Lord Darnley
Lord Darnley - A Famous Scottish Nobleman
Lord Darnley (1545 - 1567) Henry Stewart was the son of Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, the second husband of of Mrgaret Tudor who was the daughter of Henry VII. So he was the grandson of the first Tudor king, and he became by marriage to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, the father of the first Stuart king of England. His father had been seeking the marriage of his son to Mary Stuart since 1560, but it was consistently opposed by Elizabeth I who hoped to see the Scottish queen marry Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Darney was, however, allowed to go to Scotland in 1565 where his courtier's charms as a youth of 20 quickly won over Mary, aed 23.
The marriage in 1565 was a disaster for both. Darney was a contemptuous creature, jealous, unstable, and arrogant. Mary was almost instantly disillusioned and turned for advice, if nothing more, to her Italian secretary David Rizzio. Darney looked for consolidation to those lords who were equally irritated by Rizzio, to whom they attributed the spirited independence of Mary's policy. On March 9th 1566 the unfortunate Italian was dragged from the Queen's supper chamber in Holyrood Palace by a gang that used the husband's private staircase and hacked him to death with daggers. In June 1566 the child of Darney and Mary Stuart was born, the future James VI of Scotland and James I of England. But on February 10th 1567 Darney's short life came to an end when he was strangled and then blown up at the house of Kirk o' Field near Edinburgh, presumably by the Earl of Bothwell and perhaps with Mary's conivance. Mary's liaison with Bothwell earned her nothing but enemies: few of them mourned Darney.
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