Great Scottish women: The story of Lady Margaret Douglas

Last week I told how Margaret, then the Queen Dowager, lost the regency of Scotland after it was revealed that she had married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, in August 1514, less than a year after she was widowed. It was a passionate affair by all accounts, but ended with John Stewart, Duke of Albany, taking over as regent in July, 1515, while Margaret had to surrender her two sons, the young King James V and his brother Alexander to Albany’s care.

Her brother, Henry VIII of England, offered to get Margaret out of Scotland so she could live at his court, but Margaret feared that if she fled to England, Albany and his council of nobles would act to ensure that James would lose the crown. She decided to risk it.

Margaret asked the Regency Council for permission to travel to Linlithgow, ostensibly to have her baby there, but instead she dashed south and was welcomed into England by Henry’s northern commander Thomas Fiennes, Lord Dacre.

He took her to Harbottle Castle in Northumberland where, on October 8, 1515, Margaret Tudor gave birth to a girl who was named Margaret, the latest in a line of Margarets stretching back to Margaret Beaufort, the paternal grandmother – and not maternal as I stated last week – of Henry VIII and Margaret. Thus one of the most remarkable of all Scottish women was born in England and indeed she would spend most of her life there.

The Regency Council of nobles backed Albany to the hilt even after young Alexander, who had been named the Duke of Ross, died in Stirling Castle on December 18, 1515, aged just a year and seven months. Death in infancy was common in that era, even for the children of royals, and Margaret herself did not believe the rumours that Albany had something to do with her son’s death, even if it did make Albany the heir to the throne should anything happen to James V.

Margaret and her baby carried on to Henry’s court in London, but the Earl of Angus did not accompany his wife and child. Her husband was also in genuine fear for his lands, so when Margaret decided to take up Henry’s offer of sanctuary, the Earl stayed behind – “done like a Scot” was apparently Henry’s bitter response.

Angus made peace with Albany, who in turn began to negotiate with Henry and his principal advisor Thomas Wolsey for the return of King James’s mother.

After a year at Scotland Yard, so called because previous Kings of Scots had resided there, Margaret went home to Scotland and was briefly reconciled with her husband only to find that Angus had not only been living with his lover Jane but was also spending Margaret’s money freely.

She decided to divorce him, a quite simply unheard of thing for a woman to do, and that led to one of the most ironic exchanges of letters in British history.

Margaret wrote to her bother Henry VIII to say: “I am sore troubled with my Lord of Angus since my last coming into Scotland, and every day more and more, so that we have not been together this half year… I am so minded that, an I may by law of God and to my honour, to part with him, for I wit well he loves me not, as he shows me daily.”

The reply from Henry was adamant that she should not be contemplating divorce as she would bring “shame and disgrace to all her family.” A few years later, of course, Henry’s own divorce from his queen, Katherine (can also be spelled Catherine) of Aragon, was the trigger for the English Reformation.

Having squandered much of Margaret’s money – she was forced to pay off staff – Angus went first to France and then to Henry’s court, the English king taking a liking to the Scottish earl, so much so that he encouraged Angus to go back home and try to rekindle his relationship with Margaret who by now was effectively jointly ruling the country with Albany who spent a lot of time in France which was his true home.

Henry’s idea was to create a pro-English faction in Scotland, to be led by Angus, but even some of his own Douglas clan would not back this plan and Scotland remained firmly allied to France with the Auld Alliance having been renewed by the Treaty of Rouen in 1517.

There was a brief outbreak of war with England in 1522 and 1523, but with huge backing from France, the Scots secured their borders though this time there was no Flodden-style invasion. Meanwhile, as usual, the nobility of Scotland were jostling among themselves for power as they always did when a monarch was in his or her minority, and it’s astonishing that Margaret not only faced up to them but was able to maintain the control of the court that she did.

One incident sums up this woman’s courage and determination not to be browbeaten by any man. Angus did indeed come north of the Border in November, 1524 and as he approached Edinburgh, Margaret ordered the guns of Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace to be fired at him. They missed, but he got the message.

Though Angus came back to Scotland the following year, the couple were never reconciled, not least because Angus and his Douglas family members audaciously gained control of James V. But Margaret eventually did get her divorce – actually an annulment which allowed her daughter to stay legitimate – approved by the Pope in 1527, after which she married Henry Stewart, a dashing young soldierly type who had been captain of her guard.

He became Lord Methven, and in 1528, James V’s minority ended when he escaped from the Douglas leash, and the young king promptly appointed his mother and Methven as his principal advisors and surrounded himself with a court full of anti-Douglas nobles. This led to open confrontation with his stepfather, Angus withstanding a siege at Tantallon Castle before being allowed to retire to England.

Despite Methven’s occasional straying – she threatened him with divorce, too – Margaret and he remained married and she was a hugely influential figure at her son’s court where she formed a strong bond with her second daughter-in-law Marie de Guise.

Margaret died from a stroke at Methven Castle on October 18, 1541, at the age of 51, just over a year before her son James’s sad death after the Scots were defeated by the English at the Battle of Solway Moss – you may reckon that had his mother still been alive, she would have leant James some of her own courage in adversity.

NOW attention switches to her daughter, the fascinating Lady Margaret Douglas. She is a pivotal figure in the history of the United Kingdom, and not just Scotland, because of her descendants who include the current Queen.

Her childhood was spent in different homes and places due to the estrangement between her father and mother, but we know that she was at Tantallon Castle when Angus took refuge there in 1528.

He sent his daughter south – some say in a dramatic escape through the castle’s sea gate – where she could be safe in the household of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, her godfather and Henry VIII’s chancellor. But Wolsey’s dramatic downfall in 1529 saw Margaret move to the household of Henry VIII’s daughter and heir, Princess Mary, her first cousin. The two girls duly became lifelong friends, not least because they both adhered to their Roman Catholic faith in the face of the Reformation.

Margaret’s own claim to the throne of England through her mother, Henry VIII’s sister, was acknowledged and Henry insisted on a royal upbringing for his niece of whom he became genuinely fond. But that link to royalty also brought upset, not least after Katherine of Aragon was set aside in favour of Anne Boleyn as Henry desperately tried for a male heir.

Margaret was lady-in-waiting to the new Queen Anne when she fell in love with a handsome and powerful courtier, Lord Thomas Howard, who just happened to be the queen’s uncle. At the age of 20, Howard was Margaret’s first real love and they secretly became engaged in 1535.

We know their love was genuine because both Margaret and Howard were part of what we would recognise nowadays as a writers’ circle, writing courtly poetry to each other and the other members of the club – it is all preserved in the so-called Devonshire Manuscript.

Though Queen Anne approved, the engagement was bad timing on their part, as Henry was about to get rid of Anne Boleyn for the “crime’”of producing a daughter, Elizabeth, and not a son. The other charges against Anne were trumped up – an apposite description as Henry was the Johnson and Trump of his day, only interested in himself and total power and faking facts he wanted to believe.

When Henry found out about Margaret’s engagement, he was furious, because he had declared both his daughters illegitimate and Margaret and any children she had would thus be in direct line of succession. For all his previous fondness for Margaret, Henry had no hesitation in sending her and Thomas Howard to the Tower of London.

They broke off the engagement, but Henry accused Howard of trying to use marriage to Margaret to insert himself into the line of succession. Parliament duly passed an Act stating that no one in the line of succession could marry without the King’s permission, and condemned Howard to death for treason.

When Margaret fell ill, her uncle relented and allowed her to go to Sion Abbey for recuperation in late October, 1537. Having been spared execution for treason, Howard was already dying, supposedly of natural causes. In any case, earlier that month Henry VIII had lost his third queen, Jane Seymour, who died after giving birth to the future King Edward VI, and it may well have been that Henry realised that he needed his niece close.

Henry’s paranoia over Margaret’s marriage may well not have been misplaced – was Margaret’s illness really a pregnancy and did she give birth in the Abbey? It’s a question that historians of the Tudor era have long debated. There is evidence that she financially supported a son of the Howard family, but there is no definite proof that it was her son.

Henry received Margaret back into his court where she attended on Henry’s Queens Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard, but Margaret was in disgrace after she had an affair with another Howard, Catherine’s brother Charles, though this time she was not sent to the Tower of London.

Catherine Howard was one of those who did not make it out alive. She was sent to the Tower after being accused of sexual relations with Thomas Culpeper. Both were executed for treason, Catherine being beheaded on Tower Green. Henry then married the widow Catherine Parr, and Margaret Douglas was honoured by being one of the few women present at the wedding. Her own marriage soon followed, arranged by Henry VIII himself. Find out all about it and Margaret’s fate next week.