he would have had
to have expected the Queen and the lords to return
(17:06):
after the wedding mask and Mary made it quite clear
that she was going back to Holyrood House, not the
old provost lodging. Um. There's another side to the Darnley plot.
Maybe the lords discovered it and they turned the tables
on him somehow. But our prime, or at least our
most famous suspect, is Mary, and in a way there's
(17:28):
a really damning case against her right because of course
she had a very unhappy marriage with Darnley. He's a
pretty awful guy, and she took him from this strong
family base in Glasgow to Edinburgh, where of course he
was in more danger, and she had also favored bothwell,
even after he suggested murdering her husband. There's no evidence
(17:49):
to suggest they had an affair at the time, but
a lot of people thought that they did, so that's
something to keep in mind. Um. It's also likely that
these improved relations between Darnley and Mary would have eventually
led to resumed conjugal relations, which Mary obviously wouldn't have
been very enthusiastic about considering her husband was sick with syphilis.
(18:10):
And then the worst, the worst part of the evidence
is she leaves the house two hours before it explodes.
That's not going to help your case very much. But
there are a lot of flaws with with all of
this evidence, right, there's no evidence, first of all, that
Mary ever considered freeing herself from Darnley by any other
than legal means. So yeah, she was looking into annulment
(18:31):
and to divorce and even too, you know, can we
charge him with treason? Right, But she was not supporting murder.
And when she took him to Edinburgh, as we mentioned before,
it was because she knew that he was plotting against
her and she wanted him where she could keep an
eye on. So yeah, she's she's bringing him closer to
his enemies, but he's also her enemy in a way.
(18:52):
She was also hoping for a settlement on the English
succession issue and things were looking pretty rosy with that
at this time. I know Alizabeth wasn't happy with the
match between Darnley and Mary initially, but because there was
some British support of Darnley, it wasn't looking like a
bad claim anymore, So why would she kill Queen Elizabeth's cousin? Yeah? Um,
(19:16):
he only strengthens her claim. You don't want to make
Queen Elizabeth angry and bring all the suspicion on herself.
And then the point of her continuing to favor Bothwell
after he suggested murder Well, so did her her chief
advisor Maitland, and so did her bastard half brother Murray. Um.
She makes it clear to these guys that she doesn't
(19:37):
approve of murdering Darnley. But what is she going to
ditch all her nobles because they're suggesting it. Nobody in
Scotland likes Darnley and Alison Weir's book on the Darnley murder.
Her picks for a murderer are Sir William Maitland and
James Stewart or Moray, who of course was Mary, Queen
of Scott's brother, and that would rid Scotland of darn
(20:00):
Lee who was this Catholic activist, and then hopefully implicate
their enemy. James Hepburn, who we've been referring to as
Bothwell and Bothwell's actually involved in the plot himself. He's
what he's hoping to get out of it is a
marriage to Mary after Darnley's death. So I don't know
how he thinks the cards are going to fall with
the other lords, h but he's got something he wants
(20:22):
to get out of it, and the other guys are
hoping it'll all fall on him. So, rather than being
a crime of the heart, as so many in history
have painted this, Mary trying to get back at her horrible,
horrible husband we don't like him, it was really more
of a politically motivated crime. But regardless of who committed
the crime, what Mary did next did not look good
(20:46):
at all. So Bothwell is acquitted in a sham trial.
Then he kidnaps and raipes Mary after she refuses to
marry him, and then, you know, if we think of
Katherine Hepburn's, Mary Quinn of Scott's and a grand romance
between Mary and Bothwell, was there one? I mean, we
we don't know. But after he raped her, she really
(21:07):
didn't have much of a choice but to marry him,
because a pregnancy would have been far too precarious for
her crown to bear her already shaky, shaky claim to
the throne. Right, Mary Queen of Scott's cursed with a
wide variety of terrible men in her life. But Bothwell
divorces his first wife and they marry May fifteen sixty
(21:28):
seven and a Protestant ceremony. And by this point Mary
is really on the brink physically and mentally after Darnley's murder.
She doesn't seem like the adulteress who murdered her husband
to marry her lover Bothwell. She's even seen crying the
day after her wedding to Bothwell, so it doesn't seem
(21:49):
like something she's getting into willingly, no, especially if he
is this awful rapist. Clearly she doesn't want to be
in this relationship, and her husband's just been murdered, so
you have to have a little pitty for Mary Queen
of Scott's. But a coalition of Protestant and Catholic nobles
revolt after this, and um, you can you can imagine
something that actually unites the Scottish nobles must be really something. Um.
(22:14):
But the Queen's forces meet the rebels at Carberry Hill
near Edinburgh and refused to fight, so she surrenders on
the condition that Bothwell be allowed to escape. He gets
out into northern Scotland and then to Denmark, where he's
taken into custody by King Frederick the Second and after
the collapse of Mary's cause in Scotland, Bothwell is placed
(22:35):
in solitary confinement in a castle. Their marriage is annulled
in fifteen seventy and he dies in sane five years later.
Well Mary, of course, eventually flees to England and is
held captive there for eighteen years um partly based on
the Darnley Murder, and dies at the Block for plotting
against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth on February eight seven. So
(22:59):
there is oh happy ending for this story, although it
seems the case isn't entirely closed, so if you have
some ideas about what happened, please email us at History
Podcast at how stuff works dot com or check out
the blogs on the homepage at www dot how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(23:19):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be
sure to check out the stuff you missed in History
Class blog on the how stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And recently Katie
and I have been talking about the Tutors and the Stuarts,
which is one of our favorite times in history, and
(00:22):
we couldn't move on from that though, before we talked
about this one last great story, and that is the
death of Lord Darnley, which was under very mysterious circumstances.
He's the indolent, arrogant, drunken, sythletic, jealous, plotting husband of Mary,
Queen of Scott's and he's murdered. In fact, the house
that he's staying in blows up in the middle of
(00:45):
the night and his nearly nude body is found nearby
in an orchard. And this murder leads to the forced
abdication of Mary, her decades long imprisonment in England by
her cousin Elizabeth, and ultimately her execution. So our question
today is who did it and why? And our main
suspects are Mary, a group of Scottish nobles, and Darnley himself.
(01:10):
So why are there so many opinions about this murder.
That's what we have to talk about before we can
get into it. Um, what's the historical perception of Mary
that so excused the evidence surrounding this murder? And that's
the thing, because historical perceptions of Mary are very subjective,
and they've also changed over time. Scottish Calvinists saw her
(01:32):
as an adulterous and murderous, while Catholics and Loyalists saw
her as a long queen and later a martyr. She
obviously becomes the hope of the counter Reformation against Elizabeth.
After her death, her son, who is now the King
of Scotland and the King of England UM, tries to
refurbish her image a little bit, as well as that
of his father, Lord Darnley UM. By the eighteenth century,
(01:55):
she's almost seen as a victim of her own passions,
that she was brought up in this of all is
French court and just didn't know how to behave herself.
That Anthonia Fraser published a definitive biography of her in
nineteen sixty nine, which is on my Amazon wish list
if you'd like to buy it for me, that put
her in a much more favorable light, saying that she
(02:15):
was a victim of the ruthless men around her. So
that's what we have to deal with, going into this
murder and seeing how it's been handled by contemporaries and
by historians over the years. But central to the guilt,
at least um during Mary's time where the casket letters,
and it was eight letters in a series of irregular
(02:35):
sonnets that if real, would make Mary guilty as sin.
But they've long been argued to be a mix of
forgeries combined with real letters of Mary's that have been manipulated,
and they were also lost of Mary long don't happen anymore.
They disappeared sometime during James's rule, once again when he's
trying to clean up the image of his parents a
(02:57):
little bit. Something happens to these letters. So most of
our evidence comes from hostile later sources, so again not
so trustworthy. But we should give you a little background.
We gave you some in our podcast on Mary and
her cousin, Queen Elizabeth the First, but basically she's the
widowed Queen consort of France and Queen of Scotland and
her own right. When she returns to Scotland, she falls
(03:20):
in love with her handsome young cousin Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley,
who's a fellow claimant to the British throne. His father,
Matthew Stewart, the fourth Earl of Lennox, actually had a
pretension to the Scottish throne, while his mother, Margaret Douglas,
has a claim to the English throne because she's the
granddaughter of Henry the seventh. So he's got some interesting
(03:43):
claims in his own right right. And as far as
Elizabeth and the English Privy Council are concerned, the union
between the two of them would be dangerous to the
common amity of the country. Yeah, Elizabeth doesn't want um
tutor claimants uniting their causes. But nevertheless, on July they
(04:04):
are married by Catholic rights, which starts off offending people
from the very beginning, especially the Scottish Protestant ministry. And Darnley,
who you know, I guess when you first meet him,
must seem very handsome and sloth and personable. Yeah, it
turns out to be just indolent and drunk and arrogant
(04:25):
and very jealous of Mary's somewhat unseemly relationship with her secretary.
It's unlikely that Mary and David Ruzzio, her Italian secretary,
were having an affair, but it didn't look good and
Darnley really didn't like it, and so he comes up
with this plan, which again we mentioned in the Other
(04:45):
Mary Queen of Scott's podcast, to murder Rizzio in front
of pregnant Mary, hoping that she will become sick, maybe
even die, that she'll miss carry and that while she's
out of commission he can take the crown matrimony. And
even these hardened Scottish nobles who are always plotting or
trying to kill somebody, are kind of shocked that he
(05:07):
wants to do this in front of her, but degree,
and they even promise him the crown matrimonial, which is
what he wants the whole time, and it's unrealistic. That's
never gonna happen. Um. Mary finds out pretty quickly from
him that he was involved in the plot. He names
all his co conspirators. She can't ever really trust him
(05:28):
again after this. But um, despite you know, this awful
event in their already bad relationship, they kind of have
to make nice for the baby that's on the way, right,
and Mary draws up a will upon entering her confinement
during her pregnancy, and she leaves everything but very specific
bequests to her unborn child. Most of those requests are
(05:50):
to her husband, Lord Darnley. Lots of jewelry, including her
red enameled diamond wedding ring, so she's probably trying to
make sure that he'll be secure in the future should
anything happen to her, which isn't the kind of thing
you're doing. If you're trying to kill some you're gonna
kill somebody down the road. Um. And she does openly
leave some nice stuff though, to the future suspected murder
(06:14):
of Darnley, James Hepburn, the fourth Earl of Bothwell, including
a mermaids that in Diamonds and I love this detail,
But back then a mermaid often meant a siren, and
it was kind of synonymous with a prostitute, and Mary
is not likely to have referred to herself as a
prostitute in her own final will, so maybe this is
(06:37):
a warning to Bothwell about his involvement with women other
than his wife. But Mary does give birth to the
child James, and most important at this time, she has
to get Darnley to publicly recognize this child as his
And this is so embarrassing, right and not say read
Cio is like he has to say in front of witnesses,
and so does she that this is his child. She
(06:59):
really has to spell it out. Darnley kisses the child
and she has to go even further than getting that
recognition from him, and says, and I am desirous that
all here bear witness, for he is so much your
son that I fear it will be the worse for
him hereafter, which is a sad premonition from Mary on
the birth of her her son and heir that she's
(07:19):
already feeling this bad. And Darnley's behavior doesn't improve after
James's birth. He goes out very late at night carousing
and they have to open the gates for him, which
of course puts everyone at the castle at risk, including
Mary and James. James, Yeah, and he goes off by
himself to bathe in the secluded places. He's such a
strange guy and this is exposing him to all these
(07:42):
lords who are not a fan of him. Um, he's English,
he's pretentious, and he's um exposed. All his co conspirators
in the Rucio plot so he's just putting himself out
there where he could get killed, and Mary begs him
not to put himself so indiscriminately into the power of
his enemies. And that's a quote. Um. She she's worried
(08:04):
about him too, not just for him, right. She thinks
maybe his conspiracies haven't quite ended, and that he's possibly
plotting against her, that he wants to kidnap the child.
So she keeps James in a cradle beside her own bed,
which is very unusual. Usually you would establish um a
household for James. Um. Darnley at one point even threatens
(08:27):
to leave the country, which would be absolutely humiliating for Mary.
It would imply that either he had done something wrong
or she had done something wrong. And she's just horrified
by this prospect, and she gets really, really sick and
wants to make sure that the throne will pass to James,
not Darnley makes that very clear, and Um even slips
(08:49):
into a coma and goes stiff. At one point, everybody
thinks she's dead, and the truth is, at the time,
she almost wishes she were dead because things are so
hopeless in her marriage. So she has to figure out
the problem of Lord Darnley. How can she end this
marriage because a nulment based on consanguinity than being related
(09:09):
would seriously have questioned the legitimacy of James, which is
something she absolutely doesn't want to do, and divorce would
have had each of them acknowledging the validity of a
Protestant divorce, and as she is very Catholic and this
is important to her, she doesn't want to do that either.
And a Catholic Church sanctioned separation based on Darnley's carousing
his infidelities would have had them both still united in
(09:33):
the eyes of God and unable to remarry. So here
is Mary faced with the prospect of um having this
husband for the rest of her life. He's actually a
few years younger than her, so it's very likely that
he would survive her, and he is terrible, and there's
no good way to get rid of him. Um. There
(09:53):
is the suggestion that she could arrest Darnley and charge
him with treason, because even though he's her lord as
her husband, she's his queen. And the only problem with
this is there's a catch in Scottish law that makes
it impossible for the King of Scotland which even though
(10:13):
Darnley is is not the crown matrimonial, he's just kind
of a figurehead king. Um, he can't be charged with treason.
So also, even if he could be, how embarrassing is
it to um charge the father of your child with
treason just as all these foreign diploments are coming into
the country to witness the baptism and have this great celebration.
(10:35):
So she doesn't have any good options here now, So
she and her advisers come together at the Craig Miller
conference to discuss again the problem of Darnley, and Mary
expresses that she's worried about the effect divorce would have
on James's legitimate name, and her chief advisor, William Maitland,
(10:55):
who is a longtime supporter of Mary but also not
afraid to call her out, um, tells her, Madam, fancy
you not. We are here of the principle of your
Grace's nobility and counsel that shall find the means that
your majesty should be quit of him without prejudice of
your son. So that sounds like a bunch of gobbledegook,
and it is. It's roundabout language, and it's like, wait, okay,
(11:18):
are we talking about divorce here or are you talking
about something else? Is this tricky language to to suggest
a murder? And Mary must have understood Maitland's meaning right.
She catches his drift, and she says, I will that
you do nothing by which any spot may be laid
to my honor or conscience. And therefore I pray you
rather let the matter be in the estate as it
(11:39):
is abiding un till God and his Goodness put remedy
there too, than you, believing to do me service, may
possibly turn to my heart and displeasure. So this is
basically saying, don't do anything, just let's see what God does.
Let's wait until Darnley died, and it would hurt and
displease me if you did anything like, oh, I don't know,
(12:00):
murder my husband, don't do it. And when Katie and
I were talking about this earlier, I think you rightly suggested, well,
was she just playing along here? You know, like, oh,
don't do anything, you know, wink wink. But I think
that one thing we can't afford to lose sight of
here is that Mary isn't a private citizen who can
make these choices based on love or revenge or just
(12:23):
I've got to get rid of this guy. She's an
anointed queen whose lifelong ambition is to have the English
succession settled on her, and she's not likely to lose
sight of that lifelong goal just in this moment of panic. Right,
But regardless of what she wanted, the Lord's draw up
a bond for Darnley's murder. So the stage is set here.
(12:47):
Darnley is in trouble and he already knows he is
because the exiled lords, the co conspirators who he betrayed
to Mary during the Rutso murder, returned to Scotland. Darnley
is not a very smart guy, but he's smart enough
to get out of Edinburgh. He returns to the Lennox
home base in Glasgow. His family's his family's strong, you know,
(13:10):
strong home base. And on the way there he falls
ill with smallpox. Supposedly in quotes, it's really syphilis, which
he probably caught in France as a young teen. And
when his body was exhumed, examination in his skull was
examined and showed pitting caused by syphilis. And Mary must
(13:31):
have understood what this was, and I'm sure that really
didn't help her revulsion. So not only has your husband
murdered somebody in front of you, he's got syphilis. That's
just grand um. And so we know already from the
Craig Miller conference. Mary knows about the plotting of the
lords against Darnley, but she also gets when that Darnley
(13:51):
is continuing to plot against her past the Zio murder um,
and she can't bear the suspense anymore of having him
is slated down in Glasgow, where he's got more support
than anywhere else in Scotland. So she goes down to
visit him. He's sick, try to bring him back to Edinburgh,
and this is often a charge leveled against her that
(14:13):
she's luring him back to his death in Edinburgh. And okay,
on the one hand, yeah, in Edinburgh he's closer to
all these angry lords who want to kill him. But
on the other hand he wants to kill her, right,
So keep your enemies closer, and she does. She gets
Darnley back where she wants him and sees him installed
in kirk Afield at the old Provost lodging. She's just
(14:35):
a short walk away from him, about ten minutes, and
it's Darnley who wants to be at kirk Afield, a
collegiate church. She wanted him at a more fortified location,
but he said no. And they're always these um kind
of amazing superstitious type things surrounding Darnley in our podcast,
but a raven accompanies them back from Glasgow and was
(14:55):
seen perched on the roof of the old Provost lodging
where Darnley staying. He did not say nevermore as far
as we know, but it seems like relations between the
two are improving while he's there. She visits him daily,
they sit up late talking, She even stays over a
couple of nights. And while it's not likely that she's
rediscovered her love for him or anything, she's at least
(15:18):
trying to make a peace with him or make sure
he's not a threat to her anymore, to to demilitarize
him almost and um bring him back over to her side,
or at least just kind of calm him down so
he's not causing all this trouble. And also he's he's
an important part of her claim to the English succession.
(15:39):
A lot of um English parliament actually think that he
has a better claim than she does, so making nice
with him, especially when they have this one year old
son is a good idea, right, both personally and politically,
And as far as he goes, things are starting to
seem okay with the Lord's to they even come and
(16:00):
visit him even bothwell, ye, another charge leveled against her
is this all fake just to make her look good
when he's murdered. So as far as the night of
the murder itself goes, Mary is visiting Darnley, but she's
supposed to go to the wedding festivities of one of
her maids of honor, so she leaves um and she
(16:22):
is clear that she's not returning to the house later
at night. Darnley, I think, is a little upset about that,
but she'll be staying at holy Rood House because she
has to get up early in the morning, So after
the wedding festivities she's not going to be back. Later
that night, the house explodes and Darnley is found dead
of strangulation or maybe post explosive asphyxiation. So who are
(16:46):
our suspects in this murder, Katie, Well, we're starting off
with Darnley himself, So maybe Darnley wanted to murder some
of the lords and the Queen all in one go
and steal baby James and rule as some regent. But
the flaw in this plan is he would have had
to have expected the Queen and the lords to return
(17:06):
after the wedding mask and Mary made it quite clear
that she was going back to Holyrood House, not the
old provost lodging. Um. There's another side to the Darnley plot.
Maybe the lords discovered it and they turned the tables
on him somehow. But our prime, or at least our
most famous suspect, is Mary, and in a way there's
(17:28):
a really damning case against her right because of course
she had a very unhappy marriage with Darnley. He's a
pretty awful guy, and she took him from this strong
family base in Glasgow to Edinburgh, where of course he
was in more danger, and she had also favored bothwell,
even after he suggested murdering her husband. There's no evidence
(17:49):
to suggest they had an affair at the time, but
a lot of people thought that they did, so that's
something to keep in mind. Um. It's also likely that
these improved relations between Darnley and Mary would have eventually
led to resumed conjugal relations, which Mary obviously wouldn't have
been very enthusiastic about considering her husband was sick with syphilis.
(18:10):
And then the worst, the worst part of the evidence
is she leaves the house two hours before it explodes.
That's not going to help your case very much. But
there are a lot of flaws with with all of
this evidence, right, there's no evidence, first of all, that
Mary ever considered freeing herself from Darnley by any other
than legal means. So yeah, she was looking into annulment
(18:31):
and to divorce and even too, you know, can we
charge him with treason? Right, But she was not supporting murder.
And when she took him to Edinburgh, as we mentioned before,
it was because she knew that he was plotting against
her and she wanted him where she could keep an
eye on. So yeah, she's she's bringing him closer to
his enemies, but he's also her enemy in a way.
(18:52):
She was also hoping for a settlement on the English
succession issue and things were looking pretty rosy with that
at this time. I know Alizabeth wasn't happy with the
match between Darnley and Mary initially, but because there was
some British support of Darnley, it wasn't looking like a
bad claim anymore, So why would she kill Queen Elizabeth's cousin? Yeah? Um,
(19:16):
he only strengthens her claim. You don't want to make
Queen Elizabeth angry and bring all the suspicion on herself.
And then the point of her continuing to favor Bothwell
after he suggested murder Well, so did her her chief
advisor Maitland, and so did her bastard half brother Murray. Um.
She makes it clear to these guys that she doesn't
(19:37):
approve of murdering Darnley. But what is she going to
ditch all her nobles because they're suggesting it. Nobody in
Scotland likes Darnley and Alison Weir's book on the Darnley murder.
Her picks for a murderer are Sir William Maitland and
James Stewart or Moray, who of course was Mary, Queen
of Scott's brother, and that would rid Scotland of darn
(20:00):
Lee who was this Catholic activist, and then hopefully implicate
their enemy. James Hepburn, who we've been referring to as
Bothwell and Bothwell's actually involved in the plot himself. He's
what he's hoping to get out of it is a
marriage to Mary after Darnley's death. So I don't know
how he thinks the cards are going to fall with
the other lords, h but he's got something he wants
(20:22):
to get out of it, and the other guys are
hoping it'll all fall on him. So, rather than being
a crime of the heart, as so many in history
have painted this, Mary trying to get back at her horrible,
horrible husband we don't like him, it was really more
of a politically motivated crime. But regardless of who committed
the crime, what Mary did next did not look good
(20:46):
at all. So Bothwell is acquitted in a sham trial.
Then he kidnaps and raipes Mary after she refuses to
marry him, and then, you know, if we think of
Katherine Hepburn's, Mary Quinn of Scott's and a grand romance
between Mary and Bothwell, was there one? I mean, we
we don't know. But after he raped her, she really
(21:07):
didn't have much of a choice but to marry him,
because a pregnancy would have been far too precarious for
her crown to bear her already shaky, shaky claim to
the throne. Right, Mary Queen of Scott's cursed with a
wide variety of terrible men in her life. But Bothwell
divorces his first wife and they marry May fifteen sixty
(21:28):
seven and a Protestant ceremony. And by this point Mary
is really on the brink physically and mentally after Darnley's murder.
She doesn't seem like the adulteress who murdered her husband
to marry her lover Bothwell. She's even seen crying the
day after her wedding to Bothwell, so it doesn't seem
(21:49):
like something she's getting into willingly, no, especially if he
is this awful rapist. Clearly she doesn't want to be
in this relationship, and her husband's just been murdered, so
you have to have a little pitty for Mary Queen
of Scott's. But a coalition of Protestant and Catholic nobles
revolt after this, and um, you can you can imagine
something that actually unites the Scottish nobles must be really something. Um.
(22:14):
But the Queen's forces meet the rebels at Carberry Hill
near Edinburgh and refused to fight, so she surrenders on
the condition that Bothwell be allowed to escape. He gets
out into northern Scotland and then to Denmark, where he's
taken into custody by King Frederick the Second and after
the collapse of Mary's cause in Scotland, Bothwell is placed
(22:35):
in solitary confinement in a castle. Their marriage is annulled
in fifteen seventy and he dies in sane five years later.
Well Mary, of course, eventually flees to England and is
held captive there for eighteen years um partly based on
the Darnley Murder, and dies at the Block for plotting
against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth on February eight seven. So
(22:59):
there is oh happy ending for this story, although it
seems the case isn't entirely closed, so if you have
some ideas about what happened, please email us at History
Podcast at how stuff works dot com or check out
the blogs on the homepage at www dot how stuff
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(23:19):
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be
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