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.
According to one account, Darnley privately assured his uncle George
Douglas of his wife's infidelity; he had himself, if he might be
believed, discovered the secretary in the Queen's apartment at midnight,
under circumstances yet more unequivocally compromising than those which
had brought Chastelard to the scaffold. 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.
A bond was drawn in which Darnley pledged himself to support the
confederates who undertook to punish "certain privy persons" offensive
to the state, "especially a stranger Italian called Davie"; another was
subscribed by Darnley and the banished lords, then biding their time in
Newcastle, which engaged him to procure their pardon and restoration,
while pledging them to insure to him the enjoyment of the title he
coveted, with the consequent security of an undisputed succession to the
crown, despite the counter-claims of the house of Hamilton, in case his
wife should die without issue--a result which, intentionally or not, he
and his fellow-conspirators did all that brutality could have suggested
to accelerate and secure.
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