Mary was at supper. Two near relatives and friends of hers—a gentleman and a lady—and Rizzio, were with her. The room is scarcely large enough to contain a greater number. There were, however, two or three servants in attendance at a side-table. Darnley came up, about eight o'clock, to make observations. The other conspirators were concealed in his room below, and it was agreed that if Darnley found any cause for not proceeding with the plan, he was to return immediately and give them notice. If, therefore, he should not return, after the lapse of a reasonable time, they were to follow him up the private stair-case, prepared to act at once and decidedly as soon as they should enter the room. They were to come up by this private stair-case, in order to avoid being intercepted or delayed by the domestics in attendance in the ante-room, R, of which there would have been danger if they had ascended by the public stair-case at T.
The little upper room.
Murder of Rizzio.
Finding that Darnley did not return, Ruthven with his party ascended the stairs, entered the bed-chamber through the little door at d, and thence advanced to the door of the cabinet, his heavy iron armor clanking as he came. The queen, alarmed, demanded the meaning of this intrusion. Ruthven, whose countenance was grim and ghastly from the conjoined influence of ferocious passion and disease, said that they meant no harm to her, but they only wanted the villain who stood near her. Rizzio perceived that his hour was come. The attendants flocked in to the assistance of the queen and Rizzio. Ruthven's confederates advanced to join in the attack, and there ensued one of those scenes of confusion and terror, of which those who witness it have no distinct recollection on looking back upon it when it is over. Rizzio cried out in an agony of fear, and sought refuge behind the queen; the queen herself fainted; the table was overturned; and Rizzio, having received one wound from a dagger, was seized and dragged out through the bed-chamber, B, and through the ante-room, R, to the door, o, where he fell down, and was stabbed by the murderers again and again, till he ceased to breathe.
Conversation.
After this scene was over, Darnley and Ruthven came coolly back into Mary's chamber, and, as soon as Mary recovered her senses, began to talk of and to justify their act of violence, without, however, telling her that Rizzio had been killed. Mary was filled with emotions of resentment and grief. She bitterly reproached Darnley for such an act of cruelty as breaking into her apartment with armed men, and seizing and carrying off her friend. She told him that she had raised him from his comparatively humble position to make him her husband, and now this was his return. Darnley replied that Rizzio had supplanted him in her confidence, and thwarted all his plans, and that Mary had shown herself utterly regardless of his wishes, under the influence of Rizzio. He said that, since Mary had made herself his wife, she ought to have obeyed him, and not put herself in such a way under the direction of another. Mary learned Rizzio's fate the next day.
Violence of the conspirators.
Mary a prisoner.
The violence of the conspirators did not stop with the destruction of Rizzio. Some of Mary's high officers of government, who were in the palace at the time, were obliged to make their escape from the windows to avoid being seized by Morton and his soldiers in the court. Among them was the Earl Bothwell, who tried at first to drive Morton out, but in the end was obliged himself to flee. Some of these men let themselves down by ropes from the outer windows. When the uproar and confusion caused by this struggle was over, they found that Mary, overcome with agitation and terror, was showing symptoms of fainting again, and they concluded to leave her. They informed her that she must consider herself a prisoner, and, setting a guard at the door of her apartment, they went away, leaving her to spend the night in an agony of resentment, anxiety, and fear.
Darnley's usurpation.
Lord Darnley took the government at once entirely into his own hands. He prorogued Parliament, which was then just commencing a session, in his own name alone. He organized an administration, Mary's officers having fled. In saying that he did these things, we mean, of course, that the conspirators did them in his name. He was still but a boy, scarcely out of his teens, and incapable of any other action in such an emergency but a blind compliance with the wishes of the crafty men who had got him into their power by gratifying his feelings of revenge. They took possession of the government in his name, and kept Mary a close prisoner.