Alison
Weir.
Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley.
London:
Jonathan Cape, 2003.
xviii,621pp.
Hardback ISBN
0224060236.
Publisher's
recommended price £20.00
Few souls
were abroad
in Edinburgh in the early hours of 10 February 1567. On such a bitterly
cold and snowy night, most were in bed early, and anyone found in the
streets
was likely to be challenged by the watch. To the south of the city lay
the collegiate buildings of Kirk o'Field. Shortly before midnight,
Mary,
Queen of Scots, and her retinue left this place for Holyrood Palace,
leaving
behind Mary's convalescent husband, Henry, King of Scots, better known
as Lord Darnley. Darnley had now retired for the night, and all
appeared
to be quiet.
We
know, of course,
that all was not quiet at Kirk o'Field that night. At 2 a.m. Darnley's
lodging was blasted into rubble by a mighty explosion that was heard
across
the city, awakened most of its inhabitants, and initiated one of the
greatest
murder mysteries in history. For the chief victim was the King himself.
The
reverberations
from that explosion were keenly felt by those implicated in the plot,
and
they have been echoing down the centuries ever since. Controversy has
raged
over how Darnley died and who killed him, but the crucial question is
whether
or not Queen Mary was an accomplice in her husband's murder. She
certainly
had motives enough to want to be rid of him, but so, too, did several
other
people, including most of the Scottish nobility. And Darnley himself,
incredible
as it may seem, was not above suspicion.
Darnley's
murder
ultimately led to Mary's ruin. One factor was the convenient discovery
of a box of documents - the notorious Casket Letters - that her enemies
claimed were proof of her guilt. But Mary was never allowed to see the
letters, and they disappeared in 1584. The question of their
authenticity
has haunted historians ever since.
After
exhaustive
re-examination of the source material, Alison Weir has found a solution
to this enduring mystery that can be substantiated by contemporary
evidence.
In the process she shatters many of the misconceptions about Mary,
Queen
of Scots and produces an extraordinarily vivid portrait of Mary's
Scotland
at a great turning point in its history, when its future was so
dramatically
bound up with Elizabeth's England and when the destinies of two
remarkable
queens were fatally interlinked.
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