16

“MOST CRUEL MURDER”

SHORTLY BEFORE 2 A.M. ON MONDAY, 10 February 1567, a Mrs. Barbara Merton, who lived in Blackfriars Wynd, a street that rose from the Cowgate to the High Street, was awakened by running footsteps; she looked out and counted thirteen armed men, who had emerged from the gate of the abandoned Blackfriars monastery to the south and were now hastening up to the High Street.¹Around the same time, some women lodging near the south garden and orchard of Kirk o’Field, “perhaps even in one of the cottages where the ambush was set,” heard a man’s voice crying desperately, “Pity me, kinsmen, for the love of Him who had pity on all the world!” Then there was silence.²

Suddenly, “at about two hours after midnight”³the air was rent with the crash of a massive explosion that, according to Buchanan, “shook the whole town” and was followed by “fearful outcries and the confused cries of the people.” “The King’s lodging was, even from the very foundation, blown up in the air. Several neighbouring houses were shaken, and people who slept in the furthermost parts of the town were awakened, bewildered and alarmed.”⁴ The Queen later wrote that the house was blown up “in one instant.”⁵Sebastian Davelourt, Keeper of the Ordnance, afterwards likened the sound of the explosion to thunder, while the Seigneur de Clernault reported that the “tremendous noise” was equal to a volley of 25 or 30 cannon, “so that everyone awoke.”⁶Paris later deposed that, on hearing the “crack,” every hair on his head had stood on end,⁷and Herries recorded that “the blast was fearful to all about, and many rose from their beds at the noise.”

The Lords of the Council, in a letter to Catherine de’ Medici written later that day,⁸concluded that the Old Provost’s Lodging and the Prebendaries’ Chamber had been “blown into the air by the force of powder, as one might judge by the noise and the terrible and sudden event, which was so vehement that, of a salle, two bedrooms, cabinet and garderobe, nothing remains which was not carried far away and reduced to powder, not only the roof and floors, but also the walls to the foundation, so that not one stone rests on another.” In a letter to Archbishop Beaton, also written probably on the 10th, Mary confirmed this, adding that all was “either carried far away or dashed in dross to the very groundstone. It must have been done by the force of powder, and appears to have been a mine.”⁹It was said that “great stones, of the length of ten foot and of breadth of four foot, were found blown from the house far away.”¹⁰Clernault reported that the King’s lodging was “totally razed.”¹¹

Just after the explosion, Mrs. Merton and her neighbour, Mrs. Mary Stirling (née Crocket), saw eleven men emerge from Blackfriars gate and run up Blackfriars Wynd. Two of them wore light-coloured clothing. As they passed, Mrs. Merton called after them, “Traitors! You have been at some evil turn!” Mrs. Stirling laid hold of one man by his silk cloak and asked him where the explosion had occurred, but he merely shook her off. She watched as the men split up into two groups: four of them went north towards the High Street, while the other five hastened towards the Cowgate Port in the city wall.¹²

Members of the night watch were soon on the scene at Kirk o’Field, and the first man they saw there was Captain William Blackadder, Bothwell’s man, who had conveyed Mary to Alloa after the Prince’s birth. Concluding that his presence in the vicinity was suspicious, they promptly arrested him, ignoring his protests that he had been drinking at a friend’s house nearby and had come out to see what had caused the explosion. This was probably true, for there is no evidence that he had been a party to the murder plot.

Soon, local people and citizens from further afield, some in their night-clothes, some carrying lanterns, were hurrying towards Kirk o’Field, where they were confronted by a scene of devastation where the south range of the quadrangle had once stood. Their eyes were immediately drawn to the blackened figure of Thomas Nelson, swaying on the top of the Flodden Wall and crying out for help. He had luckily been thrown clear by the blast, and had suffered only superficial injuries. Once he had been rescued, people started digging frantically in the smoking rubble, many with their bare hands, looking for other survivors or bodies. Their search was hampered by the darkness, the biting cold and intermittent falls of snow. But many people were aware that the King had been staying in the house, and they were determined to find him. Soon, there were large crowds at the scene.

Few noticed that, just after the explosion occurred, the candle in the window of the Duke’s House had been extinguished.¹³Buchanan placed great emphasis on this, but it could have happened naturally with the force of the blast. But Buchanan, a Lennox man, intended his readers to conclude that Archbishop Hamilton was implicated in Darnley’s murder.

At Holyrood, Mary was also awakened by the noise of the explosion, and, thinking it was cannon fire, sent messengers to find out what was happening.¹⁴Elsewhere in the palace, people were running and screaming in panic, and the royal sentries were asking each other, “What crack was that?” The Queen’s messengers “followed the crowd until they came to the King’s residence, which they found to be entirely overthrown.”¹⁵The news was quickly conveyed to the palace.

Bothwell was Sheriff of Edinburgh, and it was his responsibility to investigate any crime that was committed there. Since he had not emerged from his lodgings, his servant, George Halket,¹⁶was sent to wake him up and inform him that Darnley’s house had been blown up and that the King was believed killed. Bothwell shot up in bed, crying, “Fie! Treason!”¹⁷then ordered his own men to go to the scene of the disaster to discover what had happened to the King and the cause of the explosion. That done, he went back to bed with his wife¹⁸to await news.

Meanwhile, at Kirk o’Field, two mutilated bodies were being uncovered amidst the debris. One of them was Andrew McCaig.¹⁹The Lords informed Catherine de’ Medici that “some” were killed “and some, at God’s pleasure, preserved,” while Robert Melville informed de Silva that five servants escaped, “who only knew that they had heard the noise.”²⁰This cannot be correct, since there were six servants in the house at the time of the explosion, and three are known to have died. It is possible that Symonds and Taylor’s boy, who were in the gallery with Nelson, also survived, and likely that Glen, who was sleeping on the ground floor with McCaig, was the other man found dead in the rubble. The Lords and Melville may have counted among the survivors guards who are not mentioned elsewhere. There was as yet no sign of Darnley.

At last, at 5 a.m., three hours after the explosion, someone thought to look in the south garden and orchard, beyond the Flodden Wall, and it was there that they found the bodies of the twenty-year-old King and his valet, Taylor, lying “sixty to eighty steps from the house.”²¹Both were nearly naked, being clad in short nightshirts, and neither body had a mark on it. Darnley was stretched out on his back, under a pear tree, with one hand draped modestly over his genitals,²²while Taylor lay a yard or two away, curled up, with his nightshirt rucked up around his waist and his head resting face down on his crossed arms; he had on a nightbonnet and one slipper. Clernault says that the body of “a young page” was also found in the garden, but this is not corroborated by other accounts, nor is a third body shown in the drawing of the scene that is now in the Public Record Office.

Those who saw the bodies were at a loss to know how they had died, for it did not look as if they had perished in the explosion. There were no burns,²³ no marks of strangulation or violence, and “no fracture, wound or bruise.”²⁴ “The people ran to behold the spectacle and, wondering thereat, some judged one thing, some another.”²⁵

Near to the bodies lay a chair, a length of rope, a dagger, Darnley’s furred nightgown and what could have been a quilt or cloak. “The clothes lying near were not only not burned or marked with the powder, but seemed to have been put there, not by force or chance, but by hand.”²⁶A backless velvet shoe or “mule” was also found in the garden near the corpses; it was later alleged to have belonged to Archibald Douglas, although, as will be seen, he was to deny that it was his.²⁷

As soon as the bodies were found, Francisco de Busso, an Italian from Mary’s household, hastened to the house of John Pitcairn, a surgeon, who lived in Blackfriars Wynd, and “cried on” him “to come to his master,” which Pitcairn did, remaining with Darnley’s body for about six hours.²⁸

Soon after the discovery of the bodies, Mary was informed of her husband’s death. It is not known who brought her the news,²⁹but, according to Nau, “when the Queen was told what had occurred, she was in great grief, and kept her chamber all that day.” Bothwell, still in bed with his wife, was told by Huntly of the discovery of the King’s body. “I was very distressed at the news, as were many others with me,” Bothwell wrote later.³⁰Hastily, he dressed, then he and Huntly, together with Argyll, Atholl, Maitland and the Countesses of Atholl and Mar, went to the Queen’s room to console her. There, “while the monstrous chance was telling, everyone wondered at the thing.”³¹

There is plenty of evidence for Mary’s reaction to Darnley’s death. The Book of Articles states “she was little altered or abashed,” but Bothwell told Melville he had found her “sorrowful and quiet” and recalled in his memoirs that she “was greatly affected by it all.”³²Mary herself stated she felt so “grievous and tormented” that she was unable to attend to any business or correspondence, and other sources bear this out. Clernault wrote, “One may imagine the distress and agony of this poor princess at such a misfortune, chancing when Her Majesty and the King were on such good terms.” Some writers have suggested that he was drawing conclusions without having seen the Queen, but he also wrote that, when he left her, she was “so much afflicted as to be one of the most unfortunate queens in the world.”³³This is corroborated by Moretta, who reported that he left the Queen deeply afflicted and in great fear of a worse fate.³⁴There is no doubt that Darnley’s murder left Mary grief-stricken, emotionally shattered and fearful for her own safety. For several months afterwards, she seems not to have functioned normally, and her judgement, never very good at the best of times, utterly failed her.

Scotland was now faced with a major political scandal. At Huntly’s suggestion, to which the Queen agreed, fifteen members of the Privy Council met in emergency session at Holyrood to discuss how best to deal with this latest crisis and “deliberate about the means of apprehending the traitors who committed the deed.”³⁵

At the Queen’s command, Bothwell took a company of soldiers to Kirk o’Field “to make a diligent search for the traitors and apprehend them.”³⁶Argyll accompanied them. Bothwell had Darnley’s body carried into “the next house”³⁷—the New Provost’s Lodging—and placed in the care of Sandy Durham, “under a guard of honour.”³⁸Bothwell also ordered a thorough search of the area, and he and his men, “in our fury, apprehended some persons suspected of the deed and put them under arrest, until they should render to us a sure account of the place they had been when the murder was committed. Nor did I ever cease making strict search that I might get at the bottom of the whole,” Bothwell added, “for I could not imagine that I could ever be suspected.”³⁹He also “found a barrel or cask in which the powder had been, which we preserved, having taken note of the mark on it.”⁴⁰This mark, which is nowhere described, was presumably thought to be a means of identifying the maker or owner of the barrel. It has been suggested by several writers that this barrel was planted at Kirk o’Field with the deliberate intention of incriminating someone.

One of Cecil’s agents had already arrived on the scene and begun sketching a plan of the site, including the events of the day as he saw them unfold.⁴¹ His drawing still survives. In it, the pile of rubble marking the area of the demolished buildings can clearly be seen. Darnley and Taylor lie in the orchard to the south, near the items found next to the bodies. To the west, Darnley’s body is carried towards the New Provost’s Lodging as a crowd of onlookers watch. Further south, Taylor’s body is buried, apparently in the churchyard of the ruined St. Mary’s Kirk. In the top left-hand corner of the drawing, Prince James sits up in his bed, his hands raised in prayer, and from his mouth there issue the words, “Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord.” The drawing was sent to Cecil in London.

According to Buchanan, before dawn broke, someone—the implication is that it was Mary and Bothwell—had sent messengers into England to spread rumours “that the Earls of Moray and Morton were doers of that slaughter.” This passage does not appear in the English edition of theDetectio. Thomas Wilson also refers to the spreading of slanders, but names no names. If such rumours were actually spread, and that is by no means certain, they may have been the only means available of attaching suspicion to men who had been clever enough to cover their traces.

News of the King’s murder spread quickly throughout Edinburgh.⁴²People were soon grouping on the streets, fearfully speculating as to the assassins and their motives, then dispersing. They were more startled by the tidings of Darnley’s death than they had been by the blast, “whilst the manner of it was no less various censured than reported.”⁴³Wild rumours began circulating. One was that Lennox had been killed in the explosion,⁴⁴which was, of course, untrue.

Back at Holyrood, the Queen had proclaimed a period of court mourning and ordered black serge from Florence for a mourning gown, cloak, mules and shoes.⁴⁵She had chosen to follow the French royal custom, whereby a widowed queen remained in mourning for forty days, secluded in her black-draped chambers, which no daylight was allowed to penetrate.⁴⁶Leslie later recalled that she “bemoaned” her husband “a notable time, using none other than candle-light,” but Buchanan claimed that Mary’s grief was a pretence calculated to “ingratiate herself with the people,” and alleged that, whilst she withdrew into seclusion, “the ceremony was evil observed,” and “such was her joy that, though she shut the doors, she opened the windows.” Paris was among those in attendance in Mary’s bedchamber on the morning after Darnley’s murder, and he saw that it was already shrouded in black.

The Queen was breakfasting in bed, being waited on by her French governess and other ladies and servants, when Bothwell returned from Kirk o’Field. Paris watched as the Earl entered her room and whispered something in her ear. Buchanan, however, says that Mary only retired to her bedchamber after Bothwell had made his report, at which she “feigned amazement.”

A little later, Sir James Melville came to the door of the Queen’s apartments to see how she was. Bothwell came out and told him she was “sorrowful and quiet, which occasioned him to come forth.” He then privately expressed to Melville his opinion that Darnley’s death had been an accident, “the strangest that ever chanced, to wit, the thunder [sic] came out of the sky and had burnt the King’s house.” This certainly would have been strange, as there had been no storm that night. Bothwell urged Melville to go and see the King’s body, expressing surprise that there had, inexplicably, been no marks on it, whereupon Melville dutifully set off for Kirk o’Field.⁴⁷

Buchanan later accused the Queen of “sweetly sleeping” until noon or for most of the day,⁴⁸but this would have been entirely understandable, given that she had had a very disturbed night followed by shocking news. Nau says she was in such grief that she “kept to her chamber all that day,” but she seems to have been awake for most of the morning at least, attending to sad but necessary duties that could not wait. The first of these was to summon chirurgeons and apothecaries to carry out a post-mortem examination on Darnley’s body. This took place later that morning, in the presence of the Lords of the Privy Council.⁴⁹During their examination, the doctors discovered that “one rib in the King’s body was found broken by the distance of the jump of the fall” and that Darnley had also suffered grave internal injuries.⁵⁰ They therefore concluded that he had been blown into the garden by the explosion. Knox claims that the doctors had only said this “to please the Queen,” and that “truly he [Darnley] was strangled.”⁵¹If Darnley had been strangled, there would have been evidence of asphyxia and marks around the throat and neck to prove it, but every source states that there were no marks at all on the body.

Once the post-mortem was concluded, the public were allowed in to view the King’s corpse. According to Buchanan, “for a long time, the King’s body remained a spectacle to a continual crowd of common people,”⁵²yet “no one could bring himself to believe that the force of the explosion had thrown him through the roof.” Contrary to what Buchanan says, the body did not remain on view for a long time, for when Melville arrived later that morning to see it, it had been moved to an inner chamber and Sandy Durham would not let him enter.⁵³

After the post-mortem, the Privy Councillors held a meeting in the Tolbooth under the presidency of Argyll, Lord Justice-General of Scotland. Realising that they must embark upon a damage limitation exercise if Scotland were not to become the scandal of Europe, they wrote a letter giving an account—the first ever account—of Darnley’s murder to Catherine de’ Medici. This was to be conveyed by her envoy, the Seigneur de Clernault, who had been visiting Scotland and is thought by some writers to have been in league with Moretta and perhaps Darnley, although on the slenderest of evidence. The Lords began:

Madam,

The strange event which occurred in this town last night constrains us to be bold to write briefly to you, in order to give you and yours to understand the miserable deed which has been perpetrated on the person of the King, in such a strange manner that one has never heard tell of a similar affair.

They then described what had happened during the night, before proceeding to offer what was to be the official explanation of events, for the time being at least, an explanation that was based on Mary’s own convictions:

Those that are the authors of this evil only just failed in destroying the Queen by the same means, with a great part of the nobles and Lords who are for the present in her suite, who were there with the King in his room until nearly midnight. And Her Majesty only just failed to remain in order to lodge there all the night, but God has been so kind to us that these assassins were frustrated in half their attempt, He having reserved Her Majesty to take [the] vengeance such a barbarous and inhuman deed deserves. We are engaged in an inquiry, and we doubt not that shortly we shall arrive at a knowledge of those who did it. For God will never permit such a mischief to remain hidden, and, having once uncovered the matter, Your Majesty and all the world shall know that Scotland will not endure that such a cause for shame should rest upon her shoulders, and which would be enough to render her hateful to all Christianity if similar wickednesses should lie hidden and unpunished.

We did not wish to miss making this advertisement to the King’s Majesty and yourself by this gentleman, present bearer, the Seigneur de Clernault, who will relate to you all the details, since he is well informed to this end. His sufficience is such that we leave the rest to him, so as not, with a longer letter, to importune Your Majesty.

From Edinburgh, this 10th February.⁵⁴

The letter was signed by Archbishop Hamilton, Argyll, Huntly, Atholl, Cassilis, Bothwell, the Earls of Caithness and Sutherland, Alexander Gordon, Bishop of Galloway, John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, Robert Richardson, the Lord Treasurer, Justice Clerk Bellenden, Secretary Maitland and Lords Livingston and Fleming.

This letter gives the lie to Buchanan’s allegation that “there was no mention of an investigation into the murder.”

Some time during the morning, Robert Drury arrived from Paris with Archbishop Beaton’s letter of warning to Mary, too late for it to be of any use; even if she had received it earlier, there was no hint in it of any threat to Darnley. However, Mary believed that the plot of which Beaton had warned her was the plot that had led to Darnley’s death, and that it had been targeted at her also.

A letter, purporting to be from Mary, was sent in response to the Archbishop, giving an account of the murder; this was dated 11 February, but was probably written on the 10th before the results of the post-mortem were known. As it is written in Scots, a language Mary did not normally write in, and is similar in tone and composition to the letter sent by the Lords to Catherine de’ Medici, there has been speculation that it was written on Mary’s behalf, perhaps by Maitland, as she was too distressed to write herself; on her own testimony, she was unable to attend to her correspondence. The letter probably reflects her views, as expressed to her Councillors, and she may have dictated some or all of it. It begins:

We have received this morning your letters of the 27th January, containing in one part such advertisement as we find by effect over-true, albeit the success has not altogether been such as the authors of that mischievous fact had preconceived and had put it in execution. And if God in His mercy had not preserved us, as we trust, to the end that we may take a rigorous vengeance of that mischievous deed, which, ere it should remain unpunished, we had rather lose life and all. The matter is so horrible and strange as we believe the like was never heard of in any country.

After outlining the facts, Mary continued:

By whom it has been done, or in what manner, it appears not yet. We doubt not but, according to the vigilance our Council has begun to already use, the certainty of all shall be used shortly, and, the same being discovered, which we wot [know] God will never suffer to lie hidden, we hope to punish the same with such rigour as serve for an example of this cruelty to all ages to come.

These strong words do not sound as if they came from a woman with a guilty conscience, but as if they were written by someone desperate for vengeance upon those who have done her so great an injury. The letter goes on to voice a strong conviction—one from which Mary was never to depart—that the explosion was meant to destroy her too.

Always, whoever has taken this wicked enterprise in hand, we assure ourselves it was designed as well for ourselves as for the King, for we lay the most part of all last week in that same lodging, and was there accompanied with the most part of the Lords that are in this town, and had that same night, at midnight, and of very chance, tarried not all night there, by reason of some masque at the Abbey of Holyrood. But we believe it was not chance but God that put it in our head.

We dispatched this bearer upon the sudden, and therefore write to you the more shortly. The rest of your letter we shall answer at more leisure within four or five days by your own servant.⁵⁵

It may not be going too far to say that Mary’s distress was caused more by the realisation that she herself might have been the target of the murderers than by her sorrow at Darnley’s death. Her feelings of shock and vulnerability could explain her behaviour during the weeks to come, when self-preservation was to be her overriding priority.

Later that day, Darnley’s corpse was carried back to Holyrood, where it was embalmed by an apothecary and a surgeon. Buchanan says that, on the Queen’s orders, it was borne to the palace by porters on “an old block of form or tree” or “an inverted bench.” An account in the Register House in Edinburgh, dated 11 February, gives details of the expenses incurred in “opening and perfuming” the King’s body. The receipt was signed by the Queen’s apothecary, Martin Picavet.⁵⁶

Buchanan alleges that, when Darnley’s body arrived at Holyrood, Mary went to see it. “As she had satisfied her heart with his slaughter, so she would needs feast her eyes with the sight of his body slain. For she long beheld, and not only without grief, the goodliest corpse of any gentleman that ever lived in this age, not only calmly, but even greedily”; elsewhere, he says “she gave no indication of her secret feelings,” which is echoed by Knox, who states that she gazed upon the corpse “without any outward show or sign of joy or sorrow.” Yet Mary had already gone into seclusion, and kept to her chamber all that day; there is no contemporary evidence that she emerged to look at Darnley’s body.

Later that morning, according to Buchanan, “the matter being wondered at, and great execration in the mouths of the multitude” against the assassins,⁵⁷“shame and fear compelled [the Councillors] to do something, and so, shortly before noon, Bothwell and several other conspirators” convened in Argyll’s chamber in the Tolbooth to begin an inquiry into the murder.⁵⁸ Tullibardine was also present, representing the interests of Lennox. Buchanan implies that the Lords present had a vested interest in keeping the true facts hidden: “at first, they professed ignorance of all that had happened, marvelling at it as a new, unheard of, incredible thing. Then they allowed a very slight examination.” Thomas Nelson was the first witness they examined. He and other deponents were “questioned as to the entry of the murderers” and asked “who prepared and ordained that house for the King” and “who had the keys.” When Nelson denied that the keys had been in his possession, he was asked, “Who had them, then?” He replied, “The Queen,” at which point Tullibardine intervened, saying, “Hold there: he is aground.” There were no further questions, and the inquiry was adjourned until the next day.