Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley

On the night of 10 February 1567 an explosion devastated the Edinburgh residence of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. The blast was heard as far away as Holyrood Palace, where Mary was attending a wedding masque. Those arriving at the scene found the naked bodies of Darnley and his valet in the garden, not killed by the explosion but bearing marks of strangulation.

Darnley's claim to the English throne had made him a contested match for Mary from the start, opposed by Elizabeth I. Historian Alison Weir reconstructs the murder investigation and the political intrigue surrounding it, weighing the evidence against Mary and the conspirators around her, and sets her conclusions against the wider turmoil of the Scottish and English courts in the 1560s.