Chapter 14

A Royal Corpse Under a Pear Tree 1567

Lord Darnley, the great-grandson of Henry VII, was once described by his wife, Mary Queen of Scots as the ‘lustiest and best proportioned long man’ she had ever seen. When it came to the calibre of his political acumen however he was sorely deficient. Within months of their marriage he had begun plotting against Mary and been party to the murder of her private secretary, David Riccio, in March, 1566. Mary had shrewdly taken Darnley back afterwards to bolster her own position but she would never trust him again and within months his own life would be in danger.

After the death of Riccio, some of the conspirators who had fled Scotland sent Mary a copy of the bond which Darnley had signed, proving his part in the planning of the murder. This act of revenge, in retaliation for Darnley switching loyalties in the aftermath of the incident, could have left Mary in no doubt about his complicity. However, for reasons of political expediency she appeared to make a show of reconciliation with her husband, partly to ensure that her child, the future James VI, who was born that June, would be seen as a legitimate heir. Despite his weakened position Darnley demanded again that he rule as an equal, a position which Mary continued to deny him. Meanwhile she became closer to the pugnacious James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, who became her chief military adviser and just possibly her lover too. Mary almost certainly couldn’t bring herself to sleep with Darnley. Still aged only twenty, he sulked and was soon back to his bad old habits, drinking and carousing, even refusing to turn up to James’ lavish baptism in December 1566 at Stirling Castle. During the course of the year, Mary had made peace with some of the rebels involved in the Riccio plot, including her own halfbrother Moray and the Earls of Argyll and Glencairn but the deeply unpopular Darnley was increasingly seen as a problem by many of the lords, even those who were at loggerheads with each other.

Towards the end of 1566, a group of leading figures approached the queen at Craigmillar Castle, just outside Edinburgh, suggesting that a divorce from Darnley might be arranged, if she would pardon the remaining Ricco conspirators, including the Earl of Morton. Speed was of the essence they felt, or Darnley himself might take some dangerous course of action. The queen seemed open to their suggestions but insisted that any annulment or divorce should not threaten the legitimacy of her son. In one version of this meeting, William Maitland of Lethington reassured the queen not to worry and that they would ‘find the means’ to get rid of Darnley while Moray would ‘look through his fingers’ – the implication being that he would not stand in the way. Mary replied sharply that she hoped they would do ‘nothing through which any spot may be laid upon mine honour’. Maitland suggested that she should allow them to ‘guide the matter among us and your Grace shall see nothing but good and approved by Parliament.’

Like most aspects of Darnley’s murder, the exact truth of what was discussed remains disputed but it seems that no explicit agreement was made with Mary. Yet, on Christmas Eve, Morton was duly pardoned along with another seventy accomplices from the Riccio murder. It is claimed that he, along with other nobles, such as Maitland, Bothwell, Argyll as well as the Earl of Huntly and the lawyer James Balfour, then drew up a bond by which they vowed that Darnley should be ‘put off by one way or another’.

Realising he was now in some danger, Darnley went to stay with his relations in Glasgow but fell ill, probably with syphilis. Then, in January, Mary intervened. She went to Glasgow and brought Darnley back to Edinburgh – ostensibly so that he could convalesce from his illness near her. By 1 February he was housed, not at Craigmillar as Mary had initially wanted, but at a modest two storey building owned by Balfour’s brother, known as the Old Provost’s house in the church quadrangle at Kirk o’ Field. The location, which Darnley preferred, was just inside the city wall. It was less than a mile from Holyrood, where Mary was in residence, though in the following days she often stayed the night at the house, overseeing Darnley’s care.

On 9 February, Mary attended a wedding during the day then visited Darnley with some members of her court. Later that evening, she abruptly returned to Holyrood for a masque. It was the last time she was to see Darnley alive. At two o’clock that night a huge explosion rocked the city. The noise was so loud that some citizens thought they’d heard cannon fire. Those who arrived on the scene first saw that the whole of the old Provost’s house had been ripped apart and was now in ruins. Two dead bodies were soon discovered in the rubble but it was not until three hours later that Darnley and another servant called Taylor were found lying some sixty feet away in an orchard outside the town wall. Both were naked apart from their nightgowns and the king was under a pear tree, his hand draped across his genitals. Strangely there were no marks on him, or his servant, yet they were both quite clearly dead. Alongside Darnley was a cloak, a chair, a dagger and some rope.

Initial witnesses said that a group of men had been seen acting suspiciously near the house before the explosion and some neighbours claimed they had heard a man cry out plaintively, ‘pity me kinsmen’ in the early hours. The alarm was raised at Holyrood where the queen was said to be shocked, vowed to find the perpetrators and let it be known that she felt the murderers had aimed to kill her as well. Meanwhile, in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, members of the watch arrested a man lurking at the scene called William Blackadder, an associate of Bothwell. He claimed to have merely been drinking nearby and had come to see what all the commotion was about.

Ironically, it was Bothwell, the man who was to be most people’s chief suspect for the murder, who began investigating the crime searching the scene and collecting evidence, though at one point he seems to have claimed that a thunderbolt had destroyed the house.

It was soon evident to everyone that a massive quantity of gunpowder had been used to blow it sky high. This had somehow been smuggled into the cellar or lower rooms of the house on the day of the murder, in which case Mary might well have had a lucky escape. Yet the lack of marks on Darnley’s body suggested that he had almost certainly not died in the explosion itself. Instead, he had probably been smothered or strangled. The theory goes that Darnley woke in the middle of the night, disturbed by the noise of something untoward going on or had even seen shadowy figures smuggling gunpowder into the cellar. He had tried to flee the scene, perhaps using the chair and rope but been spotted and caught. One account claimed that Darnley was choked to death in a stable with a serviette in his mouth before being left under the tree.

In the days that followed, the Privy Council offered a reward of £2,000 for information that would lead them to the murderers. The citizens of Edinburgh, however, soon came to their own conclusion blaming Bothwell and even Mary, with placards erected across the city to that effect. When Elizabeth heard the news of Darnley’s death, she wrote to Mary warning her cousin not to ‘look through your fingers’ in pursuing those responsible, in an echo of Maitland’s words about Moray.

A sketch showing Kirk o’ Field, where Lord Darnley was murdered. It was drawn in 1567 to help explain events to Elizabeth I. (Courtesy Wellcome Library, London)

Claims from Lord Lennox, Darnley’s father, that Bothwell was indeed to blame eventually pressured Mary into allowing a specially convened trial that April. The shambolic proceedings saw Bothwell turn up with 200 supporters. No proper evidence was submitted and Lennox was stopped from attending. Unsurprisingly Bothwell was acquitted.

Bothwell now launched his own audacious bid for power, organising a new bond at an Edinburgh tavern where he encouraged many of the nation’s nobles to sign up to the idea that he should step in to the void and become Mary’s husband. With breath-taking swagger, he next abducted Mary and took her to Dunbar Castle where it is claimed he raped her. Having hurriedly divorced his own wife, Bothwell returned with Mary to the capital and left many astonished when they were duly married on 15 May.

By now, however, Bothwell had overreached himself. Many of his former allies including Maitland and Morton turned against him. An army was raised, carrying banners that featured the dead body of Darnley himself and at Carberry Hill on 15 June, Mary was taken prisoner, while Bothwell escaped, going into exile. The queen was forced to abdicate in favour of her son and despite escaping imprisonment soon ended up fleeing to England.

This rapid turn of events had rather obscured the question of just who had murdered Darnley. A selection of Bothwell’s henchmen were arrested, but their depositions, perhaps extracted under torture, were often contradictory and only tended to muddy the picture of what had actually happened at Kirk o’ Field. The first to be found guilty, despite his protestations of innocence was Blackadder, hanged drawn and quartered in June 1567, with various body parts sent to towns across Scotland for prominent display. In January 1568, William Powrie, the man alleged to have masterminded the bringing of the gunpowder up to Kirk o’ Field went to the gallows. Three other men, George Dalgleish, John Hepburn and John Hay were also sentenced to death. Hay implicated Bothwell and another servant, Nicholas Haubert, who stated that Bothwell had revealed to him the plot to kill Darnley in the days before the murder. Haubert said that he had actually delivered the keys of the house in question to Bothwell. Haubert was executed in August 1569 and another of Bothwell’s associates, known as Black Ormiston, was put to death in 1573. Just how the gunpowder got into the house or where exactly it came from remains a puzzle. Whose was the dagger? What we can be certain about is that the plot was rather poorly conceived and did not quite go according to plan.

Bothwell was an aggressive individual, prone to outbursts of violence and it seems easy to assume that he was, at least in part, responsible. He may well have been part of a wider conspiracy involving the likes of Morton, who later became regent. Morton was executed in 1581 after he was eventually found guilty of being involved in Darnley’s murder and in his confession said that Bothwell was one of the chief planners of the crime. By this time the truth had become shrouded in claim and counterclaim and accusations of being involved were being used as a convenient tool by whichever faction was prevailing politically to try and vanquish their opponents. Thus Archibald Douglas, who supposedly left his shoe at the scene of the crime, was tried but then acquitted while his servant was found guilty and executed. Balfour was also accused and acquitted.

The truth is that Darnley had no shortage of enemies; there were plenty of people who wanted him dead. The so called Craigmillar Bond, which Mary claimed to have seen, might have proved their complicity but, had it ever existed as an actual document, it was almost certainly destroyed in order to protect its signatories upon her capture.

There have been countless theories about what happened on the night of Darnley’s death and even a wild idea that Darnley had actually meant to blow up the queen using the gunpowder and accidentally blown up himself instead. The biggest question that has faced historians is the degree to which Mary might have been involved in her husband’s murder. The accusation gained weight with the ‘discovery’ of the so called Casket Letters. These were made public by Moray, who had slipped out of Scotland after Darnley’s murder and returned to become regent after Mary’s abdication. The letters were alleged to demonstrate a love affair between Bothwell and Mary that predated Darnley’s murder. In one missive she is supposed to have said: ‘Cursed be this poxy fellow that troubeleth me this much.’ Many people believe the Casket letters to have been forged or tampered with. Even if they are not genuine, Mary may still have lured Darnley back to Edinburgh and, knowing he was to be murdered, lodged him separately, so he could be efficiently dealt with by others who shared an interest in seeing him dead. On 9 February, Mary had conveniently left Darnley just before the building was blown up. One account even has her dressing in men’s clothing so she could creep back out of the palace and watch the murder unfold. On the other hand, maybe Mary just wanted to bring Darnley back to Edinburgh to stop him working up a rebellion of his own and may have, as she herself pointed out, only just avoided death by the skin of her teeth. Mary is unlikely to have shed too many tears at Darnley’s death and even seen it as sweet justice for what happened to Riccio. Yet it seems, rather than being directly involved, she simply turned a blind eye to the scheming of Bothwell and other nobles.

If Mary had been instrumental in the removal of Darnley it certainly didn’t help her secure her throne as she might have hoped. Instead, his death plunged her reign into a desperate downward spiral. In 1568, both Bothwell (in his absence) and Mary, now a prisoner in England, faced investigation by Elizabeth’s government for Darnley’s murder, with the Casket Letters produced in evidence. Bothwell died in prison in Denmark while judgement on Mary was simply suspended. She was kept in custody for the next eighteen years. Then, on 8 February 1587, she was executed at Fotheringhay Castle, having been found guilty of plotting to kill Elizabeth. By this time, following the tenure of four separate regents, her son James VI had taken up the reins of power in Scotland. In time he would, of course, become king of England too, escaping the kind of ‘gunpowder treason and plot’ to which his father had succumbed when Guy Fawkes’ bid to blow up the English Parliament was foiled in 1605.

James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, as a child praying for his murdered father in a propaganda painting intending to show Queen Mary as the villain. Engraving by George Vertue, after The Memorial of Lord Darnley, Livinus de Vogelaare, 1567. (Courtesy Wellcome Library, London)