Chapter 13

Stabbed Fifty-Six Times 1566

Mary Queen of Scots was not lucky in love. Her first marriage, which was arranged for her, was to the sickly Francis II of France. He died in 1560 aged sixteen, just two years after their wedding. When Mary did choose a husband of her own it would be the handsome Henry Stuart, better known as Lord Darnley, a man who could claim Tudor descent (his mother was Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII). But he would turn out to be a weak and feckless spouse who would later become convinced that Mary was having an affair with her private secretary – a man described by one contemporary as ‘hideously ugly’.

Returning to Scotland from France in 1561, 18-year-old Mary took up the throne of the nation where she had been born. Her Catholicism, set against the rise of the Protestant religion which had become dominant in her absence, put her on course for conflict with many Scottish nobles and she struggled to govern the nation amid a multitude of warring factions. Mary’s own half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was a leading Protestant and one of the most influential figures in the country. With the succession of the English throne always in question, Mary also had to tread a delicate diplomatic path with her father’s cousin Elizabeth.

By 1565, Mary is said to have become ‘bewitched’ by the charms of Lord Darnley, a sometime Catholic who was technically an English subject and cousin of Elizabeth, who also had Scottish heritage. Against the English monarch’s wishes, despite the fact that she had sent him north in the first place, Mary and Darnley were married that July. Yet, from the outset, the union was unsatisfactory. As king consort, Darnley had little interest in matters of state other than in securing his own position. As Mary tried to put down rebellious elements among her nobles, which even included Moray, Darnley spent much of his time drinking, hunting and whoring. That October, Mary fell pregnant but the relationship was already breaking down.

The increasingly arrogant Darnley now demanded to be awarded the Crown Matrimonial, meaning he would rule jointly with Mary. She refused and the relationship continued to sour as rumours circulated at court that Mary was sleeping with her hunchbacked secretary and confidante, David Riccio. A host of Scottish nobles now saw their chance to rid themselves of a troublesome Catholic queen and, despite his general unpopularity, turned to the easily-led Darnley as a useful pawn in their bid for power.

Riccio, born in about 1533, was an intriguing character. He originally came from Piedmont in Italy and, as a talented singer, had found his way into employment as one of the queen’s musicians. His cultured nature soon caught the eye of Mary, who evidently found his love of cards and music a delightful diversion from dealing with the machinations of Scottish politics. However, many of the Protestant Scottish nobles felt that, promoted to the post of queen’s secretary, Riccio was garnering too much power. Mary’s relationship with Riccio was almost certainly more cerebral than carnal but that did not stop the gossip. Darnley became jealous as suspicions flew around that Riccio was the real father of Mary’s unborn child. He and the rebels now plotted to murder Riccio, perceiving this foreigner as the symbol of everything that was wrong with Mary’s reign.

There was some discussion about how it was to be done, with one suggestion being that Riccio might be thrown overboard during a fishing expedition. Instead, Darnley demanded that the act be perpetrated in a very public manner indeed – in front of the queen herself and at her chief residence, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Darnley and the rebel lords went as far as signing a pact vowing to deal with the ‘stranger Italian called Davie’. The agreement was that following the murder, the queen would be forced to give Darnley the Crown Matrimonial and then help protect the interests of Protestants, while former rebels would be forgiven. The key conspirators were to be: the Earl of Morton; Lord Ruthven; George Douglas the postulate; Lord Lindsay; Lord Ochiltree; the Earl of Glencairn; the Earl of Rothes; Lord Boyd and the Earl of Argyll. Also joining the plotters from afar was Moray, who had fled to England the previous year.

Riccio himself was aware that his life was in danger, but when an astrologer warned him to ‘beware of the bastard’, he dismissed the threat because he thought it referred to the exiled Moray – illegitimate son of James V. Riccio decided not to flee Scotland and so the die was cast. Mary seems to have been totally unaware of the murderous scheme. What happened next unleashed a chain of events that would eventually see all the major players dead or in exile.

The murder of David Riccio, from The Murder of Rizzio, by John Opie, 1787. (Courtesy of the Guildhall Art Library)

On the evening of Saturday 9 March, the six months pregnant Mary was at her private supper chamber at Holyrood. This room, measuring just 12ft by 10ft, was part of her apartments on the second floor in the turreted northwest corner of the palace. Attending the meal were a handful of close associates, including her half-sister the Countess of Argyll, her half-brother Robert Stewart and Sir Arthur Erskine, along with some servants. Riccio was there too, dressed in a fine fur-lined damask robe, satin doublet and velvet hose.

Suddenly, at about 7pm, Darnley, who had played tennis with Riccio that very afternoon, made a surprise appearance. His rooms were below Mary’s and he entered via a private staircase and through a curtain that separated Mary’s bedroom from the dining area. He and the queen did not usually eat together. Evidently bemused, the queen asked him if he had already dined and he replied that he had, casually putting his arm around Mary, kissing her and sitting next to her at the table.

Darnley gave no sign that he had just let his co-conspirators into the palace. They had with them a 100 strong force with which to overwhelm any guards and secure all the entrances. Around twenty had been stationed on the stairway leading to Mary’s rooms. Shortly after Darnley had arrived Lord Ruthven burst into the supper room too. He must have made a striking sight, dressed in a cloak, with full armour underneath and a helmet on his head but still looking pale from an illness which, until now, had seen him laid up in bed. He told Mary that he had come to render her a service, ‘To rid you of the villain who is at the end of the table and who merits neither place nor honour. We will not be governed by a varlet.’ Another account has it that he said: ‘Let it please your majesty that yonder man David come forth of your privy-chamber where he hath been overlong.’

Mary demanded to know what offence Riccio had committed and Ruthven replied that, ‘he had offended your honour which I dare not be so bold as to speak of.’ The implication was obvious. The reason for Darnley’s visit must now have become clear to Mary – that he was involved in a dastardly plan to seize Riccio. Remaining remarkably composed, she offered that if Riccio had done wrong then the matter could more properly be dealt with before Parliament.

Ruthven ignored her and ordered Darnley to take hold of Mary, drawing his dagger. Some of those present tried to lunge towards Ruthven but he held them back saying, ‘Lay no hands on me for I will not be handled.’ More conspirators, Andrew Ker of Fawdonside, Patrick Bellenden, George Douglas, Thomas Scott and Henry Yair rushed in to aid him, brandishing blades and pistols.

In the ensuing commotion the table and most of the candles were knocked over. In the eerie gloom a cowering Riccio rushed to hide behind the queen herself, clinging to her dress. Fawdonside then pointed a pistol at Mary’s bulging belly to which she is reported to have bellowed, ‘Fire if you have no care for the child I carry in my womb.’

The distraught Riccio, now pleading with the queen to help save his life, is said to have been stabbed over Mary’s shoulder, so close that she could actually feel the ‘coldness of the steel’ on her throat. Eventually wrestled from Mary’s skirts, Riccio was dragged out of the room where more dagger wounds were inflicted on his body by countless conspirators, the secretary dying either in Mary’s own bedroom or on the staircase where others rushed forward eager to land a blow.

It’s thought that the first deadly thrust came from George Douglas, the illegitimate brother of the Earl of Morton, thus fulfilling the astrologer’s earlier prophecy to Riccio. Douglas is said to have grabbed Darnley’s own dagger to plunge into the Italian’s body, leaving it sticking out of the side for all to see, so ensuring that the king would be complicit in the crime. Darnley himself had stayed behind in the supper room still restraining Mary, who feared that she too might now be murdered.

Riccio’s lifeless corpse was thrown down to the bottom of the stairs and taken to the porters’ lodge, where the fine clothes were ruthlessly stripped from it. His corpse was then unceremoniously buried in the graveyard attached to Holyrood Abbey.

After the murder, Mary was confined to her rooms and demanded to know of Darnley why he had orchestrated the ‘wicked deed’. Darnley retorted that he felt usurped by Riccio. Meanwhile, an angry and armed crowd of local citizens had assembled outside the palace wanting to know what had happened. Fearing that the conspiracy might now unravel, Lindsay threatened Mary that she would be ‘cut into collops’ if she spoke to them. Instead Darnley appeared to reassure the mob that all was well and they dispersed. When Mary was later told that Riccio was definitely dead she vowed, ‘No more tears, I will think upon a revenge.’

Mary was confined to her rooms. But by the next morning she had come up with a plan in the name of self-preservation and to protect her unborn child’s claim to the throne. When a frightened Darnley came to her the next morning, worried that he could not trust the conspirators after all, she got him to tell her everything he knew about the plot. Slowly she managed to persuade Darnley that his best course of action was to pin his hopes on her fortunes, rather than of those with whom he had just colluded.

In the meantime, everything had not gone quite to plan for the conspirators. In all the commotion of the previous evening, and despite the palace being surrounded, two of Mary’s then allies, the Earl of Bothwell and the Earl of Huntly, expecting to go the same way as Riccio, had managed to escape Holyrood – via the lion pit! The quick-thinking Mary now planned a similarly daring escape for herself and Darnley. By that Monday, she had led the conspirators to believe that she would forgive them for Riccio’s death and co-operate with their demands. Then, using her pregnancy to feign illness, she retired to her rooms but not before managing to secure the help of a few loyal supporters. That night, she and Darnley managed to escape out of the private staircase at the back of the building and through some servants’ quarters. On the way out they passed the very spot where Riccio had just been buried. Darnley apparently paused long enough to regret his killing, before he and Mary rendezvoused with a small escape party who were waiting for them with horses. After a five hour journey, they arrived at Dunbar Castle where Mary began planning what course of action to take next, writing a letter to Elizabeth describing the slaying of her ‘special servant’. Reunited with Bothwell, Mary was able to rally more supporters among the nobility and within the space of just a few days had victoriously re-entered Edinburgh at the head of a large army. Darnley was at her side. Having been out-manoeuvred, most of the conspirators fled Scotland with Darnley declaring, ‘As they have brewen so let them drink’. With bravado he issued a public proclamation that he’d personally had nothing to do with the murder plot.

The fate of the conspirators was mixed. A few were pardoned and Mary made her peace with Moray but upwards of sixty of the conspirators were declared outlaws and their lands confiscated. Morton and Ker escaped to England as did Ruthven, who wrote his own account of the murder before dying of natural causes that June in Newcastle. Just two individuals would actually be executed for their part in the murder:Thomas Scott, a man who was supposed to have had the job of protecting Mary at Holyrood and Henry Yair, who, not content with his part in the bloody end of Riccio, had promptly gone off and stabbed to death Adam Black, a friar. Yair and Scott were hanged, drawn and quartered.

Had the conspirators meant to kill Mary too? They certainly hadn’t taken too much care of her safety on the night, but the intention was probably that with the death of Riccio she could be brought to heel. Mary herself always believed that her life had been in peril on that day, later telling Darnley: ‘I have forgiven but will never forget! What if Fawdonside’s pistol had shot, what would become of him and me both?’ In time, Darnley would certainly get his comeuppance.

For a while Mary wrestled back full control of her nation and, on 19 June 1566 her son was born. He would go on to become James VI of Scotland and James I of England, but never quite shook off the taunts that he was actually Riccio’s son, not Darnley’s.

Portrait of Mary Queen of Scots by Jacobus Houbraken including a scene from her execution in February, 1587. (Courtesy Wellcome Library, London)