Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley
1545-1567. Second husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Henry Stuart was member of the Scottish Parliament as the 1st Duke of Albany and even in line for the Scottish and English crown due to his family relations. However he is more famous for his role as husband and the circumstances of his death.
He was born December 1545 in Yorkshire and was killed only at age 21 on 10 February in 1567 in Edinburgh.
In 1565 he married Mary Stuart, his cousin (among other intricate family connections), who had either fallen in love with him or married for political reasons, depending on the source.1 The marriage soon bore their only child in 1566, James, who later would unite the English and Scottish thrones and herald the start of the Stuart reign in Britain (Maurer).
The couple separated not long after their marriage, when Henry believed that Mary Stuart had a relationship with her Italian private secretary David Riccio and that she even was pregnant by him. Driven by envy, Henry Stuart and some accomplices violently entered a banquet at the Palace of Holyroodhouse where Riccio and Mary were present, and Riccio was stabbed to death under the eyes of Mary.
Only a year later, Darnley got word of an imminent conspiracy against him and fled to safety in Glasgow. There, however, he fell seriously ill and when Mary came to visit him, husband and wife became reconciled. After a mutual trip to Edinburgh, Darnley was staying at Kirk o’Field, just inside the city walls of Edinburgh. On the evening of 9 February 1567, Mary said goodbye to her husband and left him for some festivities in town. On the next morning, the apartment building blew up by a gunpowder explosion in its basement and Henry Stuart was found dead. Surprisingly, however, his body was located at a distance to the destroyed building and showed signs of strangulation. It is speculated that he tried to flee from his murderers but was caught and strangled (Weir).
A group of Scottish conspirators led by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell where held responsible. Since Mary was well acquainted with Bothwell and later married him, it is believed that she at least knew, if not ordered the murder of her husband. The fact that the murderer subsequently kidnapped her to Dunbar where they got married supports this assumption (Maurer).
Sources
- Maurer, Michael. Kleine Geschichte Englands. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007.
- Weir, Alison. Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley. New York: Random House, 2004.
- http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot02/kirk-o-field-popup1.htm [accessed on 31/05/2010]