Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,

the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenose,

from Shakespeare to Samarise, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft.

Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

It was just after 2 o'clock in the morning on the 10th of February 1567.

In Edinburgh, a deafening explosion shattered the still night air.

The blast was so powerful it was heard across the city.

A house at Kirkevild had been blown apart.

When people rushed to the scene, they found not charred remains, but a mystery.

In a nearby orchard beneath beneath a pear tree, lay two bodies.

One was Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the King, Consort of Scotland, husband to marry Queen of Scots.

The other was his servant.

Neither showed a mark from the explosion, no burns, no broken bones. Donnelly had been

strangled or perhaps suffocated before the gunpowder ever went off. Who killed him? His ambitious

rivals, the Earl of Bothwell, who would soon marry his widow, or was the queen herself somehow involved?

The murder of Lord Darnley has haunted Scottish history for more than four centuries.

It's a story of love turned rancid, of power, jealousy and betrayal, and of a death that changed

the course of a kingdom. Darling's downfall had been long in the making, handsome, vain and dangerously entitled.

He'd once swept Mary off her feet. But within a year, he conspired in one of the most shocking

acts ever witnessed in a royal court, the brutal murder of Mary's secretary David Ritsio,

stabbed more than 50 times before the pregnant queen's eyes. That act of violence would set

the stage for his own.

...