He wished to be sovereign of Scotland, to secure the crown for the family of Lennox to the exclusion of the Hamiltons, and to force the queen to follow his counsels in all matters of state. As his wishes were not granted he determined to revenge himself on Mary's secretary, David Riccio, whom he pretended to regard as Mary's secret adviser.
For this purpose he turned for assistance to the reformed party whose fears had been aroused by Mary's religious policy. A confederation was formed consisting of Darnley, the Earl of Morton, Lord Ruthven, and Lindsay for the murder of Riccio. The Earl of Lennox Darnley's father, Moray, Argyll, and Maitland of Lethington, the English ambassador, and apparently John Knox, were aware of the design and approved of it.[26]
When everything was ready for the opening of Parliament the murderers forced their way into the presence of the queen, and slew her secretary almost in her presence (9 March 1566). On the next day Darnley issued a proclamation ordering those who had assembled for the Parliament to leave Edinburgh, and on the same evening the Earl of Moray arrived in the capital.
The conspirators had agreed to proclaim Darnley king of Scotland. For this purpose the queen was to be held a prisoner or to be slain if she attempted to make her escape, but she succeeded in eluding the vigilance of her captors and in ****** her way to Dunbar, where she was joined by Archbishop Hamilton, the Earls of Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell. She advanced on Edinburgh without meeting any resistance, while the murderers of Riccio were obliged to make their escape into England. Darnley deserted his fellow conspirators by communicating to the queen the details of the plot. His desertion did not, however, gain him the dictatorship he desired, as Mary pardoned Moray and Argyll, and received them together with Huntly, Atholl, and Bothwell into her councils. The birth of an heir to the throne would, it was thought, lead to a better understanding between Mary and her husband, but unfortunately it had no result. Though the baptism of the prince was carried out in the chapel-royal of Stirling Castle with all the pomp and splendour of Catholic ceremonial (December 1566) Darnley refused to be present or to take any part in the festivities. A few days later Morton and the other murderers of Riccio were pardoned, and allowed to return to Scotland.
The Earls of Moray and Argyll and the other leading conspirators were incensed against Darnley for having communicated to the queen their share in the plot that led to Riccio's murder. Bothwell, who had done so much to frustrate the conspiracy, detested Darnley almost as fiercely as he himself was detested by both Darnley and the Earl of Lennox. During the latter half of the year 1566 nearly all the great lords of Scotland entered into a confederation or "band" against Darnley. Whether they meant merely to assist the queen to procure a legal separation from her husband with the support and approval of Parliament, or whether they intended to bring about Darnley's death by legal or illegal means is not sufficiently clear.[27]
Soon after the baptism of the prince, Darnley fell ill in Glasgow of small-pox. The queen sent her physician to attend him, went herself to visit him, and when he began to improve had him removed to a lonely house outside Edinburgh, where she frequently spent hours in his company. To all appearances a complete reconciliation had been effected, and Darnley in his letters expressed his entire satisfaction with the kindness and attention of his wife. Suddenly on the night of the 11th February 1567 the house was blown up, and Darnley was killed.
Suspicion pointed to Bothwell as the author of the crime, and no doubt the case against him was strong, though how far he was assisted and encouraged by some of the other lords must for ever remain a mystery.
Mary's concurrence or implication in the design is not proved by any reliable evidence, and were it not for her subsequent conduct it is not likely that complicity in the murder of her husband would have been laid to her charge. At the privy council on the day following the murder an explanation was drawn up and forwarded to France, declaring that a plot against the lives of the queen, king, and principal nobles had been discovered, and that it was only by a happy accident that the queen's life had been saved.
The Earl of Lennox, Darnley's father, charged Bothwell publicly with the murder of the king and demanded that he should be brought to justice. A day was fixed for the trial, but as Bothwell was powerful in the councils of the queen and was both able and willing to resort to force if force were necessary, it was very difficult to procure evidence against him. Lennox pleaded unsuccessfully for a delay, and as no one was prepared to come forward to prove the charges, Bothwell was acquitted (12th April 1567). A few days later most of the lords who had assembled in Edinburgh for the meeting of Parliament met at Ainslie's tavern and signed an agreement (Ainslie's Band) pledging themselves before God to defend Bothwell who had been declared innocent of the murder, and, stranger still, to procure his marriage with the queen. Various and contradictory lists of the signatories have been published, but from an examination of these different lists it is sufficiently clear that most of the great lords were attached to the confederation.[28] As usually happened when a serious crisis was approaching, Moray was absent from the country.