At Holyrood the acquaintance between the Queen and the daring general quickly ripened into love and intimacy, although the Queen took great care at first to conceal the new passion which had taken possession of her inflammable heart, even from her closest friends. But while these efforts on the part of the Queen may have been successful in deceiving her intimate friends, there were always eyes turned upon her which were not so easily deceived,—and these eyes were those of the ambassadors of England, France, and Spain accredited at her court. They watched her conduct very attentively, and almost simultaneously reported to their sovereigns the nascent favor with which the Queen looked upon Bothwell, and the growing coldness which became noticeable between her and Darnley. It was only a serious accident, which befell Bothwell soon afterwards and which imperilled his life for several days, that revealed the new passion of the Queen to the whole court and placed the new favorite at the head of the government, with similar honors and similar powers to those previously showered on Rizzio.
We are neither writing a personal history of Queen Mary, nor a political history of her reign; we are merely writing a history of the assassinations of which she was, so to speak, the central figure that gave them world-wide celebrity. We have therefore carefully excluded from our narration all political and biographical facts which were either not directly connected with these assassinations or had not a psychological bearing upon them.
We have reached the period when Mary—blinded by passion and infatuated with love for a man utterly unworthy of her, or to speak more correctly, of the exalted position she occupied in the world—surrendered not only herself, but also the dignity of the crown and the honor and the interests of the realm to the Earl of Bothwell, known to the entire court as a profligate and libertine of the worst sort and as a most unscrupulous and reckless adventurer. It was this infatuation for Bothwell and the shameless liaison she formed with him from which all of Queen Mary’s sufferings and disasters now flowed in rapid succession. Not even her incomparable beauty and loveliness could save her from the contempt attached to this disgraceful liaison, of which she made soon no more a secret than she had formerly made of her preference for Rizzio. But while in her infatuation for the Italian singer the artistic taste of the Queen was rather successfully used by her admirers as an excuse for her enthusiastic preference for him, there was absolutely no excuse for her liaison with Bothwell. And Bothwell did all he could do to strengthen the unfavorable impression of Mary’s conduct by the haughty and overbearing rudeness with which he treated the greatest lords and the highest dignitaries of the kingdom, including the King himself, for whom he openly showed the greatest contempt.
Outraged by the insults which he had to endure day after day and from which the Queen herself did not seem to be willing to protect him, Darnley suddenly left the court and went to Glasgow, where he took up his residence in the house of his father, the Earl of Lennox. The King’s sudden departure caused more unfavorable comment than the Queen had anticipated. It greatly disconcerted her, because she was afraid that from Glasgow Darnley might issue an appeal to the Scotch people, and especially to the dissatisfied nobility, laying before them his complaints and calling upon them to overthrow the disgraceful rule of an adulterous wife and her paramour.
Soon the news came from Glasgow that Darnley had fallen seriously ill, that he was suffering from the small-pox and was expected to die. The Queen took advantage of this serious illness and once more resorted to her power of dissimulation, which had served her so well after Rizzio’s death. She intended now to employ it not only to temporarily deceive and beguile her husband, but to decoy him into an ambush and put him to death. Incredible as the enormity and ferocity of the crime may appear, especially on the part of a young and beautiful woman distinguished by so many mental advantages, there seems not to be the least doubt that Mary, in going to Glasgow and appearing at the bedside of her sick husband as a loving wife, had this horrid crime in view and successfully paved the way for its execution. She again played with consummate art the part of a loving and trembling wife, and deceived Darnley so fully that he promised to follow her to Edinburgh as soon as the progress of his convalescence would make it possible for him to undertake the journey. Thus fully assured of Darnley’s forgiveness, she returned to Holyrood and perfected there, together with Bothwell, the arrangements for his murder.
When Darnley arrived at Edinburgh, a short time afterwards, he was not, as he ought to have been, taken to the royal palace, where he could have been cared for better than anywhere else, but to a private residence in an isolated location in one of the suburbs of the city, whose salubrious location, it was alleged, would facilitate the King’s rapid recovery. Darnley himself was greatly surprised at these arrangements, especially when he learned that the Queen would not take up her residence with him, but would remain at the Palace. Apprehensions of some impending danger haunted his mind, and he became melancholy and despondent. However, the Queen by her appearance and the excess of her tenderness soon dispelled his vague fears and convinced him that only care for his enfeebled condition and the hope of quickening his convalescence had prompted her to select his residence, from which he would be promptly removed after his complete recovery. In order to reassure him fully, she remained several nights with him, occupying a room immediately beneath his own, and manifesting toward him the greatest affection and solicitude. One of her pages slept in the same room with him, and five or six servants, whom Bothwell had appointed, formed the entire household.
Late in the evening of February 9, 1567, the Queen left the house and went back to Holyrood to pass the night there, because one of the musicians attached to the royal chapel was to be married that night, and she had promised to be at the wedding. It was while the wedding-festivities were going on at Holyrood and while the Queen was dancing with some of the courtiers in the most careless and unaffected manner possible, that a terrific explosion took place which was heard and felt in all parts of the city and at Holyrood. Soon the rumor spread that the house of the King had been blown to atoms and that all the inmates were buried under the ruins. This rumor was only partly true. The morning light of the tenth of February revealed the fact that the house had been blown up by means of an underground mine; but the corpse of the King was not found among the ruins. On the contrary, it was found, together with the corpse of the page, in an orchard adjoining the house, and neither the King nor the page showed any marks of gunpowder; but the bloated condition of their faces and the marks of finger-nails on their necks showed that both had been choked to death and had been left lying on the ground where the assassins had killed them. It was then surmised that both the King and the page, having been disturbed in their sleep by the approach of the assassins, had tried to make their escape through the orchard, but had been overtaken in their flight and slain. The explosion had unquestionably been intended to destroy all vestiges of the crime by burying both the assassins and their victims under the ruins, but it had either taken place too soon, before the murderers could have carried the King and the page back to the house, or the assassins had hurried away immediately after committing the deed. At all events, Darnley was dead.
The evidences of premeditated murder were so plain that from the very first not the least doubt was manifested as to the character of the calamity. Neither was there the least uncertainty in the public mind as to the author or authors of the terrible catastrophe and the assassinations attending it. The public voice immediately named Bothwell as the murderer and added, in a whisper, the name of the Queen as his accomplice. In those times murders were committed so often that the murderers in a majority of cases escaped unpunished. But in this case the rank of the victim was so exalted, and moreover the circumstances surrounding the crime were so damaging to the authority of the crown, that public opinion demanding an investigation of the death of the King could not be disregarded. The Queen, who, if innocent, should have been the first to insist on a thorough investigation of the crime by which her husband was killed, affected an absolute indifference in the matter. She utterly disregarded the damaging rumors which openly charged Bothwell with the murder, and by this indifference confirmed the suspicion of her silent active (or at best, passive) participation in the crime. The Queen even openly defied public opinion by leaving Bothwell in the undisturbed possession of the honors and dignities she had conferred upon him, and by adding new ones, showing the continued favor the Earl enjoyed, in spite of the public clamor raised against him. “But Banquo’s ghost would not go down!” The excitement and the indignation of the people rose to the highest point. On her appearance in the streets, the Queen was insulted by the women. She found it necessary for her safety to leave Holyrood and seek refuge in the fortified castle. Bothwell had the audacity to demand a public trial, because the Earl of Lennox, Darnley’s father, had openly accused him of the murder; and the cowardly judges, overawed by the power of the accused, by the royal troops, by the authority of the Queen, acquitted him, while the whole people considered and declared him guilty.
We have reached the end of this atrocious murder. Posterity holds Queen Mary guilty of the crime of having murdered her young husband. Her abduction by Bothwell and her marriage to him, although apparently forced upon her, had been planned by the two murderers even before the assassination. Mary’s long imprisonment and final execution at the bidding of a cruel and jealous rival has often been deplored by biographer, historian, and dramatist,—but were they more than a just atonement for crimes as atrocious as they were unprecedented?