Darnley, an event which took place on the 29th of July, 1565. Tho ceremony was performed in the chapel of Holyrood, on a Sunday, between the
hours of five and six in the morning.
Henry Stuart, lord Darnley, at the time of his marriage, was in the nineteenth year of his age; Mary in her twenty-third. The former was the son of Matthew, earl of Lennox, and of the lady Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII. Even at this early period of his life, Darnley was esteemed one of the handsomest men of his time; but, unfortunately, there was little correspondence between the qualities of his person and his mind. He was weak, obstinate, and wayward, possessing scarcely one redeeming trait, unless it were a simplicity, or rather imbecility, which rendered him an easy dupe to the designing.
Amongst the first evil results which this unfortunate connexion produced to Mary, was the hostility of her brother, the earl of Murray, who foresaw that the new character of a king consort would greatly lessen, if not entirely put an end to, the almost regal power and influence which he enjoyed whilst his sister remained single. Impressed with this feeling, he had, at an early period, not only expressed his displeasure at the proposed marriage, but, in concert with some other nobles, whom he had won over to his interest, had taken measures for seizing on the queen's person, whilst she was travelling between Perth and Edinburgh. Being earlier on the road, however, and better guarded than the conspirators expected, she reached the latter place without experiencing any interruption ; and in a few days afterwards, her union with Darnley took place.
On the 1 5th of August, 1565, seventeen days after the celebration of the queen's marriage, Murray, who now stood forward as an open and declared enemy, summoned his partizans to meet him, attended by their followers, armed, at Ayr, on the 24th of the same month. To oppose this rebel force, Mary mustered an army of five thousand men, and, with a spirit worthy of her high descent, placing herself in the midst of her troops, equipped in a suit of light armour, with pistols at her saddle bow, she marched from Edinburgh to the westward, in quest of the rebel forces.
Murray, who had been able to raise no more than twelve hundred men, finding himself unable to cope with the queen, retired from place to place, closely pursued by the royal forces. Being finally driven to Carlisle, whither he was still followed by Mary, with an army now increased to eighteen thousand men, his troops there dispersed, and he himself and his friends, abandoning their cause as hopeless, fled to the English court.
This triumph of Mary's, however, in place of securing her the quiet which might have been expected to result from it, seemed merely to have opened a way for the admission of other miseries, not less afflicting than that which had been removed. Murray, and the other lords who had joined him in his rebellious attempt, though now at a distance, and under a sentence of expatriation, still continued their machinations, and endeavoured to secure, by plot and contrivance, that which they had failed to obtain by force. In these attempts they found a ready co-operator in the earl of Morton, who, though entertaining every good-will to their cause, having taken no open part in their rebellious measures, was now amongst the few counsellors whom Mary had left to her. Working on the vanity and weakness of Darnley, Morton succeeded in inducing him to join a conspiracy, which had for its object the restoration of the banished lords, and the wresting from, or at least putting under such restraints as they should think fit, the authority of the queen. Tempted by promises of undivided sway, that imbecile prince, slighting the ties of natural affection, and forgetting
