Dark History of the Kings & Queens of England by Brenda Ralph Lewis
Author:Brenda Ralph Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
Published: 2012-06-13T16:00:00+00:00
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS is often pictured as a beautiful, desirable young woman. It was not true. Mary was no romantic heroine. She was an ignorant, foolish, indiscreet airhead. She managed to do almost everything wrong and was certainly not the queen 16th century Scotland needed. The country was in constant turmoil. Scottish lords were out of control. All Mary did was make a bad situation worse. In 1565, for example, she married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. The lords hated him. But Mary went further. She made court ‘pets’ out of men the lords detested, resulting in at least one untimely end.
One of Queen Mary’s ‘pets’ was her Italian secretary, David Rizzio. Lord Darnley, Mary’s husband, was jealous of him. He believed Rizzio was Mary’s lover. So Darnley plotted, with others, to have Rizzio killed. The murder took place at Holyrood House in Edinburgh on the evening of March 9, 1566. The Queen, six months pregnant, was dining with Rizzio and one of her ladies-in-waiting when Lord Darnley and other conspirators burst into the room. They seized David Rizzio. As they dragged him away, the Italian tried to grab Mary’s skirts, screaming ‘save me, my lady, save me!’. Mary was helpless. One of the murderers kept a pistol pointed at her as Rizzio was pulled into the room next door.
The daggers came out and Rizzio was stabbed 56 times, dying in a spreading pool of blood. Later, the conspirators kept Mary a prisoner, but she managed to keep her head. She calmed them by promising a pardon. Two days after the murder, she managed to escape from Holyrood through underground passages in the chapel where the Scots’ royal tombs were situated. From there she rode 20 miles to Dunbar – and safety.
Soon there was gossip that Mary wanted revenge for Rizzio’s death by having Darnley killed. The truth was worse than that, Mary had fallen in love with a Scottish noble, James Hepburn, Earl Bothwell. Another reason for getting rid of Lord Darnley.
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