her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that David Rizzio,
with whom he had leagued to gain her favour, and whom he now
believed to be her lover. He hated Rizzio to that extent, that he
made a compact with LORD RUTHVEN and three other lords to get rid
of him by murder. This wicked agreement they made in solemn
secrecy upon the first of March, fifteen hundred and sixty-six, and
on the night of Saturday the ninth, the conspirators were brought
by Darnley up a private staircase, dark and steep, into a range of
rooms where they knew that Mary was sitting at supper with her
sister, Lady Argyle, and this doomed man. When they went into the
room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord Ruthven, who
had risen from a bed of sickness to do this murder, came in, gaunt
and ghastly, leaning on two men. Rizzio ran behind the Queen for
shelter and protection. ‘Let him come out of the room,’ said
Ruthven. ‘He shall not leave the room,’ replied the Queen; ‘I read
his danger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here.’
They then set upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table,
dragged him out, and killed him with fifty-six stabs. When the
Queen heard that he was dead, she said, ‘No more tears. I will
think now of revenge!’
Within a day or two, she gained her husband over, and prevailed on
the tall idiot to abandon the conspirators and fly with her to
Dunbar. There, he issued a proclamation, audaciously and falsely
denying that he had any knowledge of the late bloody business; and
there they were joined by the EARL BOTHWELL and some other nobles.
With their help, they raised eight thousand men; returned to
Edinburgh, and drove the assassins into England. Mary soon
afterwards gave birth to a son – still thinking of revenge.
That she should have had a greater scorn for her husband after his
late cowardice and treachery than she had had before, was natural
enough. There is little doubt that she now began to love Bothwell
instead, and to plan with him means of getting rid of Darnley.
Bothwell had such power over her that he induced her even to pardon
the assassins of Rizzio. The arrangements for the Christening of
the young Prince were entrusted to him, and he was one of the most
important people at the ceremony, where the child was named JAMES:
Elizabeth being his godmother, though not present on the occasion.
A week afterwards, Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his
father’s house at Glasgow, being taken ill with the small-pox, she
sent her own physician to attend him. But there is reason to
apprehend that this was merely a show and a pretence, and that she
knew what was doing, when Bothwell within another month proposed to
one of the late conspirators against Rizzio, to murder Darnley,
‘for that it was the Queen’s mind that he should be taken away.’
It is certain that on that very day she wrote to her ambassador in
France, complaining of him, and yet went immediately to Glasgow,
feigning to be very anxious about him, and to love him very much.
If she wanted to get him in her power, she succeeded to her heart’s
content; for she induced him to go back with her to Edinburgh, and
to occupy, instead of the palace, a lone house outside the city
called the Kirk of Field. Here, he lived for about a week. One
Sunday night, she remained with him until ten o’clock, and then
left him, to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment given
in celebration of the marriage of one of her favourite servants.
At two o’clock in the morning the city was shaken by a great
explosion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms.
Darnley’s body was found next day lying under a tree at some
Page 179
Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
distance. How it came there, undisfigured and unscorched by
gunpowder, and how this crime came to be so clumsily and strangely