Читать книгу Long Live the Queens: Mighty, Magnificent and Bloody Marvellous Monarchs History’s Forgotten - Emma Marriott - Страница 10
ОглавлениеBorn: 1489
Died: 1541
Margaret Tudor, Scots queen and wife to King James IV, is very much a forgotten queen, upstaged by her younger brother, King Henry VIII, and even her own grand-daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. Widowed as a young woman, her life was beset by unwise marriages and her tenure as Queen was fraught with political intrigue and shifting alliances. Her role as Scottish monarch, however, marked the first step towards the union of England and Scotland, where she would rule as Queen, in one way or another, for three decades.
Discussions over the future marriage of Margaret Tudor began early in her life. The daughter of King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, she was one of four children: Arthur was the eldest, followed by Margaret, Henry and Mary. As the eldest daughter, she would have been primed for marriage, one that would enhance and secure the status of Tudors as monarchs of England. Even before her sixth birthday, her father had put forward the idea of King James IV of Scotland as a suitable partner, largely as a means to reduce Scottish support for the Yorkist pretender to his throne, Perkin Warbeck. Henry may also have seen it as a step towards uniting the thrones, dismissing objections amongst the royal council that the match would put the Stewarts directly into the line of English succession (which indeed would happen just over a century later). Scotland was also in need of a queen for James IV, who was in his late twenties and not yet married, although by 1502 and the signing of the ‘Treaty of Perpetual Peace’ (which agreed the marriage between James and Margaret and an ending to hostilities between Scotland and England), the King had fathered several illegitimate children.
After a proxy marriage (popular amongst royals to seal the deal without the individuals involved actually having to be present), Margaret, then thirteen, made a grand journey northward to Scotland to join her new husband. Splendidly dressed, she met local dignitaries along the way, her father keen to demonstrate the power and opulence of the Tudor dynasty across his realm. In August 1503, James and Margaret celebrated their marriage in person at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, the couple wearing matching white damask outfits, after which they attended extravagant festivities. The King appeared attentive to his young redhaired wife, even shaving off his beard after the wedding at her request. Whilst he was never faithful to his queen, James provided Margaret with lavish accommodation and she was clothed in rich furs and jewels. At sixteen, Margaret conceived a child, who died in infancy, as did another two children. Her first surviving son, James, was born in 1512, followed by Alexander in 1514 (although he would die a year later).
The couple would share a love of music and dancing and they presided over a cultured court; the King spoke multiple languages and had a wide interest in a variety of subjects from history to surgery and medicine. Foreign affairs, however, proved more troublesome, and the peace between Scotland and England not quite so perpetual when Margaret’s brother Henry VIII declared war on France and the French King, Louis XII, requested help from his Scottish ally. As a result, in 1513 James IV led an army south and invaded England, which culminated in a heavy Scottish defeat at the Battle of Flodden in which 10,000 Scots lost their lives, along with James himself. (Henry’s VIII’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, was actually English regent at the time of the battle and rejoiced in the Scottish defeat, even sending to Henry the Scottish King’s banner and bloody coat as trophies.) The infant James V was crowned three weeks later and, as was stipulated in the King’s will, Margaret became regent with the proviso that she remained unmarried.
Aged twenty-three, pregnant with Alexander and ruling over a country that had just lost its king and a huge number of men, all at the hands of her brother and sister-in-law, Margaret’s role as regent must have seemed fraught with difficulty. A pro-French faction took shape at Parliament, urging that Margaret be replaced by the French-born uncle of James V, John Stewart, Duke of Albany. For just over a year, she deftly managed to fend off the rival factions around her whilst maintaining a tenuous peace with her home country. In seeking allies, however, she would end up making the mistake of falling for the pro-England Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus (described by his own uncle as a ‘young, witless fool’), whom she secretly married. In doing so, she forfeited the regency and Parliament appointed the Duke of Albany in her stead in September 1514. Margaret headed to Stirling Castle, where she was forced to hand her two sons over into the care of their uncle.
Now pregnant with the Earl of Angus’s child, she escaped to England, and in Harbottle Castle in Northumberland she gave birth to Margaret Douglas; two months later, in December 1515, she learned of the death of her second son, Alexander. Angus, showing his true colours, fled back to Scotland, leaving Margaret to head to the protection of her brother Henry in London. She returned to Scotland in 1517 to discover that Angus had rekindled a relationship with Lady Jane Stewart, with whom he’d had an illegitimate child, all the while living on Margaret’s dower income. Margaret was rightly outraged and mooted divorce to her brother, although Henry was opposed to it (which was a bit rich coming from him), and in angered response Margaret allied herself more closely with the Albany faction.
The Duke of Albany, who had been in France for three years, returned to Scotland in November 1521 and both he and Margaret actively sided against Angus. This lasted until 1524, when Margaret organised a coup d’état and ousted Albany, restoring twelve-year-old James to the throne, with Margaret formally recognised as the chief councillor to the King. Still desperately wanting a divorce from Angus, she ordered cannon guns to fire on him when he appeared in Edinburgh with a large group of armed men. Angus (sadly) managed to dodge the cannon balls and ended up in control of the King, whom he kept a virtual prisoner for three years.
In 1527, Margaret was finally granted a divorce by the Pope, after which she married a member of her household, Henry Stewart, later titled Lord Methven. When James assumed the full role as King in 1528, Margaret and Methven would act as close advisors to him, although by 1534 she fell out of favour with her son when she was discovered betraying state secrets to her brother, Henry. All was not well with her marriage either, as Methven proved equally partial to cavorting with other women and spending Margaret’s money. She would eventually reconcile with Methven and in 1538 form a close bond with her new daughter-in-law, the French queen consort of James V, Marie de Guise, before dying of a stroke in 1541 at Methven Castle in Perthshire.
Margaret Tudor’s tenure as Scottish Queen was turbulent and her life was made all the more difficult by the loss of James IV and her subsequent marriages to unscrupulous men. Throughout it all she tried to bring about a better understanding between long-time enemies England and Scotland, and no doubt would have whooped with delight at the eventual union of the Scottish and English crowns under her great-grandson, King James VI and I.
