Lord Darnley (Henry Stewart) was the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots and the father of James I. He was born in 1545 and died in 1567. He was the son of the Earl of Lennox and Lady Margaret Douglas, a niece of Henry VIII, and by her first marriage queen of James IV.
His marriage to Mary was an unfortunate match, and for a long time gave rise first to coolness, then to open quarrel, and finally to deadly hate, which the murder of Rizzio, to which Lord Darnley was a party, only increased. Mary affected, however, to be reconciled to him, but could not long conceal her contempt for the handsome imbecile. After the birth of a sou, subsequently James VI, Lord Daruley was seized at Glasgow with smallpox, from which he had barely recovered when Mary visited him, and had him conveyed to an isolated house called Kirk of Field, close to the Edinburgh city walls. This dwelling, which belonged to a retainer of Bothwell's, the rapidly rising favourite, was blown into the air with gunpowder on the 10th of February, 1567. The dead bodies of the king and his page were found in a field at a distance of 80 yards from the house, quite free from any mark which such an explosion would cause. Strong circumstantial evidence points to Bothwell as the murderer, and to Mary as an accomplice in the crime. Research Lord Darnley
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