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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    though it were in the very Palace and in the presence of the Queen. The King takes the blame of this upon himself and promises none shall suffer for anything that may happen upon this engagement. These proclamations were probably drawn up with Darnley’s consent before the murder, and issued the day after by the conspirators without appealing to him. After he had become, in Ruthven’s words, “effeminate,” a proclamation was issued by King Henry only (March 20) whereby he declared himself innocent of the murder of Rizzio and of detaining the Queen’s person in captivity. He states that he never counselled, advised or encouraged any of the murderers of Rizzio to that murder. He owns that in this he was to be blamed that at the persuasion of the conspirators, without the Queen’s knowledge, he consented to the bringing back of the banished lords as Moray, Glencairn, Rothes and others. A further proclama¬ tion was issued by both King and Queen calling on the murderers of Rizzio to come and stand their trial. Is it to be wondered at that when the Queen later knew of the actual “bands,” she would have little further to do with Darnley ? Is it to be wondered at that his fellow conspirators within a few months entered into another band for Darnley’s destruction ? That Moray’s banishment and proposed forfeiture were justified is amply demonstrated by the letters of Randolph. On July 2, 1565, Randolph writes to Cecil: “The question has been asked me, whether if they (Darnley and his father Lenox) were delivered to us at Berwick we would receive them ? I answered : We would receive our own, in what sort soever they came unto us.” This was four weeks before the actual marriage. As late as September 3, after Moray had been put to the horn, Randolph writes that “If her Majesty [Queen Elizabeth] will now help them [i.e. Moray and Argyll], they doubt not that but one country will receive both the Queens.” In other words, Moray was then, as earlier, plotting to drive Mary out of Scotland into Elizabeth’s keeping. With such illustrations of Moray’s unscrupulousness* it is unnecessary to do more than refer to his treachery towards the Duke of Norfolk t- After Moray, we reach Morton, a man equally unscrupulous, equally greedy of power, but without the subtle adroitness of Moray. We have already indicated * Even such a biased writer as Henderson has to admit of Moray that “though himself indirectly involved in the Darnley murder, he did not scruple, in order to silence popular clamour and prevent inconvenient revelations, to do his utmost to secure the conviction and death of the mere tools of the conspiracy, while the principals were allowed to go scot free.” Diet. Nat. Biog. Vol. liv. pp. 405—6. f Perhaps the most extraordinary action in which Moray was concerned appears in the Duke of Norfolk’s Confession when on his trial. It appears from this that already at the time of the York Conference, Moray and Maitland, who were charging the Queen with murder, suggested to the Duke of Norfolk a marriage with her! Whether this was done as a bribe to the Duke to be favourable to them, in case the Queen of Scots was not declared guilty, or as a means of ruining Norfolk and dis¬ crediting the Commission, if its conclusions were unfavourable to them, must be left to the discretion of the reader. Norfolk would have been wise to stick to his first judgment that “he ment never to marry with such a Person wher he cold not be sure of his Piilow.” See Samuel Haynes, A Collection of State Papers of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. London, 1740, pp. 573—5.