← The Rest Is History
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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 Madame, my ears have been so deafened and my understanding so grieved and my heart so affrighted to hear the dreadful news of the abominable murder of your mad husband and my slain cousin. Oh, that I scarcely have the wits to write about it. I cannot dissemble that I am more sorrowful for you than for him. Oh, madam, I would not do the office of faithful cousin or affectionate friend if I studied rather to please your ears than employed myself in preserving your honour. I will not at all dissemble what most people are talking about, which is that you will look through your fingers at the revenging of this deed, and that you do not take measures that touch those who have done as you wished, as if the thing had been entrusted in a way that the murderers felt assurance in doing it. I exhort you, I counsel you, and I beseech you to take this thing so much to heart that you will not fear to touch even him whom you have nearest to you if the thing touches him. And that no persuasion will prevent you from making an example out of this to the world that you are both a noble princess and a loyal wife, praying the Creator to give you the grace to recognize this traitor and protect yourself from him as from the ministers of Satan, with my very heartfelt recommendations to you, very dear sister. So that is a letter, Tom, written by Elizabeth I on the 24th of February, 1567. She's writing to Mary, Queen of Scots. She is writing following the murder two weeks previously of Mary's husband and Elizabeth's cousin, Scotland's leading cock chick, I believe is the technical term. Lord Darnley. So this is an amazing document, making all kinds of slightly passive aggressive allegations. Yes, and it's a document that led Antonia Fraser, in her wonderful book about Mary, Queen of Scots, to describe the murder of Lord Darnley as the most debatable, as well as surely the most worked over murder in history. Now, we always love a murder, and we love in particular a Scottish murder.
- [02:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
A murder, yeah.
- [02:48]
Tom Holland
Just give us the outline of the crime before we get going.
- [02:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
So we've done jfk, and I guess probably that would be the most celebrated murder in history, but it hasn't been around for, you know, centuries and centuries like this one has. Antonio Fraser is absolutely right. This is a murder people have been going over for century after century after century. And I think that the barest outline of the crime makes clear why. So at 2am on the 10th of February, 1567, the house on the edge of Edinburgh where Lord Darnley, so Mary, Queen of Scots husband had been staying was blown to smithereens, blown sky high. Strangely, however, Darnley had not perished in this explosion. Instead, he and his valet were found without any marks of injury in a nearby garden. They had been laid out very neatly and next to them was a chair, a rope and a thick fur cloak. So all the elements of an astonishing murder mystery, Agatha Christie style. Very. So some obvious questions. Who killed Darnley? How did they kill him? Where did they kill him? And what is going on with the chair and the rope and fur cloak? But of course, the most sensitive question of all is the one that Elizabeth I, in that letter you read, has directly fixed on, which is, you know, is Mary complicit in the murder? Because Elizabeth says, this is what people are saying and you have to take steps to ensure, you know, that this mud doesn't stick. Another specific point that Elizabeth is making in that letter, she is hinting at the gossip that Mary had not only planned the murder, but had done so in association with one particular accomplice who Elizabeth doesn't name in her letter, but describes as being like a minister of Satan. And who Elizabeth is alluding to, we will come to in due course, because we're going to be doing a deep dive into the murder and then trying to solve the riddle of what happened. But just to emphasize, what Elizabeth is doing in that letter is echoing claims and counterclaims that are already raging like a live fire in Scotland and within only a few months will plunge into the entire kingdom into civil war and massive spoiler alert. It will ultimately result in the downfall of Mary, her imprisonment, her forced abdication, her flight to England, and I suppose in the very long run, her execution at Fotheringay.
- [05:39]
Tom Holland
So that argument about did Mary do it? Has raged for, well, for centuries, effectively, hasn't it? And you made the point in your notes tomorrow that the two great books, well, two of the great books about Mary, Queen of Scots. I mean, there are multiple very good books, but one of them, Antonia Fraser's, Antonia Fraser, thinks that Mary is absolutely a brilliant person and would never have done it, doesn't she? That soft heart, that horror of bloodshed, that inclination towards mercy. I mean, blowing up her husband and then murdering him in a very baroque way. In a garden is the last thing that Mary would have done. On the other hand, somebody you've mentioned a lot in this series, Jenny Wormold, great historian of early modern Scotland, she absolutely despises Mary, Queen of Scots.
- [06:23]
Dominic Sandbrook
If there's a chance to stick the dagger in, she'll take it.
- [06:26]
Tom Holland
Yeah. And she basically says if she didn't murder Darnley, she was, and I quote, almost the only member of Edinburgh's political society who knew nothing about it. So basically, it reflects even more badly on her if she didn't murder him than if she did.
- [06:40]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, essentially. I mean, those two books kind of articulate the very polarized position. But since they were written, a third study of Darnley's murder has come out, which I think provides a solution to the crime that if not exactly definitive, because, you know, at the distance of however long it is, it's hard to do that. But I think it is as definitive a solution as we are likely to get. And this is an account in John Guy's biography of Mary, My Heart Is My Own, which was published in 2004 and was the inspiration for the Saoirse Ronan film. And what Guy did, he's a brilliant scholar of the tudors and the 16th century more generally, and he has gone back and looked at all the original documents in a way that hadn't been done before. I mean, amazing to think of it. And most of these documents are English reports written chiefly to Cecil in the Victorian period. They were collected and kind of bunged into those, you know, the kind of enormous, vast, leather bound volumes that Victorian archivists absolutely loved. Lots of them were miscataloged, misinterpreted, and the result of that has been that their provenance has often been obscured. The dates in which they were written, certain key texts have been overlooked. And so Guy has done the hard yards and we reap the benefits. Right. Because essentially we will be drawing very heavily on Guy's work for our account of Darnley's murder.
- [08:10]
Tom Holland
So before we get into the murder, Tom, let's set the scene a little bit. We ended last time. Mary has given birth to Lord Darnley's son. So I'm guessing most people will have heard the previous episodes in this series. So Mary Queen of Scots, slightly beleaguered. Lord Darnley, an absolutely terrible man. You described him as one of the worst men we've ever talked about, I think.
- [08:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
No, I didn't say that. So he's not one of the worst men, as in kind of Himmler.
- [08:34]
Tom Holland
Right.
- [08:34]
Dominic Sandbrook
He's not like that.
- [08:35]
Tom Holland
He's not in Himmler's league. Oh, my gosh, that's high praise.
- [08:38]
Dominic Sandbrook
But he's kind of like the worst kind of person that you'd meet at. At a university disco at St Andrews.
- [08:44]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Red trousers, you said.
- [08:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
You know, cock chick. Yeah, that's what he is. He's probably the biggest chick in British history.
- [08:53]
Tom Holland
By the way, that's not us being rude, that's Scottish. That's a Scottish source, Right?
- [08:56]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. That's authentic 16th century slang.
- [08:59]
Tom Holland
Yeah. So, anyway, Mary has given birth to his son, the future James VI of Scotland, big friend of the rest is history. Tongue too big for his mouth, loves a witch. And she's done that. She gave birth to him. It was maximum security in Edinburgh Castle. And the reason for that was that three months before the birth of James, her secretary, David Rizzio, the Italian bloke, had been murdered in Holyrood in her private quarters, in ludicrous circumstances. And the conspirators had included her chancellor, who's this sinister and sort of conspiratorial Machiavel called the Earl of Mortem. There's her Secretary of State, William Maitland, and then Lord Darnley, her own husband has been in on it. And just to remind ourselves, she dealt with them in different ways. And she said, morton, all of those guys she'd exiled effectively to England and she'd confiscated their lands. Maitland has been disgraced because he didn't take part in the actual murder, so his punishment's not as harsh. And Darnley, I mean, this is bonkers. She basically used her feminine wiles to persuade him to change sides. She promised him access to her bedchamber and her person. Anyway, so all sweetness and light for Mary. She's won the day. Or has she?
- [10:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
Or has she? I mean, the key problem she faces is that Darnley remains a complete nightmare. You know, he's a massive loose cannon. And also, in his personal behavior, he's terrible. He's very, very disrespectful to her. Just a kind of awful person. So an example of this is that in August. So by now, Mary has recovered from childbirth. She and Darnley, they want to go hunting, and they go to a place called Tracker House in the Borders, centre of very famous hunting ground. But it turns out to be a disaster because actually, the deer are vanishing, the woods are starting to be chopped down. There isn't enough for Darnley to enjoy a good hunt. And he gets very cross about this. And one night he Just gets spectacularly drunk. I mean, he's always drunk, but this time he's really badly drunk. And he leans over to Mary, we're going to go bloody, you know, we're going to go hunt deer tomorrow, and you're bloody well going to come. Right. And Mary doesn't want to do it. And she whispers in his ear. Dramatic news, she said. She thinks that she may be pregnant again. And Darnley doesn't care. He reveals this to everyone in the hall. He says, never mind. If we lose this one, we shall make another one. And the Lord of tra, his host, is appalled by this and rebukes him and tells him that he doesn't talk like a Christian. And Darnley, he snaps his fingers in Lord Traquer's face. What ought we not to work and bear? Well, when she is with foe, what, and this goes down like a lead balloon? Yeah, with Lord Traquer, with Mary's attendants, and with Mary herself. And she seems to have been so offended by this that she breaks the holiday off and leaves early.
- [11:53]
Tom Holland
She's quite right.
- [11:55]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, I think she is, yeah.
- [11:56]
Tom Holland
I mean, to be honest, I thought he was a bad man, but now that I've heard him speak.
- [11:59]
Dominic Sandbrook
That's exactly how he spoke.
- [12:00]
Tom Holland
I think he's even worse than I had imagined.
- [12:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
Not quite as bad as Himmler still, but maybe nudging up there.
- [12:06]
Tom Holland
Yeah, he's in the medals. He's on the podium, isn't he?
- [12:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Anyway, so. So Mary, understandably, she goes back to Edinburgh, to Holyrood, and to her baby, little James, who is described by the English ambassador as being well proportioned and like to prove a godly prince. I mean, has he looked at his tongue? Obviously. And Mary is so anxious about what Darnley might get up to that she moves him from Holyrood to Stirling, and en route, James is guarded by 500 Musketeers. And of course, Stirling is the very castle where Mary's mother, Mary of Guise, had taken her to keep her for safekeeping. And what Mary is worried about, I think, is that Darnley might seize James and appoint himself as regent, and that would then enable him essentially, perhaps even to imprison Mary, certainly to kind of sideline her and effectively ruled Scotland as regent until James comes of age. So if Mary has control of James, then essentially she's blocking that option off for Darnley. Mary recognizes that the issue is what it's always been, which is that Darnley is not content with his status as a kind of a Consort that he wants to be king. He wants to be the king of Scotland, which Mary had promised him and then had kind of changed her mind. And because of this, Darnley is endlessly plotting. He's endlessly coming up with schemes. So he's not just plotting to make himself king of Scotland madly. He also wants to make himself king of England. He's come up with, I mean, just such a mad scheme. He wants to capture Scarborough, like Harold Hardrada. Yeah, so Scarborough is a rather. I mean, it's very picturesque, very attractive, has a wonderful cricket festival, but it's not one of the great strongholds of England, I think it's fair to say. It's a kind of fishing village on the Yorkshire coast. And the other stronghold he wants to get is the Scilly Isles, which are an archipelago off the southwest corner of Cornwall. And his plan is that he's going to capture these places and then he's going to import Catholic armies from Europe, and he will then launch an invasion of England with these armies from Scarborough and the Scilly Isles. And it's completely mad. We should actually remind listeners that Darnley is Catholic. So this is part of the mix as well. So this plot falls through, you know, it's absolutely stillborn. He's humiliated by this. And so he then has a massive strop and announces that he is going to leave Mary, he's had enough of her, and he's going to go and settle abroad. And people might think, well, that's quite a good solution, isn't it? It. Well, it isn't. Firstly, because it would be very humiliating for Mary and, by extension, Scotland, but also it would be a nightmare for the Protestant lords, because the last thing that they want is a Catholic with a claim to the throne of Scotland making mischief for them with the Catholic powers of France and Spain or whatever on the continent. And so they are irate about it. Mary is appalled. She spends a whole night trying to make him see sense, saying, you know, this is mad. Please don't do this. He refuses. And so she summons the privy council, and she orders Darnley to appear before the privy council. And the privy council asks Darnley to explain, you know, what are you up to? What are you doing here? He can't really give a credible answer because basically his answer is, oh, you know, I'm cross. You know, you're not treating me right. Yeah, I'm going off on a gap year. I mean, that's basically his pitch. And the privy council are so kind of stunned and appalled by what they've heard from him, they write officially to Catherine de Medici in France and say, look, this guy is a lunatic, have nothing to do with him. And if he does come to France and tries to set up, you know, a royal court in exile or to create mischief or whatever, you know, just do not touch him. And this, I think, is where the notion that he is a lunatic starts to come, because Elizabeth, in that letter that you quoted, refers to him as being mad. And I think, think that this is becoming part of the diplomatic chatter. Right. He's such an international embarrassment that saying that he's mad is less of a humiliation than saying, well, we just can't control him.
- [16:20]
Tom Holland
So with Darnley moving towards the sort of margins, does that mean that Mary now has to rely on a lot of people that she's previously fallen out with? So, for example, if she's talking to the French, her foreign policy expert is this bloke Maitland who was her Secretary of State, who had been disgraced after the Rizzio murder.
- [16:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, he had, but I think he'd always basically been Team Mary, and I think Mary knows that, and as you say, I mean, she needs his advice. So he's brought out of his disgrace, he's effectively pardoned and he's restored to his post as Secretary of State. But there is one condition, and that is that Maitland is reconciled with the one Scottish lord on whom Mary is now relying more than any other, because he has proved himself consistently loyal. And this is the Earl of Bothwell. And Bothwell is this swaggering muscle bound, got a tremendous ginger moustache, very fond of a punch up, I think it's fair to say. But he's been at Mary's back for a decade and more because he stood behind Mary of Guise, her mother, when she'd been in trouble. Bothwell had rallied to her cause in the wake of Rizzio's murder, and Bothwell had helped to drive Morton and his fellow conspirators into exile.
- [17:33]
Tom Holland
Both, although a very formidable man, is on the receiving end, isn't he, that autumn. I mean, the most Scottish thing that's ever happened. He's been attacked, left with life threatening injuries by a man who's called.
- [17:52]
Dominic Sandbrook
Go on, what's. What's he called?
- [17:57]
Tom Holland
He's called Little Jock Elliot.
- [18:00]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [18:00]
Tom Holland
So surely he played for Dumb Fernand in the 1980s.
- [18:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So he, he's. Little Jock Elliott is a notorious Reaver.
- [18:09]
Tom Holland
Right, of course he is.
- [18:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
And the Reavers are the bandits who. Yeah. Infest the border regions between England and Scotland, and particularly this region called the Debatable Lands, which is a stretch of the border. And the Hermitage, which is Bothwell's ancestral pile, is absolutely at the center of the Debatable Lands.
- [18:31]
Tom Holland
I love the fact that after 700 episodes and people have been like, when are you going to do Scottish history? Do some Scottish history. We could have done the Scottish Enlightenment, we could have chosen any element, but instead we chose like people headbutting each other in Debatable Lands, called Little Jock, because we absolutely wanted to. To lean into their. To their sense of, you know, what Scotland is.
- [18:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, just to reassure Scottish listeners, the Debatable Lands are the most lawless and bandit written corner, not just in Scotland, but in all of Britain. So we are emphasizing that. And this clearly is why Bothwell is so given to violence, is that you have to be violent to hold your own in this kind of landscape. So, yeah, so he's attacked and left for dead, covered with all kinds of wounds. The news is brought to Mary, who at the time is in Jedburgh, which is about 25 miles away to the east. And she's on Assizes. So she's going around hearing complaints from her subjects, basically kind of showing herself doing her royal duties. The gossip will be that is reported later, is that the moment she hears the news that Bothwell has been attacked. She leaves Jedburgh and gallops off alone to the hermitage. This is not true. She waits for a week because she still has the Assizes to hear and nor does she ride there alone. So Morrie, her half brother, he goes with her. Maitland is there a large retinue. But even so, I mean, it is a startling feat of horsemanship because it's 25 miles there over really very rough terrain. I mean, I've been there and seen it and I respect Mary very highly for having traveled that far. She spends two hours by Bothwell's bedside and it becomes clear that Bothwell isn't going to die, that he's on the road to recovery. And then they ride back. So that is a full and active day. And it turns out to be too much for Mary. She gets back to Jedburgh and she falls very, very dangerously ill. So whether it's over exertion, if she had been pregnant, she mentioned this to Darnley. I think by this point she's lost the baby. So it may be the after effects of a miscarriage, I'm not sure. But certainly her life is feared. For at one point she lies in bed for half an hour and I quote, eyes closed, mouth fast, and feet and arms stiff and cold. The Earl of Moray, her half brother, who I think is consumed with resentment that she is the queen and he's not the king. You know, an accident of his illegitimacy, he starts laying hands on all her silver plate and rings. So it's like Henry V making off with the crown before his father is dead. And Mary doesn't die because she has a very skillful French doctor, and he is able to kind of bring her back from the brink of death. And two weeks on from when it seemed like she was going to die, she's ready to continue on her way. And the impact of, of this near death experience is very profound, I think, for Mary. I think that she really starts to think, you know, what kind of kingdom am I going to leave behind? It generates a massive anxiety spike among the Scottish nobility. They don't want a change of regime, they don't want Darnley on the loose. They are worried that it will result in anarchy. And so they are very committed to keeping Mary on the throne and ensuring that Darnley doesn't cause her too much trouble. And the question then is, well, how are we going to deal with Darnley? I mean, how are we going to make sure that Mary isn't kind of embroiled in endless trouble from him?
- [21:49]
Tom Holland
What on earth could they possibly do?
- [21:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
What could we do? And it is Maitland, the Secretary of State, who was the guy who had first suggested the murder of Rizzio in very kind of subtle, insinuating terms, who again now starts to broach the possibility maybe of another murder. So he even goes so far as to kind of put this into writing. So he writes to the Scottish ambassador in Paris shortly after. Mary has had this brush with death. It is a heartbreak for her to think that he should be her husband and how to be free of him. She sees no way out. But obviously, you know, he is suggesting that he might. He is traveling with Mary from Jedburgh and they go to a place called Craigmiller Castle, and they arrive there on the 20th of November. It's just south of Edinburgh, and its laird is Catholic, which means that he is absolutely reliable. I mean, he's completely team Mary. And Mary gets there, and she then falls ill again. And so all the lords in her retinue, which include Maitland, Moray and by this time, Bothwell. Cause he's risen up from his sickbed, he's covered in scars, but he's, you know, he's kind of rough and tough. They all have time, while she's lying in her sickbed, to discuss what might be done with Darnley. And when Mary recovers, they go to see her, all except for Moray, who by this point is worried at the way in which the conversation is turning and doesn't really want to be a part of it. But Maitland and Bothwell and all the other lads, they go to Mary and they say, look, you have got to divorce Darnley. Mahre does not think that she should divorce Darnley because that would just leave him on the loose. But all the others think, yeah, let's go for it. Mary listens to them and she kind of agrees in principle. But her anxiety, obviously, is that it wouldn't be damaging to James. She says, I will have it, provided it is not prejudicial to my son.
- [23:53]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [23:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
And then she asks, well, is Moray, does he agree to this? Because I notice he's not here. And Maitland answers, I am assured he will look through his fingers thereto and will behold our doings, saying nothing to the same.
- [24:06]
Tom Holland
In other words, he's just going to let us kind of get on with it.
- [24:09]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [24:10]
Tom Holland
And obviously, if it was just a divorce, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But that implies that this may be more than a divorce, that may be a slightly more. More permanent separation, shall we say?
- [24:21]
Dominic Sandbrook
That is a hint that Maitland then drops to Mary, which Mary becomes very agitated, and she presses Maitland, well, you know, what exactly do you mean? And she goes on to say, I will that ye do nothing whereto any spot may be laid to my honour or conscience. And therefore I pray you rather let the matter be in the state as it is, that is, don't murder him. And for now, let's leave the whole question of divorce to one side.
- [24:48]
Tom Holland
But the clock is ticking a little bit, isn't it? Because they're going to christen James their son. And I suppose if Darnley had turned up to that and sort of asserted himself as James father, that might have slightly changed the game, but very foolishly. It happens at stirling, doesn't it? 17th of December.
- [25:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah.
- [25:05]
Tom Holland
And Darnley has a massive tantrum and refuses to come because he's crossed that he's not king.
- [25:10]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes. Such poor behavior to miss the christening of your own son because you know you can't wear a crown.
- [25:17]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [25:18]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. So he's not there. There is a man on hand who Mary can turn to to take down his place. And this is the much scarred and mustachioed Earl of Bothwell. You know, he's got to look smart for the occasion. And so Mary makes sure to provide him with a very fine outfit of kind of gorgeous blue clothes. And so Bothwell is strutting around looking tremendous. And of course, this is much noted, right?
- [25:43]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [25:43]
Dominic Sandbrook
People observe that Darnley isn't there, but Bothwell's looking great in his suit. But even Bothwell refuses to attend the christening, and so does Moray, Bothwell's old rival, Mary's half sister, because they're Protestants. And the ceremony, the baptism, is a Catholic one. Right. So it might look as though the whole thing has been a disaster. Darnley's not there. Bothwell is, you know, creating gossip. Bothwell and Moray aren't attending the baptism, but actually it's been a triumph behind the scenes, because what has been happening while the lords have been plotting what to do about Darnley, is that Mary, you know, I said that, you know, her mind has really been concentrated. She's really thinking, well, what do I want from the future? And so she has written to Elizabeth in England, queen to queen, not going through Maitland, not going through Cecil, and she says to Elizabeth, look, I've very nearly died and I've been worrying about my son. So what I request is that if I die, would you become James's protector? Which in effect means becoming James's foster mother. And Elizabeth is very touched by this, and she accepts. And as a token of this, she agrees to be James's godmother, even though the baptism ceremony is a Catholic one. And she sends Mary this magnificent bejeweled font of solid gold. And the detente between the two queens, you know, relations between them had been quite tense. Is now sufficient that they can continue to discuss policy without recourse to them, their respective ministers, and begin privately negotiating over what had always been Mary's ultimate dream, namely to be acknowledged by Elizabeth as heir apparent to the throne of England.
- [27:27]
Tom Holland
Wow, that's looking good for Mary.
- [27:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
It is looking good for Mary. And it was her illness that precipitated this kind of diplomatic breakthrough. You know, that this private conversation. And I think also as part of this, Mary is thinking, I'm reconciled with Elizabeth. Why don't I get everybody else to be reconciled? So on Christmas Eve, she formally pardons the Rizzio plotters. So that's Morton and all that gang. On the 6th of January, she allows Maitland to marry posh Mary, the one of the four Marys who Maitland had been desperately in love with, despite the 20 year age gap. And on the 9th of January, Morton crosses from Berwick into Scotland. He is home. And on the 14th of January, Morton and Maitland meet at a place called Whittingham Castle, which is again a few miles ride from Edinburgh. All these castles dotted around the capital. And present for their meeting is their old adversary from the Rizzio plot, the man who Mary had turned to when Rizzio got murdered. The Earl of Bothwell. So amazing.
- [28:31]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [28:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
Two different groups of people meeting up to discuss things. I mean, what could they be discussing, these three men?
- [28:37]
Tom Holland
While all that's happening? What's happened to Darnley? He refused to come to the baptism of his own son. Has he just been off hunting or has he been plotting something more sinister?
- [28:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, he's returned to his plotting. His plot is exactly what Mary's been worried he might do, which is to abduct James and to imprison her. And so she laments this and writes to Maitland, for the king, our husband, always, we perceive him occupied and busy enough to have inquisition of our doings. So in other words, he's trying to map out what her movements are so that he can abduct her. And this is despite the fact that Darnley hasn't been very well. And actually, he gets really seriously ill with syphilis, obviously.
- [29:15]
Tom Holland
But of course, what else would he have?
- [29:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
And ominously, from Mary's point of view, his sick room is in Glasgow, which is the great power base of his father, the Earl of Lennox. And this is alarming. I mean, Mary doesn't want trouble from Lennox as well as from Darnley. And so she thinks, I've got to get him back. I can't allow him to be there with his father. So, I think very bravely, she rides to Glasgow, she tends to him in his sickbed, and she urges him to come back with her. And specifically, she says, come back with me to Craigmiller Castle. You'll be much better there. You'll be nearer Edinburgh. We can look after you properly. Darnley initially refuses. He feels safe and secure in Glasgow. But finally he agrees. Yes. Why does he agree to do this? So John Guy's theory is, and I quote, to win over Darnley, Mary had to prove her affection for him in the only way his carnal and degenerate nature. Understood. Understood. This meant offering to have sex with him again as soon as he was cured. He's very into the notion that Mary is endlessly promising Darnley sex as a way of kind of trying to rein him in. I think there is another possible reason why Darnley agrees to come back with Mary and basically try and be reconciled with her, which is of course, that Morton is now back on the scene. And Morton was the co conspirator in the Rizzio plot who Darnley spectacularly double crossed. And Morton is not the kind of guy who takes being double crossed lying down. I mean, he is a very, very menacing and dangerous opponent. I think that Darnley probably is thinking, you know, Mary now I need her actually, if I'm going to be kept safe from Morton. He says, I'm not going to go to Craigmiller Castle because it's Laird, as we mentioned, is too team Mary, it's too kind of pro Stuart. So he's probably worried that Mary might lock him up in Craigmiller Castle. You know, it's a place full of dungeons. He also says, I'm not going to go to Holyrood because he's covered in weeping pustules and he's far too vain. He doesn't want to be seen, you know, covered in spots.
- [31:13]
Tom Holland
He's not a very appetizing prospect for her to sleep with. I mean, so if she has made that offer, that's a big offer from her.
- [31:19]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yes, absolutely. So Darnley probably is going back with Mary and feeling slightly fonder towards her than he had previously done. And Mary is obviously trying to be as nice to him as she possibly can because she's essentially trying to wrangle him. And so she agrees to Darnley's proposal, which is that rather than stay in Holyrood or in Craigmiller, he will stay in relative isolation on the edge of Edinburgh. And he suggests a house right next to the city wall. The house is barely furnished and it stands beside the Kirka Field, a ruined medieval church. It's simultaneously isolated so no one can see his spots, but it's near enough to Holyrood that Mary can come out and visit him. So it seems Perfect. So on the 1st of February, Mary arrives in Edinburgh. He's got Darnley in a horse litter. Darnley is installed in the house at Kirk of Field, and there he is to wait while his treatment for syphilis is completed and his weeping pustules dry up. The course goes very well. A week and a half pass, Darnley is almost ready to come out of the house at the Kirka Field. And then in the early hours of 10 February, around 2 o' clock in the morning, Mary and most of Edinburgh are awakened by A massive flash of light and then an enormous explosion. And we're told that the sound of the explosion was equivalent to the firing of 30 cannons. And the next day, Mary writes to her ambassador in France with news of what had happened. The matter is horrible, she wrote, and so strange, as we believe, the like was never heard of in any country. Darnley, her husband, the man with more enemies probably than any man has ever had in Scotland, is dead. By whom it has been done. Mary writes to the ambassador in France, or in what matter it appears not as yet.
- [33:32]
Tom Holland
Crikey. Well, on that bombshell, Tom, I'm so excited. I think we should take a break. And when we return after the break, we will investigate. We will don our true crime podcasting kilts, and we will investigate what happened in the 24 hours leading up to Lord Darnley's murder. Tom, I think we should name the key conspirators, we should unmask the plotters, and we will answer the crucial question, who did it? And was it Mary, Queen of Scots? So we'll see you after the break.
- [34:11]
Dominic Sandbrook
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- [35:39]
Tom Holland
Yeah, speed's massively important, Tom. A great inspiration for me is the Battle of Cape St. Vincent in 1797, when Horatio Nelson really made his name. He went out of the line to attack the Spanish. His ship got entangled with a Spanish ship, he jumped onto the Spanish ship and captured it. And then he realized they become entangled with a second Spanish ship and he leapt onto the next Spanish ship, captured that one as well. A tremendous example of quick thinking, saving the day.
- [36:05]
Dominic Sandbrook
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- [36:32]
Tom Holland
Hiring indeed is all you need. Welcome back to the Rest Is History. Exciting true crime podcasting with a Scottish twist. So, Tom, let's kick off in a place very close to your heart, which is Berwick on the Anglo Scottish border. There's a bloke there called Sir William Drury, and he is England's eyes and ears. He's the marshal of the town. He's basically an intelligence officer. And he thinks he knows what's been going on, doesn't he? Because he sends a report within a day of Darnley's murder to Elizabeth I Chief Minister William Cecil. So take us into that bit of the story.
- [37:15]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, so he has agents everywhere in Edinburgh, and this initial report establishes the kind of parameters of the mystery. But he will continue to send increasingly detailed, increasingly forensic accounts of what he thinks happened. And I think that these reports combined with we get confessions from participants in the conspiracy, testimonials from witnesses, and you put them all together. And I think that it, it does enable a fairly accurate account of the events that culminated in the death of Darnley to be drawn up. So when you look at these, what do they tell us? So let's look at Mary and Darnley first, just to recap. Darnley had arrived at the place of his murder on the 1st of February, 1567. And this is Kirk of Field, which is a complex of houses built up beside an old ruined church on the southern fringes of Edinburgh. And the wall that had been built in the wake of the Battle of Flodden to keep the English out runs right past it. It's a very well chosen location for an invalid to recuperate. It's on a hill, so it's above the kind of smoke and filth of Edinb. Um, it's surrounded by gardens, so there's fresh air there. Very much more salubrious than Holyrood. And as we said by 9 February. Darnley has been convalescing there for a week and a half, and he's pretty much ready to go. The evening before Darnley's due to come back to Holyrood, Mary arrives in the evening with a whole train of lords and ladies, Bothwell very prominent among them, and they're celebrating this. They're celebrating the fact that Darnley will be coming back to join Mary the following day. And Mary is in an excellent mood. She feels that she's got Darnley back under her influence. He seems much more amenable than he had been. And that evening, Darnley is off his face on whiskey. He's developed a real taste for it. He starts groping her very publicly in front of everyone, and rather than giving him a slap or telling him to leave her alone, she gives him a ring as a token of her affection. So things seem to be looking up for the happy couple. Yeah, but I think the real reason that she's happy has nothing to do with Darnley and everything to do with these ongoing private negotiations with Elizabeth in England. It really looks now as though Mary's great dream of being publicly acknowledged as Elizabeth's heir might be on the verge of fulfillment. I mean, very hard to know with Elizabeth because she's always kind of playing hard to get. But Mary, I think, genuinely believes that her great dream might be close to fulfillment. So Darnley wants Mary to stay with him the night, but Mary doesn't, because one of her favorite servants has got married that afternoon and is holding a great celebration, a kind of wedding mask. And Mary has promised to go. And Mary always keeps her promises to her servants. And, of course, also, you know, she likes to dance. She doesn't want to miss out on that. So she leaves Darnley. She arrives back at Holyrood about 11 o'. Clock. She attends her servant's mask, but she doesn't stay too long. She's in bed by half past midnight, and then at 2 o', clock. So an hour and a half later, she is woken by the destruction of Darnley's house at Kirk of Fields. And having heard the explosion, she summons Bothwell, who, of course, is the Sheriff of Edinburgh, so it's his responsibility to investigate. And Bothwell goes off, and when he comes back and he says that the house has been blown up and that Darnley has been found dead, witnesses are pretty much agreed that she is appalled by the news. And in a way that one might think is perhaps typical of Mary. She's appalled less for Darnley than by the thought that it might have been targeted at her. She says this crime was dressed as well for us as for the king, for we lay the most part of all the last week in that same lodging and was there accompanied with the most part of the lords that are in this town that same night. So it's all about her, basically. But also, and I think the, you know, an extra reason why she's devastated is that she knows how Darnley's murder is going to land across Europe. You know, this is going to be seen by the crowned heads of Christendom as regicide, which they obviously view as being a terrible crime.
- [41:30]
Tom Holland
They rank him as a king even though he isn't one.
- [41:32]
Dominic Sandbrook
He's married to a queen. I mean, he's not officially a king, but they will see it as effectively being regicide. And she knows that. One person who will be absolutely appalled is her royal cousin, Elizabeth of England, with whom she has been in negotiations. So that, I think, is the key point. The timing of Darnley's murder for Mary could not have been worse.
- [41:55]
Tom Holland
So if Mary didn't authorise or approve the murder, then who did?
- [42:02]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, by early May, you remember, we've got this Englishman in Berwick. Yeah, yeah. This guy, Sir William Drury, he thinks he has cracked the case and so he writes to Cecil and he names the two leading culprits. And probably the name of these two leading culprits will not come as a surprise to listeners. Morton, jury writes, is noted to have assured friendship to Bothwell, which to be the thankful now for his favour showed him in his absence, and trouble he intendeth to continue. And this is a brilliant piece of detective work. Most people think that Bothwell and Morton are deadly enemies. They'd been on opposed sides in the imbroglio around the murder of Rizzio. But actually what Drury has found out is that it was Bothwell who had pushed Mary to pardon Morton. And the reason that he had done that was because Bothwell knew that even though he'd been opposed to Morton over the Rizzio plot, any resentment that Morton might feel towards Bothwell is as nothing compared to the utter loathing that Morton has for Darnley, who had double crossed him over the Rizzio plot. And so Bothwell and Morton and Maitland as well, had met up on the 14th of January and they had had discussions and we left it hanging in the previous half. What were these discussions about? Well, Drury has found out what these discussions were about. They were Committing themselves to the murder of Darnley very rapidly, they had succeeded in signing up large numbers of other prominent Scottish nobles. What had motivated all of them? So, Morton is obviously motivated by personal resentment. But the number of people who are prepared to sign up to the murder of Darnley reflects the fact that he is seen as a massive, massive problem to be eliminated. And it's very telling, for instance, that one of the conspirators seems to have been the Laird of Traquer, who was the man who had witnessed Darnley's terrible behavior at his house.
- [44:03]
Tom Holland
Yeah.
- [44:03]
Dominic Sandbrook
Darnley's residence in Kirk of Fields provide the conspirators with the perfect opportunity. But, of course, the moment he leaves Kirk a Field and goes back to Mary, it then becomes much harder to eliminate him without also killing Mary, which they don't want to do. And Bothwell, who has been in close attendance on Mary throughout, I mean, he's absolutely keeping abreast of Darnley's potential movements. And so that's why it's the night before he's due to leave that they realize, well, we've got to go for it. It is also Bothwell who supplies the gunpowder for the explosion. And he can do that because he is the sheriff of Edinburgh. And so people would expect to see him in charge of men who are kind of, you know, rumbling through the streets of Edinburgh with wagons or whatever. So, on the evening of the 9th of February, as Mary and Darnley are partying in the rooms above them, Morton's men are mining the cellars of the house. And in fact, Mary runs into one of these people. He'd been a page of Bothwell. He's now become a valet to Mary, and he has the nickname of French Paris. And Mary sees him and says, jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are. What a.
- [45:14]
Tom Holland
What a thing to say to somebody. I mean, mad.
- [45:17]
Dominic Sandbrook
His face is streaked, but Mary can see through the dirt that he is blushing. But he. He says nothing, just twists his cap.
- [45:26]
Tom Holland
How begrimed you are. I'd like to use that. I'm going to use that line.
- [45:29]
Dominic Sandbrook
You can use it to Arthur, surely, if he's. I will.
- [45:31]
Tom Holland
Well, he's always begrimed, to be fair. What I don't understand, right, I get the explosion. Begrimed. People have mined this building, and it's blown up. What I don't get is why Darnley didn't die in the explosion. Why is he lying in the garden next to a chair? A rope and a cloak are the Freemasons involved in some peculiar way before being founded.
- [45:51]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, this is the whole Agatha Christie dimension to it, which has always so intrigued and fascinated people and, I think, complicated attempts to solve the murder. Guy's explanation, which is essentially a refinement of the reports that Drury has been sending to Cecil. So I think Drury is the guy who really nails it. Drury reports to Cecil that on the night of Darnley's murder, he suspects nothing of what is to come. He makes his farewells to Mary and then he goes to bed. And shortly afterwards, he's woken by the sounds of muffled footsteps from below. He looks out of a side window and he sees kind of shadowy, cloaked figures stealthily moving around. And he is a guy who knows he has lots of enemies, and so he assumes the worst, and he reaches for a thick fur cloak. He then wakes his valet and other servants, and he goes to a window that looks directly out over the city wall, which kind of adjoins the house in which he's in. The servants get a chair and they tie a rope to this chair, and they then lower Darnley and his valet into the street below. So, outside the city wall, however. Disaster. Drury's greatest investigative achievement has been to identify what happens next and in particular, to identify the man who had been on patrol in the street in case of just such an eventuality. Right. And this is a guy we've already met. He's a bloke called Andrew Kerr of Feldonside. And he was the man who, in the course of the Rizzio murder, had pointed a loaded gun at Mary's pregnant belly.
- [47:31]
Tom Holland
Yep.
- [47:33]
Dominic Sandbrook
He, as one of the Rizzio conspirators, is as consumed with hatred for Darnley as Morton, and, like Morton, is absolutely set on getting his revenge. And this is despite the fact that Darnley is actually a kinsman of Andrew Kerr. And to this end, Kerr, like Morton, has teamed up with Bothwell, and Drury writes to Cecil and details what happened next. The king was long of dying and to his strengths made debate for his life, which essentially means that he had tried to reason with Kerr and his men. And this report is substantiated in a remarkable way by the testimony of old women who lived in cottages on the side of this road and who were interrogated by agents of the Scottish Privy Council. And one of these women reported hearing Darnley cry out, oh, my kinsman, have mercy on me for the love of him who had mercy on all the world. But it's no good. Darnley and his valet are both strangled, so that's why there are no marks on their bodies. And then they are taken and laid out in a neighboring garden, and the chair, the rope and the cloak are dumped beside them. Now, the issue, obviously, is Darnley is dead. So do they need to blow up the house? The problem is that there might be all kinds of evidence. They don't really want the gunpowder to be found because then the lead might go back to Bothwell. So they think, oh, well, let's just blow it up anyway. So that's what they do. And the fact that you have this kind of, you know, the chair and the rope and everything in the garden and the explosion is what has made it such an enduring and tantalizing mystery, and why it's been so hard for people to solve. But I think that that solution that guy gives in his book, I mean, it seems to me the likeliest explanation for what actually happened.
- [49:26]
Tom Holland
So it's not a ritualistic killing and it's not been designed that way. No, it's just a result of him having tried to escape and this bloke Kerr kind of finding him. So they strangled him. Why didn't they just stab him? That had worked with Rizzio. Why the strangulation? That's my question.
- [49:41]
Dominic Sandbrook
I suppose to make his death seem as mysterious as possible, to kind of throw people off the scent.
- [49:46]
Tom Holland
And also, you just want to mix things up a bit, don't you? You don't want to just use the same method every time.
- [49:50]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah, exactly. They've already done the whole stabbing stuff, right? Yeah.
- [49:54]
Tom Holland
Try something different.
- [49:54]
Dominic Sandbrook
I mean, what would be brilliant? If they'd had kind of 56 stab wounds, like with Rizzio? But.
- [49:59]
Tom Holland
Yeah. Yeah, but no. All right, so a couple of questions that are still hanging. Number one, is it plausible that, as Elizabeth sort of suggested in that letter, that Mary had been looking through her fingers at the deed, that she. Okay, maybe she didn't officially authorise it formally, but maybe she kind of knew that it was in the air and she just gave them a little wink. Or she just. Or she did nothing. She knew it was coming, but she did nothing to stop it?
- [50:25]
Dominic Sandbrook
Well, it's a very good question, and we know of someone who did exactly that. And this is the Earl of Moray, whom Maitland, in a very suggestive prefiguring of Elizabeth's use of the same phrase in her letter to Mary, had correctly predicted that although he wouldn't participate in the plot against Darnley, he would look through his fingers at preparations for the murder. So in other words, you know, he would give it a nod and a wink. Basically, Moray knew what was going to happen and he didn't inform Mary, and instead, aware that things were coming to a head, he had absented himself from Edinburgh and retreated to his estate in Fife so that he could say, look, nothing to do with me, mate. Mary, of course, by contrast, I mean, she spends the evening before Darnley's murder, you know, partying in a house that is absolutely packed with gunpowder, which seems to me a very strong circumstantial piece of evidence that she knew nothing whatsoever of the crime. And also, there was a slight hint of amusement when you read Antonio Fraser's account of Mary's tender heart. Such a kind person, you know, I think that's right. And in fact, I mean, you know, from your perspective, I would imagine. Yeah, that's part of the problem with Mary. She is too tender hearted.
- [51:41]
Tom Holland
Don't play the game unless you're going to play it properly. Yeah, exactly. That's my take on history. Generally.
- [51:46]
Dominic Sandbrook
I think the conspirators feel like you do. That's why they don't tell her. That's why they don't even hint at it, because they're worried that she might step in and say, no, you're not allowed to do this. And I think also another key piece of evidence that Mary didn't do it is her evident panic when she is told that Darnley had been killed. Because she does, genuinely, it seems to me, she's very, very worried that she had been the target. So, as Guy puts it, Mary was a good actress, but not this good. So all of that, I think, kind of adds up to absolve Mary of the crime. But just to reiterate, the key piece of evidence, I think, is that the timing for her is terrible in relation to her negotiations with Elizabeth, because she has everything to lose. And actually, in the event she does, because that letter from Elizabeth which we began this episode with, I mean, it's a warning shot across Mary's bows. It's saying essentially, you know, solve the crime, arraign those who are responsible for it, or else there's no way that you are going to be my heir.
- [52:44]
Tom Holland
Does Mary solve the crime? The answer, I guess, is no. And this is disastrous for Mary.
- [52:48]
Dominic Sandbrook
Yeah. And her failure to do that results, I mean, in her total ruin. And that, of course, leads to the second puzzle, which is, why doesn't she manage to solve the crime? Because, as we know, there are very detailed and effective Investigations, you know, there are people from the Privy Council who are interviewing the old women and taking down their records. There's a jury's report that's gone to Cecil. Why aren't these being collated and publicized, rather than, as actually happens, being suppressed and in lots of cases, completely forgotten? And the answer, again, I think, is pretty obvious. It's because those who commissioned these reports had every interest in suppressing them. Because the Privy Council, I mean, is absolutely full of people who had actually been responsible for Darnley's murder. So Bothwell, Morton, Maitland. Right, and of those three, Bothwell, Morton, Maitland, two in particular have a real reason to lie low and allow the rumour to do its work, because one of those three is being fingered for the crime. And so the other two can say, well, you know, let's lie low and let him take the blame. And the person who is being fingered for it is Bothwell. And accusations against Bothwell are starting to be laid within a week of Darnley's murder by his father, the Earl of Lennox. Placards and graffiti and cartoons start to appear across the streets of Edinburgh, charging Bothwell directly with the murder. Kind of caricatures of Bothwell start appearing on buildings, and they have the label here is the murder of the King. And this, of course, is very bad news for Bothwell, but it is also very, very bad news for Mary, because rumours have been swirling throughout Scotland long before Darnley's murder that Mary has got a real crush on Bothwell, and some of the evidence for this is bogus. So, for instance, the story that she had ridden alone to the hermitage when Bothwell had been stabbed, that wasn't true. But the fact the story was told is suggestive of how the trend of gossip is going. And some of the stories are true. So, for instance, Mary had given Bothwell a spectacular blue suit at the christening, and she had kind of basically employed Bothwell to take the place of Darnley, her husband, who had refused to attend. So you can kind of see how these rumours, they have legs. And because of that, it doesn't take long for graffiti to start appearing on the walls of Edinburgh, charging that not only is Bothwell guilty of Darnley's murder, but Mary is as well.
- [55:22]
Tom Holland
And what about the English dimension to this, Tom? Because we started the whole episode with Elizabeth I's letter. What about Elizabeth and her chief minister, Cecil? What do they make of all this? Are they preparing to use this against Mary effectively, sort of cynically?
- [55:37]
Dominic Sandbrook
Cecil? Definitely. We've been talking throughout this series, how Cecil is Mary's great hidden enemy. He's actively working to stop Mary succeeding to the English throne, but also he's pretty keen on toppling Mary from her own throne. And so he sees a huge opportunity here. Why on earth would he publish anything that might help to absolve Mary? And I think definitely he is kind of pouring poison into Elizabeth's ear. So remember that phrase looking through fingers that Maitland had applied to Moray and that Elizabeth writes in her letter to Mary? I think it's very easy to imagine Cecil having dropped precisely that phrase into conversation with Elizabeth and Elizabeth then using it herself in her letter. And then there is that anonymous traitor whom Elizabeth referred to in her letter, comparing him to the minister of Satan. She doesn't need to name him because it's so self evidently Bothwell. Now you ask, does Elizabeth, like Cecil, want to see Mary ruined? No, she absolutely doesn't. Quite the opposite. So just, just to quote that letter, again, I exhort you, I counsel you, and I beseech you to take this thing so much to heart that you will not fear to touch even him whom you have nearest to you if the thing touches him. What Elizabeth's trying to do is to help Mary safeguard her throne and not allow her reputation to be torched by this devastating accumulation of hostile rumor, of which two rumors in particular are the most lethal. One, that she had joined with Bothwell in the plot to murder Darnley, and secondly, that she had done this out of an adulterous passion for Bothwell. And so Elizabeth is saying, for God's sake, you know, have nothing to do with Bothwell. Arraign him, convict him, execute him. But the big question is, of course, will Mary listen to this self evidently excellent advice.
- [57:35]
Tom Holland
Well, Mary has a history in this series of making very poor decisions. So next time we will discover whether she redeems herself and makes the right choice or whether things get even darker for her. Now, the only way to listen to that episode right now, because I imagine most people are gagging to find out the answer, the only way to do it is to join our own murderous conspiracy. The rest is history club@the restishistory.com and if you do that, you can hear right away what happened next in this extraordinary story. Goodbye.
- [58:06]
Dominic Sandbrook
Bye Bye.