Deadly attack of the Queen's favourite

Published on Friday 14 July 2006 09:38

BY WINTER 1565 Mary, Queen of Scots had been back home in her capital Edinburgh for just over four years. Having rid herself of the rule of her obnoxious elder half-brother, James Earl of Moray, she now reigned with the aid of a strange assortment of advisers. They included George Earl of Huntley, James Earl of Bothwell, and a person who was increasingly influential behind the scene, the exotic Italian singer David Rizzio.

Rizzio reached Edinburgh in December 1561 when he arrived with an Italian embassy from Savoy. For Scotland was then an independent country with foreign ambassadors accredited to the court of the Queen of Scots. In those days any idea of a United Kingdom was a mere chimera or dream and something far in the future.

But within four years Rizzio, or Seigneur Davie as he was known, had become a key figure around the Royal Court. He was also Master of the mint, with all the lucrative profits that resulted, and was talked of as a possible Lord Chancellor to replace the existing post-holder Lord Morton. Indeed the great religious reformer John Knox said at the time that Rizzio was "ordained to be Chancellor at the next Parliament, which made the Scottish Lords Conspire against him."

The young Queen of Scots also planned to set him up as a laird, and help him buy a property at Melville, a few miles south of the Scottish capital. He was to be ennobled as the Earl of Melville too.

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Mary, Queen of Scots

Yet these splendid prospects could not last. Rizzio had made many enemies during his rapid rise to power and on the night of 9 March 1566 they struck him down.

A posse of about 80 men - banded together from the far flung Douglas family confederation - burst into the Palace at Holyroodhouse and stabbed the Italian stranger to death in the presence of Mary herself - who was greatly distressed by the murder of her favourite. The Lord Chancellor Morton and the Earl of Ruthven led the attack. Henry Lord Darnley, the Queen's hopelessly inadequate husband (both intellectually as well as romantically), was also amongst the murderous gang.

There is little doubt that Queen Elizabeth I of England and her chief secretary, Sir William Cecil, knew that the murder was to take place. They felt that the Rizzio regime in Scotland threatened the security of the English state and must therefore be eliminated. They wanted political change since the Scots government with Rizzio at the centre had adopted a virulently anti-English foreign policy abroad.

Negotiations had opened with the Vatican for papal support - since Mary was a Roman Catholic. Envoys had been sent to Spain to seek help from King Philip II. And what was especially infuriating for the English, the Scots had sent two Gaelic-speaking Highlanders across the water into Ireland to encourage the rebel Shane O'Neill in Ulster where he was fighting to defend his homeland against Anglo-Saxon aggression. O'Neill was delighted to see Mary's men, and told them that he longed for the day when the Queen of Scots would be crowned as the great High Queen of Ireland.

And so the English support for the murderers meant death for Seigneur Davie - and perhaps for the pregnant Queen and the baby she was carrying too.

Mary survived however. But her rule was fatally weakened. And within 16 months she was forced to abdicate from her throne in favour of her newly born son James.

David Tweedie is a lawyer, historian and author. He has a masters degree in modern history from Oxford University and most recently has written David Rizzio and Mary Queen of Scots. Murder at Holyrood (Sutton Publishing, 2006).

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