Queen Mary to the Archbishop of Glasgow, February 11 [10?], 1567. Keith's History, vol. i. p. 101.

We have received this morning your letters of the 27th January by your servant Robert Dury, containing in one part such advertisement as we find by effect over true. Albeit the success has not altogether been such as the authors of that mischievous fact had preconceived in their mind, and had put it in execution, if God in His mercy had not preserved us and reserved us, as we trust, to the end that we may take a rigorous vengeance of that mischievous deed, which as it should remain unpunished, we had rather lose life and all. The matter is horrible and so strange as we believe the like was never heard of in any country. This night past, being the 9th February, a little after two hours after midnight, the house wherein the King was lodged was in an instant blown in the air, he lying sleeping in his bed, with such a vehemency, that of the whole lodging, walls, and other, there is nothing remained, no, not a stone above another, but all carried far away or dashed in dross to the very ground-stone. It must be done by force of powder, and appears to have been a mine. By whom it has been done, or in what manner, it appears not as yet. We doubt not but according to the diligence our Council has begun already to use, the certainty of all shall be used shortly; and the same being discovered, which we wot God will never suffer to lie hid, we hope to punish the same with such rigour as shall serve for example of this cruelty to all ages to come. Always whoever have taken this wicked enterprise in hand, we assure ourselves it was dressed as well for us as for the King; for we lay the most part of all the last week in that same lodging, and were then accompanied with the most part of the Lords that are in this town that same night at midnight, and of every chance tarried not all night, by reason of some mask in the Abbey: but we believe it was not chance, but God that put it in our head. We despatched the bearer upon the sudden, and therefore write to you the more shortly....

Nau's Memorials, p. 33.

He {the King} went to Glasgow, where he was seized with the small-pox. He sent several times for the Queen, who was very ill, having been injured by a fall from her horse at Seton. At last she went, stayed with him, and attended him on his return to Edinburgh.... On his return to Edinburgh, the King lodged in a small house outside the town, which he had chosen in the report of James Balfour and some others. This was against the Queen's wishes, who was anxious to take him to Craigmillar, for he could not stay in Holyrood Palace lest he should give infection to the Prince. On his own account, too, he did not wish any one to see him in his present condition.... While he was in this house, the King was often visited by the Queen, with whom he was now perfectly reconciled. He promised to give her much information of the utmost importance to the life and quiet of both of them.... He warned her more particularly to be on her guard against Lethington, who, he said, was planning the ruin of the one by the means of the other.... That very night, as her Majesty was about to leave the King, she met Paris, Lord Bothwell's valet-de-chambre, and noticing that his face was all blackened with gunpowder, she exclaimed in the hearing of many of the lords, just as she was mounting her horse, "Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!" At this he turned very red.

On the 10th of February 1567, about three or four o'clock in the morning, a match was put to the train of gunpowder, which had been placed under the King's house. It was afterwards made public that this had been done by the command and device of the Earls of Bothwell and Morton, James Balfour, and some others, who always afterwards pretended to be most diligent in searching out the murder which they themselves had committed. Morton had secretly returned from England, to which he had been banished.

This crime was the result of a bond into which they had entered. It was written by Alexander Hay, at that time one of the clerks of the Council, and signed by the Earls of Moray, Huntly, Bothwell, and Morton, by Lethington, James Balfour, and others, who had combined for this purpose. They protested that they were acting for the public good of the realm, pretending that they were freeing the Queen from the bondage and misery into which she had been reduced by the King's behaviour.... He was but deceiving the Queen, whom they often blamed for so faithfully having come to a good understanding with her husband; and they told her that he was putting a knife not only to their throats but to her own.

The King's body was blown into the garden by the violence of the explosion, and a poor English valet of his, who slept in his room, was there killed.... Earl Bothwell was much suspected of this villainous and detestable murder.... If we may judge by the plots, deeds, and contrivances of his associates, it would seem that after having used him to rid themselves of the King, they designed to make Bothwell their instrument to ruin the Queen, their true and lawful sovereign.

Their plan was this, to persuade her to marry the Earl of Bothwell, so that they might charge her with being in the plot against her late husband, and a consenting party to his death. This they did shortly after, appealing to the fact that she had married the murderer.

Buchanan (Translated from History, xx. 35).

The Archbishop of St. Andrews, who lived nearest, willingly undertook the task of killing the King, when it was offered to him, both on account of old enmities, and in the hope of bringing the succession nearer his own family. He chose, accordingly, six or eight of the most abandoned of his retainers, and entrusted the matter to them, giving them the keys of the King's lodging. They entered very quietly into his chamber, strangled him as he lay sleeping, and carried his body through the postern into a garden beside the walls. Then, at a given signal, fire was applied to the house.

[The question as to the manner of Darnley's death has given rise to considerable discussion. The depositions of Hay, Hepburn, and Paris (vide pp. 144, 215-218) agree in representing that the King was killed by the explosion. On the other hand, Drury, who wrote to Cecil on 24th April {Foreign Calendar}, and Count Moretta, the agent of the Duke of Savoy, who was in Edinburgh {Labanoff, vii. 108}, state that he was strangled. The facts that the bodies of Darnley and his servant, Taylor, were found together, in the garden, at some little distance from the house, without violent injury; that Darnley's pelisse and slippers were found beside him; and that the other bodies were found among the ruins, must be taken into account in forming a judgment on the question.]