SUMMARY.
Margaret established in Scotland Yard Palace--Munificence
of her brother--She tries to extort more cash--Her
letters to Wolsey--Ballet danced before her at Greenwich
Palace--She proposes to return to Scotland--Hindered by Evil
May-day--Her letter to Wolsey--She intercedes for rebel
apprentices--Commences her journey--Arrives at York--Her
remarkable letter--She is Lord Dacre’s guest--Meets her
husband at Berwick--Her anger at his conduct--Her arrival at
Edinburgh--Denied access to her son James V.--Her note to Lord
Dacre--Announces to Wolsey her intention of divorcing Angus
(1517)--Her quarrel with Bishop Gavin Douglas--Her endeavors to
recall the Regent Albany--Her complaints of poverty--Katharine
of Arragon sends to persuade her from divorce--Queen Margaret’s
brother traverses her plea at Rome--Her kind reception of
the Regent on his return to Scotland--Flight of her husband
over the Border--Margaret’s reputation attacked--Her letter
of vindication--Reports of her marriage to the Regent
Albany--Her rage against Gavin Douglas--Return of her husband
to Edinburgh--Margaret pleads for his life with the Regent,
who causes his abduction to France--Happy prospects of Queen
Margaret--Her alarming illness with small-pox--Her letters to
Wolsey and Dacre--Loss of her beauty.
When the season of Advent drew Henry VIII. to his great Westminster
Palace, he caused to be prepared for his sister Margaret the antique
residence of the Kings of Scotland, situated in that inclosure, or
court, below Charing Cross, which still bears the name of Scotland
Yard. Here she dwelt for some time, and was entertained with the utmost
magnificence by her brother.[258]
Some fragments of the Scotch palace were lately to be seen from the
water-side, consisting of very beautiful bay windows, which bore the
traditionary designation of the Queen’s Treasury.[259] They were
imbedded in buildings of more recent date. The entrance called the
guard-room, altered, it is supposed, as a barrack for the Scotch guards
of Queen Anne, remained till the middle of the last century, bearing
marks of extreme antiquity.
Henry VIII., as can be proved from the State Papers,[260] extorted an
oath from every Scotch traitor whom he seduced from his allegiance,
acknowledging him as suzerain of Scotland, in revival of Edward I.’s
forged claims. It is therefore likely that his admission of his
sister as Queen of Scotland in this long disused Scotch palace, had
some connection with his meditated infringements on the national
independence of the northern kingdom.
As for Queen Margaret herself, her thoughts were wholly intent on
extracting from her brother’s prime minister funds for her expenses at
the ensuing Christmas. She knew that the extravagant customs of the
English court would require a great outlay for Christmas and New Year’s
gifts. She mightily desired to give ostentatiously, but, at the same
time, to make her brother be at the cost of her donations.
She was already munificently provided for at his expense, as may be
ascertained by the commencement of her epistle to Wolsey at the close
of the year.
“I am sorry to put the King to so great cost and charge as I do,”
writes Margaret to Wolsey;[261] “howbeit I have been so in times
past, I shall not be so in times to come. Nevertheless I think I
_should_ (ought to) be like his _suster_, to his honor and
mine. Now, my Lord, you know Christmas-tide is near, and part of things
I _will_ (shall) need both for me and my servants; and I trust to
get part of money out of Scotland, for you see they owe me much, and
say they will cause me to be paid. An’ they do not, I have as great
wrong as is possible! But my trust is that the King, my brother, will
see me have _reason_ (right). Therefore, I pray you, my Lord, let
me borrow so much as two hundred pounds English. And I shall give you
a writing of mine own hand, to cause my Lord Dacre to take off as much
of mine of the first that is gotten. Now I shall trouble you for no
more money, for I trust to get mine own, and I shall do the best I can
with it. I pray you heartily, my Lord, to put me off no longer, for the
time is short.” For the purchase of Christmas gifts she means, which
naturally dates her dateless dispatch about the end of the year 1516.
The Queen was urgent for an answer from Wolsey, because in case he
would not, or could not, advance the sum requested, she meant to lose
no time in soliciting it from her brother in person--“for,” says she,
“I trust his Grace will do as much for me, and trust me for a greater
thing, as the Lord knoweth, _whom_ keep you.”
Neither Wolsey nor his master chose to make the advance. Margaret again
wrote an importunate letter, as follows--
“MY LORD CARDINAL--I commend me to you, and I would
fain have spoken with you, but ye were gone ere I could come to
you, and therefore I must write to you my mind.
“My Lord, I beseech you to show your good mind to me as ye have
done ever, but specially now, for now is the time.
“_Me_ Lord, I pray you heartily to get me some money
against New Year Day, for ye know well I must give _part_
of rewards and other needful things, both for the King my
brother’s honor and mine; and I shall not put you to _no_
more trouble; but I beseech you heartily, my Lord, that I may
have it to-morrow night at the farthest, for else I shall be
disappointed. But I put my whole trust in you, and this bearer
shall wait upon you for your answer, as our Lord knoweth,
_whom_ keep you.
“MARGARET R.”[262]
Endorsed--“Onto my Lord Kardenall.”
The royal family celebrated the Feast of Kings at Greenwich Palace,
where a grand pageant or ballet was performed in honor of Queen
Margaret, of which the cotemporary city-chroniclers have left a
picturesque description.
When the Queen of Scotland and her sister Mary were seated in state
with their brother and sister, King Henry and Queen Katharine, in the
hall at Greenwich, there was wheeled in a _garden-artificial_,
called the Garden of Esperance, railed in with gold pales, a tower at
each corner, and the banks set with “flowers artificial,” of silk and
gold, the leaves cut out of “green satin,” so that they seemed “very
leaves.” A pillar of antique work in gold rose in the midst of the
garden; set with pearls and precious stones, beneath a gilded arch, or
rainbow, stood a bush of red and white roses, all artificial, worked in
satin. The clustered roses represented the royal brother and his two
sister Queens, Margaret and Mary; near it was “a plant of pomegranates
in honor of the Queen Katharine, being her device.” Twelve knights and
their lady-partners sat in the garden and in its towers; they all came
down and danced an elegant ballet before Queen Margaret and the rest
of the royal company, then ascended their stage again, when the pageant
was wheeled out of the palace-hall.[263]
The Christmas of 1516–17, with all its festive days, came and went,
but Queen Margaret received neither money nor goods from Scotland. At
last the jewels and finery, according to the inventories, were safely
delivered, as she acknowledges in a letter belonging to the spring
of that year. The goods were escorted by her herald Ross, but the
northern wardens had caught him, and detained him and Queen Margaret’s
caskets, owing to informality in his passport. “I pray you, my lord,”
wrote Margaret[264] to Wolsey, “deliver my servant Ross--the herald
that brought my goods from the Duke (of Albany) and the lords of
Scotland--for the sooner he is sped is the better for me, an’ they do
me reason, as they say they will. Wherefore I pray you, my lord, hold
him no longer.”
The Queen had been staying at Windsor with her royal brother the
previous Sunday, where she had taken the opportunity of importuning
Wolsey in person for money.
“As you will remember,” she says, “that I spoke to you upon Sunday to
borrow a part of money of the King, my brother, while (till) I may get
my own, which I shall pay to you again, which is no honor to me and I
may remedy it. And, my lord, it is the first request I ever made to
you; an’ I were a stranger you could do no less to me; and I shall
think me ever beholden to you an’ you do so much for me at this time. I
am loth to speak to the King my brother in it, because I trust you will
do it for me.
“No more--but God keep you and your answer with this bearer.”
Her thoughts and views, in the beginning of 1517, were drawn toward the
possibility of regaining sovereign power in Scotland, by the expected
departure of the Regent Albany to France. She was likewise agitated and
angered by various flying reports of the proceedings of her faithless
spouse Angus.
Albany’s wife was in declining health at the close of the year 1516;
her death even was expected. One day he rose up, in full parliament
assembled at the Tolbooth, and, with an expression of agony in his
voice and countenance, entreated permission of the three estates to
return to France, that he might visit his wife and console her, as
she was very ill. They murmured and complained, as if their last hope
was leaving them, but finally gave a reluctant consent.[265] Yet late
in the spring he was still detained in Scotland. He did not like
the navigation of its stormy seas, and would willingly have crossed
from Dover. Once, when conversing with the English envoy--the herald
Clarencieux--the Regent took a golden reliquary from his neck, and
swore by the holy fragments within, “that he earnestly desired to visit
Henry VIII. and England;” and added, “that if he spoke not truth, he
abjured his part of Paradise, and devoted his soul and body to the
infernal demons.” To his familiar friends he wished he had broken “all
his legs and arms before he had stirred a step toward Scotland:”[266]
no great wonder, when the incessant troubles are considered which the
perversity of the leading spirits of Scotland prepared for him.
Meantime, the return of Queen Margaret to Scotland was settled, at
the court of her brother, for the middle of May. It appears, by her
letters, that she passed some time with him at Windsor Castle, from
whence he went to Richmond. In the midst of all the festivities with
which Henry and Margaret were at once greeting the approaching May of
1517, and bidding farewell to each other, that terrible insurrection
against “free trade” broke out among the London apprentices, which has
been noted in chronicle by the emphatic epithet of “Evil May-day.”
While the whole island was frighted from its propriety by the rebellion
of the young Londoners, and while slaughters and strife expanded on
all sides in the streets, it suited Queen Margaret’s convenience to go
to town. She had business connected with her return to Scotland at her
residence of Baynard’s Castle, and thither she chose to go despite of
all Wolsey’s remonstrances that the city was no safe place to abide in.
Intrepidity and impatience were, however, two leading qualities in the
mind of the Tudor Queen of Scotland; she felt no fear of the London
lads, and, with her customary importunity, she regularly worried Wolsey
into giving her admittance; caring nothing for the proceedings of the
flat-caps, who were doing their best to make London intolerable to all
non-combatants.
The following letter affords a specimen of her importunity:--
[May, 1517.]
“MY LORD CARDINAL[267]--I commend me to you as heartily
as I can, and wit ye, my lord, that I have spoken with
James-à-Borrow, and he hath shown to me that ye and the Lords of
Council would not that I should come to _Bayner’s_ Castle to-day.
“My lord, I will do as ye think best; but I pray ye, my lord, as
heartily as I can, _gif_ (if) there be no trouble to-day,
to let me come to-morrow. I trust to God there shall be no like
trouble but that I may come to-morrow, for an’ it be well this
night, I trust to God the worst be past.”
The trouble Queen Margaret here mentions clearly alludes to the
apprentice insurrection, according to her idea of the orthography and
pronunciation of her native language, as she continues--“an it be vell
this nyght, I trast to God the _varst_ be past.”
“For, my lord,” she concludes, “I have a sort of things to do
that I must needs have done, that will be needful to me. I pray,
my lord, let me have your answer by this bearer. And God have
you in his keeping.
“Yours,
“MARGARET R.”
Endorsed--“To my Lord Cardinal.”
The inconvenience which the angry London apprentices had caused to
Queen Margaret did not prevent her from pleading for them when they
were about to pay the penalty of their rebellion. She united her
entreaties[268] to those of her sister-queens, Katharine of Arragon and
the Queen-duchess Mary of Suffolk, all three throwing themselves at the
feet of Henry VIII., and begging that further vengeance might not be
wreaked on them.
It is probable that the time when Margaret joined in imploring the
mercy of her brother for the unfortunate boys was on the 9th May,
1517, when Henry VIII. had arrived at Greenwich Palace, with all his
family around him. The Lord Mayor and his civic train came from London
by water that day, as suppliants to their sovereign, clad, instead of
their gorgeous red robes, in the deepest mourning.[269]
“The Queen of Scots,” says her cotemporary Hall, “who had been a whole
year at court and at Baynard’s Castle at the King’s charge, and was
richly appointed of all things meet to her estate, both jewels, plate,
tapestry, arras, coin, horses, and all things of her brother’s gift
liberally, departed out of London to Scotland, May 18, with great
riches, albeit she entered England in great poverty. All her charges,
both going and returning, were made at our King’s cost.” Thus the “sort
of things” Margaret had to do at Baynard’s Castle was no other than,
securing this vast store of goods she had to convoy back to Scotland.
She took her little infant, Margaret Douglas, back to the north with
her. This babe, always an object of interest to its uncle Henry VIII.,
afterward found a permanent home at his court.
Queen Margaret’s intended entry into Scotland was regulated by the
movements of the departing Regent, who could not quit Scotland till
summer, and then, as late as the end of May, he received a refusal
from Wolsey to permit his land passage through England. The Queen, in
the mean time, had advanced as far as York, from whence she wrote a
remarkable letter to her brother, dated June 3. As Wolsey had entered
into a long negotiation concerning the restitution of the income of her
jointure by the Scotch government, Margaret found it needful to come to
confession respecting the property she had received from James IV.
“Your Grace knoweth,” she writes to Henry VIII.,[270] “it is concluded
between your council and Scotland that I shall have all that I have
right to, pertaining to me, with one clause in it--_that is, I giving
again what I have pertaining to my son_.”
“The King my husband,” she continues, “(whose soul God pardon!) ere
he went to the field, gave me a letter of his hand, commanding to be
delivered to me 18,000 crowns of weight that the French King (Louis
XII.) did send, which was without the Council of Scotland’s consent.
Also they (the Council) may claim any other things that I have which
the King my husband gave me which were wrong.”
Thus Queen Margaret refused to own or give any account of the treasure
James IV. confided to her, excepting the French subsidy, which she
could not have obtained but by means of the Treasurer, who of course
produced to the Council her husband’s order. All that was unaccounted
for she grasped as gifts.
“And I spent most part of it ere I came to your Grace,” she continues;
“for I was not answered of my living, since _the field_ (Flodden),
to hold my house with. Therefore I beseech your Grace to command my
Lord Dacre to see a sure way for me and Master Magnus ere I go in.”
That is, Lord Dacre was, by the terror of his master’s power, to
overawe the Scottish Council into permitting her to retain the national
treasure without giving any account of it, or making up the deficiency
from her own funds; and, above all, that she was not to be molested
concerning the defalcation. After all, she owns that Albany was the
only person she feared in the matter, adding scornfully--“Now the Duke
goeth away, I set not much by the remnant that is behind, for I know
them and their conditions. The fear they have of your Grace will make
them glad to please _me_.” In her postscript, Margaret mentions
to Henry VIII. that the pursuivant of the Regent Albany had asked, in
his name, to request of her brother that the peace between Scotland
and England might be continued beyond St. Andrew’s Day, Nov. 30.
“Sir,” she adds to her brother, “I trust you do remember that I spake
to your Grace, when I went to Windsor this last time, that it (the
peace) should not be continued long without my desire--for causes--But
do as your Grace thinks best for me, so that I may know what you do
(or intend) before the Duke (is aware of it), whether this peace be
continued, so that I may have the thanks of Scotland!”
How well she deserved them, the general tendency of her correspondence
best shows. She had, on her return northward, traversed the same track
through which the reader formerly accompanied her magnificent bridal
progress. But this time it was noted that she traveled with a train
comparatively small and mean, forming a great contrast to her splendor
when progressing to meet her first husband. Again she was the guest of
Lord Dacre at Morpeth,[271] where she waited until the Regent Albany
was clear of Scotland. He sailed from thence June 7, 1517.
At Berwick, Queen Margaret was met by her husband Angus. Englishmen,
observes Hall the chronicler, little regarded him;[272] and as to
the Queen, his spouse, she gave him any thing but a kind reception,
having been informed that he had carried off a lady, and kept her
in Douglasdale. After giving way to the expression of transports of
jealousy,[273] she declared herself implacable, and pretty well kept
her word, although, for the present, a sullen pacification took place,
for she did not then discover the whole of her wrongs.
Margaret, on her arrival at Edinburgh, demanded access to her son; but
he was immediately transported to Craigmillar, under the supposition
that she had imported from England the infection of the plague of the
sweating sickness. But by the courtesy of Lord Erskine, his personal
guardian, the Queen had access to him at Craigmillar. Her frequent
visits aroused suspicion that she meant to renew her attempts of
stealing him to England; therefore he was removed in haste to the
Castle of Edinburgh, and her access to him was denied.[274]
Directly after her arrival she wrote a hasty note to Lord Dacre; she
has drawn out with her pen an inclosed corner, evidently meant to be
addressed to her late hostess at Morpeth, the Lady Dacre:--
“My good Lady,--I pray you remembre upon me in your gud prayers, your
lovenge frende,[275]
“MARGARET THE
QWENE OF SCOTTOX.”
To Wolsey she sent the news of her arrival and treatment in Scotland in
the following epistle:--
“MY LORD CARDINAL.--In my most hartly wise I recommend
me to you, and would be glad to hear from you. Pleaseth you to
_wit_ (know) that I am come to Edinburgh, and _hath_
been very well received, saving the sight of my son the King,
which I think right strange; and this (_she means the bearer
of her letter_) will show you my mind, to whom I pray you
give credence.
“My good Lord, next the King, my brother, my most special trust
is in you, and ye may do me the most good; and _gif_ (if)
so be this realm keep not to the King my brother, and you, their
promise, I must needs call for help to his Grace and you. For
I trust to rule me so that the King and you shall be content,
for I will do nothing but I will _axe_ counsel at my Lord
Dakers (Dacres); and I pray you, my Lord, command him that he
send often to see how I do and am entreated. _But and ever_
(if) the Duke (Albany) come into Scotland again, here is no
biding for me, and that this bearer can show you. No more, but
God have you in his keeping. Written the 26th day of June with
my hand.
“Yours,
“MARGARET R.”[276]
Mightily discontented was Margaret with her prospects in Scotland--much
she protests, in a subsequent letter to her brother, “that she will
never abide therein,” and remarkable is the ill-will she displays to
her lord and master Angus. “If it please your Grace to wit (learn),”
she says, “how the King your nephew does, he is in good health, thanks
be to God. As touching myself, an’ it please your Grace to _wit_
how I am done to since my departing from you, it hath been very
evil.”[277]
But, to remunerate herself, she instigates her brother to make a
seizure of the goods of the poor unoffending merchants of ships trading
to England, that, by means of such piracy, the income which she had
justly forfeited might be made up to her!
“Your Grace knows that you may of reason _cause the ships of
Scotland to be taken, and the goods in them_, when they (the Lords
of Council) _fail to me that I be not satisfied_; which I have
suffered too long, considering that your Grace hath forborne so long to
do any evil, and I am naught the better. Dearest brother the King, I
trust your Grace will not let me be overborne, and I wot well ye will
never get any good of Scotland by fairness. Nor I shall never, with my
will, abide here with them that I know loves me not, which is proven
daily; howbeit, do to me as your Grace will, for all my weal is in your
hands.”[278]
Her resolution, expressed in the latter part of this paragraph, is the
first intimation of a struggle, which consumed the prime of her life
in unavailing endeavors to part from her husband Angus. “Also, please
you to wit that 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. Please your Grace,” continues
Margaret, opening still further the detail of her spouse’s iniquities,
“to remember, _that at my coming now into Scotland_, my Lord Dacre
and master Magnus made a writing betwixt me and my Lord Angus for the
security of me, that he might not have it in his power to put away
nothing of my _conjunct feofment_ (marriage jointure) without my
will, which he hath not kept.”
Thus she reveals that Lord Dacre and her friend Magnus, before she
entered Scotland, during her stay at Morpeth, had tried to secure her
jointure, by inducing Angus to settle all upon her. Angus promised
all they required, and did just according to his own pleasure. How he
observed his agreement, the Queen herself shall say.
“The Bishop of Dunkeld, his father’s brother, and others of his
kinsmen, caused the Earl of Angus to deal right sharply with me, to
cause him to break this bond he made to me, which I would not do.”
Here is her first quarrel with her friend Gavin Douglas, the very
same person for whom she had incensed and outraged the Church of
Scotland, to force him by the mere dictum of her capricious will into
the Primacy. The Queen complains that, at the instigation of Gavin,
her spouse, Angus, went and received all her Ettrick Forest rents,
established himself at her house of the Newwark,[279] and altogether
kept her from giving her tenants their discharge or receipts. “My
forest of Ettrick,” she says, “ought to bring me in 4000 marks yearly,
and I shall never get a penny.”
“Much more evil,” she continues, “did Angus perpetrate, of which she
would cause a servant of hers to report to her brother, as it was too
long to write.” Then comes her resolution to divorce her recreant
spouse, and kindly favor her brother with her company in England for
the time to come. Of that, Henry VIII. and Lord Dacre, if not Wolsey,
had had already enough. However, she says--
“And I am so minded that, an’ I may by law of God, and to my honor,
to part with him, for I _wit_ (know) well he loves me not, as he
showeth to me daily; wherefore, I beseech your Grace, when it comes
to that point, (that of divorce), as I trust it shall, you will be a
kind prince to me, for I shall never marry but where you bid me, nor
never part from your Grace, for I will never, with my will, abide here
in Scotland, And so send me your pleasure, and what your Grace will do
for me, for all my hope and trust is in your Grace. I durst not send by
land to your Grace for such causes, as I shall cause you to understand;
and I beseech your Grace to write me your mind by this bearer, and God
preserve you. At Edinburgh, your humble _cyster_, Margaret.”
The year passed away most unquietly to the Queen, and the whole country
of Scotland. Albany had left the young King in the care of a commission
of the Scottish lords, the chiefs of which were Angus and Arran.
Very frequently, battles were fought between the turbulent nobles
for precedence and power. Angus, who lived with the Queen uneasily,
began to show abilities and courage which his first outset in life had
not promised; but his valor and astuteness were only exerted to the
furtherance of his selfish interests and passions.
The young lady he had abducted, and carried with him wherever he went,
was the Lady Janet Stuart, daughter of Lord Traquair, to whom he
had been troth-plight before Queen Margaret wedded him, and who had
made him the father of a daughter (rival to the little Lady Margaret
Douglas), called the Lady Jeane Douglas,[280] whose subsequent marriage
with Lord Ruthven proved the origin of long troubles to Mary Queen of
Scots, and her son James VI.
Queen Margaret, incensed at seeing Angus possess himself of her Ettrick
Forest income, while his heart and company were given to another wife,
pleaded this pre-contract as a reason for divorce. But, from the moment
the Queen discovered the nefarious conduct of Angus, she set at work
every means possible to bring the Regent Albany home to Scotland again,
as he was the only person likely to control or punish her contumacious
spouse. The battles and skirmishes perpetually fought between Angus
and Arran made Scotland a most miserable country. It is useless to
load biographical narrative with the perplexing detail of this ignoble
scuffling to be uppermost.
Queen Margaret, meantime, pressed forward her divorce from Angus, a
proceeding which greatly scandalized her royal sister-in-law, Katharine
of Arragon, who, in the summer of 1519, sent one of her ecclesiastics,
Father Bonaventura, to condole with her on her matrimonial misfortunes,
and advise her to bear them without making them public. Margaret was
then at Perth, October 11, 1519. Father Bonaventura being too gentle
to deal with Margaret’s determination to dismiss her husband, her
brother himself dispatched Henry Chadworth, a very stern friar from
his Queen’s convent at Greenwich, a great orator among that rigid
order of Observants, to reprove Queen Margaret with vehemence; “to
tell her that her ideas of divorce were wicked delusions, inspired by
the father of evil, whose malice alone could prompt her to blame her
husband, Lord Angus, or unnaturally to stigmatize the fair daughter
she had by him.”[281] Chadworth amply fulfilled his commission, and
thundered terrible denunciations against the heinousness of Margaret’s
intended divorce. All these lectures and contradictions from her
brother and his queen but hardened Queen Margaret’s wishes into
obstinate determinations. She concealed her proceedings from the court
of England, and made complaints to her dear kinsman Albany, imploring
him to return and suppress her husband’s cruelty to herself and to the
people of Scotland.
Her correspondence, chiefly carried on with England through Lord Dacre,
became lamentable in the extreme, concerning her miserable destitution.
“I stand in a sore case,” she says in one of her dispatches from
Stirling Castle (without date, but probably written in the same year),
“an’ I get not the King my brother’s help, and my Lord Cardinal’s; for
such jewels as his Grace gave me, at my departing, I must put away for
money. I have discharged all my servants, because I had naught to give
them, scarcely finding meat for the day to sustain myself, and for that
I _is_ indebted to my faithful comptroller, Robin Barton, for
very sustenance.[282] Lord Dacre, intercede that I may return to live
in England, for the Lords of the Scottish privy-council prohibit me
from seeing my son.” They declared, on their parts, that they had full
conviction she meant to abduct him into England. “I had liever be dead
than live out my life in Scotland,” Margaret continues. “Let no peace
be kept between the realms till I _is_ done justice.” Yet she had
so inextricably entangled her affairs, that it was almost beyond the
power of any real friend to set them right.
“His Grace promised me,” she continues, “at my departing, that Scotland
should never have peace from England without I were well done by,
which is not done, for I was never so evil; wherefore I beseech his
Grace, Henry VIII., to remedy it hastily (speedily), for all my hope
and comfort is in him. And wit you, my Lord, this realm stood never as
it doth now, nor never like to have so much evil rule in it, for every
Lord prideth who may be the greatest party, and have the most friends;
and they think to get the King, my son, into their hands, and then they
will rule all as they will, for there is many against the Chancellor
(Bishop James Beton), and think to put him down from his authority, and
I am the most beholden to him of any here. And thus I see no good for
my son nor me.”
As to Cardinal Wolsey, she earnestly reminds him of his promises
which he made to her when she was in his house at her departing out
of England, that “he would stand good lord and friend to her, for
she is now at a sore point, being so much mistrusted, that she dares
scarcely tarry long enough to write that very letter.” She concludes by
entreating Lord Dacre to purchase of her “two cups of gold which Henry
VIII. gave her when he parted from her, likewise some gold chains, as
he had better have them than any one else, for they must be sold, and
she is ashamed to let her want of money be public.”[283]
Soon after the receipt of this lamentable statement, Lord Dacre
discovered the series of interested intrigues she had set at work
for the return of the Regent Albany. He taxed her fiercely with her
treachery to the English party; to which charge she replied in her
usual style, the burden of her strain being, as of old, the urgency of
taking care of self--which purpose she declares without the slightest
idea of the natural effect it must have on the mind of the stern and
uncompromising warrior to whom she addressed her missives.
The flatterers of Henry VIII. bestowed many praises on his sister
Margaret’s great abilities, certainly without proper foundation. For
with the most earnest desires for self-gratification, she was not
clever enough to devise her dishonest schemes successfully, and was
therefore always in difficulties. Let not any one suppose that the
analysis of a character of this species is an unprofitable study.
The world abounds in Margaret Tudors, who pursue the vain idolatry
of self-worship, though not quite as shamelessly, for it is not
conventional to avow their purposes as broadly and openly as the Queen
of Scotland does to Lord Dacre in the following letter:[284]--
“MY LORD DACRE--I commend me heartily to you. And wit
ye that I have received your writing from John Sympson, your
servant, and understand it at length. And where (as) ye remember
me in your writing of my labor and desire made unto the King’s
Grace my brother, and to my Lord Cardinal (Wolsey), and their
council, upon sundry considerations to them declared, and
specially for the weal and surety of the King my son, and for
the recovering of my authority in this realm, and tutrixship
of the King my son, according to the testament of the King my
husband--and that the Duke of Albany, then being in Scotland,
should be removed into France again, and not return to Scotland.
“My Lord, all I did there I thought for the best, as the King’s
Grace, my brother and his council knows; for I trusted that
the Lords of this realm and I should have agreed well, and I
to have brooked peaceably mine own, as they are bound to do by
their hands and seals, and then they might not have _no_
cause to excuse themselves to the Duke. Howbeit, I am not the
_betterer_, for I was never so evil answered nor obeyed
of my lands as I am since my last coming into Scotland, as I
have oftentimes written to the King my brother, and to my Lord
Cardinal and you.”
James IV.’s wise statistical improvements in his farms on the forest
of Ettrick were eagerly appropriated by Margaret’s second spouse, the
young Earl of Angus, who, as she has shown, detained that district
as his portion of the prey, and kept it both from Queen and State
whensoever his power was triumphant in Scotland. There is some reason
to suppose that Queen Margaret, in her first fondness, had made over
the life-interest of her Ettrick-dower to Angus, for it will be seen
that, after all the mutations of his fortune, he died in possession
of it.[285] When Margaret meditated divorce, and marriage to a new
husband, like the child who cries for the cake devoured, she clamored
to have her rich Ettrick lands again. These explanations Queen Margaret
knew as well, or better, than her biographer, yet she proceeds as if
she had been impoverished by wrong of others, and not by her own
ungoverned passions and extravagance.
“Howbeit,” she proceeds, “I gat no remedy; and I did show you,
my Lord, in my writings which ye have, that an’ I get not
shortly help, that I must do what the Duke of Albany and the
Lords of this realm would have me do, for I have none here that
will help me of my complaint nor do me justice; so that I may
not live to my honor. As my living is here, I _maun_ (must)
cast me to please this realm.”
Thus her influence was, as usual, put up at a price for the best
bidder, past benefactions being ever blank in Margaret’s computation.
When she had received all she could obtain from her brother and
England, she then stretched out her rapacious hands to Albany and
France; and this course she pursued until, like many other greedy
persons, she lost her market, owing to the utter contempt into which
she sank in the estimation of all parties. Margaret was the example
and forerunner of the hideous corruption and demoralization which
occasioned intense suffering both to her native and adopted country for
the ensuing two centuries. Very curious as psychological study is the
historical tracking of these dishonorable traits in the effect they had
on the people at large. The rapacity, falsehood, and contempt of the
marriage-vow shown by the Queen of Scotland, and the King of England
her brother, being imitated by their favorites and nobles, gradually
spread downward, and corrupted the classes nearest to their influence.
Like others of their race, the crimes and vices of Margaret and Henry
have either been hushed into forgetfulness, or basely praised by those
whose interest it was to follow their example, while those who were
innocent have paid the penalty which the reaction of public feeling
ever exacts, and have, withal, been loaded with calumny.
“Alway, my Lord,” continues Margaret, “when ye writ to me to
know if I have sent any writing to the King of France, for the
furthering of the Duke of Albany’s coming into Scotland, my
Lord, _there was a letter written into France to the King of
France from me_, by the special desire of the Duke of Albany
and the Lords, which I might not deny (them), for they said
it was for the _veel_ (weal) of the King my son, and his
realm.”
Thus Margaret took bribes from her brother to keep Albany away, and
wrote, at the request of the Scottish council, to France to bring him
back. She does not name her gains in this respectable commerce, but
her ensuing sentence of extenuation proves that she studied no motive
but her pecuniary interest, or “livelihood,” as she often calls her
income.
“My Lord, I pray you remember, that an’ ye were in another
realm, where ye should live your life, ye would do what ye might
to please them, so that they should not have any mistrust of
you! And so must I. For an’ I should refuse to have written
when I was desired, the Duke of Albany and the Lords would have
thought I had stopped his coming, and there-through I might
get evil. And thus I trust, my Lord, that the King’s Grace, my
brother, and my Lord Cardinal (Wolsey), will remember as (how)
I stand in this realm. And in the last writing I had from the
King, my brother, he commanded me I should do nothing that the
Lords might have any occasion to complain of me, which I trust I
have done.”
But such were cautions regarding her personal conduct, which Henry
knew was not highly in public esteem in Scotland; yet he did not mean
his exhortations for moral correctness to be turned against him in
political matters. All was one to Margaret, for the use she made of
language was merely to deceive and equivocate. Then follows a clause,
which is seldom absent from her letters, relative to pawning or selling
her goods and chattels.
Between Scotch idioms and bad English, her next sentence is not very
perspicuously worded, yet her meaning is sufficiently plain.
“An’ suppose it be evil to me, it is dishonor to the King’s
Grace, my brother, as well as to me. But the unkindness that I
find doth me more evil _nor_ any thing in the varld, for I
see well what point that ever it stand me on, I will get no help
but fair words.
“My Lord, ye must pardon that I write so sharp, for it
touches me near; and God _kype_ you. At Edinburgh the
_fowentyn_ day of July.
“Your friend,
“MARGARET R.”[286]
The Regent Albany landed at Garvloch, in Lennox, November 19, 1521,
after five years’ absence; he proceeded by easy journeys to Linlithgow,
where Queen Margaret received him with the utmost distinction and
respect. They made a state-entry into Edinburgh together soon after,
with every appearance of friendship, and even of affection. The
Queen ordered the keys of her fortress of Edinburgh Castle to be
reverentially delivered to the Regent, as the possessor of sovereign
power.
The English resident at Rome transmitted to his master the following
intelligence--“The Queen of Scots sueth her husband, the Earl of
Anguish, in cause of divorce and dissolution of matrimony. Her
case is committed to the _root_ (query, rota?) and the Duke
of Albany promotes the same.”[287] It is a mystery what Albany’s
intentions could be in this matter. In all probability, he was aware
that Margaret and Angus were bound too tightly by the church to be
separated while his regency was likely to last; and, meantime, he
would fool Margaret to the top of her bent, in order to induce peace
and quiet in Scotland till the young monarch came of age. Henry VIII.
was as earnest in hindering his sister’s divorce from Angus as he was
anxious, subsequently, to effect his own from Katharine of Arragon.
Wolsey, after announcing to his monarch the respectable intelligence
“that he had taken measures to encourage all Scotch rebels, so that
they may continue divisions and seditions,” adds this clause for the
discomfiture of Queen Margaret--“I have not only written to your orator
in the court of Rome, to impeach and hinder the suit made in that court
for a divorce between her and her husband, the Earl of Angus, but also
caused the Pope’s orator here to write in the most effectual manner to
his holiness for stopping the same, by means whereof the said divorce
shall not proceed, when the Pope shall be informed that this divorce is
to be procured only for marriage, to be made between Queen Margaret and
the Duke of Albany, whereby the destruction of the young King of Scots
shall ensue.”[288]
One question is utterly unexplained in all these agitations and
intrigues to counteract the wedlock of Albany and Margaret--what was to
become of the Regent’s own Princess? Agnes de la Tour Auvergne, without
the encumbrance of armies and regal pomp, was one of the richest
potentates in Europe. But it seems that the example of the divorce of
Louis XII. and Jane of France had already injured public morality, and
formed the precedent for the conduct of Henry VIII.
The Earl of Angus still remained in Edinburgh, contending against
Queen Margaret’s intention of divorcing him. He was considered the
head of Henry VIII.’s party. Directly, however, the Regent of Scotland
made his appearance with a strong French force of men, money, and
ammunition, the leaders of the English faction decamped. Angus and
his brother George took refuge on the Borders; they were reduced low
enough to lurk at the Kirk of Steyle, in something like sanctuary. From
thence, after certain conferences with Lord Dacre, Angus empowered his
uncle Gavin (formerly made, by Queen Margaret, Bishop of Dunkeld) to
go forward to the court of his dear brother-in-law, Henry VIII., for
the purpose of negotiating with him; and withal, to tell tales of Queen
Margaret’s evil doings against England, and of her attachment to the
Regent.
The discussions of Queen Margaret’s spouse with Lord Dacre brought to
light some remarkable imputations on her character. Lord Dacre thus
wrote to Wolsey[289]--
“There is marvelous great intelligence between Queen Margaret and the
Duke of Albany, as well all the day as _mich_ of the night. In
manner, they care not who knows it. And if I durst say it--for fear of
displeasure of my Sovereign--they are over tender; whereof, if your
Grace examine the Bishop of Dunkeld (Gavin Douglas) of his conscience,
I trust he will show the truth.”[290] Lord Dacre likewise comments that
“Queen Margaret had offered Angus her forest of Ettrick, worth 2000
Scottish marks yearly, to consent to her divorce.” Dacre, nevertheless,
pronounced “her conduct with Albany scandalous.”[291] Nor did he
confine the expression of his ill opinion to Wolsey and his royal
master. Margaret herself received a letter from him, inveighing against
her partial familiarity with the once hated Regent. His dispatches
contain, in fact, worse accusations, since she might plead political
reasons for her intimacy with the Regent; but he repeats the jealous
recriminations of Angus, who affected a great degree of displeasure at
the Queen’s proceedings with Sir James Hamilton, a notorious character
for profligacy. Sir James is called in history “the bastard of Arran;”
and possessed more power than is generally allotted to persons of
illegitimate descent.
Angus had very early manifested personal jealousy of Sir James
Hamilton, who, notwithstanding a superabundant degree of ferocity, was
not endowed with that high courage which was often the only respectable
quality of knight-adventurers like himself. The young King of Scotland
noticed, with early shrewdness, that Sir James Hamilton could never
encounter the fierce looks of the Queen’s husband, Lord Angus, without
turning away; or in the royal boy’s words, “showing the back seams of
his hose.”
All these circumstances invest with no little interest the
correspondence between Queen Margaret and Lord Dacre, in December,
1521, wherein he charges her roundly with riding away from Edinburgh
Castle to her palace of Linlithgow, and in the dead of night,
accompanied only by Sir James Hamilton.
It is but right to peruse Margaret’s answer to these terrible charges.
Although she did not read Dacre’s gross accusation of her to Wolsey,
yet she perceived, by what she calls his “sharp writing,” that he
was inimical. Her letters are frequently too wordy and tedious for
quotation, beyond her matter of fact, or that which she chooses to
indite as matter of fact; but this letter,[292] written with an evident
feeling of injured honor, bears the impress of more dignity of mind
than Margaret ever manifested on any other occasion.
“MY LORD DACRE--I commend me heartily to ye, and wit
ye that I have received your writings, and onderstands them at
length, which are right sharp, specially at the ending of them;
wherein, in part, I have shown my mind to this bearer, because
it were long to write, but, in part, I will make you answer in
this my writing.
“My Lord Dacre, as to my Lord Angus, _gif_ he had desired
my company or my love, he would have shown himself more kindly
than he has done. For now, of late, when I came to Edinburgh
to him, he took my houses without my consent, and withheld my
living from me; which he should not do of reason.”
Margaret complains that on this account she had incurred trouble,
and the displeasure of all Scotland; and yet had had neither help
from her brother “nor no love of my Lord Angus.” She adds shrewdly to
Dacre--“Methinks, my lord, you ought not to deem this reasonable if you
be my friend, as I trust you be.”
As to the reproaches regarding her partiality for the handsome Regent,
she retorts that “his assistance was somewhat more than fair words,”
since solid benefits had been bestowed on her by him, both of his own
money given to her, and the readiest money belonging to the King, her
son; and if it had not been for this friendly supply, she must have
sold or pawned her jewels and cupboard of plate.
After deliberately answering, paragraph by paragraph, the business
departments of Dacre’s epistle, Queen Margaret thus meets his offensive
charges:--
“My Lord Dacre, you should not give so lightly credit to evil
tales of me as you do, when you know the truth; suppose you
bear great favor to my lord of Angus, as I see you do. Howbeit,
time was I have seen it far otherwise. I must bear me to please
this realm (seeing I am living here), and have few friends but
through my good behavior.
“Also you say I came out of Edinburgh in the night: but that was
not so; for all the Lords (of the Council) knew of my coming
away, and I saw no good to abide there. And where you say I am
ruled by advice that will never do me good nor honor, my lord,
I did never dishonor myself nor _them_ that I am come of.
Methinks you should not give credence to that of me, both for
the King’s Grace my brother’s sake, and the King my father
(whose soul God pardon); and I have done better for your cause
than my lord of Angus hath done, or any of his. But I know well,
when the Bishop of Dunkeld (Gavin Douglas) hath been with you
lately, which hath caused you to write so sharply.
“As to Sir James Hamilton, I could not hinder him from riding
on the way; but he _convoyed_ (escorted) me not. It was
the other lords that brought me from Edinburgh to Linlithgow,
as is known. My lord, you also write sharply to me in your last
article, saying that I do dishonor to myself in abiding away
from my Lord Angus, and that I follow them that will be my
destruction, and can not stand in the pleasure of the King’s
Grace, my brother, and that I may not look for any favor from
the King my brother’s hand for it is thought that I am sore
abused under color of fair promises, which will bring me to
the displeasure of God, and my dishonor and undoing at length.
My lord, these _is_ sore words, and unkindly, if this be
the King my brother’s mind--I being his sister. That evil and
false folk make such report of me, and credit so lightly to be
given to the same, is right heavy to me; and I may think it
strange that my lord of Angus can make the King, my brother, so
displeased at me without any fault. Wherefore it is no marvel
supposing others be unkind, considering that I took my lord of
Angus against all Scotland’s will, whereby I lost the keeping
of my son, and my house of Stirling, and my rule of the realm,
which I had by right.”
From this passage it appears that the occupation of Stirling Castle was
Queen Margaret’s right only as Queen Regent; but when she forfeited
that dignity on her second marriage, Stirling, as she here observes,
was lost to her.
“And all this,” resumes Margaret, “for his sake who now hath
shown himself as unkindly to me as possible, which all the realm
knows; holds my living from me as far as he may; and, above all
things, he spoke open dishonor of me, which is no token of love:
and I did neither displeasure nor dishonor to him, as is well
known. My lord, this is no good way to cause me to come to my
Lord Angus. Sith I took him at mine own pleasure, I will not be
_bosted_ (browbeat) into taking him now. Thus I must do
the best I may to get friends, since his Grace, that I trusted
most in, puts me by without a fault, which I shall never make to
his Grace (Henry VIII.), as I shall write at length to him by a
servant of mine. My lord, I trusted that you would rather have
helped me at the King’s Grace my brother’s hand than hindered
me. You must hold me excused that I write so plainly, for you
have written right sharply to me. No more at this time; but God
keep you. Written at Stirling, the xi. day of March.”
Margaret kept her word. She wrote in such indignation to her terrific
brother, that he called all his Council to task, and demanded to see
the copies of the epistles that had passed between Wolsey and the
Lord Dacre. The antagonistic attitude assumed by Scotland, under the
rule of Margaret’s new love, the Regent, was the best excuse that the
prime minister and the Lord Warden of the Marches could offer for the
outrageous charges they had brought against her. They had, however,
carried their attacks too far.[293] Margaret contrived to enlist her
brother on her side of the question. One day, with a lowering brow, he
demanded the letter she had lately written to my Lord Dacre, murmuring
“against the Scots for their evil entreatment of his sister,” he
sternly ordered Wolsey to produce her correspondence,[294] and when
delivered, he retired wrathfully for its private perusal.
Albany had deprived Gavin of the temporalities of the bishopric of
Dunkeld, for the part he took in the insurgency of his nephew. Margaret
boasted that the Regent had such good bearing toward her “that he had
given _her_ the profits of this rich bishopric,” only inferior to
St. Andrews and Glasgow: moreover, the Regent had given an abbacy to
her servant, and other benefices, for her help. “Wherefore,” continues
this fickle woman, “I pray his Grace (Henry VIII.) right effectuously
that he help not the said Gavin of Dunkeld, considering the great evil
he has done to this realm of Scotland by his council; for he has been
the cause of all the trouble and dissension in this realm.”[295]
Then Margaret proceeded to express her personal anger, because Gavin
Douglas “had made evil report of her, both in Scotland and England,
falsely,” as she of course asseverates. “And since,” concludes she,
in a climax of spite, “I helped him to get the benefice of Dunkeld, I
_sal_ now help him to lose the same! Considering the displeasure
he has done me, both in word and deed, to my utter dishonor, all in
his power, quhilk he can not deny, I trust your Grace will make him na
help, na favor him!”.[296]
Her spouse wrote, nearly at the same time (December 12, 1521), a
cautious letter to Cardinal Wolsey, dated from his place of sanctuary
or concealment, the Kirk of Steyle. Not one word does the sagacious
husband of Margaret say against her: she was, he knew, the mighty
Henry’s sister, and that it would not be politic to speak of her
according to the provocation she gave.
Gavin Douglas being “accrased,” as he says, or sickly with traveling,
was ten days journeying between the Scottish Border and Waltham Cross,
where he rested. When at length he had access to the royal brother of
his undutiful niece, the Scottish Queen, his testimony regarding her
proceedings, and of her new love, the Scottish Regent, occasioned an
angry letter from Henry. The King disdained to address his remonstrance
to the offending parties, but wrote at once to the Scottish Privy
Council, telling them more of his mind concerning his sister and Albany
than was perhaps consistent with her reputation.
One would think, as this angry manifesto of Henry VIII. proceeds,
that every idea of divorce would ever have been abhorrent to the soul
of that monarch. He denounces Albany as “contriving and heinously
purposing the divorce of the Queen, our sister, from her lawful husband
Angus, and purposing to contract marriage with her himself, whereby not
only the person of our nephew is in great danger of being destroyed,
but also our sister, Queen Margaret, is on the eve of ruin, to our
great dishonor and displeasure.”[297] He advises the assembled estates
to rid themselves of their Regent, “lest,” says he, “they should
dishonor the Queen, my sister, and provoke us to do you all the harm
and damage we can (for which we should be sorry).”[298]
Lord Herbert of Cherbury is the only historian who cites Albany’s very
natural retort to Henry VIII.’s revilings regarding his intentions of
marrying Queen Margaret, of “How could he marry her, even if she were
divorced from Angus, when he had a wife of his own?”
The Queen’s accusation of the learned Gavin Douglas as the person
who had spirited up all his tribe against her, is certainly pretty
well borne out by his letter written to Cardinal Wolsey, from “the
Inn of Carlisle” (some house of reception for northern travelers in
London). Throwing aside all his ecclesiastical caution, he gives vent
to the vexation of heart which oppressed him when he found that his
nephew, the Earl of Angus, tired of lurking in the purlieus of Steyle
Church, had delivered himself up to the mercy of the Regent Albany,
and returned to Edinburgh. When Bishop Gavin heard the news, in the
last days of January--“I am,” wrote he, “aweary of mine own life, and
promise to God and your noble Grace, as your humble servant and true
Christian priest, that I sal never have _or take way_ with the
Duke of Albany, the unworthy Earl of Angus, or others that assist the
said Duke. Nor never sal I pass to Scotland, but at your pleasure, as
long as this _wicket_ Duke is therein, or has rule thereof; and
I trust my brother and friends will use my council.” And then Gavin
Douglas bursts into contemptuous bitterness regarding his nephew Angus.
“Albeit,” he continues, “yon young witless fool is running on his own
mischief by the continual persuasion of wily, subtile men, showing to
him, I doubt not, many feigned letters and wonderful terrors, and that
the Duke of Albany should marry the Queen.” The letter concludes with
mention of the poverty to which he was reduced.[299] Queen Margaret and
Albany joined to urge the obedience of Gavin to the orders of the Pope,
that he should speedily pass onward to Rome; but he passed nowhere
excepting to his grave. He died of the plague, soon after he wrote the
above letter, and is buried in the church of the Savoy.
As the Regent Albany had returned to Scotland at the loving invitation
of Queen Margaret, it may be presumed that she was particularly
exasperated at her brother’s proceedings, all which she considered were
owing to the instigations of Gavin Douglas, then his guest in London.
Her entreaties for money, which were ever the pre-eminent subject of
all her communications with her brother, were met by him with scornful
refusal. Worse than that, Henry, in return for all the letters and
blandishments of Albany (sent by Gualtier, his secretary), wrote him a
ferocious letter, charging him with “dishonorable and damnable abusing
of our sister, inciting her to be divorced from her lawful husband, the
Earl of Angus (with what corrupt intent, God knoweth).” Henry refused
to grant Albany a renewal of the truce, which was to expire at the
ensuing Candlemas; and roundly affirmed to him “that he would use every
possible means to get him turned out of Scotland.”[300] These letters,
and another long lecture on the general iniquity of divorce, were
delivered to the Regent and Parliament of Scotland by Henry’s herald,
Clarencieux, sent for that purpose.
The departure of Angus from the arena of public action at this period
is one of the obscure places of history, on which, where a few gleams
of light happen to fall, some amusing traits display themselves. It
will excite no surprise to find that he had put himself in danger of
the Regent’s justice, by many a lawless prank,[301] during the five
years’ vacation which that potentate had allowed him. Although John
Stuart, Duke of Albany, was a long-enduring and good-natured man,
who never shed blood but on due deservings; although he preferred
sacrificing a dozen rich bonnets, or toques, in a session of Parliament
to immolating one human creature (for when unbearably exasperated he
always snatched off his cap and flung it behind the fire), yet human
patience has its bounds; and Angus well knew that the Regent had in
former times made a wholesome example of the two Homes, out of his
entire conviction that their treachery had caused not only the death,
but the defeat of James IV. at Flodden.[302]
Angus had just lost his brilliant relative Gavin Douglas. Although that
prelate died with a mind full of contempt for his nephew, there is no
doubt he would have done all in his power to aid him. Thus forsaken
on all sides, he tried to revive the affection of Queen Margaret in
his behalf. A very small portion remained, if her own passionate
words--written long afterward--may be brought against her. It is
always an ungracious and malicious task for a historian to find evil
and sinister reasons for actions which are in effect kind and good.
Notwithstanding all her vows of implacability, Margaret proved that
cruelty and blood-guiltiness were not her vices. She actually pleaded
with the Regent for her spouse so effectually, that he was forgiven
all his treasons if he agreed to depart for France with his brother
George. A comedy certainly occurred at their departure, of which the
sole particulars are to be drawn from an anecdote in a cotemporary
chronicle,[303] and that anecdote misplaced in chronology. It seems
that Angus, after he had made a favorable agreement with Queen Margaret
and Albany, lingered in Edinburgh contrary to his engagement. One night
the Regent, resolving to make Angus fulfill his treaty by strategy
rather than force, had the wine-cup out of which he and his brother
George were carousing so potently drugged that they both fell into a
profound slumber. They were then bound and taken to the vessel which
had waited for them at Leith, and being carried on board in a state of
unconsciousness, they were deposited in France, and remained some days
in Dieppe Castle before they could guess where they were, or what was
meant to be done with them. In a short time the good-tempered Regent
gave an honorable turn to the banishment, by investing Angus with a
diplomatic employment as resident-ambassador to the court of France.
Albany, meantime, gave the herald Clarencieux an audience in reply to
the public ratings which he had delivered from the King of England,
his master, before the Council and Parliament. On the matter of the
accusations Henry VIII. had loudly made regarding Queen Margaret’s
intimacy with him, Albany spoke like a man of honor and a gentleman.
With great delicacy he left the coarse Tudor’s taunts unanswered,
except by saying, “He used clemency and mercy to the Earl of Angus,
not for his own deserts, but principally out of respect for the Queen,
whom he ever honored as his sovereign’s _moder_.”[304] Henry
VIII. was infuriated when he found how cleverly Albany had ridded Queen
Margaret, himself, and the Scottish realm, of the head of the turbulent
clan of Douglas. His rage showed itself against the unfortunate Scotch
resident in England, by an edict which may excite a smile at first; but
a moment’s thought will show that it was an outrage equally against the
laws of nations and of Christianity. He made a proclamation that every
Scotchman, of whatsoever degree, was to depart England forthwith, on
foot, with a white cross marked on his outward garment.[305] Many a
tragedy, many a strange adventure and hair-breadth escape of the poor
souls thus branded as the victims of national spite, must this freak of
the despot have originated. Who in the world of romance ever imagined
such a journey as that of the homeward foot-march of Scottish subjects,
through an inimical country, with Henry VIII.’s white-cross marks on
their shoulders?
War, conducted with all the venomous hatred which such measures were
likely to excite, broke out between the English and Scotch. But never
had Queen Margaret been equally happy. Her husband was gone; there was
no person likely to gather her Ettrick rents but herself; the Regent
had not only taken off the _distringa_ laid by the Council on
the rest of the income of her jointure, but he had allotted to her a
very handsome gratuity from the rich subsidies he had brought from
France, and, in process of time, she deemed would certainly give her
himself, for his fondness for her had raised the furious remonstrances
of England, and proved the subject of that series of solemn sermons
delivered by the herald Clarencieux before the Privy Council, and then
before the Parliament of Scotland in full session. Angus had lost his
feudal power, and with it the support of England; she should have her
divorce; Albany’s wife would die by the time it was pronounced; she
should marry the handsome chivalric Regent, and live happy in all the
splendor of youth, beauty, and royalty for the time to come.
Scarcely could Queen Margaret have combined the hopes that promised
her such a delightful futurity, when one dire disease dispelled the
illusion. An illness which had hung over her all the autumn gathered
strength in November, and, breaking out while she was resident with her
son at Stirling Castle, proved the confluent small-pox, from which
she suffered with such severity that her death even was reported on
the Borders.[306] The Queen, in the midst of her violent illness, was
annoyed and harassed by the officiousness of Wolsey, who was urgent
for the return of her hated husband, Angus, and for her reconciliation
with him. Ill as Margaret was, and prevented from having recourse
to her indefatigable pen, she dictated an answer to the Cardinal,
acknowledging a letter from him (dated from Wolsey’s house beside
Westminster the 12th of November, delivered by Clarencieux the English
herald), which her illness prevented her from answering for more
than a month. The Queen reproached Wolsey with Lord Dacre’s conduct,
who, after he had received her letter of information respecting the
forces and affairs of the Scotch, sent it again to her, to her great
danger and displeasure--at a time, too, when the dismal illness of
the small-pox was upon her; “and I was, and yet _is_,” as she
says in her droll phraseology, “at _malaise_, and troubled with
sickness.”[307]
Lord Dacre did pretty well as seemed good in his own eyes, neither can
any one wonder at the insurmountable disgust with which Margaret’s
treachery had inspired him; but sending back her spy-dispatches, at
the risk of falling into the hands of the Scotch, must have originated
in some blunder of his messenger. Margaret exclaims rather piteously
on the subject: “It is no marvel that Scotsmen are unkind to me, when
Englishmen are so unthankful!” She then continues her epistle to
Dacre:--
“My Lord, as touching any matters between me and my Lord of
Angus, I _has_ shown my mind plainly to Clarencieux, to
whom you will give credence (belief), beseeching you to take my
part; and if there be any person who would solicit you to the
contrary in that matter, that you would give them no credence,
for I assure you that he and I shall never _forgader_
(meet together), nor agree, for certain cause which ye shall
understand hereafter. I am plain to you, therefore I beseech you
to help us better to part than _forgader_; and doing this
you will do me a singular pleasure.”
The “singular pleasure” thus entreated for by Queen Margaret of
slipping her neck out of the matrimonial yoke which she had a few
years previously assumed with impetuous eagerness, was a pleasure
likewise much desired by a vast number of other willful people in her
dominions, on whom her example was likely to have the baneful effect of
loosening all family ties, to the great misery of society in general.
“My Lord,” continued Queen Margaret, still addressing
Wolsey,[308] “an’ it please you, commend me heartily to the
King’s Grace, my brother, and thank his Grace for the diamond
that his Grace sent me, and beseech his Grace to be good brother
to me, as his Grace ever was. And his Grace, and you my Lord,
must needs have me excused that I wrote not to his Grace and to
you with mine own hand at this time, for because my hands and
all my body be so full of the small-pox that I neither write nor
sit, nor scantly speak, and hereafter when I _may_ (can)
I shall write with my own hand, at length, as please God, who
preserve you evermore in prosperity.
“At Stirling, the 26th of December.
“My Lord, I have sent a token to the King’s Grace, my brother,
by Clarencieux: it is a ring which his Grace Henry VIII. sent me
afore.”
The beauty of Queen Margaret has been mentioned at times with
adoration by statesmen and historians. She undeniably appears
handsome in her portrait at Hampton Court, painted when she visited
the court of England. No hint regarding her beauty ever appears in
any correspondence after the winter of 1522, when she suffered so
severely with the small-pox. Her pictures, when she recovered, prove
that a dismal change had taken place in her person. The appearance and
expression of Holbein’s portrait of her, in middle life, gives the
idea to the beholder as if the sight of one of her eyes was covered by
the growth called a pearl, causing an unpleasant obliquity of vision,
and a sinister expression of countenance. Lord Dacre’s pen rests in
peace after the brightness of Queen Margaret’s visage was thus dimmed
and eclipsed. No more reports of the Regent’s alarming attentions, no
more tales of the Queen’s coquetries with the Regent, no more lectures
concerning the midnight escort of Sir James Hamilton, “whom the Queen
could not hinder from riding on the road to Linlithgow when she
traveled that way.”