James Hepburn

Moray is jealous of the Lennox family's rise to power and from August to October has attempted to arouse Edinburgh citizens against Mary's authority.

Aided by other nobles, he raises a rebellion that she quickly suppresses with the help of twenty-nine-year-old James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell, despite his support of the Protestant faction in Scottish politics.

She outlaws Moray and personally leads the force that drives him and his supporters across the border.

Feeling betrayed, however, by her Protestant advisors, Mary withdraws some of her support from the Reformed church.

The house at Kirk o' Field on the outskirts of Edinburgh, at which Darnley lies recovering from illness, is blown up on the night of February 9-10, 1567; Darnley himself is strangled while trying to escape.

Conflicting accounts of the crime, including the possibility that Darnley, plotting to blow up Mary, had been caught in his own trap, nevertheless tend to incriminate the nobles who hated Darnley, among whom the likely mastermind is Mary’s friend, the earl of Bothwell.

Bothwell is acquitted after a cursory, obviously rigged trial.

Maitland may also have had a hand in the murder.

There is no proof of Mary’s foreknowledge or complicity in the event, but she had in April 1567 gone off with Bothwell, who in early May secures a divorce from his wife.

He has possibly abducted and ravished the Scottish queen against her will but in any case, Mary, already living with Bothwell, agrees to wed him according to Protestant rites held on May 15, the day after his creation as duke of Orkney and Shetland.

Her mounting despair exacerbated by ill health, Mary possibly sees the need for a strong shoulder to aid her in managing the affairs of her fractious subjects, but at this point even some of the queen’s closest supporters become alienated, including Maitland, who had opposed the union with Bothwell.

Moray, a month after Mary’s wedding, leads a group of Scottish Protestant and Catholic nobles, most of whom dislike Bothwell.

On the pretext of saving her from the man who is widely believed to be Darnley’s murderer, Moray’s rebel force assembles at Carberry Hill near Edinburgh on June 15, 1567, to confront their queen and her new husband.

When Mary’s troops refuse to fight, she surrenders on the condition that Bothwell be allowed to escape; he flees north into exile, first to Orkney and Shetland, then to Denmark, where Frederick II takes him into custody.

Mary is imprisoned in the castle on Loch Leven’s tiny island and on July 24 is formally deposed in favor of her fifteen-month-old son, who succeeds his mother to the Scottish throne as King James VI, with Moray as regent.

Protestantism is thus secured in Scotland.