Rizzio Sentence Examples
In 1567 Mary made Bothwell keeper of the castle, and sought its shelter herself after the murder 'of Rizzio and again after her flight from Borthwick Castle.
Mary who had already married her kinsman in secret at Stirling Castle with Catholic rites celebrated in the apartment of David Rizzio, her secretary for correspondence with France, assured the English ambassador, in reply to the protest of his mistress, that the marriage would not take place for three months, when a dispensation from the pope would allow the cousins to be publicly united without offence to the Church.
Rizzio, hitherto his friend and advocate, induced the queen to reply by a reasonable refusal to this hazardous and audacious request.
Another version of the pitiful history represents Douglas as infusing suspicion of Rizzio into the empty mind of his nephew, and thus winning his consent to a deed already designed by others.
On the 9th of March the palace of Holyrood was invested by a troop under the command of Morton, while Rizzio was dragged by force out of the queen's presence and slain without trial in the heat of the moment.
The slayers of Rizzio fled to England, and were outlawed; Darnley was permitted to protest his innocence and denounce his accomplices; after which he became the scorn of all parties alike, and few men dared or cared to be seen in his company.
Four days after the discovery of the bodies, Darnley was buried in the chapel of Holyrood with secrecy as remarkable as the solemnity with which Rizzio had been interred there less than a year before.
Mary had wearied of her guiding statesmen, Moray and the more pliant Maitland; the Italian secretary David Rizzio, through whom she had corresponded with the pope, now more and more usurped their place; and a weak fancy for her handsome cousin, Henry Darnley, brought about a sudden marriage in 1565 and swept the opposing Protestant lords into exile.
Mary and the lords still in her council ordered Knox not to preach while she was in Edinburgh, and he was absent or silent during the weeks in which the queen's growing distaste for her husband, and advancement of Rizzio over the nobility remaining in Edinburgh, brought about the conspiracy by Darnley, Morton and Ruthven.
Knox does not seem to have known beforehand of Rizzio's "slaughter," which had been intended to be a semi-judicial act; but soon after it he records that "that vile knave Davie was justly punished, for abusing of the commonwealth, and for other villainy which we list not to express."
AdvertisementHe was doubtless concerned in the conspiracy against David Rizzio, and after the favourite's murder he was obliged to leave the court and was himself in danger of assassination.
He believed that Mary's relations with David Rizzio injured him as a husband, and was easily persuaded to assent to the murder of the Italian, a crime in which he took part.
There followed rapidly the murders of Rizzio and Darnley, the Bothwell marriage, Marys defeat, captivity, and flight into England (1568).
Notwithstanding his insulting language concerning Mary and the fact that he was the "stoutest" in refusing mass, he became one of her chief advisers, but his complete ascendancy over her mind and affections dates from the murder of Rizzio on the 9th of March 1566.
Proofs of his power in the sustained narration of stirring events are abundant; his treatment of the Pilgrimage of Grace, of the sea fight at St Helens and the repulse of the French invasion, and of the murder of Rizzio, are among the most conspicuous examples of it.
AdvertisementDarnley at once threw himself into the arms of the party opposed to the policy of the queen and her secretary - a policy which at that moment was doubly and trebly calculated to exasperate the fears of the religious and the pride of the patriotic. Mary was invited if not induced by the king of Spain to join his league for the suppression of Protestantism; while the actual or prospective endowment of Rizzio with Morton's office of chancellor, and the projected attainder of Murray and his allies, combined to inflame at once the anger and the apprehension of the Protestant nobles.