Meanwhile, the courts of Europe were busy with schemes for Mary's marriage. The king of Sweden, the king of Denmark, the king of France, the arch-duke Charles of AuStria, Don Carlos of Spain, the duke of Ferrara, the duke of Nemours, the duke of Anjou, the Scottish earl of Arran, and the English earl of Leicester were proposed as candidates for her hand. Her own preference was for Don Carlos, the heir of what was then the greatest monarchy in Christendom; and it was not until all hopes. of obtaming him were quenched, that she thought seriously of any other. Her choice fell, some what suddenly, on her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, son of the earl of Lennox, by his marriage with a granddaughter of king Henry II. of England. He was thus among the nearest heirs to the English crown, and his claims to the .succession were believed to have the support of the great body of Eng,lish Roman Catholics. But except this, and his good-looks, he had no other recommendation. He was weak, needy, inso lent, and vicious; his religion, such as it was, was Roman Catholic; his house had few friends and many enemies in Scotland; and he WAS two or three years younger than Mary. Her best friends, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, warned her arrainst him, but in vain. The marriage was celebrated at Holyrood on July 29, 1565. It was tbe signal for an insurrection by Murray and the Hamiltons, who hoped to be joined by the whole Protestant party. But their hope was disappointed; and the queen. taking the field in person, at once quelled the revolt, and chased the rebels beyond the Tweed.
Her triumph NW a8 scarcely over when her eyes began to open to the great mistake of her marriage. Her husband's worthlessness and folly became only joo apparent; she waa disgusted by his debauchery, and alarmed by his arrogance ,rand ambition. She had given him the title of king, but he now demanded that the crown should be secured to him for life, and that if the queen died without issue it should descend to his heirs. Mary hesitated to comply with a demand which would have set aside the settled order -of succession; and what she refused to grant by favor, the king prepared to extort by force.
3fary's chief minister, since Murray's rebellion, had been David Rizzio, a mean-look ing Italian of great ability and many accomplishments; but generally hated beyond the palace walls as a base-born foreigner, a court favorite, and a Roman Catholic. The -king and Rizzi° had been sworn friends, sharing the same table, and even sleeping in the same bed; but the king was now persuaded that it was Rizzio who was the real :obstacle to his designs upon the crow'n. In this belief he entered into a formal compact with Murray, Ruthven, Morton, and other chiefs of the Protestant party, undertaking, .on his part, to prevent their attainder, or procure their pardon, and to support and .advance the Protestant religion; while they, on the other part, bound themselves to procure the settlement of the crown upon him and his heirs, and to take and slay, if .need were, even in the queen's palace and presence, every one who opposed it. The :result of this conspiracy was the murder of Rizzio on 3Iar. 9. 1566, the king, leading the way into the queen's cabinet, and holding her in his grasp while the murderers dragged -the poor Italian into an ante-chamber, and, mangling his body with more than 50 wounds,
.completed what they believed, and Knox pronounced to be, " a just act and most worthy of all praise." When 31ary learned what had been done she broke out in reproaches against the king as to blame for all. " I shall be your wife no longer," she :told him, "and shall never like well till I cause you have as sorrowful a heart as I have st this present." As had been agreed beforehand among the conspirators, 3fary was kept prisoner in Holyrood; while the king, of his own authority, dismissed the parlia ment which was about to forfeit Murray and his associates in the late insurrection. The plot was thus far successful; but Alary no sooner perceived its objects than she set her self at work to defeat them. Dissembling her indignation at her husband's treachery and the savage outrage in which he was the ring-leader, she succeeded by her blandishments in detaching him from the conspirators, and iu persuading him not only to escape with her from their power by a midnight flight to Dunbar, but to issue a. proclamation in which he denied all complicity in their designs. The conspiracy was now at an end; Rutliven and 3forton fled to England, while Murray, by renouncing their cause, hastened to make his peace with the queen; and the king, hated by both sides, because he had betntyed both sides, became an object,of mingled abhorrence and contempt.
It was an aggravation of the murder of Rizzio that it was committed, if not in the queen's presence, at least within a few yards of her person, only three mouths before she gave birth (on June 19, 1566) to the prince who became king James VI. As that event drew near the queen's affection for her husband seemed to revive; but the change was only momentary; and before the boy's baptism, in December, her estrangement from the king was greater than ever. Divorce was openly discussed in her presence, and darker designs were not obscurely hinted at among her friends. The king, on his part, spoke of leaving the country; but before his preparations were completed he fell ill of the small-pox at Glasgow. This was about Jan. 9, 1567. On the 25th Mary -went to see him, and traveling by easy stages brought him to Edinburgh on the 31st. He was lodged in a small mansion beside the kirk of the field, nearly on the spot where ,the s.e. corner of the university now stands. There Mary visited him daily, and slept lor two nights in a room below his bed-chamber. She passed the evening of Sunday, Feb. 9, by his bedside, talking cheerfully and affectionately with him, although she is said to have dropped one remark which gave him uneasy forebodings—that it was much :about that time twelvemonth that Rizzi° was murdered. She left him between 10 and 11 o'clock to take part in a masque at Holyrood, at the marriage of a favorite valet. The festivities had uot long ceased in the palace when, about two hours after midnight, the house in which the king slept was blown up by gunpowder; and his lifeless body was found in the neighboring garden.