Husbands of the Scottish Queen

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1:01Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When segregation was a law, one mysterious Black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, had his own rules. Segregation in the day, integration at night. It was like stepping on another world. Was he a businessman? A criminal? A hero? Charlie was an example of power. They had to crush him. Charlie's Place, from Atlas Obscura and Visit Myrtle Beach. Listen to Charlie's Place on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just a quick note before we begin today's episode, this story contains murder, sexual assault, and pregnancy loss.

1:43So if any of those are particularly sensitive to you, this might be a good episode to skip. And on a more personal note, unrelated to the episode, before we dive in, I just wanted to say I have a brand new book coming out. This one comes out in May 2026. It's called The Arcane Arts, and it's a sexy, dark academia book about a professor and a student studying illicit magic at magic grad school. I'm not really good at describing it. Hopefully I'll get a little better. It's by a pseudonym by S.D. Coverley because I co-wrote it with a friend of mine, Dan Fry. I wrote the female points of view, he wrote the male points of view, and then we sort of blended it together.

2:29It was an incredibly fun collaboration. I love this book. It's available for pre-order now. If you like dark, twisted, sexy stories in this podcast, I think you'll really like that book. Now let's get to the story. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke. Listener discretion advised. In early February 1567, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the King of Scotland, arrived at a spacious two-story house in Kirkafield, an abbey and church college near Edinburgh. It had been a tough year for Lord Darnley so far. He had been living in Glasgow away from his wife, Mary, Queen of Scots.

3:18But after Darnley fell dangerously ill, Mary arranged to bring him to be with her in Edinburgh to convalesce, perhaps as a gesture of reconciliation after their relationship had gone downhill in recent months. Kirkofield seemed like the perfect spot. The heir was said to be the healthiest in the whole town. But still, things didn't seem very optimistic. According to one of Darnley's advisors, a raven followed their caravan from Glasgow to Edinburgh and perched on the roof of the house. An ominous sign. It seemed the raven knew something mere mortals didn't. February 9th was supposed to be the last day of Lord Darnley's convalescence.

4:13This was the last Sunday before Lent, and after a day of revelry, attending a wedding and a dinner with a bishop, Mary and her royal entourage spent the evening with Lord Darnley in his chamber, playing dice, listening to someone play the lute, and chatting. Mary considered sleeping over with Lord Darnley at Kirkafield, but the Earl of Bothwell, the sheriff of Edinburgh and a member of her entourage, reminded Mary that she had promised to stop by an aristocrat's wedding mass before the end of the night. Besides, she had to be up early the next morning to depart from Holyrood on a diplomatic excursion.

4:57Wouldn't it be easier just to sleep in her castle instead? Mary agreed and departed from Kirkafield, promising to see her husband in the morning. At 2 a.m. by the time the queen was asleep in her own bed at Holyrood, an explosion startled the whole town awake, including the queen. One townsperson described it as a clap of thunder, while the queen noted that it sounded like 20 or 30 cannons. Fairly soon after, the queen was informed what had happened. Somebody had carried two trunks of gunpowder to Lord Darnley's house at Kirkfield earlier that day and came back that night to light it, causing a huge blast and demolishing the house.

5:51Her husband, Lord Darnley, had been killed. But strangely, it wasn't the explosion that killed him. His body was found in the back garden with signs of strangulation. He had made it out of the exploded house and been killed anyway. This was a murder, and the suspicious details would unravel the Scottish aristocracy and change the course of Mary, Queen of Scots, life forever. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. As news of Lord Darnley's murder spread internationally, there was increasing pressure on Mary to find and convict the culprit. There was no shortage of suspects. Lord Darnley was, to put it mildly, a controversial figure in Scotland and beyond.

6:51Because both Mary and Lord Darnley were descendants of Henry VII in England, their marriage could give them a more legitimate claim on the English throne than Queen Elizabeth herself, making Darnley a target of anyone in the Elizabethan court. But even closer to home, Mary herself and her entourage had even deeper enmity for Lord Darnley. Despite the fact that Mary had originally chosen Darnley and married for what seemed to be love, the bloom was off the rose fairly quickly. Darnley had a reputation as a power-hungry, paranoid drunkard. He had violently stabbed Mary's secretary in front of her while she was pregnant out of an unfounded fear that he and Mary were having an affair, traumatizing her and alienating him from the rest of Mary's court.

7:51Like I said, Darnley was a guy with plenty of enemies. Within days, a primary suspect for Darnley's murder emerged, Lord Bothwell. Bothwell was a key member of Mary's court, and he wielded political and military power. He was the Sheriff of Edinburgh, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, and Lieutenant of the border between England and Scotland. He had access to enough gunpowder to set off the explosion, and some of his lackeys had been spotted near Kirkafield around the time of the murder. He also had a motive. Because Lord Darnley had murdered Mary's secretary, who was one of Bothwell's allies, he could have been seeking revenge.

8:40Bothwell had done this kind of thing before. In 1562, a political enemy, the Earl of Arryn, spread a rumor about Bothwell that he planned to abduct Mary, Queen of Scots, and marry her to advance his own political career. These rumors were baseless. They actually came to the Earl of Arryn in a dream. But Bothwell escalated the situation, threatening to retaliate. Mary was so afraid of what Bothwell might do to the Earl of Arryn that she sent Bothwell into exile. But even in exile, Bothwell had his lackeys' attempt to abduct the Earl of Arryn's mistress as payback. Just days after Darnley's murder, in March 1567, anonymous placards appeared in Edinburgh, openly accusing Bothwell.

9:36The English ambassador, Sir William Drury, reported to London that, quote, the Earl Bothwell is most suspected. Even Mary might have been wary around Bothwell by this point. One of Mary's courtiers alleged that one of Bothwell's allies approached Mary a few months before the murder, asking for written permission to dispatch her husband. Allegedly, Mary declined and said she wanted to hear nothing more of the matter. Still, Mary seemed conflicted about bringing Bothwell to court. Mary and Bothwell met in 1560 and had been growing steadily closer ever since. Even though Bothwell had converted to Protestantism while Mary was a staunch Catholic, Bothwell had been steadfast and loyal.

10:27Ambassadors reported that Bothwell commanded her confidence, quote, more than any other man. Given the chaos in Mary's court, she felt that she couldn't trust anyone, even her own husband, who was moved to kill her beloved secretary based on rumor alone. After Darnley's murder, she needed support more than ever. Mired in grief, Mary was bedridden and depressed. Sir William Drury, the ambassador, reported to the Secretary of State of England that she was, quote, for the most part either melancholy or sickly. Perhaps this breakdown was in part fueled by guilt. As historian Antonia Fraser put it, quote, she had wished Darnley dead, and now he was.

11:18Mary's counsel encouraged her to return to matters of state to distract herself, but that backfired. She tried to meet the English ambassador in her sickbed, but she was so ill that she may have had one of her ladies impersonating her. When the Queen moved from Hollywood House to Seton a week after Darnley's murder, she left Bothwell to take care of her baby son. Mary's hesitation to convict Bothwell made her a suspect as well. It was widely known that the Mary-Darnley marriage was fraught, making her closeness with Bothwell seem increasingly suspect. Placards began appearing in Edinburgh, now accusing both Mary and Bothwell of Darnley's death.

12:09On one of the placards, Bothwell was depicted as a hare, while Mary was depicted as a mermaid, a symbol for a prostitute. Worse, after Bothwell visited Mary and Seton at the end of March, rumors started spreading that Bothwell intended to marry the queen. Some suspected that they may have been having an affair and conspired together to have Mary's husband killed. After all, she was the one who insisted that Darnley meet her in Edinburgh, and she set him up to convalesce in Kirkafield. Maybe it was all part of the murder plan. There's no real evidence that implicates Mary in her husband's murder.

12:57If anything, it seems she had tried to prevent conspiracies against her husband throughout their marriage. It was not Mary, but her courtiers, aligned with Bothwell, who insisted that Darnley stay at Kirkofield. Mary had actually raised some concerns that Kirkofield might be unsafe. And historically, Mary didn't really give Bothwell any special treatment. She had been willing to arrest Bothwell and send him to exile without a trial when he had threatened the Earl of Arryn a few years earlier. Anyway, at the beginning of April, with public pressure mounting, Bothwell was formally accused of Darnley's murder with a trial planned for April 12th.

13:46In a case like this, it was customary for the victim's family to initiate the proceedings, manage the prosecution, and gather evidence. So Mary left the trial to Darnley's father, the Earl of Lennox. A few days before the trial, Lennox attempted to gather 3 ,000 armed retainers, a typical show of force for nobles taking the stand. But his army was outnumbered by Bothwell's, which might have impacted the trial. Bothwell's stronger army could, for instance, implicitly or explicitly threaten witnesses away from testifying against him. Lennox also had a number of other disadvantages. He had only recently moved back to Scotland after 20 years, so he didn't have many allies in the region.

14:40and his late son was so unpopular that it was hard to galvanize support. Lennox begged Mary to postpone the trial, but she refused. Queens did not participate in matters of criminal justice, so she was ill-equipped to go hunting for legal loopholes that could justify the delay. Besides, just a couple of months ago, Lennox had been pressuring her to expedite the trial. The trial went ahead as planned. In face of the opposition and perhaps fearing for his own life, Lennox didn't show up, fleeing the country entirely. Lennox's absence meant there was no one willing to testify against Bothwell or introduce any evidence that could convict him.

15:29It was essentially a sham trial in a courtroom filled with Bothwell's allies. After seven hours of deliberating, Bothwell was acquitted. An obvious choice given that there was no permissible evidence against him. Bothwell installed troops throughout Edinburgh that threatened anyone who undermined the verdict with hand-to-hand combat. With that, Bothwell technically was off the hook. He could have returned to his plum post as Mary's closest advisor without much fanfare. but he decided to use this chaotic moment to pursue even greater political power. On April 19, 1567, just a week after the trial, he convened a meeting with various bishops, earls, and lords of Parliament, Edinburgh's upper crust, to Ainsley Tavern to discuss his next moves.

16:30There, Bothwell revealed his plan. He wanted to marry Mary and become the king, and he asked everyone present to sign a document formally supporting the marriage. It's almost hard to overstate just how crazy this was. It cast the Darnley murder in an entirely new light. Perhaps Bothwell assassinated Darnley not only for revenge, but to take his place. This union with Mary would totally undermine Mary's reputation. If she married Bothwell, Mary would be replacing her late husband with the man who, despite his acquittal, remained the only plausible architect of his murder. Still, as many as 24 of the men, competing accounts give different numbers, in Ainsley Tavern that night signed the document in favor of the marriage.

17:29These men were willing to play along with Bothwell's plan, but we don't know how they might have really felt. Later, many of them revealed that they only agreed to the document because they thought a Bothwell-Mary union would confer them political advantages. The signers were a group of Protestant nobles, so ensuring Mary had a Protestant husband would undermine the Catholic stronghold over Scotland that Mary represented. Some might have represented Bothwell out of loyalty, others out of fear, since he had a reputation for being a powerful loose cannon who sought vengeance on those who confronted him, and probably wasn't afraid of violence.

18:17Others still thought they could sign onto the document and change Bothwell's mind later. After all, for the record, Bothwell was already married. He would have to get a divorce, not an easy feat in 16th century Scotland, before he could pursue Mary. Mary seemed oblivious to Bothwell's plans. During the Ainsley Tavern meeting, Mary was in Seton for a short rest. So when Bothwell set off from Edinburgh the next day, met up with Mary, and formally proposed marriage, she was caught off guard. It had only been a couple of months since her husband was murdered, and to repeat, Bothwell already had a wife.

19:06But here he was, not only demanding her hand in marriage, but carrying a document that suggested that pretty much all of the noblemen in Edinburgh also supported that union. Still, Mary turned him down. A letter she wrote to a bishop the day after confirms that impression. It professed her loyalty to Pope Pius V and announced her plan to die a devout Catholic, which would conflict with having a Protestant wedding with a closest advisor. But Bothwell would not be deterred so easily. After all, he had already proven himself willing to go to extreme lengths to get what he wanted. Nothing would stop him on his quest for power, not even the Queen.

19:58On April 24th, Mary was finally on the road back to Edinburgh, returning from her long trip. Perhaps she was nervous to find out what was waiting for her there. The city had been in chaos since Darnley's murder. Moreover, she had just turned down Bothwell's marriage proposal, and he was one of the most powerful men in Scotland. It's a risky position going against one of your closest allies. Mary wouldn't even make it halfway to Edinburgh before Bothwell suddenly appeared on the road with 800 men. He warned Mary that it was too dangerous to return to the city and that she should instead accompany him to his castle in Dunbar to hide away.

20:47We don't know what was going through Mary's mind at the time. She was still feeling physically ill. The day before, she had been delayed on her journey because she was too weak to continue. She was probably tired, overwhelmed, confused, and conflicted. Maybe she didn't believe Bothwell and wanted to continue on to Edinburgh, but she was outnumbered by Bothwell's army and was worried he might retaliate or force her if she refused. Or maybe she believed Bothwell, or at least assumed that Bothwell was less dangerous than whatever conspiracy might be afoot in Edinburgh. Mary was already paranoid that she might be assassinated, just like her ex-husband.

21:32In any case, she said that she would not like to be the cause of any more bloodshed, and agreed to go with Bothwell to Dunbar. Historians debate whether or not this constitutes a kidnapping. To some, like Fraser, Mary clearly consented. She describes Mary as docile and that the proceedings were so calm and placid that it is difficult to describe what happened as an abduction, especially since she didn't even attempt to refuse Bothwell or seek rescue from the country people as she passed. She also argues that Mary must have known ahead of time that Bothwell was on his way. Letters from earlier in the week between the Earl of Lennox and another noble discussed the plan, suggesting that it was fairly common knowledge in Mary's court.

22:25Other historians, like the French historian Catherine Herméville, take a more extreme view, that Bothwell was actually doing Mary a favor by intervening, that the two were actually secretly in love, and Bothwell pretended to kidnap Mary so that they could marry without ruining her reputation, or at least mitigating the damage. These theories have some flaws. First is that there's no concrete proof that Mary had been having an affair with Bothwell. While some interpret her closeness with Bothwell as romantic, Bothwell's overtures only became explicit after the death of Mary's husband, and Mary had shut them down.

23:12There's also no proof that Mary had heard of Bothwell's plan to take her before it occurred other than Fraser's sense that it seems likely. Her courtiers may just as well have heard of the plan and decided not to tell Mary, not wanting to interfere, get in the way. These theories are also more focused on the explicit consent itself than the larger conditions that influenced it. Mary was, I remind you, surrounded by 800 armed men and the guy who probably killed her husband. Even if she did refuse and Bothwell let her go back to Edinburgh, her political allies there signed a document professing their loyalty to Bothwell.

23:58So Mary may have faced consequences from them instead. Bothwell had gathered enough literal and metaphorical ammunition against Mary, that her choice to go with him to Dunbar may not have really felt like a choice at all. After she was taken, Mary sent a member of her entourage ahead to Edinburgh to alert the provost that she had been kidnapped. The provost rang the literal alarm bell, and the citizens called on the government to engineer a rescue. But by then, it was too late. Mary arrived at Dunbar at midnight with an army surrounding her. That night, Bothwell raped her. There are a number of accounts that confirm this.

24:46One noble who was at Dunbar while it happened wrote that regardless of whether or not she had wanted to marry Bothwell, she had been, quote, ravished against her will. Mary herself said in a cryptic note that Bothwell's actions were, quote, rough, and that given the circumstances, she had no choice but, quote, to make the best of it. The story got back to Edinburgh days later. By then, the mood had shifted. While some contemporaries maintained that she had been kidnapped, most thought that she had gone willingly and harbored secret romantic feelings for Bothwell. That said, no one cast any doubt that Bothwell had assaulted her.

25:35Mary was known for being straight-laced and pious, and Bothwell for being lecherous and scheming. Still, no one thought that a rape would exempt Mary from her impending marriage to Bothwell. If anything, it forced her hand, because the only way to lessen the sin of sleeping with a man out of wedlock would be to marry him. According to them, Bothwell did a heinous act to break down Mary's sexual boundaries, but she would have to suffer for it. As historian Reith Warnick put it, quote, Mary reacted like many other early modern victims who believed their ravishment polluted them, unwilling to dishonor her family by revealing the rape and eliciting charges that she was immensely immodest or that she deserved to be attacked because she had not lived virtuously enough.

26:31Mary stayed at Dunbar for three weeks, where she seemed to give up and accept her fate. By the time she received an offer of rescue at the end of April, she rejected it, resigned. Now that Bothwell had secured his new marriage, he set out to dissolve his old one. That turned out to be way easier than anyone could have anticipated. His wife was all too happy to get rid of him. Bothwell set up two divorce trials in both Protestant and Catholic ecclesiastical courts, and within days the courts agreed to end his marriage on the grounds that he cheated on his wife. Not with Mary, incidentally, but with his wife's sewing maid.

27:16His servants also found court officials and threatened to cut off their noses and ears if the verdict wasn't reached quickly enough. The threats worked. By May 7th, Bothwell was officially single. That week, Bothwell also finally brought Mary back to Edinburgh. One onlooker reported that he was holding the queen by the bridle of her horse, as if she were a captive. On May 12th, Mary declared formally that, although she had been abducted, she would agree to marry Bothwell. Three days later, Bothwell and Mary were wed in a small Protestant ceremony at the Great Hall of Holyrood. After the wedding, the Earl of Bothwell technically had a new title, the Duke of Orkney, but I'll keep referring to him as Bothwell for clarity's sake.

28:11The atmosphere was hardly festive. The wedding banquet was a rush job. Some protesters placed on the palace gates the words, Wanton's Mary in the month of May. Mary seemed miserable. She had already been depressed before Bothwell's abduction, and now she was doing even worse. One of her advisors wrote a letter describing a conversation she had had with the Queen on her wedding day. Mary apologized for seeming too formal with her new husband. It was because she felt no joy about the wedding and longed for suicide. Mary had no idea that behind the scenes, the political elite of Edinburgh were trying to overturn the marriage.

28:59Even though many of them had signed the letter at Ainsley Tavern, they had begun to turn against Bothwell. A few months before, they had assumed that Bothwell would repay them for their support by including them in his plans. Besides, Bothwell probably seemed like a more reasonable choice of a husband for Mary than the paranoid, murderous Lord Darnley. But by May 1567, Bothwell seemed much more dangerous than Darnley. He had murdered someone, kidnapped and raped the queen, and manipulated the government toward his own ends. Bothwell had shut out his former allies, going against their wishes and concentrating his own power.

29:44Even the more specious claims against Bothwell that these nobles had initially dismissed seemed increasingly reasonable. Earlier in this episode, we mentioned that in 1562, five years before any of this happened, Lord Arryn spread a rumor that Bothwell would kidnap the queen and marry her to advance his own political career. Lord Arryn was ruled crazy, lest we forget the information had come to him in a dream. But Lord Arryn turned out to be right. His dream became a reality. Maybe Lord Arryn had even given Bothwell the idea. At the beginning of May, while Mary was still in captivity at Dunbar, the nobles of Edinburgh met up to figure out what to do next.

30:35These confederates planned to gather an army in secret. If Mary couldn't escape the marriage herself, they would do it for her with whatever force necessary. By June, the anti-Bothwell nobility, known as the Confederates, had gotten organized. The Confederate lords had occupied the city of Edinburgh and taken over Parliament, installing troops throughout the city. On June 11th, they issued a proclamation that they would rescue the queen, arrest Bothwell, and avenge Darnley's murder once and for all. Bothwell had already caught wind of the plan. Fearing a military coup, Bothwell took Mary to Borthwick Castle, about 12 miles south of Edinburgh, to avoid a surprise attack.

31:27He had an army of his own and was ready to fight back. But when Bothwell and Mary heard that 1 ,200 Confederate troops were on their way to Borthwick Castle, they fled once again. Bothwell dressed Mary in men's clothing to avoid suspicion, and they headed back to Dunbar. On June 15th, the two armies finally met up for a showdown at Carberry Hill, about seven miles from Edinburgh. One of the Confederates promised Mary that if she abandoned Bothwell, he would restore her to power. Mary refused. It may seem weird for her to have declared loyalty to Bothwell, given that he abused her, raped her, and forced her to marry him.

32:16But Mary had a secret. She was pregnant. She feared that the child was Bothwell's and didn't want to sully her reputation further by giving birth to an illegitimate child. No matter how they had gotten there, she and Bothwell were married. The two armies were at a standoff, neither of them particularly wanting to fight. Instead, they argued about what to do next. After a few hours, Bothwell's soldiers began wandering off, bored. Bothwell finally called for single combat to settle the dispute, but then backed down immediately, claiming that he was too high status to fight the guy who had volunteered.