Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley

Henry Stuart became King of Scotland on 29 July 1565 when he married Mary, Queen of Scots, a union that gave him a crown but little actual power. The marriage produced one child, James, born in 1566 — the future James VI of Scotland and I of England, the king who would unite the thrones. Less than a year after his son's birth, Darnley was murdered at Kirk o' Field on 10 February 1567. Contemporary accounts called him Lord Darnley, the title he held as heir to the Earldom of Lennox, and most of them focused less on his reign than on the violent and murky circumstances of his death.