ON March 9th, 1566, Darnley made his pregnant wife watch as David Rizzio was savagely knifed to death. The following February, Darnley himself was found strangled amid the wreck of an explosion at his Edinburgh lodgings.
Just three months afterwards, Mary married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, universally suspected of Darnley’s murder.* Disgusted, the Scots handed the crown to her infant son, James, and confined Mary in Lochleven Castle. She escaped, but following defeat at Langside in 1568 fled to England and her cousin, Elizabeth I.**
For two decades, the disgraced Queen was passed around England’s castles, attracting scandal and conspiracy; yet Elizabeth was loth to execute an anointed Christian monarch. She signed the order on February 1st, 1587, but felt sufficiently guilty to send her secretary, William Davison, to the Tower for carrying it out.
And Mary was, after all, family. When Elizabeth died in 1603, young James VI of Scotland was her closest living relative, and Darnley’s boy became James I of England.
It is not clear how much choice Mary was given. Bothwell’s men probably kidnapped her, and he may have raped her; the marriage service was Protestant, hardly Mary’s style, and Bothwell’s political support was not what Mary may have been led to believe.
** Henry VII’s daughter Margaret, sister of Henry VIII, married James IV of Scotland in 1503. Mary Queen of Scots was their granddaughter. Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in 1533. Elizabeth I was their daughter. So Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots were cousins once removed.