Tea at Trianon: Lord Darnley Revealed

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Lord Darnley Revealed

From The Telegraph:

Darnley (Henry Stuart) who was described by Mary's courtiers as persistently arrogant, drunken, and petulant was murdered at the age of only 21, eight months after Mary gave birth to their son, James I and VI. On 9 February 1567, his body was discovered in the orchard of Kirk o' Field in Edinburgh, a two-storey house a short walk from Holyrood, where Mary had installed him to recover from smallpox. The house was rocked by explosions after two barrels of gunpowder were placed in a small room under Darnley's sleeping quarters. His corpse, dressed in nightclothes, and that of his valet William Taylor, were found in the orchard surrounded by a cloak, a dagger, a chair and a coat. The bodies appeared unharmed by the blast, and it was determined that the two men had been strangled as they tried to flee the smoking ruins. (Read more.)