Renaissance Murders

by Michael Hone

  She was immediately assailed by suitors. Darnley, now 14, had been sent by his parents to Paris to commiserate with Mary after the death of François. Mary herself favored the son of Philip II, King of Spain, but the poor lad fell and cracked open his head, later dying insane. There was as yet no reason to favor a man like Bothwell, a known danger to virgins and virginal boys alike. Mary took up residence in Holyrood Palace and replaced drabness and foul weather with a court as French as the one she’d known in Paris. At a height of 6 feet, the Venetian ambassador said she was the greatest beauty in Europe. She must have indeed been impressive, as the average height for men was 5’ 6’’--the exact height of Bothwell.

  Since her father’s early death, Scotland had been ruled by its nobles, nobles who were Protestant, while Mary was Catholic. Little by little, as was natural, she gained in confidence and began to assert herself. Alas, her only interest was herself. She cared little for her people and was obsessed by gaining the throne of England, making a deadly enemy of Elizabeth. Elizabeth had nearly lost the throne--her half-sister Queen Mary could have ordered her death at any moment she wished--and continually feared for her survival (and rightly so). And Elizabeth’s chronic indecisiveness would plague her entire reign, all of which left her emotionally unstable. Finally, Elizabeth was intelligent, but jealous of Mary’s youth and beauty. (She nonetheless showed unbelievable patience concerning Mary throughout most of Mary’s life.)

  Only Darnley and his brother, out of eight children, survived childhood. Ancestrally, Darnley had certain rights to the throne of England, and one of Mary’s motives for marrying him may have been her need to reinforce her claim as Elizabeth’s successor. But the boy had other qualities. Unanimously said to have been ‘’beautiful’’, he had been raised in France. Intelligent, he translated Latin texts into English. Spoiled by his parents, he was also willful, insolent, petulant, arrogant and, as are many boys, vulgar, uncouth, sexually insatiable and totally devoted to himself. He was also an extreme rarity: 6’ 3’’!

  Darnley, Henry Stuart Lord

  Around this time Mary found herself a musician, an Italian David Rizzio, flutist and singer, totally devoted to her, who won her ear with his advice. He had liked Darnley from the time they first met and had advised Mary to marry the boy. Rizzio also had Darnley’s ear and more, as they became lovers, a perfect normality for Renaissance times although less so in England than in Renaissance Italy, Rizzio’s native home. Darnley was too pretty to limit himself to girls, too highly sexed for simple maidens, too sensitive in a place a woman had no hope of satisfying. The only open question is whether Rizzio had also shared Mary’s bed before her marriage, although he did Darnley’s, before and after. There was something about Rizzio’s loyalty and ability to listen and offer sound council that endeared him to those he frequented. The others, the nobles and the people, hated the effeminate foreign dandy.

  In Darnley’s disfavor was the fact of his being Catholic in a land where the lords were Protestant. He was English, therefore disliked by the Scots, and when he married Mary he was considered a traitor by Elizabeth for not receiving her consent. He was, as said, arrogant. He was known to be too friendly with the foreigner Rizzio, and because the lords hated Rizzio they automatically hated his friend Darnley.

  Darnley presented himself at his wedding far more sumptuously dressed than Mary, his doublet strewn with gems, and after the wedding he made his merry way in the company of boys ‘’out to fulfill his affections,’’ as a source put it. Mary came down from her cloud and it was from then on that the idea of Rizzio being a surrogate husband came to light. Nothing blinds more easily and conveniently than love, and Mary most likely loved Darnley until his coldness for her froze her heart. Rizzio may have genuinely loved her, as most texts concord in believing, which simply didn’t stop him, as a man and an Italian, from seeking other outlets to assuage his virility.

  Davis Rizzio

  Mary grew to even fear Darnley, whom she honored with titles and grants, but never enough to earn his gratitude. His frustration with not being her noble equal led to his slapping and beating his servants. And in the end, What kept him from being King of Scotland and heir to the English throne himself?--the thin strand of life named Mary. How easily that strand could be severed. An assassin’s dagger. One thrust. The world at last at his feet.

  Darnley and Rizzio had a falling out over the body of Mary that at least Darnley no longer--or perhaps never--wanted, but he assuredly didn’t want Rizzio to have access to it either, especially Rizzio whom he knew so well. Mary became pregnant--perhaps by Darnley, but Darnley knew too that the birth of a child would keep him forever from the throne. Rizzio certainly didn’t have it easy as he was a Catholic and therefore hated by the Protestant lords, lords who had less of a stronghold on Mary due to the ever-growing influence of Rizzio, perhaps the father, they said among themselves, of Mary’s baby. Scots were not refined killers. They wouldn’t stoop to using the famous Borgia white powder to do their dirty work for them. With dagger in hand they would see to the deed themselves. Absolutely everyone in Scotland, from the nobles to the people, felt it a political necessity to rid the country of the man who possessed Mary’s ear. Behind Darnley’s back the conspirators--120 (!) Alison Weir tells us in her wonderful and wonderfully complete book Mary Queen of Scots--worked things so that it was Darnley himself who would take the fall. For his part, Darnley lost himself in binges of drinking and whoring. In holding Darnley’s role in Mary’s death over his head, Darnley would become the nobles’ puppet, and the nobles would regain all the power and property and prerogatives they had possessed under King James V.

  It’s a fact well known by every follower of Machiavelli: the greater the enemy the closer one must keep him to one’s breast, to smother him with kindness, until he is literally smothered. Thusly did Darnley and Rizzio play tennis together the day of Rizzio’s murder, laughing and hooting because, in reality, both were still but boys, Darnley not yet 20.

  Darnley, restrained by what he felt was Mary’s obstinacy in recognizing him as co-king of Scotland, had ceased dining with her. The night of the murder, while she was enjoying a tête-à-tête with Rizzio during an intimate meal, Darnley was busy admitting the conspirators into Mary’s palace. He entered the room through a secret passage behind a tapestry, telling the surprised Mary to not be disturbed, as a husband had the right to visit his wife. But he was immediately followed by men who demanded that she render Rizzio. Rizzio rose and stepped back into a window alcove. Instinctively Mary went to him, protecting him with her body, unaware that it was she the real target. Darnley tried to pull her aside while one of the conspirators lunged forward with a dagger, so close that Mary later said she felt the blade. Rizzio was wounded in the throat and fell to his knees, holding on to Mary’s skirt, all the while begging for his life. Later still James, the son in her womb, her pregnancy so advanced that she was said to have been pregnant up to her neck, asserted that he had been told by those there that one man tried to run a sword into Mary’s extended stomach, a sword another man purposefully deflected. Another put a pistol up to her side but, swore Mary later, it refused to discharge. Why Mary wasn’t dispatched is unknown. The men perhaps took pity on her condition. Darnley pulled her towards him, perhaps feeling that she had now been frightened enough to accord him his due without having to answer for her murder. After all, at the time Mary was still highly popular among the people. Rizzio was dragged down the winding stairs behind the tapestry where a score of men awaited with drawn daggers. Still pleading, he was literally cut to ribbons by those who had witnessed months of his mincing gate, fine apparel and gifted speech. Thrown into an unmarked grave, he left History for eternity.

  Mary had indeed been frightened, but her fear would coalesce into limitless hatred, and although she would be forced to play the fool and dutiful wife, her heart was now set on revenge. Alas, the only tranquility she had known, her Parisian years, were behind her. The planets had moved into still other formation
s, the Fates would now dog her like mad Erinyes.

  It would finally dawn on Darnley that the nobles who committed the crime and who had nearly succeeded in killing the queen, had never had any intention of becoming his subjects. He suddenly realized that the woman he had wished dead was now his only hope of gaining control. He therefore conspired with her against them. In doing so they became his enemies and his ticket to martyrdom.

  With the help of Bothwell, Mary and Darnley were able to sneak out of Holyrood at night and escape to Dunbar, a sentence easy to write but how great must have been the terror that both Mary and Darnley shared. The guards placed to keep watch over both had been lightened because Mary was thought to be too near to giving birth to be able to even walk, let alone run for her life on horseback. Yet that’s just what she did, showing both ingenuity in the planning of her flight and great courage in its fulfillment.

  Nine days after Riccio’s murder, the nobles responsible had fled to England and Mary and Darnley had returned to Holyrood, accompanied by troops loyal to her, under Bothwell. Bothwell became her preferred advisor. The complotters were outlawed and their lands seized. Mary was forced to live with Darnley, but only up to the moment of her child’s birth and Darnley’s recognition of it, because if the child were ever suspected of being Riccio’s, it would never have been allowed to follow Mary as king of Scotland. During all these events Mary had corresponded with Elizabeth, Elizabeth who wore a miniature portrait of Mary on her person. How much the Protestant Elizabeth’s love for Mary was real or feigned is not known, although Elizabeth never forgot for a moment Mary’s claim to Elizabeth’s throne. And then, the Catholic Mary had some very serious backing: Pope Pius, Charles IX of France and his wondrous mother Catherine, Philip II King of Spain, among others.

  With the birth of James, Mary’s popularity exploded and the future of the realm was guaranteed. She claimed that James would unite England and Scotland, which indeed was the case, but at the time Elizabeth took her words as threats. Like a child abandoned at birth who would never ever know inner rest, Elizabeth’s fight for survival, especially against her Catholic half-sister Mary, left her emotionally unstable. For her own protection Mary relied more and more on Bothwell, while Darnley spent his nights roaming around Edinburgh, drinking and cavorting with whores and rent-boys. As he had recognized James as his own, he was no longer of any use to Mary, Mary who, once recuperated from childbirth, gave herself to whomever caught her fancy, including Bothwell. She renewed relations with Darnley, the only means of procuring legitimate children, or children recognized as such. Already James was said to have resembled half a dozen of Mary’s previous friends.

  Her liaison with Bothwell was singular in that many sources at the time claimed he had first raped her, an experience that, on reflection, she had so appreciated--after living with dainty poofs like Rizzio and Darnley--that she had sent a loyal servant to his quarters to awaken him and bring him half-naked to her. It was said of Caterina Sforza that her last husband, Giovanni de’ Medici, was perhaps the first educated man she had known. For Mary, it could perhaps be said that Bothwell was the first virile male she had known, the reason she clung to him thereafter.

  Darnley himself was in danger for a number of reasons. He threatened, unless Mary gave him more power, to leave Scotland and take up residence in France in order to live the good life, supported financially by Mary. Mary couldn’t allow this as her enemies could use him as the titular head of an army to recapture Scotland, with Darnley becoming the Scots’ new king. And what would happen if Darnley were in Paris and Mary became pregnant by another? Many nobles, who knew of Mary’s obsession for Bothwell, felt that by ridding Scotland of Darnley they would have Mary’s favor, and subsequent rewards. Others simply hated Darnley because he had gone over to Mary’s side after the death of Rizzio, for which he had been the most responsible. From various sources Mary had learned what was in store for Darnley, but she feigned ignorance, for which she was guilty of regicide. Some historians claim that Mary had been warned so that she herself could be tried later on for Darnley’s death, which would free the way for James being raised a Protestant, while during James’s minority the nobles would be all-powerful in Scotland. Anyway, Darnley was a Catholic, a religion responsible for the death of thousands of Protestants in France and elsewhere. And finally, rumors had Darnley kidnapping James, the reason why Mary had the boy taken to a secret destination.

  During this time Darnley had a horrifying outbreak of syphilis that he probably contracted in France where, at age 14 we remember, his parents had sent him to woo Mary. She was not the only person he had apparently wooed. Now his body was covered in pustules and he was wracked with pain and fever.

  As often occurs in such distant history, what happens next is conjecture, an example of which was Pope Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia who had nearly died following a banquet during which it was suggested that they both had tried to poison a certain cardinal and had inadvertently poisoned themselves. In the same way, some believe that Darnley had filled the house where he was recuperating from syphilis with powder, the plan being to lure Mary and her followers there and, taking leave for a few moments, blow her and them to kingdom come. The powder, notoriously unstable, had gone off itself while he slept, or the nobles had found out what he was preparing and had simply beat him to the punch. Both scenarios are improbable, but they illustrate the depth of our ignorance.

  Of all the nobles known to have been implicated, only Mary and Bothwell were accused at the time. They had killed Darnley, the reasoning went, because of their wish to be united in wedlock.

  At any rate, around 2 a.m. an explosion was heard, even at Holyrood where Mary slept, miles away. Three hours later the bodies of Darnley and his page were found nearly totally naked in a nearby orchard, without a mark on either body. An autopsy showed internal injuries, giving credence to the obvious conclusion that they had been thrown there by the force of the explosion. As the doctors performing the autopsy had been bribed (and their lives had most certainly been threatened), they overlooked the evident strangulation marks on both corpses.

  The guilty party was most probably Bothwell who had his servants bring powder in trunks that were stored in the room under Darnley’s bedroom. A fuse, a yard long, was said to have been used.

  Historians, criminologists and others have debated Darnley’s end ever since. As the bodies of both Darnley and his servant had no traces of powder, many suggest that both had been awoken by noise made by the perpetrators when they came to light the fuse, giving both men time to escape before the powder was lit. But unfortunately both had been seen escaping, or had been found hiding in the garden where they were then smothered or strangled to death. In order to explain Darnley’s internal injuries, it has been suggested that he fled his room by ladder, slipped on a rung, and fell to the ground.

  At any rate, the nobles’ plan worked. Bothwell would die a prisoner in exile in Denmark and Mary would be jailed by Elizabeth in England. The nobles would take power and James would be raised a Protestant.

  The follow-up can be found in the next chapter.

  THE MURDER OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

  1587

  After the assassination of Darnley, Mary hesitated to find and execute his assassins. Both Catherine de’ Medici and Elizabeth had written to her, telling Mary that if she didn’t act decisively there would be two extremely bad consequences: she would be accused of the murder and, if not guilty, all three women would nonetheless suffer from Mary’s indecisiveness, giving grounds for the belief that women were unworthy of ruling men. But Mary, so courageous in her defense of Rizzio, reverted to her real self, incapable of accepting advice--the weak spot of the weak--and incapable of analysis, Catherine de’ Medici’s strong point and Elizabeth’s too, once Elizabeth overcame her crippling hesitancy. Catherine had known Mary in Paris and didn’t care for her, Elizabeth could never forget that Mary claimed a hold on Elizabeth’s throne. No one in their right mind wanted Catherine de’
Medici for an enemy, and Catherine’s indifference to Mary amounted to such, and no one with any sense would ever try to corner Elizabeth, a cobra when eventually stirred.

  Mary’s support of her lover, Bothwell, the man who had filled the room below her husband’s with powder, would lead to her ruin. The nobles knew that against Bothwell it was a fight to the death, and the people would never pardon Mary for being nightly impregnated by the assassin of Darnley. Darnley, youthful and of fresh vigor, unjustly murdered, found, in death, a solid place in Scottish hearts.

  Mary Queen of Scots

  Bothwell was accused of Darnley’s murder and insisted on a trial to clear his name. He was given one and exonerated. There followed a strange interlude during which Mary claimed that Bothwell raped her, despite the fact that they were lovers (which, naturally, doesn’t preclude rape). Bothwell was thought to have tried to poison his wife (he had married years before meeting Mary). After all, what could be easier after killing a king than killing a woman? But his wife recovered and they divorced. Mary and he married. As Bothwell was known, by the vast majority of the Scots, as the assassin of Darnley, Mary was now guilty in the minds of nearly all of having played a role in Darnley’s death in order to be free for Bothwell.

  Catastrophes had begun the moment Mary had left the shores of France, and her descent into Hell from then on would know no respite: Hatred from Protestant nobles whose power ended with her arrival; the marriage to a boy who felt that he deserved better and grander, in his case being proclaimed King of Scotland as a first step to becoming King of England; Rizzio’s murder by the jab of a dagger that skirted Mary’s jugular; the birth of a child of disputed legitimacy; her husband blown up by her current husband; she herself raped as she had confessed in a letter to the pope; and finally her wedding and her wedding night, after which she appeared decidedly glum, perhaps because, many believed, Bothwell at last dared use her as he did his boys, anally.