Printed in Percy's Reliques, with changes, 1765, II, 197, 'The Murder of the King of Scots;' with some restorations of the original readings, 1794, II, 200.
This ballad represents, 8, 13, that the murder of Darnley was done in revenge for his complicity in the murder of Riccio; in which there may be as much truth as this, that the queen's resentment of Darnley's participation in that horrible transaction may have been operative in inducing her assent such assent as she gave to the conspiracy against the life of her husband.
2. Darnley came to Scotland in February, 1565 (being then but just turned of nineteen), not sent for, but very possibly with some hope of pleasing his cousin, 'the queen [dowager] of France,' to whom he was married in the following July. His inglorious career was closed in February, 1567.
5. On the fatal evening of the ninth of March, 1566, Riccio was sitting in the queen's cabinet with his cap on; "and this sight was perhaps the more offensive that a few Scotsmen of good rank seem to have been in attendance as domestics."[foot-note]
6. The ballad should not be greatly in excess as to the number of the daggers, since Riccio had fifty-six [fifty-two] wounds.
7. After Riccio had been dragged out of the queen's cabinet, Darnley fell to charging the queen with change in her ways with him since "yon fellow Davie fell in credit and familiarity" with her. In answer to his reproaches and interpellations her Majesty said to him that he was to blame for all the shame that was done to her; "for the which I shall never be your wife nor lie with you, nor shall never like well till I gar you have as sore a heart as I have presently."[foot-note]
9-14. A large quantity of powder was fired in the room below that in which "the worthy king" slept, but the body of Darnley and that of his servant were found lying at a considerable distance from the house, without any marks of having been subject to the explosion. One theory of the circumstances was that the two had been strangled in their beds, and removed before the train was lighted, another account is that Darnley, who would naturally hear some stir in the house, made his escape with his page, but "was intercepted and strangled after a desperate resistance, his cries for mercy being heard by some women in the nearest house."[foot-note] Bothwell, though the author of all these proceedings and personally superintending the execution of them, did not openly appear.
It will be observed that King James says that his father [Manuscript mother] was hanged on a tree, in 'King James and Brown,' No 180, 82.
Bothwell and Huntly, who by virtue of their offices had apartments in the palace, not being in sympathy with the conspirators, are said in the Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 90, to have broken through a window, in fear of their lives, and to have let themselves down by a cord. Bothwell, as the champion of the queen against the confederate lords, might naturally be supposed by the minstrel to take a personal interest in revenging Riccio.
15, 16. The Regent Murray is here described as 'bitterly banishing' Mary, wherefore she durst not remain in Scotland, but fled to England. The queen escaped from Lochleven Castle on the second of May, 1568, and took refuge in England on the sixteenth. We must suppose the ballad to have been made not long after.
Translated by Bodmer, II, 51, from Percy's Reliques.
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