Darnley conducted Ruthven and other assassins through his private staircase, by the use of his own key, into a small room where the queen was at supper with Rizzio, her natural sister the countess of Argyle, and some other favourites. Ruthven rose from a sick bed, to which he had been for three months confined by a painful, and, as it soon proved, a mortal, illness. He was now in armour; though he could only come into the apartment by the support of two men. The paleness of his haggard countenance, sometimes flushed by guilty passions, ⚫ formed a gloomy contrast with the glare of his helmet. Rizzio had his cap on his head as Ruthven entered; and Darnley hung on the queen's chair with his hand round her waist. That unhappy lady was in the sixth month of her pregnancy by her contemptible husband. Ruthven called to her—" Let Rizzio leave this privy chamber, where he has been too long."-"It is my will he should be here," said the queen. "It is against your honour," answered Darnley. "What hath he done?" said the queen. "He hath offended your honour," replied Ruthven, "in such a manner as I dare not speak of." The queen rose up; and David ran behind her, laying hold of the plaits of her gown. Ruthven lifted up the queen, and placed her in the arms of Darnley, who disengaged Rizzio's hands from the hold which he had taken of her garments. Several persons here rushed in, and overset the table with the supper and lights. Rizzio was pushed out to the antechamber; at the front of which he fell under fifty-five wounds, in one of which Darnley's dagger was found, whether employed by himself or by one of his accomplices is neither certain nor important. Ruthven is said to have aimed a stab at the victim over the queen's neck. He seated himself, and called for a cup of wine, which drew a spirited reproof of his familiarity from Mary. He appealed to his illness as an excuse. Though worked up by the contemplation of a crime into a ruffianly paroxysm of distempered vigour, he speedily relapsed into the feebleness incident to his malady. He expired about two months afterwards. He left behind him a narrative of his crime, written in a tone of undisturbed impartiality; and it does not appear that his last moments betrayed a glimpse of natural compunction. 66 During the tumult the queen remained for a long time in the closet, interceding for her favourite, who was probably then dead. She asked her husband how he could be the author of so foul an act. The recrimination was too coarse for historical relation. "It was," he said, as much for your honour as for my own satisfaction."* The nature of her defence; her retort on Ruthven; her loathsome assent to Darnley's desire of resuming all the usual exterior of living together, with her backwardness and her evasions about such intercourse after such a scene, are conclusive and disgusting proofs that the highest-born beauties of the court of Catherine de' Medicis threw but a thin veil over their frailties, and deported themselves with so little delicacy as to render jealousy somewhat excusable, however ungenerous or unwarrantable. After this offensive conversation, she sent one of her ladies to learn the fate of Rizzio. The lady quickly returned with tidings that she had seen him dead. The queen, with a spirit that never forsook her, said, "No more tears; I must think of revenge." She wiped her eyes, and was never seen to lament the murdered man. To complete the narrative of an event sufficient to dishonour a nation, and to characterise an age, it may be added, that the earl of Morton, lord chancellor of Scotland, commanded the guard who were posted at the "This we find for certain, that the king had entered into a vehement suspicion of David having committed something which was most against the queen's honour, and not to be borne by her husband."- Letter from Bedford and Randolph, 27 Mar. ii. Ellis, 208. "Marie Stuart reine d'Ecosse avait un beau mari, et delectabatur turpibus adulteris. Lorsque j'y étois, elle étoit eu mauvais menage avec son mari, à cause de la mort de ce David L'histoire de Buchanan est très vrai: elle ne parloit point avec son mari. C'étoit une belle créature!"-Scaligerana, 149. From the mention of Mauvissier in the despatches, it is clear that Castelnau was the ambassador whom Joseph Scaliger accompanied. The universal prevalence of these rumours, the only circumstance for which they are quoted, is confirmed by the language of the accurate Dutch historian, Van Metteren, who resided, during a great part of his life, in England. "Henri par jalousie fit oter de sa table et massacrer David Rizzio, musicien Piedmontois, qui étoit dans la bonne grace de la Royne."— Metteren, Hist. de Pays Bas, liv. iii. p. 266. entrances of the palace to protect the murderers from interruption.* * Bothwell and Huntly, the most obnoxious of the catholic ministers, made their escape in the night of the murder. On Monday the 11th the banished lords came to Edinburgh. On the entrance of Moray into the palace, Mary embraced and kissed him, declaring "that if he had been at home, he would not have allowed her to be so discourteously handled; which so moved him that the tears fell from his eyes." She informed the archbishop of Glasgow, that " Moray, seeing our condition, was moved by natural affection towards us.”‡ The attractions of Mary prevailed over the fidelity of Darnley towards his accomplices: she obtained the discharge of the guard, under the specious pretext of showing the liberty of the king and queen after their hearty reconciliation. He was content to disavow in public whatever he had written or sworn; and she carried him towards Dunbar, after stealing out of Holyrood House at midnight. The particulars of the remainder of this year belong to the historians of Scotland. To us only pertains such an account of them as may explain the policy of England; of which, however, the ascendant of the protestant party in Scotland continued to be the main object. The birth of a prince on the 19th of June was deemed by Moray and Castelnau an event sufficiently auspicious to revive § the habits of conjugal intercourse between the queen and her husband; the reconciliation The principal contemporary accounts of the murder of Rizzio are Knox, Buchanan, and Melville, together with the despatch from Bedford and Randolph at Berwick (printed by Dr. Robertson in his appendix, and by Mr. Ellis in his letters); the letter written on the 2d of April in the queen's name to the archbishop of Glasgow, the minister at Paris, (Keith, 330-334.); and the narrative sent to Elizabeth by Morton and Ruthven from Berwick, in the latter end of April, (Keith's App. 119. 129) which appears in Keith without subscription or address, but was probably the same which is re ferred to as about to be sent in a despatch of the 2d of April, State Paper Office MSS. The materials for the greater part of it must have been sup plied by Ruthven. Nothing that can extenuate his conduct is therefore admitted into the text. Neither is any thing taken from the beautiful narrative of Buchanan, though it was so solemnly confirmed by that great man on his death-bed. No part of it rests on Knox, though he was a man that never lied. Melville, 150. was, however, only apparent; the just indignation of Mary against Darnley continually broke out. "I could perceive nothing," said Melville, "but a great grudge that she had in her heart. He moves about alone; few dare to bear him company." The unpopular influence of Bothwell increased: he, with Huntly and the bishop of Ross, laboured to undermine the reviving ascendant of Moray, the sole stay of public quiet. Darnley complained to his wife that he was not trusted with authority; that no one attended him; and that the nobility shunned his society.* "Bothwell," says Killigrew, the new English minister, "is thought, and said, to have more credit with the queen than all the rest. Leslie, bishop of Ross, doth manage all her state affairs."+ Such was the displeasure of the contemptible youth, her husband, that, in his despair, he conceived the wild project of leaving Scotland; and had actually prepared a vessel to convey him to the continent, either to appeal to the compassion of foreign princes, or to escape from the odium which surrounded him. On the 5th of August the earl of Bedford informed Cecil, that "the king and queen agree worse than before. She eateth seldom with him, and does not keep company with him; nor loveth any such as love him. It cannot, for the sake of modesty, nor consistently with the honour of a queen, be reported what she said of him." § On the 15th of September he came to the queen at Edinburgh, to make known to her his chimerical scheme for leaving Scotland he refused to enter, because he found that she was in council with three or four lords. She, however, condescended so far as to meet him without the palace, and conducted him to her own apartment, where he passed the night. After much conversation, in which he denied that he had any discontent, he said, “Adieu, madam; you shall not see my face for a long time.” A * Keith, 350. + 24th June, 1566, MSS. State Paper Office. Privy council of Scotland to the queen mother of France. Edinb, 8th Oct. 1566. Lecroc to archbishop of Glasgow, 15th Oct. 1566. Jedburgh. Keith, 345. 350. Robertson's App. xvii. project so absurd died out of itself. Meantime, Mary gave suspicious marks of her partiality for Bothwell, in the course of journeys towards the borders, of which he was warden. That lord being wounded in one of the accustomed affrays by a border laird named Elliot, the queen made a journey of twenty miles on horseback to visit him; and returned on the same day to Jedburgh, where the assizes were held. It was then generally suspected that her visit was prompted by passion, and her return hastened by shame. On the 17th of October, the day after her return, she was seized with a dangerous fever in consequence of her violent exertion. Bothwell came to her as soon as he could travel. 66 Darnley followed her about," says Melville, "wherever she went; but he could get no good countenance.' "As soon, says a contemporary writer, "as he understood her visitation, he addressed himself with expedition towards her, although he was not welcomed as was fit."+ The queen, on her recovery, went to Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh, in November, where she showed such marks of despondency and depression as often to cry out, "I wish that I were dead." The lords who attended her had so little doubt of the source of this despairing language, that they proposed to her their assistance in obtaining a divorce. In answer to Lethington she said, that she might consider such a proposition, if it were to be carried on lawfully, and without prejudice to the rights of her son. "Think not," said Lethington, "that we, your principal nobles, would not find the means to be quit of him without damage to the prince; and though my lord of Moray be little less scrupulous * Melville, 173. + Historie of James VI. 4th ed. Edin. 1825. Crauford of Drumsoy, historio. grapher of Scotland in the reign of queen Anne, had so falsified this work, to suit the politics of a Stuart reign, as to render his publication of it in all important particulars a forgery; which was indeed intimated by Keith, and almost owned by Whitaker; but was first completely detected by my excellent friend, Mr. Laing. Mr. Chalmers's observations on the delay of a few days in the journey to Hermitage are very satisfactorily obviated by the account of this writer. "Understanding the certainty of this accident, she was so highly commoved in mind, that she took no repose in body till she saw him." p. 2. Le Croc, Disp. 2d Dec. 1566. Keith's pref. vii. |