The skull and portraits of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and their bearing on the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; with frontispiece, forty-five plates, four figures in the text and six tissues of cranial contours.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
[1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The skull and portraits of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and their bearing on the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; with frontispiece, forty-five plates, four figures in the text and six tissues of cranial contours. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1563: “ Well, you are wise enough ; but you will not find that men will bear with you in times to come, as they have done in times bypast ” (Ibid. p. 295). Again we may note Knox’s views in the letter that John Spottiswoode sent to the Lords on the escape of Queen Mary from Lochleven, namely that God’s just judgment would come upon the kingdom because the Lords had not at once executed the Queen, “ for if she had suffered according as God’s law commandeth murderers and adulterers to dee the death, the wickednesse takin furth from Israel, the plague sould have ceassed*.” (2) Characterisation of the Chief Actors in the Murder of Darnley and the Deposition of the Queen. To grasp fully the evidence regarding the various explanations of Darnley’s illness and murder, we have to go back to the assassination of Rizzio, and to state our attitude with regard to the Casket Letters. We have further to note certain facts with regard to syphilis as well as to smallpox, which have been too often disregarded by historical writers. Lastly there is the question of the extent to which we may accept the statements of contemporary writers who have been con¬ victed, or are easily convictible, over and over again of deliberate lying for either religious, political, or venal purposes. When we come to such writers the difficulty is to determine whether they have actually invented facts with the view of befouling their opponents, or whether they are perverting real occurrences with the same end in view. In the latter case it is possible to accept the occurrence without attaching to it the author’s interpretation. Chief among these venal liars, and perhaps, owing to his great literary gifts, the basest hireling scholar of all the ages, stands George Buchanan. Hardly a single statement in the Actio, the Detectio or the Historia,when they deal with Buchanan’s own time, or with occurrences of which he must have had direct experience or which were very familiar to his good lords and paymasters, is trustworthy. Yet we find writers like T. F. Henderson (Mary Queen of Scots, L905)and D. Hay Fleming (Mary Queen of Scots, 1898), quoting Buchanan as if he were a credible historian! I would refer, for those who need illustration, to such accounts as Buchanan gives of the Alloa expedition, and the Hermitage journey. Mary, some five weeks after her confinement, went by sea to be a guest of the Earl of Mar at Alloa Castle. On her way thither she was accompanied not only by Mar, but by Moray. Now Alloa in Clackmannan is directly approached from Edinburgh by the Firth of Forth, and for a convalescent woman the natural way would be by water, and for a Queen the vessel would necessarily be provided by the Commander of her Navy, in this case Bothwell. There is no evidence at all that Bothwell was one of the partyj*. Yet this is how Buchanan describes the affair: Not lang efter hir Delyuerance, on a Day verray airly [confinement June 19, journey to Alloa, July 28] accompanyit with verray few that wer preuie of hir Counsall [at any rate by * Calderwood’s History of the Kirk of Scotland, Vol. ii. p. 482. Woodrow Edu. 1848. f Henderson (ii. p. 402) says Bothwell was evidently not in her company “though she had found it needful to have recourse to him to provide her a means of escape.” But why “escape,” and from what?