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- [00:00]
Tom Holland
Thank you for listening to the Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes ad free listening, early access to series and membership of our much loved chat community, go to thereestishory.com and join the club that is thereestishistory.com I know not how to utter what I conceive of the pitiful and lamentable estate of this poor queen, whom ever before I esteemed so worthy, so wise, so honourable in all her doings, and at this present do find so altered with affection towards the Lord Darnley, that she hath brought her honour in question, her estate in hazard, her country to be torn in pieces. All men here stand in suspense. Sir Tom, that was a letter written on 21st May, 1565 by Sir Thomas Randolph, the English Ambassador to Scotland. Now, Sir Thomas Randolph is the bloke who has been sent to the Scottish court by William Cecil. And as we discovered last time, he is Elizabeth I's chief minister. And he is a man committed to destroying the life and career of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. But he's gone a bit native. Has he? Or has he fallen for her charms?
- [01:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I think he has fallen for her charms. Men, unless they're William Cecil, do tend to fall for her charms. And when he first arrived at the court and met Mary, he wrote back to Cecil saying, I've never found myself so happy nor never so well treated, so, I mean, I wonder what Cecil made of that. And he was particularly smitten by Mary Beaton, who was the prettiest of the four Marys, Mary Queen of Scots squad. And this was despite the fact that there was a 20 year age gap between them. So he's complaining about Mary's infatuation with Darnley, but I mean, he's definitely a man for an embarrassing infatuation himself. And so when Randolph writes to Cecil saying that Mary has embarrassed herself by falling for this kind of spoiled, vicious, narcissistic toy boy, perhaps there's a slight element of fellow feeling, a slight sense of, you know, concern that she's embarrassing herself. That's coming from his own personal experience. I don't know.
- [02:31]
Tom Holland
So to give people a sort of sense of where we are, Mary, Queen of Scots, hopefully has just married Lord Darnley. This sort of arrogant, hard drinking, sexually voracious kind of toy boy figure, this sort of posh boy. And to general stupefaction and horror, she has announced that he will have the title of king. And you described last time how, when the herald announces the news, there's this terrible Silence. Because basically all the lords think this is the worst thing that's ever happened. So what happens next? Because is Scotland heading for civil war? Is that pretty much the position?
- [03:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, one person who's very keen on Darnley becoming king and who does speak up is his father, Lennox, who thinks, you know, all his Christmas are coming. His. His son is now married to the Scottish queen. His grandchildren, hopefully, will be the kings of. Of Scotland. And you ask, is there civil war? Well, I think it is brewing. And people sense that, because among that crowd of disapproving lords, there was one notable absentee. And he was so disapproving that he hadn't even turned up for the celebrations. And this is the most significant of all the Protestant lords. Mary, Queen of Scots, half brother James Stuart, who she has made the Earl of Moray. And he, in a way, is the flag bearer of the Protestant cause. And because Darnley is Catholic, I think that's one reason that he disapproves. I think also that he's a very austere, sober man, and he sees Darnley as just a contemptible figure. So he has withdrawn to his estates, and the word is that he is raising levies, he's recruiting a private army, and what is worse, other Protestant lords are doing the same. And so, absolutely, it does seem that civil war in the most kind of hideous sense, you know, sibling against sibling, brother against sister, might indeed be brewing.
- [04:27]
Tom Holland
And against this background, the role of England will become crucial. Right, because England is, of course, the. The old enemy, but it's also the great power broker on the island. Mary has long fancied herself as the successor to Elizabeth I. And by marrying Lord Darnley, who also has a claim to the English throne because of his mingled Tudor and Stuart blood, has Mary effectively declared war against Elizabeth I, you think?
- [04:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, certainly not war. Mary is very keen to be named by Elizabeth as her successor, and essentially, for the first four years of her reign, has been doing pretty much what Elizabeth says, completely dancing to Elizabeth's tune. But by marrying Darnley, which Elizabeth doesn't want her to do, I think she is certainly declaring a measure of independence from her. And I think Mary is actually quite excited to be doing this because up until now, she's been describing herself as Elizabeth's daughter. And now, I guess, she's presenting herself more as her equal, her sister, if you like. And this is clearly aggravating for Elizabeth, but I think for Cecil, her chief minister, it's more than aggravating. It's Very, very alarming because I think there is an anxiety in the kind of the hard Protestant circles in England that Mary's marriage to Darnley might well threaten the very future of Protestantism in Scotland. And so there is always this kind of religious dynamic to Anglo Scottish relations in, in Mary's reign, to remind listeners.
- [05:55]
Tom Holland
Mary was a Catholic, but when she had come back from France to Scotland to rule, she had not imposed her Catholicism. She'd in fact gone very easy on Scottish Protestants because, as we discussed last time, her real priority is to make herself palatable to the English, because she really fancies the English throne. But now that she's married Darnley, who is also a Catholic, does that mean that basically she's given up on that side of her kind of political personality and she's doubling down on the Catholicism? Is that what she's doing, do you think?
- [06:24]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, I don't think so. Not to begin with, although maybe in due course we'll see what. What she does. But for now, she knows that her marrying Darnley might alarm Protestants. But she hasn't married Darnley because he's a Catholic. She's married him because he has both Tudor and Stuart blood in his veins. That is the prize for Mary. And so actually, in the buildup to her marriage, she goes to quite kind of ost. Ostentatious lengths to demonstrate that she's still very favourable towards Protestants. So in the build up to Easter, in the period of Lent, she had eaten meat for the first time. Catholics don't eat meat in Lent. She deigns to attend a Protestant baptism, which, again, she'd never done before. And she makes a point of telling the leading Protestants at her court, who includes Randolph, the English ambassador, that in her opinion, all her subjects should obey their consciences and, in her own words, live as they list. And this is sufficient to reassure even John Knox, the kind of the great leader of the Scottish Reformation. And so, even though Murray is going around saying, oh, this is a kind of Catholic revanchism, Knox disagrees. And this is a crucial part of Mary's propaganda against Moray. And I guess she feels, I've stood up to Elizabeth, I've got Knox on my side, I've got the mass of my subjects on my side, therefore there is really nothing holding me back. I can absolutely go out and defeat and humiliate my troublesome half brother. And even before the wedding, she had put preparations in place to do this. So she had recruited 7,000 troops, and also Dominic she had summoned back from exile in France, the single most terrifying man of action in the whole of Scotland, a man who happens to be Murray's deadliest enemy. And this is a man we've mentioned before, fleetingly, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell.
- [08:28]
Tom Holland
Right, now, anyone who's done this at school, which I did when I was about 11, will remember the splendidly dramatic rivalry between Lord Darnley and Lord Bothwell. So Bothwell, it's fair to say he's a controversial character, isn't he, Tom?
- [08:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, I think you could say that.
- [08:49]
Tom Holland
He's the Lord Admiral, he's the Sheriff of Edinburgh. He had been, if you remember, back in, I think, our first episode, he'd been loyal to Mary's mother, Mary of Guise, when people had turned against her and there'd been a lot of fighting and he had basically made off with loads of gold that William Cecil had sent to Moray, and Moray never forgave him for that, and that's why they have this massive feud.
- [09:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Nor does Cecil ever forgive him either.
- [09:11]
Tom Holland
Right now, there are two views of Bothwell, aren't there? View number one is that he is the sort of flower of manhood, a very impressive person, and he certainly sees himself as a sort of a great chivalric figure. The other view of Bothwell is that he's an absolute monster and a sort of violent thug. And. And to which of those two views do you cleave, Tom?
- [09:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
More to the latter, I think, generally the view that Bothwell is a model of chivalry is one that pretty much only one person holds to, and that's Bothwell himself. You know, he takes the notion of himself as a courtly figure, I think, genuinely. And he definitely has a kind of loyalty to the House of Stuart, and that's why he had opposed Moray and the Lords of the Congregation back in the time of Mary of Guise. So he's not, for instance, a Catholic, he's actually a Protestant. But he's unusual in that his loyalty to the House of Stuart has made him incredibly Anglophobic. He really, really hates the English. And by this point, most Protestant lords have kind of swung round to the notion of an alliance with England as being in the best interests of Scotland. And, of course, the fact that he's opposed to English interests and that he's very loyal to the Stuarts as a dynasty, both of these are things that are absolutely calculated to make him an attractive figure to Mary. There are also, I think, other aspects of his character that recommend him to Mary. So he has a relish for solving problems. And the way in which he tends to solve problems is by hitting people or worse. So it might be Mary gives him a problem, he will go out and beat someone up, or he'll send kind of armed forces out to deal with it. It doesn't really make any difference. And he has a kind of very calculating intelligence, but he also has a very, very hot temper. And so it's not surprising that his life has been full of scrapes and adventures so simply over the course of Mary's reign, the kind of the four years up to the point where she marries Darnley, he had got into brawls with his fellow nobleman. He'd been locked up in the Tower of London, he'd been locked up in prison in Edinburgh. He's always kind of making ropes out of sheets and climbing out of windows. He'd suffered banishment from Scotland, he'd undertaken secret missions for the Scottish queen, he'd fought pirates in the seas off Newcastle. So he is a turbulent figure, and it's not surprising that to his end, he seems a demon. So Randolph, the English ambassador, who obviously hates him, writes to Cecil and says that he is, despiteful, out of measure, false and untrue as a devil. Now, we will see whether. Whether that's a characterization that is fair or not, but I think it is absolutely true to characterize him right from the front as a very complex and very dangerous man.
- [11:56]
Tom Holland
And so, Tom, surely he's the perfect person that you want on your side in a civil war, right? I mean, he's incredibly violent. He loves, you know, jumping out of windows and fighting pirates and things. I mean, that's basically the guy you want to set on Moray, you know, if you're fighting your half brother.
- [12:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
Absolutely. And so the moment that Bothwell arrives in Holyrood from France, Mary kind of goes a little bit weak at the knees, thinks he's brilliant, restores him to the Privy council, which he'd been exiled from. And then shortly afterwards, you know, she's got this army ready to go after Moray, and she's already given command of that army to Lennox, Darnley's father. She tells Lennox, look, you've got to share the command with Bothwell because he's absolutely brilliant, you know, slight kind of fluttering of her heart, I think. And the truth is, is that I would say probably the first time since she had to leave France, Mary is now really, really enjoying herself. So when Lennox and Bothwell ride out at the head of her army, she goes with them, and she has Darnley at her side. So she has this very handsome husband. And she herself, she rides with pistols in her saddle holster. So like a kind of cowboy cowgirl, I guess. She's got a steel cap on her head, her auburn hair flowing so very Saoirse Ronan in the film. Saoirse Roan, who did this brilliantly in the film. And she doesn't ride side saddle, she rides astride the saddle. And this is a technique that she had picked up from her mother in law, Catherine de Medici, who had kind of patented. Catherine de Medici had worn breeches underneath her skirts. And Mary, Queen of Scots has adopted this. So she makes a very intimidating and impressive figure.
- [13:29]
Tom Holland
So this is all very Elizabeth I at Tilbury, isn't it? I mean, in different circumstances, this would be a moment long remembered that would be the defining image of her, of her reign. And actually it works at the time because Moray and his allies are intimidated by it and they run away and basically she ends up chasing them around the lowlands of Scotland.
- [13:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. And the whole campaign is Scots derisively call it the chase about raid. And it's so disastrous for Moray and his allies that they end up fleeing to England. And it's a completely stunning triumph for Mary. And it's so stunning that even John Knox confesses to being impressed. So he says about it, albeit the most part waxed weary. Yet the Queen's courage increased, man, like so much that she was ever with the foremost. You know, what could be better? Fun times for Mary.
- [14:16]
Tom Holland
Well, I'll tell you what could be better. It'll be brilliant if at this point she gave birth to an heir, that would be better. And you know what? That Christmas, it turns out that she is going to give birth to an heir because she's pregnant, isn't she?
- [14:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, she is. And of course, this is another string in her bow when dealing with Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. And you asked earlier, does Mary kind of swing towards being more pro Catholic in her policies? And I think it's at this point, when she's seen Moray, the leading Protestant nobleman, chased out of Scotland when she herself is pregnant, hopefully with an heir to the Stuart throne, that she does start slightly reining in her appeasement of the Protestants. So she starts to pressure noblemen in her court to attend Mass. So one of these, for instance, is Bothwell, who remains very, very sternly Protestant and refuses point blank Darnley by her side. Her husband starts talking of restoring Mass across the whole of Scotland. The Pope is so exc by the news that suddenly is now coming out of Scotland, that he rather jumps the gun and sends a letter to Mary praising her for restoring the due worship of God throughout your whole realm. I mean, that's going too far. But it is a kind of indication of how Mary's policies suddenly are being seen by Catholics in Europe. And then in February 1566, comes really the most spectacular of all her gestures of defiance. She holds a. A great banquet in the hall at Holyrood in honour of the visiting ambassadors from kingdoms across Europe, including, of course, Randolph, the English ambassador. And she sees on the wall a portrait of her cousin, Elizabeth Tudor. And Mary rises and declares very publicly, in full view of the ambassadors, there is no other queen of England but myself, you know, which is a stunning reversal of her policy of appeasing Elizabeth.
- [16:21]
Tom Holland
I mean, that is a massive. A massive gamble, right? Because if things go wrong for her, you know, she set herself against her cousin. What's motivating that, you know, she's so confident or she thinks that Elizabeth is vulnerable or what?
- [16:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think it's self confidence. I think she's a woman of instinct, a woman who obeys her instincts in a very impetuous manner. And just as she can be flung into the depths of despair, so her moods of self confidence can encourage her to adopt policies that perhaps otherwise she wouldn't have the courage to do. So she's faced down Moray and the Protestant lords, she's faced down Elizabeth. And there is one other person who she now feels confident enough to face down, and this is her husband, her loving husband, Lord Darnley. Because by early 1566, so the year after her marriage, it's pretty clear to Mary, to Darnley himself and to everyone else at court that the marriage is going quite badly wrong. So it's not just that Darnley is violent, abusive, cowardly, given to endlessly being drunk, there's also the fact that, in addition to that, he has no qualities suitable to be a monarch. So, to quote. To quote Alec Ryrie, Darnley had proved to be more arrogant, inconstant, short sighted, petulant and incompetent than any other British politician of the 16th century, excepting only those who were actually insane. So that's a kind of nice qualifier. And I think Mary feels that this is suboptimal in terms of projecting the dignity and power of her own court. And so she decides that that gift of the title of king that she had offered to general disapproval the day after her marriage to Darnley, that she's going to rescind it, and she's going to rescind Darnley's right to bear royal arms. And the honest truth is that she's absolutely within her rights to do this. There's nothing Darnley can really do about it, because legally, the title of king can only be voted by the Scottish Parliament. And if Mary doesn't want the Parliament to do it, then Darnley is kind of stuck, really. The problem is, how is Darnley going to react to this? He is not the kind of man who enjoys being humiliated, and I think particularly humiliated by a woman. He's, you know, he's not going to take that lying down.
- [18:34]
Tom Holland
So he's got his father, Lennox, who's a big power broker, and he can use him. And so the natural thing to do, of course, because Mary does have a rival, is to go to this bloke, Moray, who's her half brother, who's her kind of, you know, arch enemy, as it were, and to, I guess, reach out to him. And presumably, that's what Lennox and Dany do.
- [18:53]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, but it's a very, very cynical gesture. And the deal that he arrives at with Moray is very cynical. So the terms that Darnley and Moray arrive at are that Moray and the other Protestant lords who've gone into exile are to back Darnley's right to coronation. And since one of the reasons that Moray had risen in rebellion was disapproval of Darnley's Catholicism, I mean, this is a very cynical gesture from. From Moray. Darnley, in exchange, once he's king, pledges to recall the exiled lords and grant them full pardons. And not only that, he absolutely agrees that he will jettison all talk of restoring Scotland to Catholicism and that basically they will go back to the status quo, that Protestantism will be enshrined as the approved religion of Scotland. And essentially, everyone here is a winner, except, of course, for one person, and that is Mary. But that's not a consideration that really bothers Darnley. In fact, it's probably a positive. He wants to bring his wife down a peg or two. But, of course, he does face a problem, which is that his volteface, I mean, is incredibly shameless. How is he to explain it before the court of public opinion? And I think the obvious solution is for him to blame someone for having seduced him and Mary from the defense of Protestantism in Scotland. And so that requires Darnley or, you know, perhaps other people who are kind of involved in this plot behind Mary's back to identify a suitable scapegoat.
- [20:27]
Tom Holland
Well, I'll tell you who might be a suitable scapegoat. Do you remember that in the last episode, Darnley at one point was found in bed with Mary's Italian secretary, who presumably must be a Catholic, and that was a guy called David Rizzio. Would he not make a splendid scapegoat, Tom?
- [20:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, I think he would. He is indeed Catholic and he is indeed Italian. And Italy, as every true born British Protestant knows, is the home of the Inquisition and the home of Machiavelli. So clearly very easy to finger him as a wrong unit. And all the more so because Rizzio has had quite a dramatic rise. So he had been brought to Edinburgh by Mary as a kind of valet, but he's now been promoted to a position as her private secretary. And in this position he has shown himself to be both incompetent and venal. So ever ready to take a bribe. And he's foolish because he should realize that nobody likes an over promoted royal favourite, but he absolutely flaunts it. So he's got all these bribes. He lavishes it on spectacular fashions and styles and clothing and so on. And this makes his role as a go between for Mary and, you know, maybe nobles people way, way above his station. The nobles still depend on him to deliver messages to Mary. It really, really makes him very, very unpopular with the vast mass of the nobility. And all of this makes him an absolutely perfect person to blame for having led Darnley and Mary astray, and particularly Mary, because the reason that Mary has promoted him isn't necessarily because of his secretarial skills. I think it's because she finds him very good company. I don't think there's any hint that she is having a sexual relationship with him, although that will be part of the gossip, as we'll see. But I think she enjoys his company because, you know, he's a reminder of the courtly society of Catholic Europe. He's a very, very good singer, very good musician, he's amusing, he's witty, he's good at cards. And of course, by this point, Mary is pregnant, so she's increasingly confined to her quarters.
- [22:41]
Tom Holland
To Rizzio, the perfect candidate, therefore, to be the villain of the story. And there are two people in particular, aren't there, who are much more cunning and conspiratorial. And you mentioned Machiavellian. Machiavellian. Rizzio is the first of these, is the guy who is the chancellor The Scottish chancellor. And this is a guy called the Earl of Morton, who you describe in your notes as pudgy, avaricious, vengeful. I mean, he sounds a tremendous man.
- [23:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So John Guy describes him as the most villainous of the Scottish lords. And he is a kind of spider spinning webs that all kinds of people get entrapped in. Absolutely. A kind of like a villain from Shakespeare. And the second Machiavel who is keen to see the back of Rizzio is Mary's Secretary of state, William Maitland, who we met in the previous episode. And he too, like the English ambassador, is a middle aged man with a crush on one of the four Marys. And in his case, it's Mary, Queen of Scots cousin Mary Fleming. Say posh Mary. And he's so obsessed by posh Mary that he's actually written about it to Cecil, which, you know, it's not the kind of thing I think that Cecil is likely to be interested in, but it reflects the fact that Maitland feels pretty intimate with Elizabeth's chief minister. And this reflects the fact that he is, like Cecil, very Protestant. He is absolutely an Anglophile. He admires England as a great bastion of Protestantism and essentially he wants to see England and Scotland joined in a union of the crowns. And there's a sense in which Mary, you know, by marrying Darnley and staking her independence from Elizabeth, is going off on a course that Maitland doesn't approve of. And so he brings his talents to the task of blackening Rizzio's name. And he's very, very good at it. He's very, very insinuating and he's tremendous at instigating a kind of venomous whispering campaign. So if it's Morton who organises the plot and recruits the heavies who are going to, you know, make sure that Rizzio is is terminated, it's Maitland who is assassinating Rizzio's character before the assassination itself takes place.
- [24:54]
Tom Holland
And there are two elements to that, right? One is to say, I mean, ironically, given that he's so Machiavellian, he basically says it's Rizzio who's the Machiavel. He's basically pouring poison into Mary's ear. And then the other element, he goes to Darnley, doesn't he? Darnley, who, you know, when he's not boozing, is very kind of jealous and suspicious. And he says to Darnley, this Italian bloke that you used to sleep with, guess what? He's sleeping with your wife. He's sleeping with the queen behind your back. And Darnley, well, perhaps because he's aware of Rizzio's nocturnal arts, he completely believes it, doesn't he?
- [25:30]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, he does. And Darnley takes it on board as being the only possible explanation for the failure of their marriage. You know, he never contemplates blaming himself. Himself. It's completely Rizzio's fault. Even though, to reiterate, I really don't think that Rizzio was sleeping with Mary. Mary was not the kind of woman to do that. But Darnley believes it. And when a document is drawn up by Morton and by Maitland and by all the other conspirators who Morton has recruited to the assassination plot, committing themselves to the murder of Rizzio, there is Darnley's signature. You know, he signs it, he's out and proud about it. And news of this is sent to London. So Cecil is aware of it, his agents in Berwick are aware of it, and in Newcastle, where Moray and the exiled Protestant lords are gathered, they are aware of it as well. So basically, pretty much the only person who doesn't seem to be aware of it is Mary. And we've talked throughout this series about how the architecture of Holyrood kind of sets up a division between the public sphere, where lords meet for council meetings, and the private chambers of Mary, where she retires. And I think that the suspicions of Rizzio reflect this. In a way. The lords are allowing their darkest fantasies about what Italians get up to with queens to run away with them. And that's why it's so fitting that on the 9th of March, 1566, as the night draws in, Mary is up in her private quarters in a small dining room that adjoins her bedroom. And she has, with her various companions, none of whom are a Protestant lord. So she has one of her half sisters, she has the master of her horse, she has her apothecary, she has a page, she has a groom, and she has Rizzio. And the candles are flickering, the wine is flowing. It's a very convivial scene. And then at around 7 o', clock, the door opens and in comes Darnley. And he sits down beside Mary and he puts an arm around her waist. And you might think, well, this is the kind of thing a husband would do. But Mary finds it very surprising because Darnley hasn't done anything like this for months. So, you know, her eyebrow is arched. And then something even stranger happens. She hears from the spiral staircase below her, the sound of clanking armor, drawing ever closer to the room, but very painfully slow. And then over the clanking, she can hear the sound of heavy wheezing. And it's kind of so a very unhealthy cough. And then finally, staggering into the room and looking absolutely ghastly at puking up great lumps of phlegm and coughing them onto the carpet, comes Lord Ruffin, who people may remember from the previous episode is known as the Warlock. So there's Mary with Rizzio, with her other dinner companions. In comes this warlock, Lord Ruffin, and Ruffin, he's panting and wheezing, and he orders Mary to surrender. Rizzio, let yonder man, Davy, come forth of your presence. And Mary is absolutely outraged by this, and she orders Ruffven to withdraw under pain of treason. And Ruffin, in turn orders Darnley to take his wife Mary, take her in hand and remove her from the the dining room. And by this point, Rizzio, who knows that the arrival of a warlock doesn't bode well, has scampered around Mary and is clutching onto the kind of the pleats of her skirt like a little child, kind of frightened of a dog or something. And while he's cowering there, some of Mary's servants try to rush Ruthven and bundle him out of the room. Ruthven responds to this by drawing a dagger. And then, as he's doing that, into the room, surrounded by compadres, comes the Earl of Morton, and he too is in armour. And clearly there's a massive great posse of angry noblemen, all of whom mean business. And while all this is going on, Ruffin has reached over Mary's shoulder and stabbed Rizzio. And then another of the conspirators, he also reaches past Mary and he delivers a second blow to Rizzio. And this, you can imagine how terrifying this must have been for Mary. And she said later that she felt the coldness of the iron. And by now Rizzio has been grabbed hold of. He's dragged out of the room. And as Rizzio is taken into the bedroom next door to the dining room, Ruffin grabs the queen and simultaneously, a cocked pistol is pressed into her stomach, her pregnant stomach, the stomach where her unborn child is, is in the womb. And this is done by a man called Andrew Kerr of Feldonside, and he is notorious among biographers of Mary as the most brutal of Rizzio's killers. And that is quite an accolade for anyone to have. And Darnley pins her down, Roughen as well. And she has no choice but to sit there and listen to Rizzio being murdered next door, listen to the thud of dagger after dagger being plunged into his body. And John Guy describes how it all ends. Darnley refused to join in the butchery, so one of the conspirators seized his dagger and used it to deliver the final blow. Darnley's dagger was left in the corpse to signify his connivance in the plot.
- [30:57]
Tom Holland
So, gosh, Rizzio is dead. His body has been pockmarked, it's been fret worked with wounds, delivered by 57 varieties of dagger blow. So that's the end of him. But what does this mean for Mary, Queen of Scots? And what have these murderous conspirators got planned for her? Well, we will find out after the break.
- [31:22]
David Olusoga
I'm David Ulushoga.
- [31:24]
Sarah Churchwell
And I'm Sarah Churchwell. Together we're the hosts of Journey Through Time, where we explore the darkest depths of history through the eyes of the people who live through it.
- [31:32]
David Olusoga
Today we're going to tell you about our new series on the Great Fire of Light. London. One of the great pivotal events of the 17th century, one of the most important events in all of English and British history.
- [31:42]
Sarah Churchwell
It began at a bakery on Pudding Lane and quickly turned into a catastrophe. It consumed 13,000 houses. It decimated London and caused £10 billion worth of damage in today's money. It even burned down the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral.
- [31:58]
David Olusoga
The city was already devastated by the great plague, but rumors of foreign invasion led to mobs to attack innocent foreigners on the streets. In this episode, we'll explore the chilling consequences of rumors of fake news of xenophobia, problems that clearly are not unique to today.
- [32:16]
Sarah Churchwell
From desperate attempts to save their homes and belongings to the struggle to assign blame, which turned deadly. This is the story of the fire as it was lived through by the people on the ground and the lasting impacts it left on the city.
- [32:29]
David Olusoga
We've got a short clip at the end of this episode.
- [32:39]
Tom Holland
Welcome back to the Rest Is History. We left you on a thrilling and bloody cliffhanger. David Rizzio has been perforated with 57 dagger blows. He's lying in a bloodied heap, a load of men clanking around and wheezing in rusting Scottish armor. And what's happened to Mary?
- [32:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
Tom, tell all not just what's happened to Mary, but what about her loyal captains, Bothwell and the other nobles who had been with her on the chase about raid and who are not part of the conspiracy and are lodged elsewhere in the palace. And Mary is very anxious that they might be targeted for elimination as well. And actually, Bothwell has picked up the rumours of what's happening, and he certainly hasn't hung around to find out what the plans of the conspirators are for him. So he does his favourite stunt, which is to get some sheets to knock them up, to make a rope and to climb out of the window and get away that way. So he's safely off. But poor old Mary isn't. She's still in the supper room where she'd been enjoying a nice game of cards with Rizzio. And the conspirators have come back in there and they are roundly telling her off for having employed Rizzio, for plotting to bring back Catholicism, for allying herself to the Pope, to all these kind of terrible things that she's been getting up to. And that at least is kind of fairly. You know, it's kind of politics. It's hard politics, but it is politics. But then Darnley disgraces himself by completely going off on one. He accuses Mary of ignoring him and ends up complaining that she's been denying him his conjugal rights as a husband.
- [34:16]
Tom Holland
Oh, nay.
- [34:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
And Mary's completely mortified by this. I mean, it's not the kind of thing that anyone, any woman, would want her husband talking about in full view of 50 wheezing lads in blood spattered armour. I mean, it's not fun at all. And so she's very mortified and she says it is not a gentlewoman's duty to come to her husband's chamber, but rather the husband to come to the wife's.
- [34:42]
Tom Holland
I'm on her side on this.
- [34:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, Darnley doesn't. Darnley completely loses it. And he is evidently very paranoid that Mary has been finding him sexually inadequate and that this is why she hasn't been coming to him. And so he goes off and won about that. And then he gets absolutely furious when Mary tells him, you shouldn't be doing this. I married you, I raised you up to this rank. And this he's just absolutely livid. And see, he replies, suppose I be of the baser degree yet am I your husband in your head? And you promised me obedience the day of our marriage, and that I should be participant and equal with you in all things. And now it's Mary's turn to lose it. I shall be your wife no longer, nor sleep with you anymore, and shall never like you well, until I have caused you to have as sorrowful a heart as I have at this present.
- [35:28]
Tom Holland
Oh, my word.
- [35:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
So an absolutely massive marital tiff. And meanwhile.
- [35:34]
Tom Holland
Yeah, what are the lads up to?
- [35:35]
Dominic Sandbrook
They're all watching Eyes on Storks. I mean, great entertainment. But there is one of them who's not really up to it. And this is the warlock, Lord Ruffin, who by now, I mean, he's gone up the stairs, he's wrestled with Mary, he's stabbed Rizzio, and he is just, you know, he's. And so he sits down and he demands a drink and a servant brings him a goblet of wine and he downs it in a single gulp. And then he just sits there, wheezing and looking terribly ill. Mary, unsurprisingly, isn't particularly sympathetic. And she says, if I or my child die, you will have the blame thereof. And at this, the warlock just goes. And at this point, as he's sitting there wheezing, the news comes that Bothwell has escaped. And Darnley and Ruthven get up to go out. Darnley scampers down the stairs. Ruthven, of course, goes much more slowly.
- [36:30]
Tom Holland
Right, he's knackered, right.
- [36:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
Crash, clank, wheeze, clang. Morton stays there. He stands a sentry on the door to make sure that Mary can't get away and to ensure that no servants are allowed in and definitely that the four Marys are not allowed in. Because he knows that if Mary gets put in touch with the Marys, they'll then be able to go out and spread the news of what's happened. So this goes on for several hours. And then Darnley comes back up, he disposes of Rizzio's corpse.
- [37:02]
Tom Holland
Rizzio's body's been there the whole time?
- [37:04]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, behind the arras.
- [37:06]
Tom Holland
Oh, at least take the body with you. Come on. That's poor.
- [37:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. The blood slowly congealing.
- [37:11]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [37:12]
Dominic Sandbrook
All over Mary's prized tapestries, terrible scenes. But Darnley, to doing credit, I mean, he does remove the body and then he comes back after that. And by now it's about 8 o' clock in the morning, and unsurprisingly, he and Mary have another massive row. This goes on for two hours. I mean, not the good basis for a happy marriage at all by this point.
- [37:31]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [37:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
But after. After a while, Mary has been pressing him to allow the four Marys to come and join her and Darnley, because he's. I mean, he's just not particularly astute, you know, much less sharp than Morton. He says, oh, fine. All Right, you can have them. And Morton, when he learns about this, is absolutely appalled, and he's right to be, because sure enough, the Marys have come up. Mary has scribbled down instructions to her most loyal supporters, and the Marys have gone out and handed them out to the people that Mary's written to. So, Morton Ruffin, when they find out that the Marys have been allowed in, they're furious. They pack them off. So Mary is now seemingly left alone again. She wants to get Darnley back with her, so she pretends to have a miscarriage. Darnley, of course, comes rushing at this because it's his child who is in Mary's womb. In a way, the fact that he's given Mary a child is his meal ticket. So, you know, he's basically willing to do anything that he can to ensure that there absolutely isn't a miscarriage. And so he ends up sitting by Mary's bed, mopping her brow, holding her hand. And in a sense, you know, Mary is starting to play him like a fiddle by this point. And it reflects the fact that over the course of the terrible hours that she's been going through since Rizzio was murdered, she's come up with a two prong strategy. And the first part of this strategy, she's decided, is that she's going to pardon her half brother Moray, and the other lords who've been exiled for their part in the chase about raid. And she very soon has her chance, because Moray, people may remember he'd been waiting in Newcastle for news that Rizzio had been killed. And he has now returned from exile, comes to Edinburgh, comes to Holyrood House and comes into Mary's presence. And Mary bursts into tears, throws herself into Moray's arms and she formally pardons her half brother there and then. However, what Mary is not prepared to do is to pardon Rizzio's murderers. So she's decided that Morton, Maitland, Ruffin, all the others, they're all going to be exiled. There is one murderer, however, of Rizzio, whom she is prepared to pardon, and that is Darnley, who all along has been beside her, right, and who, you know, she's kind of working on to make him feel more tender hearted towards her. And she understands him very well. He's been complaining about the fact that she hasn't been offering him sex. And so this is what she now decides to do. She doesn't really want to have sex with him, I think, but she makes this offer on the assumption that he's so drunk by this point that at any minute he's going to pass out. And this is what happens. And so, in due course, he wakes up long after Mary has gone to bed and complains, was fallen on such a dead sleep I could not be awakened.
- [40:11]
Tom Holland
Right, hold on. But I mean, there are other nights, right? I mean, it's not like for one night only.
- [40:16]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, no, because Mary is playing a shrewder game than that. She doesn't intend to hang around in Holyrood for a minute longer than she has to. So when Darnley wakes up and comes to Mary in the morning, she sits him down and says, look, you've teamed up with all these lords. You have been very, very naive. Because once you have granted Moray and the Rizzio conspirators what they want, they will then turn on you. You are a Catholic, they are Protestant. The only way that you can possibly stop them from exterminating you, from dispatching you, is if you then become Protestant. And then you will lose all your esteem and value in the eyes of the Catholic powers in Europe, with whom Darnley really, really wants to be on good terms. And you think that these are arguments that he must have thought through before, but no, not a bit of it. And the amazing thing is that Mary persuades Darnley, and the same man who two nights before had turned up and stabbed to death this guy who Darnley thought Mary'd been sleeping with. Now it's happy couples again. He says, brilliant. I'm going to turn against these awful people. I don't know what I was doing with them. They seduced me.
- [41:29]
Tom Holland
I suppose two things are true, right? Which is? Number one, she might be right.
- [41:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
Right.
- [41:33]
Tom Holland
They might have turned on him. I mean, he's a complete head case and a kind of loose cannon, so they might as well get rid of him.
- [41:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think she is right.
- [41:39]
Tom Holland
And secondly, the other thing that's probably true is that he's an incredibly stupid man. He's a Gillet man, isn't he?
- [41:45]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think he's even posher than a Gilet.
- [41:46]
Tom Holland
Oh, my God. Is there such a thing?
- [41:47]
Dominic Sandbrook
Kind of one of those very posh polo shirts, perhaps.
- [41:51]
Tom Holland
Right, yeah, he's a polo person. Ah, the worst.
- [41:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, that's what I think.
- [41:56]
Tom Holland
Oh, no, Tabby just says in the chat he's a red trouser person.
- [42:01]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, he's absolutely a red trouser man. Yeah. Anyway, so it works. And as Mary later put it, by this persuasion, he was induced to condescend to the purpose taken by us to retire in our company to Dunbar. So, red trouser man Darnley is now prepared to escape from Holyrood with Mary and head to Dunbar, which is a great fortress on the east coast down from Edinburgh. And why Dunbar? Partly because it's the nearest royal fortress, but also because it is the home of the widowed sister of the Earl of Bothwell. And this reflects the fact that in her hour of need, Mary's instinct is to turn to Bothwell, the man who has always been loyal to her and to her mother. So the plot is laid. That afternoon, Morton and Ruffin are led upstairs by Darnley into Mary's private quarters. So up the spiral staircase. Poor old Ruffin, by this point, you know, he's hacking and whoring away again. He then has to kneel down, so God knows what impact that has on him. Clank.
- [43:05]
Tom Holland
Right.
- [43:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
And Mary says, look, draw up whatever petition you know you want me to sign, and I will do it in the morning, because, to be honest, I'm a bit tired, I'm a bit run out by everything I've been through, but I will do it in the morning. And she also says to them very explicitly, I know you think that I'm angry about this, but I'm not. I see that you were right. I see that, you know, Rizzio was an evil man who'd seduced me and led me astray, and so I will absolutely not be taking vengeance on you. And she says, I was never bloodthirsty nor greedy upon your lands and goods since my coming into Scotland, nor will I be upon you. And Morton and Ruffin are absolutely delighted by this, and so they withdraw and they think, brilliant, we've absolutely aced this. Sometime later, Mary sends for Maitland, the Secretary of State, and she says, you know, could you withdraw the guards? Now, look, I'm not gonna go away. I've agreed to everything that you want. And so Maitland, who is, I think, in the fundamentals, loyal to Mary, he says, yes, of course, of course. And to be honest, they have no reason to be suspicious, because as long as they have Darnley, you know, on board, on side as part of their conspiracy, Mary's effectively trapped. She's got nowhere to turn. And I think they all assume there is no way that Darnley could be so stupid as to reconcile with Mary, because, you know, he had put his name to this bond where all the assassins had agreed to Rizzio's murder. It's there in plain sight. And also, no one would be mad enough to double cross Morton, who is the most terrifying of all the nobles, the most sinister. No one would be mad enough to do that. They can absolutely rely on the fact that Darnley will not help Mary to escape.
- [44:46]
Tom Holland
They've overlooked the red trousers, that's the trouble, they have.
- [44:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
So, Dominic.
- [44:51]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [44:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Shortly after midnight that same night, Mary and Darnley slip down from their appointments, all the way down the spiral staircase into a wine cellar. And down there, there is a subterranean passage that leads outside the walls of the palace. And there, waiting for them are servants who've brought horses from the stables. Darnley and Mary get onto their horses and they then gallop off through the streets of Edinburgh, out into the countryside, heading east towards Dunbar on the coast of the North Sea. And it's pretty grueling for Mary, it's five hours ride. She keeps having to stop to be sick. You know, she's heavily pregnant. But once they reach Dunbar, they're effectively safe. It's a very, very well fortified castle and the Earl of Bothwell, who effectively commands it, has already begun raising an army. And so you can imagine that in Edinburgh, when Morton and Ruffin and all the other conspiracies and murderers of Rizzio wake up to find that Mary and Darnley have flown, they realize not just that they've been double crossed, but that they have very, very badly lost the initiative to Mary, of course.
- [46:04]
Tom Holland
So Mary, you know, there's been a lot of criticism of Mary in this series, but here she has played her cards superbly, right?
- [46:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
She has.
- [46:10]
Tom Holland
I mean, she has escaped, she has, I was about to say seduced. It's not quite the right word, seduced her husband. But she's basically tricked her husband into coming with her. Her, she's teamed up with this bloke Bothwell, who's an absolute kind of, you know, he's a proper man of violence. And her strategy works perfectly, doesn't it? Because basically she has the initiative and she's not going to surrender it.
- [46:31]
Dominic Sandbrook
Absolutely. So her strategy all along, as we said, was to divide and rule. So she's decided she's going to pardon Moray and the chase about raid conspirators. And so she does this. And 10 days later, they are permitted to return to court. Mary stages a ceremony of reconciliation between Moray and Bothwell, who, you know, for years and years have been mortal enemies. And so they stand before Mary and take each other's hands and swear amity. And I think there's no question as to who the Big winner out of all this is. And it is Bothwell, because it is now very evident that he is the go to guy. If Mary is in trouble, she will turn to him. And in a way, he is in a position now to start eclipsing even Moray, the most formidable of all the. Of all the lords, the Rizzio conspirators. Meanwhile, the lords who've joined up to murder him, they are officially condemned as rebels. They're outlawed, their goods and property are confiscated by Mary. Morton flees to England. So too does Lord Ruffin, who, by this point is. I mean, he's at his death door, literally. And he dies a couple of weeks later in Newcastle. And he says on his deathbed that he can see paradise opened and a great company of angels coming to take him. So that's quite nice.
- [47:43]
Tom Holland
That is lovely.
- [47:44]
Dominic Sandbrook
Maitland, the Foreign Secretary, who had not put his name to the bond agreeing to murder Rizzio. He's not exiled, but Mary's very, very suspicious of him, dismisses him from office and places him under house arrest. So the Rizzio conspirators are big losers, of course, but perhaps the biggest loser is Darnley, because even though he denies complicity in Rizzio's murder, and he swears it upon his honour, fidelity in the word of a prince, I mean, this is mad, because, as we've said, you know, his fellow conspirators have this bond, which he signed, and so they release it immediately. And there it is, absolutely clear. And so Mary now irrevocably despises him. And what's even worse for Darnley, of course, is that he has made a mortal enemy of Morton. And Morton is a truly terrifying man. And not only has he annoyed Morton, he's even annoyed his own father, because Lennox has been caught up in this. He gets banished from court retreats to Glasgow, which is basically his power base. And he is furious with Darnley because he spent, you know, decades trying to make a comeback. He's done it. And now Darnley has completely screwed things up.
- [48:56]
Tom Holland
So Darnley presumably has no friends and allies left. I mean, everyone can see, even if they liked him, which I guess a lot of people don't, they can just see he's a complete flake and a waste of space, and he just makes incredibly bad decisions.
- [49:07]
Dominic Sandbrook
They can absolutely see that. I mean, Mary's problem is that she can't actually banish him. Cause he's still her husband and he's the father of her unborn child. And she can't really dispose of him or divorce him or anything like that, because she doesn't want to cast shade on the legitimacy of what she hopes will be her son. And this is very much on her thoughts, because by now she is getting close to term. And unsurprisingly, rather than return to Holyrood, where she, you know, had these kind of horrendous experiences, she chooses instead to settle herself in the relative security of Edinburgh Castle. And it's there, on the 3rd of June, 1566, that she goes into confinement. She's still very nervous of plots, I mean, entirely understandably. And so, outside the room where she's going to give birth, she posts only men whom she can absolutely trust. She goes into labor. It's very long, it's very agonizing. But at last, triumph. Not only does she successfully give birth, but she gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Hurrah.
- [50:11]
Tom Holland
Tremendous scenes. The guns of Edinburgh Castle are firing bonfires in Edinburgh. Bad news, though, for Elizabeth I, right? Because when she gets the news that this baby has come into the world, Mary's son, a boy, an heir, she has a massive sulk, doesn't she? What did she say?
- [50:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
She does. The queen of Scotland is lighter of a bonnie son, and I am but barren stock. So that's the dark side of being the Virgin Queen, I guess. And it reflects the fact that Mary has achieved her prime duty, really, as a queen, which is to give her kingdom a male heir. And even Jenny Wormald, never one to cut Mary any slack, even she acknowledges it as the one great success of her queenship. So, well done, Mary. However, her situation remains precarious. She's still hemmed in around by all kinds of. Of challenges and perils and enemies. She's still a Catholic queen in a country that is dominated by fractious and by now embittered Protestant lords in England, she still has a deadly enemy, barely suspected by Mary herself, who is William Cecil, Elizabeth I's most powerful minister. And above all, of course, there is the problem of Darnley, her completely incorrigible husband and the man who is now the father of her son. And the big question is, can he be trusted to behave? Is there any prospect that he will mend his ways, or is he going to continue to be an absolutely massive embarrassment?
- [51:46]
Tom Holland
Well, a big spoiler alert. He's not going to behave. And what is more, waiting in the wings is the formidable and bloodstained figure of Lord Bothwell. Now, those people who want to find out what happens next, if you're a member of the Rest is History club. You can do that right now. If you're not and you would like to find out what happens next in the incredible story of Mary Queen of Scots, then I urge you to join our own bloodstained conspiracy. Go to therestishistory.com you can sign up more quickly than it would take you to kill an Italian secretary. So sign up@therealStishistory.com and we will see you next time for the next thrilling installment in the story of Mary Stuart. Thank you, Tom, and goodbye.
- [52:28]
Dominic Sandbrook
Bye bye.
- [52:40]
David Olusoga
It's David Ulusoga from Journey Through Time. Here's that clip that we mentioned earlier. If you look at all of the accounts of the fire at this point, as we get to the end of Sunday the 2nd, the 1st day, this fire is not behaving in any way the way fires traditionally did in London. And there are some people who've argued that it was becoming a firestorm, that the heat and the wind and the movement of air caused by the fire was feeding. It was becoming self sustaining, as it were. John Eveling, who's a great writer and a diarist of this moment, he talks about the sound of the fire. He said it was like thousands of chariots driving over cobblestones. There are descriptions in Pepys and elsewhere of this great arc of fire in the sky. And we imagine that everything around you is colored by the flames, yellows and oranges, and above you is this thick black smoke. This is a city you know. These are streets you walk. This is a place that's deeply familiar to you and it looks completely otherworldly. It looks like another, like a sort of landscape you've never seen before. People describe the fire almost as if it's supernatural.
- [53:55]
Sarah Churchwell
If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time. Wherever you get your podcasts.