Lord Darnley

Henry Stuart, Lord, Darnley son of the Earl of Lennox and Lady Margaret Douglas, a niece of Henry VIII., and by her first marriage queen of James IV., born 1541. In 1565 he was married to Mary Queen of Scots. It was an unfortunate match, and ere long gave rise first to coolness, then to open quarrel, and finally to deadly hate, which the murder of Rizzio, to which Darnley was a party, only increased. Mary affected, however, to be reconciled to him, but could not long conceal her contempt for the handsome imbecile. After the birth of a son, subsequently James VI., Darnley was seized at Glasgow with smallpox, from which he had barely recovered when Mary visited him, and had him conveyed to an isolated house called Kirk of Field, close to the Edinburgh city wails. This dwelling, which belonged to a retainer of Bothwell's, the rapidly rising favourite, was blown into the air with gun-powder (10th February, 1567). The dead bodies of the king and his page were found in a field at a distance of 80 yards from the house, quite free from any mark which such an explosion would cause. Strong circumstantial evidence points to Bothwell as the murderer, and to Mary as an accomplice in the crime.