The second _dramatis persona_ is Darnley, ‘The Young Fool.’ Concerning Darnley but little is recorded in comparison with what we know of Mary. He was the son, by the Earl of Lennox, a royal Stewart, of that daughter whom Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII., and widow of James IV., bore to her second husband, the Earl of Angus. Darnley’s father regarded himself as next to the Scottish crown, for the real nearest heir, the head of the Hamiltons, the Duke of Chatelherault, Lennox chose to consider as illegitimate. After playing a double and dishonest part in the troubled years following the death of James V., Lennox retired to England with his wife, a victim of the suspicions of Elizabeth.[6] The education of his son, Henry, Lord Darnley, seems to have been excellent, as far as the intellect and the body are concerned. The letter which, as a child of nine, he wrote to Mary Tudor, speaking of a work of his own, ‘The New Utopia,’ is in the new ‘Roman’ hand, carried to the perfection of copperplate. The Lennox MSS. say that ‘the Queen was stricken with the dart of love by the comliness of his sweet behaviour, personage, wit, and vertuous qualities, as well in languages[7] and lettered sciencies, as also in the art of music, dancing, and playing on instruments.’ When his murderers had left his room at midnight, his last midnight, his chamber-child begged him to play, while a psalm was sung, but his hand, he replied, was out for the lute, so say the Lennox Papers. Physically he was ‘a comely Prince of a fair and large stature, pleasant in countenance ... well exercised in martial pastimes upon horseback as any Prince of that age.’ The Spanish Ambassador calls him ‘an amiable youth.’ But it is plain that ‘the long lad,’ the _gentil hutaudeau_, with his girlish bloom, and early tendency to fulness of body, was a spoiled child. His mother, a passionate intriguer, kept this before him, that, as great-grandson of Henry VII., and as cousin of Mary Stuart, he should unite the two crowns. There were Catholics enough in England to flatter the pride of a future king, though now in exile. This Prince _in partibus_, like his far-away descendant, Prince Charles Edward, combined a show of charming manners, when he chose to charm, with an arrogant and violent petulance, when he deemed it safe to be insulting. At his first arrival in Scotland he won golden opinions, ‘his courteous dealing with all men is well spoken of.’ As his favour with Mary waxed he ‘dealt blows where he knew that they would be taken;’ he is said to have drawn his dagger on an official who brought him a disappointing message, and his foolish freedom of tongue gave Moray the alarm. It was soon prophesied that he ‘could not continue long.’ ‘To all honest men he is intolerable, and almost forgetful of her already, that has adventured so much for his sake. What shall become of her or what life with him she shall lead, that already taketh so much