Margaret Tudor: Queen of Scots' reign descends into chaos

The fact is that women barely get a look-in in many historical accounts of Scotland, apart from Mary, Queen of Scots, and even she is usually portrayed as a tragic or hysterical case rather than the young and vigorous battler that she was for most of her reign.

Yet Mary was only one of a remarkable quartet of women who at one time or another were in dominant roles in 16th-century Scotland, a period in which women were very much second-class citizens and an age which would be dominated by male-led religious ferment.

The other three were Queen Consort Margaret Tudor, her daughter Lady Margaret Douglas, and Mary of Guise, herself a Queen Consort and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. I have written extensively about the latter queen already so I am going to leave her tale aside and concentrate on the other three women, who each have a fascinating story to tell – not least because they were women in a darkly misogynist century that would see John Knox write his execrable polemical pamphlet “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women” and be applauded for it.

I am penning this column as the first of a six-part series about great women of Scotland, and as a man I will undoubtedly make mistakes, probably of interpretation rather than fact, in trying to divine the methods and motivations of the women I will portray, so I apologise in advance and can assure you the series will be advised by very knowledgeable women.

READ MORE: The enduring fascination of Mary Queen of Scots

The three women I am writing about today and over the next two weeks were all crucial to the history of Scotland, and indeed the United Kingdom as a whole, but none of them were actually born in Scotland as I shall explain.

First up is Margaret Tudor who, as her name suggests, was of the royal house that ruled England at the start of the 16th century. Even a brief acquaintance with the facts of her life would convince you that she is the most important English-born woman in Scottish history – Saint Margaret was born in Hungary, and I exclude Margaret Thatcher, who undoubtedly changed Scotland’s modern history, on grounds of good taste.

Margaret’s father was King Henry VII, who had seized the throne of England in 1485 by defeating Richard III to become the first Tudor monarch. Her mother was Elizabeth of York, who Henry had married to unite the warring houses of Lancaster and York under his Tudor name – a new start for England after the Wars of the Roses.

Named after her maternal grandmother, the powerful Margaret Beaufort, the princess was born in Westminster Palace on November 28, 1489. Her elder brother was Arthur, the Prince of Wales, and her younger brother would become Henry VIII.

As the eldest daughter of the King of England, it was Margaret’s fate to become a pawn in the international game of thrones. Practically from the day of her birth, Henry VII seems to have seen her as a vital part of his diplomatic machinations that were necessary to secure the Tudor dynasty – even as she grew up a pretender to the throne, Perkin Warbeck, appeared on the scene claiming to be one of the Princes in the Tower and the rightful king of England. Aware of the worst kept secret in England, Henry knew both Princes were dead, killed under his predecessor’s command, so he declared that Warbeck was an impostor.

That was not proven, however, until after Warbeck went to Scotland and secured the support of James IV, the Stewart King of Scots.

Though James appears to have known Warbeck was not who he claimed to be, the Scottish king’s meddling in his affairs made Henry determined to do something about his troublesome neighbours and Margaret’s entire life would change as a consequence.

Regular readers will know that the lack of written contemporaneous chronicles has been the drawback for all who study Scottish history of the mediaeval period and the Middle Ages, but by the turn of the 16th century more and more correct accounts of the events were beginning to be produced. That’s why we know much more about Margaret and her life than, say, the life of a previous Queen of Scots, Saint Margaret.

The English court and the activities of English kings were also being better recorded, so we know that Henry VII started negotiating marriage for his daughter before she was five- or six-years-old.

The first possible royal marriage for her was to the King of Portugal, but Henry decided that an alliance with the Scots would be more advantageous and as a direct result of the Warbeck incidents, serious negotiations began with James IV in the mid-1490s, when the King of Scots was already in his 20s.

Margaret Turdor’s life was thrown into chaos after her husband James IV fell at the Battle of Flodden

James had been just 15 when he gained the Scottish throne following the death of his father James III after the Battle of Sauchieburn in 1488 – James was the figurehead of the nobles in opposition to his own father and did penance for that act for the rest of his life. At least Henry and his nobles only killed the usurper Richard III and thus Henry was no parricide, but both kings came to their thrones through violence.

In need of a wife to give him an heir, James saw the advantage of an alliance with England through marriage, and so in 1497, a commissioner, the Spanish envoy Pedro de Ayala, was employed to negotiate a peace between the two countries, including talks on the possibility of the King of Scots marrying the daughter of the King of England.

There were many nobles in England who feared that bringing the Stewarts into the line of succession would be a disaster but there were many more, particularly those with lands in the North of England, who saw it as a way of stopping the incessant raids on their territory by the Scottish reivers.

It took five years of negotiations but eventually James and Henry agreed on the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, which was completed in January 1502 and contained the marriage agreement for the then-12-year-old Margaret – such arrangements for youngsters to marry were common among the royal families of Europe at that time.

The Treaty stated: “There [shall] be a true, sincere, whole and unbroken peace, friendship, league and amity, not only for the term of the life of each of our said princes … from this day forth in all times to come, between them and their heirs and lawful successors, heritable and lawfully succeeding.”

Approved by the Pope, the treaty took immediate effect and preparations began for the royal marriage. There had been intermittent wars between England and Scotland for centuries, and of course Scotland’s main ally was France, so Henry thought he was getting a good deal, particularly as his daughter’s dowry – money was always a huge concern of his – was unlikely to bankrupt him.

To those at his court who feared the union of the two crowns through any child of James and Margaret, Henry said: “What then? Should anything of the kind happen (and God avert the omen), I foresee that our realm would suffer no harm, since England would not be absorbed by Scotland, but rather Scotland by England, being the noblest head of the entire island, since there is always less glory and honour in being joined to that which is far the greater, just as Normandy once came under the rule and power of our ancestors the English.”

Prescient words – as history shows us.

READ MORE: Saint and sinner: The women who changed the face of Scotland

MARGARET and James were married by proxy on January 25, 1503 – again such proxy marriages were common among royalty and aristocracy – and from that day on, Margaret Tudor was Queen of Scots.

James showered her with gifts, including several castles and the income from their lands. Poems and songs were written to welcome her to Scotland – the Scottish people seem to have rejoiced that their king would have a wife and presumably an heir would follow. James gallantly rode out to meet her, and is said to have charmed his 13-year-old queen.

She arrived in Scotland in early August, 1503, and immediately suffered a mishap – her favourite horse was killed in a stable fire at Dalkeith and records show that James spent £127 on replacing her saddlery and riding gear.

On August 8, 1503, James and Margaret solemnised their marriage in a grand ceremony in Holyrood Abbey. The new queen was highly popular and became even more so when her first child, James, was born on February 21, 1507 – Scotland now had an heir to the throne who was given the title Duke of Rothesay, which is reserved for the Scottish crown prince.

Sadly, the infant James died when he was just a year old, and a second son, Arthur, also died at the age of nine months. Two daughters both died shortly after they were born, but on April 15, 1512, at Linlithgow Palace, Margaret gave birth to a healthy son who would become James V of Scotland.

We all know the tragic circumstances in which he ascended the throne. In 1509, Henry VIII had succeeded to the throne of England and he was determined to make war on France, knowing that they were Scotland’s auld allies. Believing that, with his sister married to their king, the Scots would not back France, not least because James would be excommunicated by the Pope if he broke the 1502 Treaty, Henry went over the Channel to wage war, leaving his wife Katherine of Aragon in charge.

Despite the firm opposition of his queen, James IV did invade England in the summer of 1513, and on September 9, Margaret Tudor was widowed when James fell at the Battle of Flodden. She was pregnant with James’s final child, Alexander.

Her brother’s forces having killed her husband, we can only imagine the maelstrom of emotions experienced by Margaret at that time. Yet now was her finest hour – she had been named as Regent by James in his will, and she quickly took up her duties in the name of her one-year-old son.

She seems to have ruled well enough, and managed to negotiate peace with England, but a pro-French group of nobles led by John Stewart, Duke of Albany, were unhappy with her politics. They became apoplectic when it was revealed in August, 1514, that the Queen had secretly married Archibald Douglas, the 6th Earl of Angus, in what appears to have been a love affair of passion and lust.

The Scottish privy council of nobles reacted by removing her regency and giving it to Albany, who was then, in July 1515, third in line to the throne. The council also decreed that Margaret should give custody of her children to the new regent.

Again, we can only imagine the emotions such a decree would have caused Margaret, who fled to Stirling Castle with her two sons James and Alexander. Albany insisted on having personal control of the two princes and Margaret eventually surrendered them to the regent. Now pregnant by the Earl of Angus, she went to live in Edinburgh, where she received messages from her brother Henry VIII that her life was in danger and that she should come to his court where she would be treated as a queen.

She had a decision to make – stay and secure her son’s accession or flee and all but guarantee that Albany would become king. Find out what happened next week.