David Rizzio - Legacy and Memorial

Legacy and Memorial

David Rizzio's career was remembered and referred to by Henry IV of France. Mocking the pretension of James VI of Scotland to be the "Scottish Solomon", he remarked that "he hoped he was not David the fiddler's son", alluding to the possibility that Rizzio, not Darnley, fathered King James.

Whilst it has been alleged that Rizzio is buried at Canongate Kirkyard, Edinburgh this is highly unlikely as this would have required reinterment of a Catholic with no living friends in a Protestant graveyard 120 years after his death. It is more likely and logical that he lies in an unmarked grave in the graveyard attaching Holyrood Abbey. The Protestant historian George Buchanan wrote in 1581 that David was first buried outside the door of the Abbey, and then Mary arranged for him to be buried in the tomb of her father James V and Madeleine of France within. As Buchanan described this circumstance as reflecting badly on the Queen, while his book was at the printers, a friend James Melville tried to get Buchanan to rewrite the passage, fearing that Mary's son James VI would suppress the whole book. Buchanan asked his cousin, Thomas Buchanan, a schoolmaster in Stirling, if he thought the story was true, and the cousin agreed. The story was published.