18

“THE CONTRIVERS OF THE PLOT”

THE PROTESTATION OF HUNTLY AND Argyll reads: “We judge in our conscience, and hold for certain and truth, that Moray and Lethington were authors, inventors, devisers counsellors and causers of the murder, in what manner and by whatsoever persons the same was executed.”

It was Maitland and Moray who first broached the question of the removal of Darnley at Craigmillar, and who took Huntly, Argyll and Bothwell into their confidence. When Mary pointed out that an annulment would impugn her son’s legitimacy, Maitland assured her that the Lords would think of other means of freeing her. A bond for Darnley’s murder was almost certainly drawn up at Craigmillar, therefore the inevitable conclusion must be that Maitland and Moray were its instigators. Their conversation with Mary suggests that they had thought the whole matter through before involving the other Lords, and the fact that they enlisted the support of their enemy, Bothwell, whose power had become insupportable, probably indicates that he was to be the scapegoat. What they could not have envisaged was the enthusiasm with which Bothwell applied himself to the murder plans, an enthusiasm that derived from his unstated ambition to marry the Queen. Thus he played unwittingly into their hands, enabling them to distance themselves from the actual deed of murder. There is little doubt that he was betrayed into believing that he had their moral support.

Maitland was no stranger to intrigue. He had been at least privy to the plot against Rizzio, for it was he who had warned Cecil that the Italian was about to be murdered. Maitland’s cherished political goal was union with England under a Protestant government, and Darnley, with his Catholic pretensions, was an unwelcome obstacle to that. All the sources agree that Maitland signed the Craigmillar Bond; furthermore, his presence with Bothwell at Whittinghame, when Darnley’s murder was discussed, proves that he was deeply implicated. There is also some evidence that he chose the Old Provost’s Lodging for Darnley, and he may even have prevented Mary from staying there on the fateful night. Darnley had warned Mary, three days before the murder, to be on her guard against Maitland, for he was out to ruin them both. Maitland was undoubtedly involved in the plot, if not its mastermind.

There is no question that most of the Scottish Lords hated Darnley, and even those not directly involved in the plot would have lifted no finger to save him. He had alienated many of them, dishonoured the Queen, intrigued incessantly to disastrous effect and brought scandal upon Scotland, and they were not prepared to tolerate any restoration of his influence. It is no coincidence that the plans that had been laid at Craigmillar were speedily expedited after the Queen and her husband were reconciled.

The evidence against Moray is largely circumstantial, but he certainly had compelling reasons for wanting Darnley taken out. Nau claimed that Moray “had told several Englishmen that it was necessary to get rid of the King, not only because he was a Catholic, but also because he was an enemy to the Queen of England. But there had been private feuds of an old standing between them, both before and after the marriage. The King never forgot the ambuscade before he married the Queen, and wanted to kill him.”

Moray was adept at distancing himself from unpleasant events in which he might be implicated and at “looking through his fingers” at what was going on in his absence. His departure from Edinburgh on the eve of the murder is unlikely to have been coincidental, and the contradictory descriptions of his wife’s illness suggest that this was a contrived excuse. Nau claimed that Moray left “after having matured all his plans necessary for his success in seizing the crown and ruining the Queen,” while Paris said that, when he heard that Moray was leaving Edinburgh, he immediately concluded that the Earl had resolved to be away while the crime was being committed.

Moray had been noticeably silent when the problem of Darnley was raised at Craigmillar: it was Maitland who had done most of the talking. Yet, by his presence, he had made it known that he was involved in the matter. He strongly denied signing the Craigmillar Bond, and the depositions extracted during his regency predictably do not list him among the signatories, but both Leslie and Nau state that he did sign the Bond, and Nau may have got his information from the Queen, who had almost certainly seen it.

Moray took no part in the commission of the murder itself, but there are strong grounds for believing that it had his moral support. According to Paris, Bothwell believed Moray to be neutral, which implies that Moray was aware of what was going on; certainly he made no attempt to save Darnley. Mondovi reported that most people imputed the crime to Moray, “who has always had the throne in view,”¹while Cecil received an anonymous letter stating that Archbishop Beaton had alleged that Moray was the author of the King’s death.²Even Moray had to admit to Cecil, “I am touched myself.”³

Moray had more to gain than anyone else from Darnley’s death and the removal of Bothwell. Suited both by bearing and abilities to kingship, only his bastardy had lain between him and the throne. He had been involved in every major plot against his sister, determined to hold on to the political dominance he had come to enjoy, and which had been threatened, in turn, by the ascendancy of unsuitable men promoted by Mary—Rizzio, Darnley and now Bothwell. Some people, including Mondovi, believed that Moray wanted the throne itself, but the evidence suggests that it was power he desired, not a crown. He was also committed to the success of the Protestant Reformation, and would have regarded any means to that end as acceptable. The ultimate consequence of the Kirk o’Field conspiracy was that Moray attained the political supremacy he desired and was able to firmly establish the reformed religion in Scotland.

Buchanan later claimed that, after the murder, “messengers were at once sent to England to spread the report that the King of Scots had been foully done to death by the direct means of the Earls of Moray and Morton”; there is, however, no record of any messenger saying this. Buchanan also asserted that, in Scotland, rumours were “spread by the regicides to the effect that the King had been murdered by the means of Moray and Morton.” There certainly were rumours to that effect, and some probably had their basis in truth. After a discussion with Moretta, Giovanni Correr, the Venetian ambassador in Paris, wrote:

It was widely rumoured that the principal persons in the kingdom were implicated because they were dissatisfied with the King, and above all a bastard brother of the Queen’s is suspected because, at the time when she was at variance with her husband, the bastard told her that the King had boasted to him of having had intimacy with her before she was his wife. The Queen, exasperated, asked the King if it was true; the King gave the lie to the bastard, who repeated the accusation to the King’s face. From this private quarrel, the report arose that the bastard had desired to revenge himself.⁴

How true this is there is no way of knowing, but there was speculation in 1565 that Mary and Darnley had anticipated their marriage, and a puritanical man like Moray would not have relished hearing Darnley boast of it. Indeed, it may have been this that initially caused the rift between Darnley and Moray. But Moray had far more and greater reasons than that for wishing to be rid of Darnley. Of course, Correr could have been referring not to Moray but to Lord Robert Stewart, who had quarrelled with Darnley a day or so before the murder, but that quarrel had had nothing to do with Mary’s private relations with Darnley, and there is no suggestion in any source that Lord Robert was involved in the murder.

Correr also claimed that the assassination of Darnley was the work of heretics who had meant to kill Mary too and bring up the Prince in the new faith. Most of this is pretty accurate, but it is unlikely that the murder of the Queen was intended: Maitland had prevented Mary from staying at Kirk o’Field, and Moray later balked at executing her, or doing away with her by other means, even when he had the opportunity.

Mary herself was always to believe that the Protestant Lords had been behind the plot. Nau, whose work almost certainly reflects her views, stated that “it was afterwards made public that [the murder] had been done by the command and device of the Earls of Bothwell and Morton, James Balfour and some others, who always afterwards pretended to be most diligent in searching out the murder which they themselves had committed.” Interestingly, no mention is made of Moray and Maitland, who had both died before it was written, but Morton was Regent of Scotland at the time and one of Mary’s most virulent enemies. Nau also states that, “if we may judge by the plots, deeds and contrivances of [Bothwell’s] associates, it would seem that, after having used him to rid themselves of the King, they designed to make him their instrument to ruin the Queen.” Elsewhere, in speaking of the Lords, Nau refers to “the murder which they themselves had committed,” and speaks of Bothwell, Morton and Balfour as the guilty parties.

In January 1568, Hepburn and Hay, in their confessions, “accused the greatest and chiefest of [Moray’s] Council, who were at that time sitting beside him, especially Morton, Lethington and Balfour, and their own Master the Earl [Bothwell]” of the murder.⁵A report in the secret archives of the Society of Jesus claimed that Maitland was “present at this conference between Moray” and one of the prisoners, who is not named, and, “being very farsighted, he feared that if the criminal were permitted to make [a public] confession, he would name him, or some of his accomplices, for Lethington’s conscience accused him of many crimes.” Maitland therefore prepared a speech for the condemned man to recite on the scaffold, but to his dismay, the wretch refused, saying “he had reached that frame of mind when threats and compliments are equally worthless, and that nothing should hinder him from saying what his conscience told him to say.” Addressing Moray, he said, “Since you, my Lord Regent, occupy the position in which I now find you, of you I will say nothing, and I spare you because of your dignity.” Then, turning to Maitland and some others who are not named, he asked, “Who is there among you who either can or dare accuse me of this crime?—a crime of which you are quite as guilty as I am. For you planned what these Lords of mine put into execution, as is attested by the signatures of all of you, which would establish the truth of all my words if they could be produced.” At his words, “all were so struck that for a time there was silence.”

On the scaffold, “whatever charges he brought openly against the Secretary, the Earls of Morton and Bothwell and James Balfour, whom he affirmed to be the first inventors of this crime, the very same he insinuated sufficiently plainly against Moray. Everyone who knows anything about this affair knows how true is the statement made about him and the others mentioned.”⁶The man concerned may have been Hay for, on the scaffold, Hay incriminated Maitland, Bothwell, Huntly, Argyll and Balfour, stating “that Balfour and Maitland were notoriously known as the principal advisers and counsellors,” and although he had not seen Morton’s signature on the Craigmillar Bond, Bothwell had told him it was there.⁷The report in the Jesuit archives states that the other men executed that day “bore witness not only that the Queen was guiltless of this crime, but that the individuals mentioned above were the authors of the King’s murder.” Buchanan also says that both Maitland and Balfour, “it is believed, were privy to the plot to murder the King.” In his confession, John Binning accused Maitland’s brother John of also being involved.

Many believed that Morton had helped to commit the murder,⁸and his indictment of 1581 asserts that he had personally placed the gunpowder “under the ground and angular stones and within the vaults” of Darnley’s house, but, in his confession, made that same year, Morton would only admit to having foreknowledge of the murder, not to taking any part in it; he added that nothing had been done to prevent the murder because it was known that the Queen desired it. Morton was not in Edinburgh when it was committed, yet his kinsmen were at the scene of the crime. Possibly Archibald Douglas was there on his own initiative, but his intervention may well have had Morton’s blessing. Morton admitted having received Douglas after the murder, even though he knew Douglas had been involved in it. Yet the evidence collectively suggests that, in his confession, Morton was telling the truth. When he was found guilty in 1581 of being “art and part” in the murder, “he showed himself much grieved and, beating the ground once or twice with his staff, said, ‘Art and part? God knoweth the contrary.’ ”⁹

Huntly and Argyll were certainly involved in the conspiracy. According to Morton’s confession, Huntly went with Bothwell to Kirk o’Field on the night of the murder, while Argyll was in Edinburgh at the time. He had allegedly patted Paris’s shoulder after the preparations for the explosion were completed. There is no reliable evidence to connect any other noble with the murder. Glencairn, Fleming, Kirkcaldy of Grange, Livingston, Melville, Eglinton and Atholl were definitely not involved.

Another man who was to be executed for complicity in Darnley’s murder was Archbishop Hamilton. Buchanan was especially eager to condemn him for it. The Archbishop had been in residence in the Duke’s House on the night of the murder, and it is from Buchanan that we learn the seemingly ominous detail of the light being extinguished in the window after the explosion. Buchanan claims that the good Bishop [sic] not only conspired with the Earl Bothwell, but came with the Queen to Glasgow and conveyed the King to the place of his murder, the Bishop being lodged as he was seldom or never before, where he might perceive the pleasure of that cruelty, and help the murderers, and sent four of his familiar servants to the execution of the murder, watching all the night and thinking long to have the joy of the coming of the crown a degree nearer to the House of Hamilton.

The Book of Articles alleges that the Archbishop purposely took up residence in the Duke’s House to prevent Darnley from lodging there. This is impossible to substantiate, and may be the product of Buchanan’s prejudiced imagination, for he was a staunch Lennox man and hated the Hamiltons. Furthermore, in his History, Buchanan, having elsewhere alleged that the murder was the work of Bothwell and Mary, asserts that the Archbishop, “when the proposition of killing the King was made to him, willingly undertook it, both by reason of old feuds between their families, and also out of hopes thereby to bring the kingdom nearer to his family. Upon which he chose out six or eight of the most wicked of his vassals and commended the matter to them.” In the earlier account there were four vassals, and they were sent to assist the murderers, not do the deed. The Archbishop gave them “the keys to the King’s lodgings [and] they then entered very silently into his chamber and strangled him when he was asleep. And when they had so done, they carried out his body through a little gate into an orchard adjacent to the walls, and then a sign was given to blow up the house.” In his eagerness to incriminate an old enemy, Buchanan temporarily forgot about Bothwell, and about the depositions of the Earl’s accomplices, which he himself had published. But Lennox was Regent at the time this was written, and it was politic to blacken the reputation of the Hamiltons.

It is unlikely that the Archbishop could have seen what was going on at the Old Provost’s Lodging from the Duke’s House because the north and east sides of the quadrangle stood in the way. Aside from Buchanan’s vitriol, there is little reliable evidence to connect Hamilton with the crime. However, he did have every reason to loathe and resent Darnley, and rumours of his guilt were circulating as early as June 1567. Much later, a priest called Thomas Robinson asserted that one John Hamilton, on his deathbed, had confessed to him that he had been present at Darnley’s murder on the Archbishop’s orders.

That there was a degree of self-interest in the killing is indisputable. It is significant that, in the Parliament held in December 1567, when Mary had reached twenty-five and, had she not by then been deposed, would legally have been able to revoke grants made during her minority, both Moray and Morton were confirmed in their titles and estates, and the earldom of Angus was conferred on Morton’s nephew; it had been Darnley’s intention to claim it himself.¹⁰

Most significant of all, Moray and Maitland were soon to be in a position where they could suppress any evidence of their involvement in the crime. That evidence was suppressed we know for a certainty, and we know also that it was manufactured under the auspices of these men. This alone is enough to condemn them, for if the evidence against Bothwell and Mary was sound, why tamper with it or embroider it?

There has been speculation that the Lords who devised the plot had the covert backing of Cecil. Moray and Maitland had striven for years for a closer relationship with their southern neighbour, and it would have suited the English to have a Protestant government in Edinburgh. The Queen of Scots had been a constant thorn in England’s side ever since Elizabeth’s accession, and her marriage to Darnley had only made matters worse. Despite her fair words, Elizabeth had no intention of naming Mary her successor—she feared her too much for that. The removal of Darnley would therefore remove a potential threat and devalue Mary’s claim to the English throne. The French certainly believed that England had been involved in Darnley’s murder, and Archbishop Beaton “affirmed that the assassination was controlled from England, where the intention had been to kill the Queen as well.”¹¹Mary believed this too. In 1581, after Morton’s execution, she wrote to Elizabeth and made reference to the secret agents and spies employed by England to bring about her ruin. “I will not at present specify other proof than that which I have gained of it by the confession of one [Morton] who was afterwards amongst those that were most advanced for this good service.”

During the twentieth century, another suspect was added to the list of those who might have plotted the explosion at Kirk o’Field: Darnley himself.

As we have seen, there is sufficient evidence to show that, from before the Prince’s birth, Darnley had been trying to enlist the support of the Catholic powers for his bid to set himself up as the champion of Catholicism and, with their aid, establish himself as a crusading ruler of Scotland. At one stage, his grandiose plans had also embraced the conquest of England.

There is very little evidence that Darnley actually secured much influential support. Although he seems to have been in contact with Francisco de Alava, King Philip’s ambassador in Paris, there are no grounds for believing that the Spanish monarch was interested in his plans. Catherine de’ Medici may have known something of them, or may even have encouraged Darnley, and it is possible that he had promised to send Prince James to be brought up in France; nevertheless, Catherine remained noncommittal. Late in 1566, however, Mondovi had informed the Pope that Darnley was just the man to bring about the deaths of the six leading Protestant nobles in Scotland, which Mary had refused to sanction. Once this had been achieved, the Counter-Reformation could proceed apace.

There is no proof, but Darnley may well have fallen in with this plan; indeed, it may have been the reason he intended to return with Mary to Edinburgh. His calumniation of Mary as a dubious Catholic in letters to her European allies had been designed to demonstrate that he, by comparison, was zealous in the faith. But he had his own agenda as well. By the end of 1566, he was apparently planning to overthrow his wife, much as he had intended to do after Rizzio’s murder, rule in the name of their son, and reestablish the Catholic faith in Scotland. The murder of the Lords would be a preliminary to this and would remove the chief obstacles in his way. Moretta and Lutini may have been employed as emissaries between Darnley and Mondovi, while de Alava, who had probably shown himself friendly to Darnley until he learned how unreliable and indiscreet he was, realised that something nefarious was afoot and warned Archbishop Beaton. It was probably for this reason that, on 5 April 1567, Sir Henry Norris, the English ambassador in Paris, confided to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, “As at first I thought, therein I remain not to be removed, that the original of that fact [i.e., Darnley’s murder] came from hence [i.e., Paris], for besides that their [the French rulers’] desire is to have the Prince hither, so do I see that all they that are suspected for the same fact make this their chief refuge and sure anchor.”¹²Furthermore, Cecil, in a letter to Norris dated 21 March, referred to “the French attempt for the Prince.”¹³However, given their mutual animosity, it is entirely predictable that the English should blame the French for Darnley’s murder.

At home, Darnley was concentrating on building up support, hence his recall of Ker, and his involvement with Balfour, whom he probably accounted his chief ally; Balfour, after all, owed his political prominence to Darnley’s patronage, and he was a Catholic. The younger Anthony Standen was also in Edinburgh at this time. Darnley’s staunchest support, however, came from his father, Lennox.

It has been claimed by several recent writers¹⁴that it was Darnley, with the support of Balfour and Lennox, who plotted the explosion at Kirk o’Field, in an attempt to murder some of the Lords and perhaps the Queen too, then seize the Prince from nearby Holyrood. It would not have been the first time that Darnley had plotted Mary’s ruin.

But there are essential flaws in this supposition. Darnley himself had chosen Kirk o’Field, probably at the suggestion of Balfour, yet he could not have guaranteed that the people he wished to destroy would visit him there at all. Moreover, the theory hinges on the fact that Darnley expected the Queen and the Lords to return to Kirk o’Field after the wedding masque on 9 February, so that he could blow them up in the house, but all the evidence shows that Mary had made it very clear that she was not returning, and that there could have been no misunderstanding on Darnley’s part. The circumstances in which Darnley was found indicate surprise and haste; furthermore, he had very few servants, no armed support and none of his friends nearby; Balfour had left Edinburgh, and Lennox was in Linlithgow, allegedly on hand to hear of the success of the coup. How was Darnley to consolidate his position after it had taken place?

Buchanan and Wilson claimed that some of Darnley’s servants had “gone out of the way as fore-knowing the danger at hand.” It has been speculated that Darnley warned them. It is strange, therefore, that he did not warn the servants who intended to stay in the house that their lives were in danger, and far more likely that there was no warning, for if there had been, no one would have dared to stay behind, and we know that six people did. Darnley is said to have left the powder barrel in the garden as a clue that would incriminate the Protestant Lords; just what the connection was is not adequately explained, and in any case, the barrel was probably nothing to do with the murder. Because it was found nearby, an elaborate tale was concocted around it in order to incriminate Bothwell.

Drury later recorded that Ker of Fawdonside was waiting near Kirk o’Field with other mounted men on the night of the murder, his intention being to give aid in that cruel enterprise.¹⁵It has been suggested that he was there to help Darnley make his escape. Darnley had probably issued Ker’s pardon in a bid to buy his forgiveness and gain support, but although Ker seems initially to have played along with this, he had as much reason as Morton to wreak vengeance on Darnley, and, having perhaps been apprised by Douglas or Morton of the murder plot, he may have gone to Kirk o’Field as part of, or in support of, the Douglas contingent. The treacherous Ker also had good reason to hate Bothwell, and perhaps hoped to kill him too.

It has been suggested that the Lords somehow discovered Darnley’s plot, which was possibly betrayed to them by either Balfour or Sandy Durham, and that this was what prompted Bothwell’s midnight meeting with the Queen and Traquair, at which it was decided that Bothwell should return to Kirk o’Field and turn the tables on Darnley. In fact, the midnight meeting was probably held to discuss the future security of the Prince, now that his father was returning to Holyrood. Given the Queen’s busy schedule, there would have been no time to hold this meeting earlier in the day. The matter was almost certainly one relating to James’s security, for Traquair was Captain of the Queen’s Guard and Bothwell was Captain of the Prince’s Bodyguard.

There is no evidence in Mondovi’s correspondence that he had pursued his plan for Darnley to bring about the deaths of the Protestant Lords. Of course, Mondovi might have used Moretta as a messenger for intelligence that was too sensitive to commit to paper, but he can hardly have expected Darnley to act when he was still convalescent, nor did Darnley see Moretta whilst he was at Kirk o’Field.

The fact remains that, during the period after Darnley’s murder, although there was intensive speculation as to who had committed it, not one person suggested that Darnley himself might have been culpable, despite the fact that several people, including the Queen herself, suspected that he had been plotting to seize power. It was nearly four centuries before anyone suggested that he had been involved.

Sir James Balfour’s role in the murder conspiracy is one of the most obscure and mysterious. Balfour was pragmatic as far as religion was concerned. He had early on embraced the Protestant faith, but after being sentenced to the galleys for his part in Cardinal Beaton’s murder in 1546, he had turned Catholic in order to buy his freedom. Thereafter he had remained a Catholic, but probably only because it served his interests to do so. He had come to political prominence through Darnley’s friendship and patronage, but was soon admitted to the secret counsels of the Protestant Lords. Although he was not involved in the plot against Rizzio, he profited from it, being appointed Clerk Register in place of the disgraced James MacGill in March 1566. By June, however, he was out of favour with the Queen, probably because of his association with her increasingly estranged husband.

In December 1566, Balfour probably drew up and signed the Craigmillar Bond for Darnley’s murder, which suggests that he had by then detached himself from the King. At the same time, he may have maintained the pretence of being Darnley’s friend. The fact that he lent his house to Moretta may be significant, and may suggest that he was to some degree involved in Darnley’s schemes, but only circumstantial evidence supports this theory. We may infer from all this that Balfour was perhaps playing a double game in order to safeguard his own position whoever triumphed. Du Croc, after all, had described him as “a true traitor.”

It was almost certainly Balfour who, after Moretta’s arrival and the possible revelation of Darnley’s plans, suggested that the King stay at Kirk o’Field in a house owned by Robert Balfour. He may have realised that this remote house was suitable for an assassination attempt. Yet by the night of the murder, Balfour had left his Edinburgh house and gone to ground, probably because he did not wish to be associated in any way with the crime, and when he returned he kept a low profile for a time.

However, there is ample testimony that Balfour was involved with his cousin Bothwell—Melville says they “were great companions”—in the Lords’ plot to kill Darnley. As we have seen, Hepburn (in the suppressed part of his deposition), Hay, Paris, the report in the secret Jesuit archives, Nau and Buchanan all incriminated Balfour. Buchanan says that both Bothwell and Balfour “were privy to the plot to murder the King” and calls Balfour “one of the chief regicides. He was either the author of, or a participator in” the murder. Balfour was named as one of the murderers in placards that appeared soon after the crime was committed.¹⁶On 12 March, Lennox accused him of being one of his son’s assassins,¹⁷and on 19 April, Drury reported to Cecil the murder of Balfour’s servant, and supposed that the motive had been “very lively presumptions for utterance of some matter either by remorse of conscience or other folly that might tend to the whole discovery of the King’s death.” De Silva reported to Philip II on 6 September, “It is believed for certain that this man [Balfour] was one of the principal actors in the murder of the King.”¹⁸Later, in 1581, Lord Hunsdon wrote that Balfour was “well known throughout the realm to be one of the principal murderers.”¹⁹Balfour himself would later admit to Sir William Drury that he did know about the murder before it happened, but not until 7 February; later still, he claimed that Mary had asked him to kill Darnley but that he had refused; little credence can be given to either of these stories, which are not borne out by the other evidence and were probably concocted in order to deflect blame from himself.

With his brother owning the Old and New Provost’s Lodgings, Balfour would have been able to gain access to Darnley’s house in order to position explosives beneath it. Robert Balfour had delivered the keys to the house to Thomas Nelson, but there would almost certainly have been a duplicate set; Hepburn alleged that Balfour had one made. John Binning, Archibald Douglas’s servant, later claimed that one of the Balfour brothers was seen at the foot of Thraples or Throplows Wynd (which no longer exists) near Kirk o’Field on the night of Darnley’s death. Binning also named Robert Balfour as one of the conspirators. Balfour not only had the opportunity to commit murder, he had a motive, which was the identification of his interests with those of the powerful Lords who were his co-signatories to the Craigmillar Bond.

Morton’s indictment of 1581 asserted that he himself had “placed and input” the gunpowder “under the ground and angular [i.e., sloping] stones, and within the vaults in low and secret places,” which is at variance with what the depositions and the Book of Articleshad hitherto claimed, which was that the gunpowder had been placed in the Queen’s room, an allegation that was almost certainly invented in order to incriminate her.

On 28 February, Drury informed Cecil that “one from Edinburgh” had affirmed that Balfour had “bought of him powder as much as he should have paid three score pounds Scottish.”²⁰It has been suggested that this powder was stored in the New Provost’s Lodging, and later moved to the house next door. Bothwell claimed that, once the “traitors” had seen that the Old Provost’s Lodging “would suit their purpose admirably, they collected a whole lot of gunpowder and stacked it under his [Darnley’s] bed,” which is what was alleged in the Queen’s indictment of 1568. This does not necessarily mean that the powder was placed immediately under the bed, but probably that it was positioned two floors below; Mondovi was told by Clernault that a mine had been “laid under that apartment only where the King slept.”²¹Significantly, Bothwell added that “this was done at the dwelling of Sir James Balfour,”²²which suggests that the powder was stored at Balfour’s own house, not the New Provost’s Lodging belonging to his brother. At the time Bothwell made this allegation, he had good reason to calumniate Balfour, who had callously abandoned him in order to preserve his own life and career.

In order to bring about the destruction that occurred at Kirk o’Field, it would have been necessary for the gunpowder to be packed into the foundations of the house. A pile of gunpowder loose in a ground floor room would not have had such a devastating effect, and many people were of the opinion that Darnley’s house had been mined. On the day after the murder, the Council informed Catherine de’ Medici, “It is well seen that this unhappy affair proceeded from an underground mine,” while the Queen told Archbishop Beaton that “it must have been done by the force of powder, and appears to have been a mine.” Clernault echoed this in his first report of the murder: “It is very clear that this wicked enterprise was occasioned by an underground mine,” and later, in Paris, he declared, “Some scoundrels fired a mine, which they had already laid under the foundation of the said lodging. The house was reduced to ruins in an instant.” Mondovi refers to a mine exploding,²³and Moray told de Silva on 19 May that the house had been “entirely undermined.”²⁴The Diurnal of Occurrents, Thomas Wilson and Melville were all of the same opinion, while Lennox claimed that “the place was already prepared with undermines and trains of powder.” Buchanan, in his Detectio, states that the assassins had retained the key to the lower room, “where they had undermined the wall and filled the holes with gunpowder”; elsewhere he says that the powder was put under the foundations of the house”; this all runs counter to the evidence of the depositions, which Buchanan prints in the English edition of the same work.

It seems fairly certain, therefore, that the house was mined, and that, as Morton’s indictment stated, the gunpowder was buried under the ground and packed in between the stones of the vaults; the ceiling was low and the powder was hidden in secret places. Bothwell and Clernault both averred that the powder had been laid beneath the King’s bedroom, that is, in the cellar kitchen of the Old Provost’s Lodging. This could not have been done until the evening before the murder, for Bonkil and his assistants would have been on duty for much of the time that Darnley was at Kirk o’Field, and there must of necessity have been at least an open fire for cooking, which could have ignited the powder dust at any time. The kitchen staff would probably have left early on the evening of the 9th, having given their master his supper; their services were not needed any further, for the Queen and her entourage would not have required any food, having just attended Moretta’s banquet. After Bonkil and his assistants had gone, Bothwell’s henchmen would have got speedily and stealthily down to work, conveying the powder from Balfour’s house to Darnley’s, and putting it in place. This was no doubt how Paris became very “begrimed,” as Mary herself noticed, and it was probably the reason why the explosion was delayed for two hours after the Queen’s departure.

Because part of the eastern gable wall of Darnley’s house was left standing and the back door of the New Provost’s Lodging was damaged, it is possible that the vaults beneath the eastern end of the Prebendaries’ Chamber, where the ceiling was higher, were also mined, so as to effect the greatest possible damage. The Prebendaries’ Chamber was destroyed in the explosion.

For more than four centuries, there has been speculation that Mary, Queen of Scots was a party to her husband’s murder, or at least had foreknowledge of it. Even today, the matter is controversial, with Mary’s detractors insisting she was guilty and her partisans proclaiming her innocence, much as happened during her own lifetime.

It is indeed possible to construct a convincing case against Mary, even without reference to the Casket Letters and the works of Buchanan and Lennox, for the circumstantial evidence is strong. Mary did want to be rid of Darnley. His treasonable conspiracies were grounds enough to justify his murder. The most telling evidence against Mary is the fact that she took him from the safety of his father’s power base at Glasgow to Edinburgh, where he had powerful enemies who had good reason to seek vengeance on him or even kill him; she herself had sanctioned the return of some of these men from exile less than two months earlier. According to the later libels, she was having an adulterous affair with Bothwell at the time, and wanted to marry him, but whether this was true or not, and there is no contemporary evidence to show that it was true, she certainly continued to show favour to Bothwell after he had asked her to sanction the murder of Darnley; Bothwell had earlier told Morton that Mary had given her consent to it.²⁵Mary had agreed to a surprising reconciliation with Darnley, which may have been a pretence calculated to divert suspicion from herself. It was perhaps more than coincidence that the syphilitic Darnley was murdered the very night before he had been due to resume carnal relations with his wife. Mary herself had fortuitously—or deliberately—left Kirk o’Field about two hours before the explosion. Finally, she was quite capable of sanctioning the murder of someone who had become inconvenient: there is no escaping the fact that, in 1586, she authorised the assassination of Queen Elizabeth by Anthony Babington and his associates as a preliminary to seizing the throne of England.

On the face of it, this is all pretty damning, but it is not the whole picture. There is no evidence that Mary ever contemplated freeing herself from Darnley by other than legal means. When Maitland suggested that other ways might be found, she insisted that they must not conflict with her honour and conscience. When Mary took Darnley away from Glasgow, she was in possession of compelling evidence that he was plotting against her in order to seize power and rule through their child; she was therefore in some peril, and it would have been unthinkable for her to have left him where he was, with an English ship waiting in the Clyde and his father at hand to raise troops. That Darnley was dangerous was later confirmed by de Alava, who later opined that Mary had had to get rid of him, otherwise he would have killed her.²⁶But Mary would hardly have connived at the killing of her husband, who was Queen Elizabeth’s cousin, on the eve of the hoped-for settlement of the English succession question. In bringing him back to Edinburgh, however, she unwittingly gave his enemies the opportunity of bringing their plans to fruition.

Mary had indeed recalled the exiles who were out for Darnley’s blood, but only after months of being pressured to do so by their friends; she must have known that these men posed a danger to Darnley, but she took measures to prevent them from coming anywhere near him, banning them from court for two years. She may have been lulled into a sense of false security by the fact that Bothwell and other Lords accompanied her on her visits to cheer the invalid at Kirk o’Field.

Mary did continue to show favour to Bothwell after he asked her to sanction Darnley’s murder; she also continued to favour Maitland and Moray, even though they had hinted at getting rid of Darnley by underhand means. She was no innocent, and knew the turbulent nature of her nobles. In both cases, she had made it categorically clear that she did not approve of the suggestions put to her, and she doubtless naïvely expected her embargo to be sufficient. Bothwell’s loyalty had been proven again and again; she could have imputed his suggestion to an excess of zeal for her welfare, and even if she had taken offence at it, she could not have afforded to alienate him.

With regard to her reconciliation with Darnley, this is in keeping with other evidence that suggests that Mary had come to realise that there was no lawful means of ridding herself of her husband and that, given the imminent hoped-for accord with England, it would be more advantageous to her to stay married: her union with Darnley had greatly strengthened her claim to the English succession, since many members of the English Parliament felt that he had the better claim. Without him, she would have been far less acceptable to Elizabeth’s subjects. This apart, it is unthinkable that Mary would have prejudiced these longed-for negotiations by committing murder just as they were about to begin. Instead, she had probably resolved to make the best of her marriage. She had forgiven men who had committed worse crimes against her, so there was no reason why she should not have been reconciled to Darnley. The reconciliation may not have been heartfelt, but Mary may have hoped that, as a result of it, she would be able to wean her husband away from his plotting and prevent him from going abroad, for his abandonment of her at this time would have been a serious embarrassment.

Mary may have left the gathering at Kirk o’Field at a fortuitous time, but she herself would always maintain that she had been the intended victim, and that it was only by a lucky chance that she had not returned to the Old Provost’s Lodging to stay the night. In the letters written the day after the murder, both she and the Privy Council stated this belief, and it would be repeated in a report sent to Cecil on 19 March,²⁷although soon the official line would change. Mondovi was of the opinion that Mary, by “being too prone to pity and clemency,” had become “a prey to those heretics, with danger even to her life.”²⁸Bishop Leslie, who was in Mary’s confidence, later recalled, “She returned thanks to God for her preservation from so great a peril, for it looked as though the contrivers of the plot had expected that she would pass the night there with the King, and they planned the destruction of them both.” Even after Mary’s death, the belief that she had been the intended victim persisted, as was manifest in the funeral sermon preached in Notre-Dame de Paris by Renauld de Beaulne, Archbishop of Bourges, in March 1587.²⁹

As for Mary’s capacity for murder, by the time she connived in the plot to assassinate Elizabeth, she had been a prisoner in England for eighteen frustrating and miserable years, during which she had plotted ceaselessly for her release and her elevation to her cousin’s throne. She was then an ageing, embittered woman, worn down by injustice and ill health, and a shade of the girl of twenty-four she had been in 1567. In addition, after 1570, the Pope had sanctioned and urged the assassination of Queen Elizabeth as a means of furthering the counter-reformation. Moreover, while there is good evidence of Mary’s complicity in the Babington Plot, there is no reliable evidence of it in the Kirk o’Field plot, and prior to 1567, nothing to show that she had the makings of a murderess. She had seen murder and bloodshed at first hand, and been profoundly shocked by it.

There are other good reasons for believing Mary innocent. She did not choose Kirk o’Field as a lodging for Darnley. She had intended that he stay at Craigmillar, where he would be more secure from his enemies. Bothwell allegedly asked Paris, rather than Mary, to bring him the keys to the Old Provost’s Lodging; had Mary been in league with Bothwell, it would have been easier, and more logical, for her to supply them. If Mary had been involved in the conspiracy allegedly described by Lord Robert Stewart to Darnley, she would hardly have allowed Darnley to confront Lord Robert. It is also highly unlikely that she would have consented to become involved in a Protestant plot against a fellow Catholic, because, given Darnley’s highprofile protestations of faith, the outcry among her co-religionists would have been great. Furthermore, if Moray and Maitland were behind the conspiracy, which seems almost certain, they would hardly have taken Mary into their confidence; she was certainly in ignorance of it when Maitland warned her not to remain at Kirk o’Field on 9 February. It has been suggested that, as so many people were involved in the plot against Darnley, Mary could not have failed to be aware of it; but even more people were involved in the conspiracy against Rizzio, and she, Bothwell and others had still remained in ignorance of it. With the murder of a king being high treason, the conspirators had even more compelling reasons for maintaining secrecy. Finally, Hay, Hepburn and others had “declared the Queen’s innocence” in their confessions,³⁰and, in July 1567, her own confessor confided to de Silva that she had had no knowledge of Darnley’s murder and was greatly grieved by it.³¹

It is important to remember that almost all the evidence against Mary comes from her enemies and was produced some time after the murder, and that there are serious flaws in much of it, which proves that it was deliberately falsified. The men who were responsible for this evidence—chiefly Moray, Maitland, Morton and Balfour—had to justify the actions they had taken against their Queen and safeguard the continuance of their regime and their own power. They had also to emphasise that the blame lay wholly with Bothwell and Mary, so as to deflect suspicion from themselves, and in so doing they waged one of the most vicious and successful propaganda campaigns in history, the effects of which are still apparent today. These men were certainly clever at covering their traces, but they have left enough clues to condemn themselves. Not only were they guilty of the murder of Darnley, but, in killing a man under the Queen’s protection, and pinning the guilt for their crime on Mary, they were also responsible for one of the greatest injustices in history.

So how did Darnley die?

The plot to kill him was masterminded by Maitland and Moray, Maitland being the active partner, Moray the passive one but the ultimate beneficiary. Their motive was to rid Scotland of a troublesome Catholic activist and hopefully implicate their enemy, Bothwell, who had been brought into the plot, with Huntly and Argyll, at Craigmillar. Once Darnley and Bothwell were out of the way, Moray and Maitland would be restored to their former political eminence. Bothwell soon became the leading participant in the plot, having secretly conceived an ambition to marry the Queen once her husband was dead. What with the christening and Darnley’s illness, there had been no opportunity for the conspirators to carry out their plans until Darnley returned to Edinburgh. By then, Sir James Balfour had entered the conspiracy, and he suggested that Darnley lodge at Kirk o’Field, which the Lords soon realised was ideal for their purpose.

The Lords had decided to use gunpowder so that all the evidence of the murder would be destroyed, and it would also be easier to pin the deed on Bothwell. Balfour purchased the gunpowder and stored it at his house, whence it was moved to Kirk o’Field on the evening of 9 February. By then, Balfour had apparently left Edinburgh. Once the kitchen staff had gone home, the Old Provost’s Lodging was undermined, as perhaps was the Prebendaries’ Chamber adjoining it. The men who transported the powder and laid the explosives were those same henchmen of Bothwell’s who later made depositions as to their guilt, although these depositions were undoubtedly manipulated by men who had secrets to hide. Bothwell would almost certainly have returned to Kirk o’Field after midnight, and it is possible that Huntly and Balfour were there too. Bothwell must have returned to Holyrood prior to the explosion for, since he was Sheriff of Edinburgh, he could not guarantee that he would not be disturbed when the blast was heard. He could have gone back to the palace over the ruined wall near the Blackfriars monastery, and thence by the gardens along the Cowgate.

Gunpowder being unpredictable, Archibald Douglas and his men, perhaps with Morton’s blessing, were on hand to apprehend Darnley should he by any chance escape, which is what appears to have happened. Darnley may have been awoken by suspicious noises outside, which were probably caused by the assassins beating a hasty retreat after lighting the slow fuse(s), or by the “many armed men round the house.”³²Convinced that he was in danger, and fearing that there was no time to lose, Darnley panicked, awoke Taylor— if the latter were not already awake—and begged him to help him get out of the house. Together, by means of a rope and a chair, they climbed out of the window that rested on the Flodden Wall and lowered themselves to the ground about 14 feet below. Darnley took with him a dagger and Taylor his master’s nightgown and a quilt or cloak for himself. Before escaping, they may have tried to awaken Nelson and the others who slept in the gallery, but time was against them, and self-preservation uppermost in their minds.

It is possible that, in escaping from the window, Darnley either fell to the ground or jumped, and hurt himself—this would account for the internal injuries discovered during the post-mortem. Birrel speculated that Darnley and Taylor were thrown clear by the explosion then strangled outside, Darnley “with his own garters,” although there is no reason to think he was wearing any; being hurtled from the exploding house would also account for Darnley’s injuries, but while there is good evidence that a man can be thrown clear from an explosion and left unmarked, it is inconceivable that two men, who were sleeping in different places in the bedchamber, would have been blasted in the same direction and survive without a blemish. It is also inconceivable that several objects and items of clothing would have been found lying neatly beside them. Nau, however, and perhaps Mary, believed that “the King’s body was blown into the garden by the violence of the explosion, and a poor English valet of his, who slept in the same room, was there killed.” But this would not account for the witnesses overhearing a man pleading with his kinsmen for mercy.

Probably in great pain, Darnley, followed by Taylor, began making his way across the orchard, but Douglas and his men suddenly emerged from the nearby cottages and seized them. Realising that their intent was murderous, Darnley cried to them, “Pity me, kinsmen, for the love of Him who had pity on all the world!”—which is what the women in the cottages heard him say. But the Douglases were out for revenge, and in no way inclined to mercy. They suffocated both Darnley and Taylor, perhaps with the nightrobe and the quilt. Captain Cullen, who apparently later confessed to taking part in the murder, testified that “the King was long a-dying, and in his strength made debate for his life.”³³According to Correr, who had his information from Moretta, Taylor was heard to exclaim, “The King is dead! Oh, luckless night!”³⁴After the double murder, the assassins made off towards Blackfriars Wynd, where they were seen by Mrs. Merton and Mrs. Stirling. As soon as they had gone, the house blew up.

This theory of what happened in Darnley’s final moments is supported by Moretta, who later told Correr that the King had taken fright at the noise of armed men outside the house, trying the doors, and lowered himself from the window to the garden, where he was surrounded by his murderers; Moretta says they strangled him under the window “with the sleeves of his own shirt,” but strangulation would have left marks. After the killing, the assassins blew up the house, hoping people would think Darnley had been killed falling from the window while attempting to escape.³⁵

Pietro Bizaro, the Italian visitor to Scotland who had reported Darnley’s affair with a lady of the Douglas family in 1565, asserted that the King had been alerted by the sounds of men in the house, and had hidden with Taylor in the cellar. After a while, they emerged into the garden, only to be murdered there. Oddly, there is no mention of them panicking at the sight of the burning fuses in the cellar. Furthermore, there was no entrance to the cellar from the inside of the house.

Clernault had a novel theory which he made known to Mondovi, that the King had been awakened by the smell of the burning fuse(s) but was suffocated by the smoke from the explosion while trying to escape,³⁶even though his body was found too far from the house for that to have happened. Melville heard rumours that “the King was brought down to a stable where a napkin was stopped in his mouth, and he therewith suffocated.” Lennox claimed that the napkin was soaked with vinegar. Lennox, the Diurnal of Occurrents, Herries and Buchanan all asserted, with stunning illogicality, that Darnley and Taylor had been strangled in their beds by murderers who then carried them outside then returned to blow up the house, “to cause the people to understand that this was a sudden fire.”³⁷If this was the case, why not leave the bodies to be consumed in it instead of going to all the trouble of carrying them to the south garden?

Buchanan claims that the murderers had themselves constructed the postern gate in the town wall in order to remove the bodies to the garden, as if such a breach in the city’s defences would not already have attracted attention. Ormiston, who was unaware of Darnley’s actual fate, was to declare, “As I shall answer to my God, I knew nothing but that he was blown up,” and swore that Hepburn and Hay thought the same. He was adamant that the King had not been handled by any man’s hands. Hepburn, before his execution, stated that there had been no more than nine people present at the murder, and if the King were handled by anyone, it was not one of them. Bothwell, when he went to view the bodies the next morning, seemed astonished that there was no mark on them, and was probably not aware at that point that the explosion had not killed them. Whether he ever found out the truth from the Douglases is uncertain and unlikely. Most official versions of the murder, and even Bothwell’s own account, which naturally makes no mention of his own involvement, asserted that Darnley had been blown up with the house.

The theory outlined above is grounded in a detailed study of the extensive evidence for Darnley’s murder. There can be little doubt that his assassination was a political crime dictated by motives of ideology, self-interest and revenge, and that its aim, and ultimate result, was the securing of power by a faction dedicated to establishing the reformed faith and wielding exclusive influence. But this is not the whole picture. The events that followed the murder also have a bearing on the detection of those responsible, and Mary’s subsequent behaviour raises questions that need to be answered.

On 1 March, one Thomas Barnaby wrote from Paris to the Earl of Leicester, “Your letters tell me of the strange and sudden disaster which of late hath happened in Scotland. Pray God the tragedy may have no more acts but one.”³⁸His prayer was not to be answered.