Mary, Queen of Scots (9 page)

Edinburgh was abuzz, however, with speculation as to the meaning of the ghostly warriors that had been heard fighting in the streets at midnight on the three nights before Darnley’s arrival. In a superstitious and credulous age, many regarded them as a warning of what the young Lord’s coming portended for Scotland and its Queen.

“A HANDSOME, LUSTY YOUTH”

HENRY STUART WAS THE SECOND of the eight children born to the Earl and Countess of Lennox, and was named after his august godfather, King Henry VIII, and for an older brother who had died in infancy.
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The name Darnley came from one of the Lennox estates near Glasgow: Lord Darnley was the courtesy title borne by the eldest son of the Earl of Lennox, according to English usage; in Scotland, Darnley would have been styled the Master of Lennox.

There is conflicting evidence for his date of birth, which is traditionally given as 7 December 1545, yet the continuator of Knox’s history states that he was not yet twenty-one at the time of his death in February 1567, and in March 1566, Queen Mary’s own messenger to the Cardinal of Lorraine stated that Darnley was then nineteen.
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It is likely, therefore, that he had been born on 7 December 1546.

Darnley first saw the light of day, and spent most of his youth, at his parents’ Yorkshire seat, Temple Newsham House, near Leeds, a mansion dating from about 1520, which had been given by Henry VIII to the Lennoxes at the time of their marriage. The house has been much altered since then, but some diapered Tudor brickwork survives on the west front, where the great chamber and main apartments were probably sited in Darnley’s day. The rest of the house dates mainly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An inventory of 1565 refers to “Lord Darnley’s Chamber,” in which there were tapestries with scenes of hunting and hawking and “one bedstead with gilt posts”; it also reveals that a portrait of Darnley hung in the great chamber alongside others depicting Henry VIII, Mary I, Philip of Spain and the Countess of Lennox.
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Of all the children born to the Lennoxes, only two, Henry and Charles (who was born c. 1555/6), survived infancy,
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therefore Darnley was especially precious to his parents, both of whom doted on him, spoiled him and invested their dynastic hopes in him. Near in blood to the sovereigns of England and Scotland, he was given a Renaissance education befitting a royal prince, and grew up to be just as ambitious as his mother and father, and believing that he was destined for a crown.

Darnley was reared in England as a Roman Catholic. In 1554, aged about eight, he wrote a courteous letter to Mary I, declaring that he wished his “tender years” had not prevented him from fighting against her rebels, and asking her to accept “a little plot of my own planning” called “Utopia Nova.” For his pains, the Queen rewarded him with a gold chain, for which he sent a charming note of thanks. The Lennoxes had rather hoped that she would name Darnley her heir, but were destined to be disappointed.

In 1559, after the Lennoxes had fallen from favour on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Darnley was sent to France to complete his education, and was much praised there for his accomplishments. At some stage, he is said to have translated the works of the classical Roman author Valerius Maximus from Latin into English.

All accounts agree that Darnley was outstandingly good looking. According to Castelnau, it was “not possible to see a more beautiful prince,”
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while Buchanan called Darnley “the most handsome of our time.” He was certainly tall; analysis of a femur alleged on good grounds to be his (now in the museum of the Royal College of Physicians) suggests that his height was between 6’1’’ and 6’3’’,
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which was exceptional in an age in which the average man’s height was at most 5’6’’, and made him a fitting match for the Queen of Scots, who was herself about six feet tall. Darnley had a slim, strong athletic physique, honed by the sports in which he excelled. He had cropped fair curly hair and a clean-shaven and handsome, if rather effeminate, face; later, he grew a short beard and moustache.

Darnley was accomplished in all the traditional aristocratic pursuits. He was a gifted lute player, a good dancer, a poet and a man of letters who was proficient in Latin and French,
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and a keen and expert sportsman, skilled at swordplay, shooting, horsemanship, hunting, hawking, tennis, golf and pell-mell (croquet). He had a certain charm, was well versed in courtly manners, and was described by Randolph as “a fair, jolly young man.”
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“He could speak and write well, and was bountiful and liberal enough.”
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Indeed, he seemed “an amiable youth,”
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and his courtesy and his good looks invariably made a favourable impression on those who met him.
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Yet there was another side to Darnley, the side that was only revealed when he was bored or thwarted, and to which his loving parents were blind. For beneath the courtly veneer, he was spoilt, wilful, petulant, immature and, at his worst, grossly uncouth. And for all his careful education, he lacked intelligence, depth and sound judgement. Unreliable and unstable, with a quick, violent temper, he was “haughty, proud and so very weak in mind as to be a prey to all that came about him. He was inconstant, credulous and facile, unable to abide by any resolutions, capable to be imposed upon by designing men, and could conceal no secret, let it be either to his own welfare or detriment.”
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His kinsman Morton said of him that “he was such a bairn that there was nothing told him but he would reveal it,” while Melville states that he told everything to his servants, “who were not all honest.”

Throughout his adult life, Darnley made enemies not only because of his arrogance and treachery, but also through his innate selfishness, stupidity and sheer tactlessness, he being “naturally of a very insolent disposition.”
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To those who opposed him, he could be ruthless, vengeful and vicious. His expenditure on clothes shows him to have been inordinately vain, and he was also something of a gourmet. He was sexually promiscuous, “much addicted to base and unmanly pleasures”
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and excessively given to drink. His friends were mostly young men who exerted a bad influence over him. All things considered, it is hard to find much to say in extenuation, except that he was young and inexperienced, and lacked “good counsel.”
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And when illness and adversity eventually forced him to grow up, acknowledge his shortcomings and try to reform, it was by then far too late.

Such was the young man who arrived in Scotland in February 1565 to woo the unsuspecting Queen of Scots.

“MOST UNWORTHY TO BE MATCHED”

AT THE TIME OF DARNLEY’S arrival in Scotland, Mary and her court were on a progress in Fife, whither he was obliged to follow them in snowy weather. On Saturday, 17 February, Mary received him at Wemyss Castle, a pink sandstone fortress overlooking the Firth of Forth. Randolph, still hoping that she would accept Leicester, reported that the Queen welcomed Darnley with no more than the courtesy due to a cousin, but Melville wrote later, “Her Majesty took well with him and said that he was the lustiest and best proportioned long [tall] man that she had seen.”
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Lennox later claimed that, as soon as she saw Darnley, she was “struck with the dart of love,”
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but there is no other evidence for this.

Few of the Protestant Lords welcomed the arrival of the reputedly Catholic Darnley, and on 19 February, Randolph reported that Glencairn and Darnley’s cousin Morton “much misliked him and wished him away.” Later, Lady Lennox secured Morton’s support with her renunciation of her claim to the earldom of Angus in Morton’s favour, and in the hope of buying friendship, Darnley himself distributed expensive gifts of jewellery to the chief Lords.

On 18 February, Mary left Wemyss Castle for Dunfermline, while Darnley visited his father, Lennox, at Dunkeld before riding south to rejoin the progress. On 24 February, he crossed the Forth with Mary and returned to Edinburgh,
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and thereafter remained with the court, high in favour with the Queen.

On the day after his arrival at Holyrood, Darnley accompanied Moray to St. Giles’s Kirk to hear Knox preach, intent on earning the support of the Earl, in which he was initially successful. Afterwards, he dined with Moray and Randolph, and that evening, at Moray’s suggestion, partnered the Queen in a galliard. Mary later recalled that Moray was at this time in favour of a match with Darnley, if only to thwart the dynastic ambitions of the Hamiltons.
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Darnley’s visit to St. Giles was meant to allay the fears of the Protestants, yet he also attended Mass with the Queen in the chapel royal. For Darnley, religion was a matter of policy, as it was for his father. Although brought up a Catholic, at Queen Elizabeth’s court he had practised the reformed faith because it was expedient to do so. He was now prepared to follow both doctrines in order to retain the favour of Queen Mary and her nobles. His contemporaries thought he was “indifferent to religion,”
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and indeed there is little evidence that he had any deep spiritual convictions.

Darnley’s willingness to compromise on religion went some way towards placating those who had been hostile to him. “A great number wish him well,” wrote Randolph, but “others doubt him, and deeplier consider what is fit for the state of their country than a fair, jolly young man.” Some feared that, if Darnley married the Queen, “it would be the utter overthrow and subversion of them and their Houses.”
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It was not so much his religion that was the stumbling block, as the fact that he was a Lennox Stuart, and a rival of the powerful Hamilton faction.

Darnley, meanwhile, was enjoying the pleasures of the court and the Queen’s company. He set himself to charm her by his lute playing and dancing, and made friends with Rizzio. Darnley and Mary shared a passion for riding and hunting, and in the evenings they enjoyed cards, dice and music. Mary was certainly taken with Darnley, but she was still prepared to marry Leicester if Elizabeth, in return, would name her as her successor. Randolph believed that Mary’s favour to Darnley and her long talks with him proceeded “rather from her own courteous nature than that anything is meant which some here fear may ensue”; yet he conceded that Mary’s emotions were unpredictable, “seeing she is a woman and in all things desires to have her own will.”

So far, according to Randolph, Darnley’s behaviour was “well liked, and hitherto he so governs himself that there is great praise of him.” Buoyed up with his success, he precipitately proposed marriage to Mary, only to be coldly turned down. After she told Melville “how she had refused the ring which he offered unto her,” Melville “took occasion to speak in Darnley’s favour, that their marriage would put out of doubt their title to the succession.”
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Rizzio also added his persuasions, but to no avail.

Before 5 March, to the dismay of Moray and the Protestant Lords, Bothwell returned to Scotland. Randolph reported that Mary “mislikes his home-coming without her licence,”
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but when Bothwell, from the security of Hermitage Castle, sent his friend, Sir William Murray of Tullibardine, to plead his cause with the Queen, she listened sympathetically and declared that “she could not hate him.” Moray, however, insisted that Bothwell was plotting to kill him and Maitland,
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and demanded that he be “put to the horn” (i.e., outlawed). But although Mary told Randolph that Bothwell would never receive favour at her hands, the Earl of Bedford, from his vantage point at Berwick, believed that she would not permit him to be exiled.

Moray and Randolph now got two of Bothwell’s enemies, Sir James Murray of Purdovis, brother of Tullibardine, and the Earl’s former servant, Dandie Pringle, who was now employed by Moray, to tell Mary that, whilst in France, Bothwell had “spoken dishonourably of the Queen,” claiming that between them, she and Queen Elizabeth “would not make one honest woman”; as for Mary, she had been her uncle “the Cardinal’s whore.”
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What Bothwell had allegedly said was not only a dreadful slur on Mary’s honour, but also high treason, and the Queen, shocked, willingly agreed to Moray’s demand that the Earl be summoned to Edinburgh to face trial.
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For many months now, Mary had been urging Elizabeth to proclaim her her heir. If marriage to Leicester was the price, then Mary was prepared to pay it. On 16 March, Randolph finally delivered Elizabeth’s answer, sent ten days earlier, which was that, if Mary agreed to marry Leicester, Elizabeth would advance her title to the succession in every way that she could, but she “could not gratify her desire to have her title determined and published until she be married herself, or determined not to marry.”

It was a bitter blow. Too late, Mary saw that she had been duped. In a passion, she “wept her fill” and “used evil speech” of Elizabeth, complaining that she had “abused” her, deceiving her with vain hopes and wasting her time to no purpose.
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After this, there was no more talk of the Leicester marriage, and no longer a pressing need to keep Elizabeth sweet.

While Moray and Maitland simmered with anger, Mary did “nothing but weep,” reported Randolph. He espied her crying as she watched Darnley and her half-brother, Lord Robert Stewart, running at the ring on Leith Sands, and noticed there was “much sadness in her looks.” It seemed that her hopes must now be invested in Darnley, which is what Elizabeth had perhaps intended when she effectively scuppered the match with Leicester.

Darnley was about to alienate his most important ally. When Lord Robert Stewart showed him a map of Scotland and pointed out the extent of Moray’s vast estates, Darnley tactlessly remarked “that it was too much.” Moray, hearing of this, was mightily offended and complained to the Queen. Mary made Darnley apologise, but it was too late,
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for Moray, alarmed, had realised that, if Darnley became King, he would almost certainly try to curb Moray’s power and encourage Mary to free herself from his tutelage. From this time onwards, therefore, Moray was Darnley’s enemy, and, in concert with Maitland, Argyll and Chatelherault, strongly opposed any plan for his marriage to Mary, having no intention of allowing his political supremacy, built up over six years, to be eroded. According to Bothwell, “these villains did all they could to stop her, chiefly because they wanted above everything else to prevent her having any children, but also because they wanted no one else to challenge their authority. They realised well enough that any such marriage could only diminish their own influence.”
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Significantly, Bothwell makes no mention of the Lords acting in the interests of the reformed faith.

As yet, it was by no means certain that Darnley was Mary’s first choice as a husband. On 24 March, she again attempted to revive negotiations for a union with Don Carlos,
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but at the same time, aware that there was little hope of success, she agonised over whether or not she should take Darnley. “What to do, or wherein to resolve, she is marvellously in doubt,” Randolph wrote on 27 March.

Rizzio, whose influence at this time should never be underestimated, was strongly in favour of a match with Darnley. Rizzio was now Mary’s most valued counsellor, and any lord who sought an audience with her had to approach him first, for he controlled access to her. Arrogant, boastful and open to bribery, he swaggered about the court dressed in rich velvets and silks, incurring enmity on all sides. “Some of the nobility would gloom upon him, and some of them would shoulder him and push him aside when they entered the chamber and found him always speaking with Her Majesty,” recalled Melville, who tried to warn Rizzio of the folly of his conduct, only to be told that the Queen approved of it. Melville gently attempted to alert Mary to “the inconveniences I did clearly foresee would inevitably follow if she did not alter her carriage to Rizzio, a stranger, and one suspected by her subjects to be a pensioner of the Pope,” yet she insisted she would not be restrained but would “dispense her favours to such as she pleased.” Melville reminded her “what displeasure had been procured to her by the rash behaviour” of Chastelard. “I told Her Majesty that a grave and comely behaviour towards strangers, not admitting them to too much familiarity, would bring them to a more circumspect and reverend carriage.” Once the hearts of her subjects were lost, they might never be regained. Mary thanked him for his advice, but ignored it.
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Given the hatred of the Lords, it was in Rizzio’s interests to secure the friendship and patronage of Darnley and further the latter’s prospects of becoming King. According to Randolph,
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Rizzio was one of “the chief dealers” in negotiations for the Darnley marriage—the other was Melville—and Buchanan says Rizzio “was also assiduous in sowing seeds of discord between [Darnley] and Moray.”

Before long, Rizzio had become Darnley’s “great friend at the Queen’s hand.”
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It was a friendship of mutual self-interest, for Darnley too needed an advocate, and it was also very warm, for Rizzio, having persuaded Darnley “that it was chiefly by his good offices that the Queen had become attracted to him,” was admitted to Darnley’s “table, his chamber and his most secret thoughts.”
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On occasions, the two men would “lie in one bed together.”
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This and other evidence, which will be considered later, suggests that the effeminate-looking Darnley, although he certainly chased women, did have bisexual tendencies, which he may have indulged with Rizzio.

Randolph had thought by now to see evidence as to whether or not Mary was attracted to Darnley, but although he wondered “what alteration the sight of so fair a face daily in presence may work on the Queen’s heart, hitherto I have espied nothing. I am somewhat suspicious.”

Moray was unable to stomach the triangular relationship between Mary, Darnley and Rizzio. He too was suspicious of the fact that all three were Catholics, and believed that they were plotting to undermine not only his own position, but also the reformed Church. On 3 April, he withdrew from court on the pretext that he did not wish to witness the “ungodly” Catholic ceremonies that the Queen would observe at Easter.
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Mary was irritated by his disapproval, but, freed from his constant unwelcome advice, realised she would have scope to act independently.

The court now moved north to Stirling Castle, a mighty fortress commanding access to the Highlands. Set upon a steep rock, the castle boasted strong mediaeval defences, but within its walls was a magnificent great hall, erected by James IV, and a luxurious Renaissance palace that had been built by James V in c. 1538–42 and embellished by French and Italian craftsmen. The Queen’s apartments boasted large windows, decorated stone fireplaces and a ceiling adorned with carved oak roundels known as the Stirling Heads, many of which survive today. The castle was surrounded with ornamental gardens and a hunting park stocked with deer, boar and wild cattle.

On 5 April, soon after arriving at Stirling, Darnley fell ill with a feverish cold and took to his bed; within two days, “measles came out on him marvellous thick.”
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Mary insisted on helping to nurse him back to health, regardless of the threat of infection; there was shocked amazement in European diplomatic circles when it became known that she had spent an entire night in Darnley’s sickroom,
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notwithstanding the fact that she had “showed herself very careful and anxious about his malady,” although it was conceded that “her care was marvellous, great and tender over him.”
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Darnley’s illness marked a turning point in his relationship with Mary, for it inspired in her first sympathy and then something deeper, and made her realise that she did indeed wish to marry him. Melville says that she tried at first to suppress her feelings, but that it was not long before she was so infatuated that she could not bear to be apart from Darnley. “Great tokens of love daily pass” between them, reported Randolph, but it was clear Mary had become entranced by a “fantasy of a man, without regard to his tastes, manners or estate,”
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in consequence of which she was throwing propriety and discretion to the winds.

Love, or perhaps lust, blinded her to other concerns, not the least of which was the scandal her behaviour was causing, and she was unwilling to listen to those Lords who cautioned her against the marriage, urging that it could only bring discord and divisions to Scotland. Nor would she heed those who warned her that Darnley was not all that he seemed. For him, she would defy Moray, Maitland, Knox, the Hamiltons and even Queen Elizabeth, jeopardising her long-cherished hopes of the English succession. As she began to lavish gifts on Darnley—rich materials for clothing, hats, shoes, shirts, ruffs, nightcaps, trappings of cloth of gold for his horse, feathered bonnets for his fools—the courts of Europe began to bristle with scurrilous rumours and disapproval of a queen thus compromising her reputation.