Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley not together in early 1545 and a letter of March 1566, from Mary Queen of Scots, indicates Darnley was then nineteen years old. Therefore the date 1546 would seem probable. A descendant of both James II of Scotland and Henry VII of England, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was heir to two royal houses, the House of Stuart and the House of Tudor, thus he had claim to both the Scottish and English thrones, a claim that may have cost him his life. In 1545, his father, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox was found guilty of treason in Scotland for
Lord Darnley on their necks (they were possibly strangled) and next to them lay a knife which they were stabbed with. The suspected murderer, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, married Mary one month after he was acquitted and released from jail. With the elevation of the Earldom of Lennox to a dukedom in 1581 the barony of Darnley retained its link with Lennox and in 1612 the Dukedom of Richmond was added to the title and remained so after its extinction and revival in 1675. The subsidiary Earldom of Darnley was revived at the same time. Lord Darnley Lord Darnley is