James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray

Balfour, whose family owned the lodging and who allegedly helped procure the powder, was never seriously pursued or investigated in any way.

The powerful Lord James Stuart, Earl Moray, Mary's half-brother, had ridden out of Edinburgh just hours before the blast.

an absence his critics have found convenient ever since.

Darnley's father, the 4th Earl of Lennox, demanded justice.

Five weeks later, imprisoned at Loch Leven, she was forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, who would later become James I of England in 1603.

In June 1567, Bothwell's servant George Doglish was arrested, and with him surfaced a silver casket said to contain letters and sonnets from Mary to Bothwell.

If genuine, the casket letters put the Queen inside the plot, and Moray's government used them against her before English commissioners in 1568.

Their authenticity was disputed from the first day, and it always will be, because the originals vanished around 1584, and only copies survive.