despised the “new-made earl”, and Leicester himself apologized to Mary’s ambassador for the presumption of the proposal, “alleging the invention of that proposition to have proceeded from Master Cecil, his secret enemy".[69] While the Leicester negotiations were in progress, the Earl of Lennox, who had been exiled in 1544, returned to Scotland with his son Henry, Lord Darnley, a handsome youth, eighteen years of age.  As early as May, 1564, Knox suspected that Mary intended to marry Darnley.[70] There is little doubt that it was a love-match; but there were also political reasons, for Darnley was, after Mary herself, the nearest heir to Elizabeth’s throne, and only the Hamiltons stood between him and the crown of Scotland.  He had been born and educated in England, as also had been his mother, the daughter of Angus and Margaret Tudor, and Elizabeth might have used him as against Mary’s claim.  That claim the English queen refused to acknowledge, although, in the end of 1564, Murray and Maitland of Lethington tried their utmost to persuade her to do so.

On the 29th July, 1565, Mary was married to Darnley in the chapel of Holyrood.  Elizabeth chose to take offence, and Murray raised a rebellion.  There are two stories of plots:  there are hints of a scheme to capture Mary and Darnley; and Murray, on the other hand, alleged that Darnley had entered into a conspiracy to kidnap him.  It is, at all events, certain that Murray raised a revolt and that the people rallied to Mary, who drove her brother across the border.  Elizabeth received Murray with coldness, and asked him “how he, being a rebel to her sister of Scotland, durst take the boldness upon him to come within her realm?"[71] But Murray, confident in Elizabeth’s promise of aid, knew what this hypocritical outburst was worth, and the English queen soon afterwards wrote to Mary in his favour.  The motive which Murray alleged for his revolt was his fear for the true religion in view of Mary’s marriage to Darnley, nominally a Roman Catholic; but his position with regard to the Rizzio Bond renders it, as we shall see, somewhat difficult to give him credit for sincerity.  It is more likely that he was ambitious of ruling the kingdom with Mary as a prisoner.  About Elizabeth’s complicity there can be no doubt.[72]

Mary’s troubles had only begun.  On the 16th January, 1566, Randolph, the English ambassador, wrote from Edinburgh:  “I cannot tell what mislikings of late there hath been between her grace and her husband; he presses earnestly for the matrimonial crown, which she is loth hastily to grant”.  Darnley, in fact, had proved a vicious fool, and was possessed of a fool’s ambition.  Rizzio, Mary’s Italian secretary, who had urged the Darnley marriage, strongly warned Mary against giving her husband any real share in the government, and Darnley determined that Rizzio should be “removed".[73] He therefore entered into a conspiracy with his natural enemies, the Scottish nobles, who professed to be willing