CHAPTER IX

ASSASSINATIONS OF RIZZIO AND DARNLEY

(March 9, 1566; February 9, 1567)

Among the female rulers of Europe there is one who on account of her matchless beauty, her genius, her adventurous life, but especially her tragic death, has enlisted the attention and admiration of authors and poets even to a higher degree than Catherine the Second of Russia or Elizabeth of England, who perhaps surpassed her in political genius. More regretted and admired for her misfortunes and accomplishments than condemned for her sins and crimes, Mary Stuart, the beautiful Queen of Scots, lives in the recollections of posterity as a vision of incomparable grace, beauty, and loveliness, hallowed by the genius of great poets and redeemed by a tragic and cruel death. To no historical memory poetry and tradition have been more kind and more idealizing than to Mary Stuart; and yet she deserves a place in this gallery of assassinations not as a victim, but as a murderess.

After reading the descriptions in prose and verse of her personal charms, of her matchless beauty and grace, of her elegance and wit, of her poetical inspiration and musical accomplishments, it is almost impossible for the stern historian to maintain the self-possession of an impartial judge and record the misdeeds of which this bewitching creature was unquestionably guilty. She seemed to combine in her incomparable personality all the physical and mental perfections woman is capable of. We will say, however, that the crimes which have justly been laid to her charge were, in part at least, excusable either on the ground of the surrounding circumstances or of great provocations. Murder itself, in the rude country and in the equally rude and violent times in which it was committed, had not that horrid significance which stigmatizes it in a more refined and cultured state of civilization.

Mary Stuart was the only daughter of King James the Fifth of Scotland by his second wife, Marie de Lorraine. She was the niece of the famous princes of the house of Guise--Duke Francis of Guise and the Cardinal de Lorraine--who were rivals in authority and power with the kings of France, and who on several occasions rose superior to them. James the Fifth died young, with his daughter yet in her cradle. Quite young she was betrothed to the Dauphin of France, who became afterwards King Francis the Second, and she was married to him when a mere child. Her renown for beauty and genius resounded from one end of Europe to the other. With remarkable facility she learned French, Italian, Greek, Latin, history, theology, music, painting, dancing, and she excelled in writing poetry. Some of her short poems are still famous in French literature. But her life as Queen of France was but a short dream of splendor and delight. The weak and emaciated Francis the Second died after a reign of eleven months, and the crown went to his young brother, Charles the Ninth.

Mary Stuart retired for a while to a convent at Rheims, but soon, upon the death of her mother at Edinburgh, she proceeded to Scotland, where a throne awaited her. Quite a number of enthusiastic adorers among the high nobility of France followed her to her new home, because they could not bear the thought of separating from a princess so charming and beautiful,--a princess who kindled in the hearts of all men who were brought into contact with her, desires and frequently a passion which became fatal to them. Unquestionably Mary Stuart was one of the most dangerous coquettes who ever lived, and at the brilliant and voluptuous court of the Valois in France, almost under the personal direction of the famous Diana de Poitiers, she had cultivated the art of using her extraordinary charms and accomplishments for the seduction of men to her best advantage. One of the most conspicuous of these followers from France was Du Chatelard, the scion of one of the noblest houses of the French monarchy. He bears the sad distinction of having been the first victim to Mary Stuart’s intrigues, and of having paid for the mad and uncontrollable passion which he had conceived for her with his life. Chatelard himself was a young man of high accomplishments. He was a poet and musician, and by his sweet voice he easily won the favor of the young Queen. She imprudently gave him so many proofs of her favor and openly admitted him to such a close intimacy that young Chatelard not without reason believed that she returned the love which he had conceived for her. And Mary was not in the least afraid to show her fondness for him. It is authentically reported, for instance, that in bidding him goodnight in the presence of the court “she kissed him below the chin, looking at him in a way that set his whole soul afire.” No wonder that the young man in the transport of his passion committed acts of indiscretion and madness, which in a short time led to his execution, without visibly affecting the beautiful coquette who had encouraged his passion. One night the ladies of the palace discovered him hidden behind the curtains of the Queen’s bed, but his audacity was ascribed to his thoughtlessness and vanity. He was expelled from the palace for a while, but was soon afterwards forgiven and received again into the Queen’s intimacy. This act of pardon turned the young man’s head again. He made no secret of his glowing admiration for the Queen, and addressed amorous verses to her, which were repeated by her attendants. One evening he was again discovered in the Queen’s bedroom, where he had secreted himself under the Queen’s bed. This second time he was put on trial, and was condemned to death for having conspired against the Queen’s life. In vain he protested his undying love for Mary Stuart, but the judges were inexorable, and Mary herself, who had been trifling with his heart so long, and who with a single stroke of the pen could have pardoned and saved him, coolly handed him over to the executioner. A scaffold was erected before the windows of Holyrood Palace, where Mary resided, and Du Chatelard, the grand-nephew of the famous Chevalier Bayard, suffered death with a heroism worthy of his great ancestor. His last words were, as he cast a sorrowful look upon the windows behind which the Queen stood with her attendants: “Farewell, thou who art so beautiful and so cruel, who killest me, and whom I cannot cease to love!”

The death of Chatelard was the first of a series caused by the mad passion which Mary Stuart kindled in the hearts of her adorers. Another attendant who had followed Queen Mary from France to Scotland, and whose tragic fate is even more generally known than that of Du Chatelard, was David Rizzio, an Italian musician, who for some time had been attached to the court of Francis the Second of France. Rizzio was of low birth, but had some talent as a composer of songs and as a singer, and had been brought from Italy by the French Ambassador at Piedmont, from whose service he passed into that of one of the enthusiastic noblemen who had escorted the young Queen to Scotland. The Queen’s attention was soon attracted to the Italian composer and singer, and she begged Rizzio of the nobleman, so that he might enter her own service and by his art make her forget the lonesome hours and the homesickness for France which she felt would be the inevitable result of her residence in Scotland. By a congeniality of taste the poor and lowborn Italian artist and the beautiful young Queen were thrown together a great deal, and gradually the love for the art ripened into a preference for the artist. He soon became the declared favorite and private secretary of the Queen, who made him practically the omnipotent counsellor and minister of her policy.

The scandal of this singular preference, which was at once announced as a vulgar love affair, spread rapidly over all Scotland, and gave rise to loud complaints by the Protestants, headed by John Knox, who preached against the “woman of Babylon” and her low-bred paramour. The Queen was blind to the consequences of her infatuation for this lute player, a mere servant, who moreover, by his Italian nationality and Catholic religion, defied the narrow prejudices of the Scotch people. In spite of her beauty, youth, and loveliness the Queen became very unpopular, not only with the nobility, but with the great mass of the people.

At that very time Mary Stuart was induced, mainly through the influence of Queen Elizabeth of England, to contract a marriage with Henry Darnley, a young Scot of the almost royal house of Lennox, of great physical, although somewhat effeminate, beauty, but of very inferior mind. On seeing this young Adonis, Mary Stuart fell immediately and very desperately in love with him, while it was noticed that Darnley showed much greater coldness than men generally manifested in their gallantry toward her. Darnley, descending from a daughter of Henry the Eighth, had perhaps as good a title to the crown of England as Mary Stuart, and by a marriage of these two claimants, it was expected that their interests would be consolidated and consequently strengthened. The interest which Queen Elizabeth of England had to promote this marriage was her hope of lowering Queen Mary’s standing and authority in the eyes of her many Catholic adherents in England by this marriage with an English subject,--an intention in which Elizabeth was largely successful. In spite of the strong opposition of a number of the most prominent Scotch nobles and most notably of Lord Murray, Mary’s half-brother, the marriage was consummated on the twenty-ninth of July, 1565. On the other hand. David Rizzio, Mary’s Italian secretary and confidant, had very warmly advocated and promoted the marriage, and Darnley openly paid court to him, expecting great results from his influence over the Queen. Why Rizzio should have so eagerly encouraged the

marriage is involved in doubt. Very likely the scandalous stories circulated about the Queen’s relations to Rizzio were mere inventions; and Rizzio, who moreover was deformed and ugly, far from being the Queen’s lover, was only ambitious; he hoped to have even a greater share of political authority under a nominal king, whom he recognized as an intellectual nonentity, but whose personal beauty diverted the young Queen’s thoughts from the cares of government.

During the first months after the wedding Rizzio’s expectations were fully realized. The young Queen in the transport of her passion for Darnley paid no attention to government affairs; her whole mind and soul seemed to be enwrapped in her love for her young husband; apparently she cared for nothing else but to caress him and to shower her favors upon him. She conferred upon him the title of king, without, however, giving him the attributes of royal power, which she reserved for herself. If Darnley had been a man of greater mental calibre he could very easily have made himself king in fact as well as in name; but he was a weakling in every respect. After the first few weeks had passed away in the closest intimacy with her consort, Mary’s extreme fondness, not to say idolatry, of him, entirely disappeared, and in a very short time her conduct toward him assumed a degree of estrangement and coldness which contrasted strangely with the cordiality which had preceded them. Mary’s full confidence and intimacy turned once more toward Rizzio, whose ascendency over her mind seemed to be greater than ever before. More than anybody else Darnley was dissatisfied with this turn of affairs. He saw that the chance of empire had slipped away from him, and he found that it was impossible for him to recover his former standing with the Queen. In vain he tried to be admitted to a direction of the government affairs and to perform some of the duties which seemed to pertain to his exalted station in the state; but Queen Mary obstinately refused to accede to these demands. Darnley, who ascribed this refusal, in part at least, to Rizzio’s influence, then joined the party of political malcontents who, either from motives of personal ambition or of religious antipathy, were anxious to bring about the overthrow of the Italian favorite and place a national and, if possible, a Protestant ministry in power. To carry out this plan they won Darnley over to their side, and filled his mind with dark insinuations and jealousy against Rizzio. It seems they also promised him a co-regency with the Queen, and full royal authority equal to hers in case the much-hated Italian should be removed.

These prospects were sufficient to inflame Darnley’s ambition and make him a willing tool in the hands of Rizzio’s enemies. He did not shrink even from murder, and committed it openly and defiantly. As soon as the conviction had been established in his mind that Rizzio stood in the way of his ambition, he resolved upon his assassination, which was not only to lead to his own aggrandizement, but also to punish Mary for having preferred the Italian to him. He did not wait long to carry his plan into execution; and the brutality and reckless ferocity with which the murder was committed were even more atrocious and repulsive than the crime itself. Only a brute and cowardly knave could have planned it.

The murder was committed on the evening of Sunday, the ninth of March, 1566, in the Queen’s private dining-room in the palace of Holyrood, adjoining her bedroom. The Queen was there with the Countess of Argyle, one or two other ladies, and Rizzio, her secretary. The best of feeling and humor prevailed in the little party. There was not the least indication or suspicion of impending trouble or danger. Nevertheless an armed force of five hundred adherents of the conspirators, under the lead of one of Darnley’s lieutenants, had been posted on the outside so as to surround the palace entirely. The greatest caution had been observed to avoid all noise, and the first intimation that something was wrong was conveyed to the little party in the dining-room by the sudden appearance of Darnley. With great familiarity he throws his arm around the Queen’s waist. He is almost immediately followed by Ruthven, one of his friends, who is clad in full armor and is ghastly pale from excitement and fear. The Queen haughtily commands him to leave the room; but before he can answer, her bedroom is filled with men bearing torches and brandishing their swords, nearly all under the influence of liquor, and calling with loud and threatening voices for Rizzio. The Italian knows immediately what this scene means. He jumps from his seat and takes refuge behind the Queen, clutching her gown with the grasp of despair and imploring her to save his life. Mary Stuart at this moment stands erect in the consciousness of her outraged dignity, her eyes sparkling with indignation and wrath, and trying to protect Rizzio against the crowd of aggressors who are pushing up to her, upsetting the table on which she leans her hand, and trying to push her aside in order to get at Rizzio. For a few moments she succeeds in keeping them at bay; but then it is Darnley who comes to their rescue. He seizes the Queen, tries to push her away, and takes hold of Rizzio’s hand in order to make him loose his grasp of Mary’s gown. In this struggle Mary has partly uncovered the Italian, and one of the conspirators, espying the opportunity, plunges a dagger over Mary’s shoulder into Rizzio’s breast. It is a signal for a general assault on the unfortunate victim. Like madmen they rush upon him from all sides; they drag him from behind the Queen, who is herself in danger of being slain; they beat him, they kick him, they plunge their swords, their knives, their daggers into his bleeding and mutilated body, they pull him by the hair, lifeless and maimed as he is, through the dining-room, through the bedroom, to the outer door of the antechamber, and only desist when they see that it is nothing but a corpse which they are maltreating.

The dead silence which suddenly follows gives notice to Mary that the horrid crime has been fully committed, that her favorite lies prostrate and silenced forever at the threshold of her bedroom. What wonder that in that terrible hour thoughts of revenge and hatred against Darnley, the leader of this gang of savages and murderers, arise in her brain, never to leave it again?

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The assassination of Rizzio had opened a chasm between Mary Stuart and Darnley which nothing but his own blood could fill up. From the very first moment it became evident--and the Queen made no secret of it--that Mary Stuart intended to resent the foul murder of one who, if he had not been her lover, had enjoyed her confidence and her friendship, and whom not even her personal intercession had been able to save from a most cruel and entirely undeserved death. Immediately after the murder, when Ruthven came back to her presence, with the blood-stained dagger still in his hand, and demanded wine, she answered: “It shall be dear blood to some of you!” Nor would she permit the blood of Rizzio to be washed off the floor; she wished that it should forever remain as a mark of the murder which had been committed there, and she ordered a partition to be built between the grand staircase and the door of the antechamber leading to her bedroom, in order to protect the blood-stained floor from being desecrated by the feet of visitors. In this condition the Palace has remained for centuries and the stains caused by Rizzio’s blood have withstood the lapse of hundreds of years.

The halcyon days which Mary had tried to create for herself at Holyrood--the days and hours which she had hoped would console her by poetry, music, and song for her absence from France--had come to a sudden and cruel end. The conspirators were not satisfied with having slain Rizzio; his murder was only the unavoidable means to accomplish a certain purpose,--to get control of the government. They kept the Queen in close captivity and would not permit any of her friends, not even her ladies, to see or confer with her. It was then that Mary resorted to her great power of duplicity. Carefully concealing the profound horror and disgust with which the sight of Darnley filled her, she convinced him easily that her interests and his were identical, that his strength lay in his exalted station as consort of the Queen, and that their continued estrangement and enmity would only lead to the elevation of her half-brother, Lord Murray, or some other great nobleman. Darnley was only too easily persuaded; he fell readily into the trap which the deceitful Queen had set for him. In his overweening vanity, and convinced of his own invincibility, he ascribed the passionate appeals and the affectionate solicitations of the Queen for his support to a renewal of her former love and passion for him. Carried away by her tenderness and loveliness, he promised to release her from her captivity and to abduct her to Dunbar castle, where she would be secure from any plots of her enemies. Darnley induced a number of his personal friends and adherents to join him in this undertaking, and a few nights later the flight from Holyrood to Dunbar was effected with complete success.

Darnley, after having thus separated his cause from that of the enemies of the Queen,--who were seriously debating whether she should be imprisoned for life, exiled from the country, or put to death,--went a step further. He openly denounced the assassination of Rizzio as an inexcusable crime, and disclaimed all previous knowledge of and complicity in it. Nobody believed him,--neither the Queen, who had seen his active participation in the murder when he could easily have prevented it; nor the conspirators, who knew that he had planned all the details, had helped in its execution, and had promised to protect those who would take a hand in it. But Darnley’s lying declaration served the political aims of the Queen well. From Dunbar she issued an appeal to the loyal people and nobles of Scotland, imploring their assistance against the rebels who had driven her from Edinburgh and had insulted and threatened her in her own palace, and using the presence and the declaration of the King to contradict the stories and accusations circulated by the conspirators and “rebels” against her scandalous private life. Eight thousand loyal Scots responded to this appeal of their Queen, and at the head of this enthusiastic army Queen Mary and her husband returned to Edinburgh and once more took possession of Holyrood.

It was not long before the Queen threw off the mask of affection for Darnley, which she had assumed for political purposes, and openly again showed that aversion which she really felt for him. Not even the birth of her son, who afterwards as James the Sixth ruled over Scotland and as James the First over England, changed the strained relations between husband and wife. There seems to be no doubt that the new cause of these strained relations, which grew more apparent from day to day, was a criminal and adulterous love affair which had quite suddenly sprung up between the Queen and one of the noblemen of her court, the Earl of Bothwell.

The new favorite was a scion of one of the noblest and most renowned families of Scotland, but his personal history was far from being honorable. The mere fact that a man with such antecedents could appear at court and be received in the very highest society is a sad comment on the moral tone prevailing at that court and in that society. Bothwell was at that time no longer a young man. When quite young he had one day disappeared from the castle of his fathers and, on reaching the coast of the North Sea, had joined a gang of adventurers who, as pirates, infested those waters and were a terror to the merchant vessels of all the nations of Europe. By natural ability, unbounded courage and daring the young Scotchman had rapidly risen to a commanding position among the wild corsairs; his name was repeated with fear and awe from the coasts of Denmark to the west coast of Ireland. In one of the desperate engagements with warships of the Hanseatic League he had lost one eye, but had saved his life and his freedom. Many years of his life he had passed in this wild and adventurous career. Then the news of the death of his father reached him, and one morning he reappeared in his ancestral home to take possession of his vast domain. The turbulent condition of Scotland, the civil war between Protestants and Catholics, the struggles for supremacy between the crown and the nobility, were congenial to his adventurous and reckless spirit. He had been among the first to greet Mary Stuart on her arrival from France and had shown her, from the first day he saw her, an enthusiastic, almost worshipful devotion. He was a passionate adorer of female beauty, and the romantic halo of his past life which surrounded his brow had secured for him triumphs in love-affairs with some of the fairest women of the court. He was among those who escorted Mary from Holyrood to Dunbar, and again he was one of those who led her back in triumph from Dunbar to Edinburgh. During this return march Bothwell distinguished himself by the skill of his military dispositions, by his boldness and intrepidity, and attracted the personal notice of the Queen.

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.

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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?