Darnley was born in 1545 at Temple Newsam, Leeds, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England.
He was the eldest son of Matthew Stewart, 4th earl of Lennox, whose pretension to the throne of Scotland was contested by James Hamilton, 2nd earl of Arran. Darnley’s mother, formerly Margaret Douglas, had a claim to the English crown as granddaughter of Henry VII.
Нe was educated in England, and his lack of intellectual ability was compensated for by exceptional skill in military exercises.
Darnley was strong and athletic, a good horseman with knowledge of weapons and a passion for hunting and hawking.
He also excelled in singing, lute playing, and dancing.
In February 1565 Darnley, who had been living in England, went to Scotland with the permission of Queen Elizabeth I.
On 17 February, he presented himself to Mary at Wemyss Castle in Fife. By late April it was known that Mary wished to make him her husband. She created him successively earl of Ross (a rank previously reserved for a son of the Scottish king) and duke of Albany. Elizabeth and the English privy council sent word that the proposed marriage was “dangerous to the common amity” of the two countries.
The marriage incensed Elizabeth but provoked in Scotland only a minor rebellion of disaffected protestant nobles, led by James Stewart, earl of Moray (Mary’s illegitimate half brother), which she declined to support and which rapidly fizzled out.
Within months, stability was restored, Mary was pregnant, and the Stuart dynasty's future seemed assured.
Mary's refusal to grant Darnley the Crown Matrimonial drove him to ally with the disaffected nobles who had opposed the marriage and who carefully implicated him in the Rizzio murder of March 1566. He betrayed his accomplices, but they showed Mary his written agreement to Riccio’s murder, and he was unable to clear himself with her.
The birth of a son was eventually to solve the problem of the English, as well as the Scottish, succession.
The rift between Mary and Darnley, briefly healed following the Rizzio affair, now widened beyond repair.
Darnley pointedly missed his son's lavish baptismal celebrations and the political isolation resulting from his betrayal of his fellow Rizzio conspirators was compounded by Mary's increasing dependence on Bothwell.
Her precipitate marriage to Bothwell, however, handed the Lennox Stewarts a gift-wrapped opportunity to gild Darnley's memory at Mary's expense.
The marriage of Mary and Darnley was a question of practical politics, and the queen, having nursed her new suitor through an attack of measles, soon made up her mind to wed him, saying he " was the properest and best proportioned long man that ever she had seen. "
In March 1565 there were rumours that the marriage had already taken place, but it was actually celebrated at Holyrood on July 29, 1565 according to the Roman Catholic rite.
Mary and Darnley's son James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle. He was baptised Charles James on 17 December 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France, Elizabeth I of England and Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy.
