SUMMARY.
Queen Margaret’s residence in Edinburgh Castle--Her dispute with
Magnus--Employs Sir James Hamilton in her divorce--Groselle’s
diplomacy touching her marrying Albany--Furious quarrel in
her presence with Harry Stuart--Her familiar discussions
with Angus on their own divorce--Opens Parliament as Queen
Regent--Affronted by Henry VIII.’s Letter--Her fit of
passionate weeping--Her influence over the young King--Her
strange plea of divorce--Her mysterious absence--Required
to carry on State affairs--Her son pleads her excuse--Her
march from the North--Encounters Angus and her son--Her
general deserts her--Her divorce pronounced in Scotland and
Ancona--Its illegality--Queen Margaret declares Harry Stuart her
husband--They are besieged in Edinburgh Castle--Queen surrenders
him--She sends to England for blood-hounds--Retires to Stirling
Castle--Leaves it desolate, and becomes a fugitive--Exchanges
with her son Stirling for Methven--Her partisans aid the King
in expelling Angus--Harry Stuart recognized by her son as her
husband, and made Lord Methven--Escape of her daughter--Queen
Margaret’s Letters on Angus’s exile--She goes to a Highland
festival--Presides at an archery contest--Holds her forest-court
at Ettrick--Her brother sends Lord W. Howard to announce his
marriage with Anne Boleyn--Queen Margaret’s diplomacy--Betrays
her son’s confidence--Is in disgrace with him--Complains of her
son and husband to Henry VIII.--Her anger at his sending her
daughter to the Tower--Her intent of divorcing Methven while her
son is in France--Talks of re-marrying Angus--Her son stops her
new divorce on his return--Her rage--Her letter on the birth
of Edward VI.--Her friendship with her son’s consort, Mary
of Lorraine--Margaret’s zeal for Catholicism--Sponsor to her
grandson--Fatal illness--Confession--Death--Burial, &c.
The domestic disasters which followed Queen Margaret’s retreat to
Edinburgh Castle were of a nature calculated to throw the imputation
of “ill luck”--that ominous Shibboleth of the populace--over the whole
tendency of her affairs. Such was the opinion of the lower classes,
by whom she had hitherto been supported for the sake of their future
protector, the royal minor, their sovereign. The ignorant, who never
trouble themselves with the connection of cause and effect, found that
the furious hurricane, which almost toppled down the stalwart old pile
on Margaret’s head, had a great deal to do with her imprisonment of
their prelates, and her forcible wresting of Great Seal, Privy Seal,
Signet and Quarter Seal, by the strong hand of armed mercenaries, from
those who had legally held them.
“The Queen, with the King, being at this time resident in Edinburgh
Castle, there was so great a wind one _Uphally_ (Epiphany?) day,
that the same blew down the whole _battling_ stones (battlements)
of David’s Tower, and raised fire in the Queen’s lodging within the
Castle, that the same was almost all burnt.”[388] The stormy wind,
which was assuredly no respecter of persons, whatsoever the dealers
of judgments might declare, “cast down the Bishop of Galloway’s house
upon him while he was saying divine service; yet his life was saved
by special grace, for the whilk he thankit God, and made a solemn
_wow_ he would no longer be ane courtier, and so left the Queen’s
court, and past home to his awn cure and see, where he remainit, acting
according to his vocation.”[389]
No historian has dwelt on the danger which threatened Scotland of
having Catherine de Medicis for a Queen. She being the daughter of the
Duke d’Urbino and Marie de Boulogne, niece and heiress of Albany’s
wife, the late Regent wished to secure her great riches for his young
sovereign, James V. Henry VIII. sought to counteract the offer to
the Scottish King of Catherine de Medicis and her enormous dower,
by earnestly tendering the hand of his daughter Mary to him. It is
probable that Queen Margaret’s remarkable coolness respecting this
marriage arose from some pre-knowledge of the manner in which her
brother meant to treat the mother of the Princess, his noble-minded
wife, Katharine of Aragon. Margaret was, as Magnus slyly notes,[390]
“very high-minded” concerning all the grand offers of marriage made
to her son. But the real fact was, she had previously entered into
a private agreement with Louisa of Savoy, when that Princess was
appointed Regent of France, whereby she had sold the marriage of the
young King James to her for her granddaughter, the little Magdalene of
France. On one occasion, however, she openly boasted of having received
a benefaction of thirty thousand crowns[391] from France, with which,
according to her nature, she bitterly taunted the English ambassador,
Magnus, saying, “It were long before I have so much from England.”
William Hetherington, one of her English officers in attendance behind
her chair, took a part in the colloquy by exclaiming that “Your Grace
should not speak so!”
“Oh,” replied Margaret, “I said as much or more yesterday to Magnus.”
The ambassador denied it; and declares that he made her confess “that,
were it not for the _love_ and dread which Scotland bore her
brother, Henry VIII., she would have long since been put from the rule
of her son, King James.”
“Of late was with me,” wrote Magnus, “Sir James Hamilton, a right
_proper_ gentleman, and one that hath the greatest rule with
the Earl of Arran. He demanded of me ‘Whether I supposed the King’s
Highness (Henry VIII.) could be content if there were a divorce between
the Queen’s Grace and the Earl of _Anguish_?’” Magnus, to this
delicate question, replied, “that he could make no answer excepting
this, that he had never heard his King, or the English Council, speak
of the matter.”[392]
The indefatigable Sir James Hamilton then convened a meeting between
the Earl of Lennox, and other confidants of Angus and the Queen, to
let them know “that, if her husband would aid her in procuring the
divorce, she would not oppose his assumption of political power, and
would permit a reconciliation between him and her prime-minister, the
Earl of Arran.” While Margaret carried on the divorce matter, she was,
at the same time, tantalizing the English ambassador by the attentions
she paid to Groselles (or Courcelles), a secretary of Albany, left by
him as captain of his fortress of Dunbar, and at the same time to take
care of the French interest, by acting as a sort of resident minister.
Groselles flattered her, renewing hopes that, if she were divorced, the
Duke of Albany, now a widower, meant to commence a suit for her hand.
The news was whispered to young Harry Stuart, or perhaps was vaunted
to him by Margaret herself. His anger led him to adopt the English
interest for a short time, the Queen having concealed that the real
business of the castellan of Dunbar was to promote the marriage of
either Catherine de Medicis or the infant daughter of Francis I. with
James V.
One day the Queen was ill, and remained in her chamber all day--or
rather she came not into the state-rooms, nor appeared before the
public; nevertheless her majesty had all her attendants round her.
Groselles was importunate for an audience, and was admitted to speak
with her. Instead of paying the delicate attentions which the royal
invalid expected as her due, he troubled her with much disagreeable
business; and happening to see some of her maids (his old acquaintances
in the days when his master, the Regent Albany, swayed the destinies
of Scotland), Groselles so far forgot the solemnity of etiquette as
to laugh and chatter very familiarly with the damsels. The Queen made
some indication of her displeasure, when Harry Stuart, glad of an
opportunity of raising strife between her and Groselles, stepped from
behind her chair, and proposed to him the agreeable choice of avoiding
the Queen’s chamber or being cast down stairs.[393]
The unfortunate Frenchman soon after paid a visit to the levee of
the King of Scotland. Magnus himself prevailed on James to order
his expulsion from the privy-chamber, on which occasion young Harry
Stuart was quite as active in forcing poor Groselles to make his exit.
Magnus strongly commended Harry Stuart’s conduct on the occasion to
Henry VIII. He owns, however, that some of the Scottish Lords showed
great indignation. As to Groselles, he loudly proclaimed the want of
courtesy at the Scottish receptions, and vowed “that he expected to be
assassinated by the over-officious ruffling lieutenant of the guards,
Harry Stuart.” Lord Cassilis,[394] lately the ambassador to England,
and entirely of the English party, endeavored to enlist his cousin as a
creature of Henry VIII. Magnus wrote--
“Since the coming home of my Lord of Cassilis (Jan. 8), his
Lordship hath spoken with Harry Stuart in sundry cases for his
own and the Queen’s honor, wherein my Lord saith the said Harry,
his kinsman, hath done much good in these French matters. The
Queen keeping her chamber, Groselles, upon importune suit, came
unto her Grace and troubled her with much matter, wherewith her
Grace was not content.”
Then follows another version of the throwing-down-stairs adventure, of
which Radclyffe had given previously a more racy account.
The months of February and part of March were passed by the Queen
at Edinburgh Castle, “holding herself warily, and keeping guard lest
her young son should be taken from her by the confederate Lords.” The
childish despotism of Margaret had put her at issue with the clergy
and government of the country: of course the chancellor and all the
great officers of state were indignant at her interference with their
functions, when, with her ignorant tyranny, she deprived them of
their seals and insignia. Her Majesty now executed all state affairs
lawlessly by the aid of her lieutenant of the guards. Long-suffering
and loyal as the people at large were, in consideration of their
youthful King, the conduct of the Queen-mother, they were forced to
own, was not only noxious but ridiculous.
The divorce from Angus was the point she was laboring with headstrong
energy. Once more she offered to give up her dower lands, to the
value of 1000 merks per annum, and withal carried on the negotiation
with Angus in person, using the utmost familiarity in discussing the
divorce, and now and then affecting, in private, much friendship and
kindness to him, just for the purpose of deceiving Magnus, who lectured
her incessantly on her want of godliness in her projected divorce.
Angus, meantime, had contrived to obliterate, or put out of her reach,
all proofs of his subsequent private marriage with Lady Janet Stuart.
It was that event which had incensed Margaret at first against her
spouse.
At last Queen Margaret sent her steward, a priest whose sanctity was
approved by Magnus, to treat with Angus; and after many messages, she
condescended to come down from her stronghold of Edinburgh Castle to
Holyrood and open Parliament, consenting that Angus and his faction
might appear in their places. As Regent for her son, they agreed that
Queen Margaret was to exercise all sovereign power: on the other hand,
it was stipulated, by written treaty, to the following effect--
“Item, the Earl of Anguish sal bind him to the King’s Grace
(James V.) under pain of the crym of lese-majesty, not to
intromit (intermeddle) with the Queen’s Grace’s person, lands,
and goods, even gif he is her husband, until Whitsontide
next.”[395]
By that time Margaret hoped that her divorce would be accomplished.[396]
When the treaty was concluded, Queen Margaret and the young King came
in state, royally robed, from Edinburgh Castle, the Earl of Angus
carrying the crown before them, and the Earl of Arran the scepter. They
opened the Parliament, the Queen behaving with all gracious familiarity
to her spouse,[397] as stipulated, and her favorites and ministers
following her example. It was noticed, that when Queen Margaret opened
Parliament, Harry Stuart attended her for three days most assiduously.
The displeasure of the Lords of the Council, however, made him “avoid
privily” (retire privately), and he went off to the Queen’s fortress,
Stirling Castle, where he and his two brothers waited her orders.[398]
On a great alarm among the citizens of Edinburgh, that their young
King was about to be carried off from Holyrood the night he came down
from the castle, the Queen took him and resolved to stay with him in
the very heart of the city, where they remained until they went a
progress toward Perth, and finally took their abode at their palace of
St. Johnstoun. Thither the English ambassador followed her, for the
purpose of delivering to her letters from her brother Henry VIII. Of
the reception of these he gives the following account:
“I required of the Queen’s Grace that I might speak with her apart; and
so I did, in a privy-chamber. All folks avoided (retired) but only her
Grace and myself; and thus I delivered her my King’s most honorable
letters, which her Grace received in full honorable manner.[399] But
after her Grace had looked over or read the first five or six lines of
the same, her countenance altered in such manner that it was a full
hour before her Grace could sober herself from excessive weeping; and
long it was, and with much pain, ere that her Grace could read the
letter to the end. Some words were between us; but howsoever I armed me
with patience, though some deal cumbered to answer her.”
Margaret’s first comment when her passion of crying let her speak, was
“Sure never was such a letter ever written to any noble woman.”
Magnus recommended patience, and to read Henry VIII.’s letter over more
dispassionately, and to bring to mind her own aggravating epistle which
had provoked it. But the Queen, with many “haught and high words,
expressed herself much against her brother’s honor, cried out on his
wrong in sending the Earl of Anguish to torment her, regretted her own
conduct for being too easy in regard to the said earl, and finally,
declared she would send none ambassadors to England.”
Then the angry, sobbing Queen forbade Magnus to bring any more such
letters from her brother for her to read; “for, if she did read any
more, she was right sure it would be her death;” and long she raged at
the patient man, accusing him of knowing the tenor of the letter, and
of causing her vexation--“as there were matters mentioned, of which the
information must have proceeded from him.”
The English ambassador left Queen Margaret with the promise that
she should be urged no longer concerning her husband until after
Whitsuntide, when she expected decision from Rome on her divorce. He
went to the opposite party, and consulted with Angus, whose chief
desire was, that an end might be put to the restriction Henry VIII. had
laid upon him, not to seize upon any part of Queen Margaret’s dower
lands, from which he had, since his return to Scotland, unwillingly
abstained--avarice rather than ambition being his leading passion. He,
with the lords of his party, discussed the character and conduct of the
boy King. Some were afraid James V. would prove cruel; for, said they,
“When Queen Margaret is angry with any of us, then she talks to her son
privily, and makes him sad and pensive, and to look down, and gloom and
glower upon us, using to us some sour and sharp words.”[400] The young
King was devotedly attached to his mother, and was inclined to defy
and hate her enemies, and to protect her, when she had been exciting
him with tales of her wrongs. The Earl of Angus told Magnus, “That his
young King was right well pleased with him in all matters relating to
hawks and hounds; but of late the Queen had urged her son to view the
matter of divorce as she wished;” that King James had earnestly asked
him, when alone, “to be divorced from his mother, and had promised him
boundless favor, when he came to his power, if he would consent.”
Strange it was, that such a subject should be discussed by either
Margaret or her husband to a boy not fourteen. While these proceedings
were grieving the sensitive feelings of national honor, ever prevalent
among the people of Scotland, their honest pride was somewhat soothed
by the noble fidelity their late Regent showed to Francis I. “Here hath
been rumors and bruits, that the Duke of Albany had won and rescued
again the French King being right joyous tidings here, and as painful
to me, to see and hear the same.”[401] Angus was sedulous in impressing
on his royal brother-in-law of England an amiable description of his
conduct toward his refractory spouse, Queen Margaret. “I have,” he
says,[402] “please your Highness, shown humble suit and service to
the Queen’s Grace, your sister; howbeit, it is not accepted, but she
remains at Stirling away from her son, the King’s Grace (James V.), and
is ruled against me with ane evil counsel, against the law of God and
holy kirk; as God knows, I have kept my part toward her, as I promised
your Grace, and to my Lord Cardinal, and aye abode at his and your
commandment therein, and so shall continue.”
It is certain that if Queen Margaret could have proved the charge
of previous marriage or pre-contract against her husband, she would
not have had recourse to a pretext futile as that which, after great
research, Dr. Magnus discovered was her plea for divorce at Rome. “The
Queen’s Grace,” wrote he,[403] “continueth still at Stirling, and sueth
fast for a divorce from the Earl of Angus, submitting her cause to be,
that when she was married to the said earl, the late King of Scots, her
husband, was alive; and that the said King was living three years after
the field of Flodden or Brankston.” Notwithstanding this discovery,
made by Queen Margaret, of the existence of the first husband, for the
purpose of getting rid of the second, Dr. Magnus remained earnestly of
opinion that the rights of the Earl of Angus should be recognized by
his perverse helpmate. The character, indeed, that the learned Doctor
is pleased to give the Queen’s repudiated husband for gentleness and
submission, makes it doubtful matter if she could ever have changed
for the better. “After my poor mind, and as I hear her Grace will say
that ‘she dare not come hither (to Edinburgh), for dread that her Grace
hath of the Earl of Anguish,’ whom, if it would please her Grace to
accept into her favor, she _mought_, without doubt, better order
for his gentleness than I can rule any servant I have.”[404] Angus was
in fact, at the very time, paramount and pre-eminent over the Scotch
Parliament, then about to conclude its session. He was endeavoring to
entice his contumacious spouse into his presence, by insisting that the
peace between England and Scotland could not be concluded without her
assistance. His party declared that “if she would not come, she must be
deprived of her authority, which was to be first and principal of the
council, and have the disposal of all benefices; that she had had all
reasonable safe-conducts given, and if she would not attend, she must
forfeit her dignities.”
The young King of Scotland, when this resolution was being passed
into an act, spoke on the subject, to the admiration of all present.
“I trust,” said the royal boy, “that the Queen, my mother, hath not
so highly offended, that her Grace should lose, or be put from her
authority;” therefore, he required “that the act might be respited, or
put in some better train.” It was then resolved, that “if the Queen,
within twenty days, repaired to the King her son, and follows the
advice of the Council, and confirms the peace, the act against her
shall be of none effect--otherwise to stand in full strength.”
Margaret’s plea was, as usual, fear of being in the presence of Angus;
but it was generally whispered, “that the Queen was forced to retire
awhile, on account of the birth of her first child, by Harry Stuart,
with whom she had made secret marriage.” Before the month expired, the
Parliament deprived the Queen of her authority, for not coming to open
it; but, by the young King’s personal entreaty, “another twenty days’
grace were allowed her to come in.” Many evil reports were afloat,
concerning her absence. Magnus again affirmed, “that as to being
afraid of Angus, it was well known she might rule him as her servant,
if she would be kind to him.”[405] All business was perplexed. Magnus
wrote an urgent letter to her. He told her “he had consulted a most
worshipful gentlewoman, late _mistress_ (governess) to the young
King, and a fast friend of her (Queen Margaret), who declared her
conviction, that coming to the Parliament at Edinburgh would neither
bring the Queen-mother into difficulty or danger.” The young King,
however, Magnus owns, thought differently; by which he guessed that
her absence was concerted with her son. Margaret remained in the north
of Scotland, deaf to all summons from Parliament, husband, brother, or
son. The next news regarding her was that, January 11, 1525–6, she was
marching southward with a small force of six hundred men, commanded by
the Earl of Murray, and was expected to do a great deal of mischief to
her opponents.[406] The approach of Margaret and her army took place
January 20. She trusted that the Earl of Arran, who had previously
withdrawn himself from Angus’s government, would have joined her with
force sufficient to have taken the young King away from the Douglas
faction. But her hated husband, instead of Arran, met her a mile from
Linlithgow, accompanied by James the young King, and an overpowering
army. Margaret’s general, the Earl of Murray, instantly went over to
the force which ostensibly bore his King’s authority; while his men,
taking their cue from their lord, fraternized with Angus’s troopers.
The lords and gentlemen of Margaret’s party offered their services to
Angus, and they all marched merrily to Edinburgh. “As for the Queen’s
Grace,” wrote Angus to Dr. Magnus, “thare sal be na falt funden in
me, but we sal agree shortly, as understands the King’s highness her
son; all my lords here, and you that kens her part and mine as well
as our sel.”[407] The rage of Margaret may be supposed at the turn of
affairs quietly effected by her spouse, when she had been six months
in the north, fomenting a revolution which was to destroy his power.
Her letters to Wolsey, after this historical _coup-de-théatre_ had
been played against her, by the cool cunning of her husband, are for
some months very dry and mysterious--their chief tenor being murmuring
at Angus’s power, and urging that, by the help of the Archbishop of St.
Andrews, she might have more authority over her son and his government.
When Queen Margaret wrote in great hurry, her orthography renders her
letters more difficult to edit, than if written in a foreign language.
At no time are her original lucubrations more uncouth than at this era.
If these lines were suddenly placed before any one, there would be some
difficulty in ascertaining which among the tongues of Babel the writer
was inditing--
“_Gyff ve fynd the sayd Byschope of Saynt Tandroz be ony vay to be
trw tyll owz, ve had lever hav hym, bot as zet I can not parsaff it.
Ther for, vee man doo as ve fynd beast for owz, trostyng that the
Kyng’s Grace, my brethar, vyl suple owz, and not lat owz vant._”[408]
By the elegant pronoun “_owz_,” Queen Margaret means “us;” and her
hieroglyphics, as usual, include a bitter complaint of her husband, and
an intimation that a subsidy would be acceptable to herself.
The Queen, the Earl of Lennox, and the Bishop of St. Andrews, secretly
aided by the young King himself, commenced a struggle to overcome
Angus. Although her prime-minister Arran, out of jealousy of his
relative, the Earl of Lennox,[409] deserted to the side of Angus, the
party increased every day. Lennox, in the last days of August, came
to the Borough Moor, near Edinburgh, with two hundred picked men, and
a few horsemen leading eight spare horses, upon which the young King
and his train were to escape. The Master of Kilmorris entered Holyrood
to inform the King. Angus learned his arrival. Before Kilmorris
could be seized, young King James led him personally “through the
coining-house,” and thus he got safely out of Holyrood. Angus forced
the King to leave Holyrood, and put him under the guard of his brother
George and forty men, at a house of the Bishop of St. Andrews, in the
city, where he was watched night and day.[410] About a week afterward
the belligerent powers came to collision: the King expressed a wish
to visit his mother at her palace of Linlithgow, and the Douglas
put a little army in motion to guard him on his short journey. Near
Linlithgow, at the bridge, they encountered the Earl of Lennox and
many other nobles of the Queen’s party, among whom were Harry Stuart
and his two brothers. A fierce skirmish ensued. When the young King,
who was kept back with the rearguard, manifested eagerness to ride
forward into the fray, George Douglas, in whose charge he was left,
thus addressed him, “Bide where you are, sir; for if they get hold of
you, be it by one of your arms, we will seize a leg and pull you in
two pieces rather than part from you.”[411] A savage speech which the
young monarch never forgot. The result of the skirmish was disastrous
to Queen Margaret’s faction: the Earl of Lennox, her most respectable
partisan, and the kinsman best beloved by James V., was treacherously
slain by that promoter of all mischief, Sir James Hamilton.
Although full of sorrow, the Queen mounted her palfrey, and set out for
Edinburgh, November 20, to open Parliament. The Earl of Angus leading
the young King with him, met his contumacious spouse at Corstorphine:
here he received her with the affectation of the utmost deference. Her
train was small, and her attendance mean, for most of her friends were
absent--some having been slain at the “battle of the bridge,” near
Linlithgow, some being fugitives, and others prisoners to her husband.
Harry Stuart was wounded; his brothers were reported slain. She rode by
the side of her son to Holyrood, where she was inducted into the same
apartments formerly occupied by the Duke of Albany when Regent. The
young King lodged with her, and slept in a room over her bedchamber;
excepting when he was hunting, he would never leave her company for a
moment. “It is thought,” wrote Sir C. Dacre to his brother, “that if
the Queen remains thus near her son, that the whole court will have a
turn; for King James, since the death of the Earl of Lennox, has no
affection for the Earl of Angus nor him of Arran.”[412]
The New Year’s Day of 1526–7 was certainly kept by the royal mother
and son at Holyrood. Evidence exists of that very rare occurrence,
a largess from the hand of the Queen. A cotemporary poet, Stuart of
Lorne, one of her court versifiers, celebrates her bounty by a lay of
gratitude so barbarous in its wording, that it is not easy to give an
idea of more than two of its lines:--
“Great God reward Margaret our Queen
For largess of this New Year’s Day!”[413]
Both Margaret and the King remained ill at ease--James V. in deep
grief for the death of his beloved kinsman, the Earl of Lennox, slain
in the endeavor to take him from the hated control of the Douglas.
Margaret, meantime, was meditating other enterprises. Among her plans
she intended to use blood-hounds for the means of either attack or
defense, making the odd request for a pair of these creatures trained
to sit behind men on horseback. It was addressed to her old friend
Magnus, then tutor to the young Duke of Richmond, in his magnificent
establishment of Sheriffe Hutton, Yorkshire.
“QUEEN MARGARET TO DR. MAGNUS.
“Right trusty and well-beloved Friend--We commend us to you in
our most hearty manner, praying you right affectuously that you
will get and send us three or four brace of the best ratches
(harriers) in the country, less or more, for hares, foxes, and
other greater beasts. With a brace of blood-hounds that are
good, and will ride behind men on horseback.”[414]
Her note was written January 8, 1526–7, Dr. Magnus treated the Queen’s
letter and message to Sheriffe Hutton as a mere pretense to spy out
the particulars of young Richmond’s almost regal establishment there.
Wolsey ordered Magnus to send the dogs; but that was not done until
the succeeding year, when the fortunes of the royal family of Scotland
obtained the ascendency in the struggle that ensued.
Margaret’s present object was to arrive at some decision concerning
her divorce; for this purpose she affected to be on very friendly
terms with Angus, and even had some amicable consultations[415] with
him on the subject. Finding the delays of Rome interminable, she
contrived to enlist Beton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, on her side, who
summoned Angus to hear his divorce from the Queen pronounced according
to the laws of the Church. He appeared on the day appointed at the
Consistorial Court of St. Andrews, Then the Queen alledged “that he
had been betrothed, and given his faith and promise of marriage to a
noble lady (some say a daughter of the Earl of Traquair, and others
of Earl Bothwell) before he had married her (the Queen), and so by
reason of that pre-contract he could not be her lawful husband.” The
earl confessed all. Upon which the archbishop pronounced sentence of
divorce, making a proviso, “that the daughter born of the Queen should
not suffer loss or disadvantage”[416] from the ignorance of her mother
of the father’s pre-engagement.
The legality of this sentence was immediately disputed; the flaw
appears to have been the uncertainty which of the two noble ladies,
Janet Douglas or Margaret Hepburn, was Angus’s _fiancée_ when he
wedded the Queen. There is nothing definite, therefore, alledged in any
of the sentences of divorce. Another passed later in the course of the
same year, dated at Ancona, in which the Pope mentions the marriage
as infirm and bad, but gives no specific reason why it was so.[417]
Previously, however, to the Papal decision, we find that Turenne, the
French ambassador at the Court of London, writes a most remarkable
letter to the Regent Albany, dated May 1, 1527, in which he gives the
following details of a conversation that passed between him and Henry
VIII., on the subject of Queen Margaret’s desire of going to France to
prosecute her divorce:--
“On Sunday,” says he, “the King of England sent for me; and
after putting several questions, he demanded of me and my
associates, ‘if we had informed the King his brother of what he
told us through the Cardinal (Wolsey), touching his sister the
Queen of Scotland, for that he understood she was meditating a
journey to France, to endeavor to induce our King to use his
influence with our Holy Father to get her divorced from Monsieur
_d’Angou_ (the Earl of Angus), in order to marry you.’ He
told me it was most displeasing to him to learn the foolish
and evil conduct of his said sister, for she made herself a
shame and disgrace to all her family; declaring ‘that it was
impossible for any one to lead a more shameful life than she
did.’”[418]
The envoy replied that he was sure his King was the last person in the
world to encourage so near a relation to the King of England in coming
into his realm, against the will of her royal brother; and that the
Duke of Albany was the last person to do any thing that was unpleasant
to him. Henry then admitted that Albany was a wise and good Prince;
adding, however, “that he thought his nephew was old enough to govern
without further tutelage; but certainly, of all tutelage, that of the
Queen his sister was the worst that young Prince could have.”
Previously to the papal sentence of divorce, Margaret had endeavored
to act on that of the Archbishop; “and when she visited her son, who
was at that time completely in the power of Angus, she asked him leave
to let Harry Stuart come to his court and remain with him.” The young
King flatly refused, and Queen Margaret departed out of humor with her
son, and apparently out of favor with him.[419] James V. was certainly
highly displeased at the idea of the second step-father with which
his Queen-mother had provided him: he had more than enough trouble
with the first, who at that time held him virtually a captive, after
having slain his best loved kinsman. Neither was it very probable that
Angus, who ruled every thing at court, could permit Harry Stuart,
his rival, to appear there as Queen Margaret’s acknowledged lord. On
her next visit to her son, April, 1527, she required license for her
new husband’s appearance there, which James totally refused, at the
instance of Lord Angus, upon which the Queen again retired from court
in disgust to Stirling Castle.[420]
It is surprising how little notice general history takes of Queen
Margaret’s proceedings in the north of the island in that momentous
year in which the divorce of Katharine of Aragon was first agitated.
So far from pleading the excuse of his sister’s long-pending divorce,
Henry was heartily ashamed of the false position in which he exhibited
himself in the eyes of the courts of Europe, as if he aped Margaret’s
disreputable proceedings. It is curious enough to find him urging
Wolsey perpetually to delay his sister’s divorce at the Court of Rome,
which was done with such success that, of course, he became furiously
suspicious that similar means were used when his own turn came.[421]
There is a letter from Margaret to Albany, dated March 23, 1528, in
which she thanks him in the warmest terms, not only for having used his
influence at Rome in furthering her affair, as she styles the sentence
of divorce from Angus, but for furnishing her with the money necessary
to obtain the completion of that business;[422] “for which services,”
she says--
“I give you a hundred thousand thanks, and trust the time will
one day come when I may return the pleasure you have done
me, and praying you, Monsieur my cousin, as the person I have
more affiance in than any other man in the world, except my
dearest son, both for the love of me, and to put an end of
all the torments and tribulations I suffer, and for the happy
advancement of all the other matters between you and me, that
you will be pleased to expedite the completion of my sentence,
and the process; to send to me into Scotland as quickly as
possible, and to supply me with the money that will be needful
and requisite, till God is pleased to grant me of his grace
the means of recompensing you for the said moneys, and all the
gratuities and benefactions you have aided me with in times
past.”
She goes on to say--
“I am informed to-day by your servant and secretary, Nicholas
Canyvet, that a captain named William Stuart, with another
gentleman, have been sent by you to my son with all sorts of
horses, and other beautiful presents, which I can assure you
will be very agreeable to him; and I should have written to
you for things of that kind a long time ago, if I had not been
hindered as I have told you in my last letters, and forasmuch
as I hoped to get a full answer to my last letters by the said
captain, both from the King of France and yourself. The said
news (about the divorce) are to me very joyous: all the letters
that you may be pleased to send me, can be kept in charge by
your secretary, the Dean of Dunbar, or by some other equal sure
and secret channel, on the subject that you have written to me
in your last letters. As to any other news, I must refer you to
your servant Nicholas, desiring above all things to have my said
sentence and process. Written at _Striming_ (Stirling),
this 23d day of March, by
“Your good cousin,
“MARGARET.”
Postscript in the Queen’s own hand--
“Monsieur my cousin, I beg you to excuse the whole letter not
being written by my own hand; but have me and my business in
your remembrance. I remain, to the utmost of my power,
“Your good cousin,
“MARGARITE.”[423]
In the seal to this letter, Margaret impales the royal arms of
Scotland with those of England. Margaret, on the promulgation of the
above-mentioned Ancona divorce, being then at Stirling Castle, publicly
declared herself married to Harry Stuart, and had him treated as her
lord and husband by her whole household; on which intelligence the
young King, in great displeasure, sent Lord Erskine with a troop of
soldiers to besiege Stirling. Margaret immediately surrendered her
husband, who was forthwith marched away captive, and put into prison.
He soon escaped from his captivity; and the next appearance of this
gentleman is in Edinburgh Castle, the Queen having again retreated to
that impregnable fortress, which was still garrisoned in her name as
Queen Regent; and from thence she defied her first husband, and all his
doings.
Angus considered it requisite to reduce her pride, for, in the
course of the preceding year, he had found many symptoms of his own
unpopularity. Every one in Scotland was looking forward to the majority
of their young sovereign, who had now entered his seventeenth year.
Although James V.’s moral character had been systematically impaired
by the policy of Angus, and the base agency of Sir James Hamilton,
yet great ability, and a latent principle of rectitude, were known to
be inherent in the royal youth. He had been for some months separated
from his mother, and his first interview with her was a strange
scene, but such as she had played more than once in the course of her
tumultuous career at the far-famed castled rock of Edinburgh. Angus
marched there with a large force, and brought the young King along
with him; and in his name, March 27, 1528, summoned Queen Margaret to
surrender Edinburgh Castle and her pretended husband, Harry Stuart of
Evandale, to the King’s mercy. As soon as the Queen saw that her son
was actually present, she came down from Edinburgh Castle in great
haste, accompanied by Harry, and his brother James Stuart. Falling
on her knees before her son, Angus standing by, she humbly asked
mercy “for her husband and his brother.”[424] They were, however,
notwithstanding all her humiliations, led away as prisoners into the
very castle she had just yielded. As for herself, she was treated by
Angus with the grimace of great respect. The King her son rode by her
steed in the pacific entry she made into Edinburgh--the leading power
in the scene being her former husband, with whom she had afterward
many private conferences and consultations.[425] Yet all the civil
deceitfulness of Angus could not disguise from Queen Margaret the plots
and plans he was devising against her income and liberty. Soon after
her surrender of Edinburgh Castle, she retired to her usual residence,
Stirling Castle, but when there she received mysterious intimation from
Archbishop Beton that she was not safe. She fled in disguise from it,
dispersed her household, and, for the first time, Stirling Castle was
left desolate, without garrison or inmates--as it is at present, the
wisdom of which piece of state economy no historian who deals in facts
can greatly commend.
What became of Margaret can only be guessed in the few vague words of
Lindsay’s Chronicle.[426] “The Douglases,” he says, “ever took high
upon them, and now they specially frighted Bishop Beton, so that he
fled away and durst not be seen; and so did Margaret the Queen of
Scotland, who gaed vagrant, disguised ane long time for fear of the
Douglas faction. They took the King to St. Andrews, and, in his name,
caused great search to be made for them. As for the Bishop, it was
known afterward that he kept sheep in Boigremoir with ane shepherd’s
clothes upon him.”
It is a grief to her biographer that Margaret’s disguise and
occupations, when she “gaed vagrant,” can not be described with equal
accuracy. But that close delineator, Dr. Magnus, at this time ceased
to witness the scenes of her varied life. Dacre was dead; and Norfolk,
that other state-paper chronicler, is too busy raising his niece to the
throne-matrimonial of England, and shaking the long-established sway
of the mighty Cardinal Wolsey, to have a thought to spare for Queen
Margaret vagabonding in the wilderness. Whether she, as well as her
ally Beton, kept sheep in the mosses and moors can not be asserted.
One thing, however, is certain, her pen was forced to rest idle for a
while. In truth, she is best to be traced in the plots that began to
herald the coming revolution, which overthrew the power of Angus.
The worst feature of the Douglas domination was the murder of the
proto-martyr of the Reformed Church of Scotland, the mild Patrick
Hamilton, Abbot of Fern, who was burned at St. Andrews in 1527, being
a victim to an agreement of reconciliation which took place between
the usurpers and Archbishop Beton. Other horrid persecutions followed
of the same nature, which formed precedents for continuation. The
commencement of this bad work, it is but just to observe, occurred
when James V. was a prisoner to Angus, and his mother a fugitive.
The royal stripling now fast advanced to a period of life when his high
spirit and princely courage could no longer be controlled. His mother’s
servants, emboldened by his approach to manhood, crept out of their
lurking-places, and, by degrees, brought military stores and provisions
into her palace of Stirling Castle, till about May-day, 1528, it was
found to be thoroughly garrisoned.[427] James V., being then in the
course of his seventeenth year, resolved to deliver himself and his
people from the Douglas yoke: he saw the advantage of having such a
fortress as Stirling for his retreat when his project for a struggle
with his first step-father, Angus, was ripe. However, he was forced to
compromise with his mother’s passions and predilections; she had longed
for the lordship of Methven wherewith to endow her favorite Harry
Stuart, who had escaped to her, and was very active in arranging the
approaching struggle for the King.
James V., being at Falkland Palace, contrived to negotiate with his
mother the exchange of the Castle of Stirling, on which she still held
claim during his minority, for his castle and demesne of Methven.[428]
When the agreement was completed between the mother and son, young
James rode over one night from Falkland to Stirling with a few of
his most confidential servants,[429]--was admitted by the Queen’s
garrison,--barred out all that were out, raised the regal standard over
the lofty citadel, and issued his royal summonses for all his loyal
lieges to attend him at Stirling--the faction of the Douglases being
excepted as traitors. From that moment the young sovereign was free.
Methven was an ancient possession of the Kings of Scotland, and had
been the dower-castle and demesne of the Princess Margery Bruce
(daughter to the Great King Robert), who finally brought the crown
of Scotland into the family of her husband, Walter Stuart. Methven
is situated to the north of the Ochil Hills, and to the south of the
Grampians, in the county of Perth, and is distant six miles from the
town of Perth.[430] James V. kept faith with his mother, and in the
year 1528, separated Methven forever from the crown of Scotland, and
settled it on her husband, whom he raised to the peerage by the title
of Lord Methven, with entail on his heirs-male. Margaret, who became
in time the mother of a son and daughter by Harry Stuart, took up her
residence at Methven Castle, which may henceforth be considered her
home when she did not occupy her suite of apartments at Holyrood or
Stirling.
She had now obtained the end for which she had anxiously striven for
more than eight years. Her son had acknowledged her divorce, by his
recognition and favor to her dear Harry Stuart, who was, from a younger
brother and needy courtier, raised to high rank, with the fairest
barony in Scotland for his inheritance, and that of their children.
Her inimical husband, Angus, was soon afterward chased out of the land
into exile in England. Angus had impoverished the Queen by seizing,
as her husband, the lands with which she had been richly endowed by
the crown of Scotland on her marriage with James IV. It may be freely
inferred that he was forced to yield up this prey, for on his flight to
Henry VIII. the young King took possession of his vast property, and
divided it among those who had aided in the overthrow of the Douglas
power. It was not likely that the King forgot to restore his mother
to her dower lands. But Henry VIII. treated his sister’s divorce from
Angus with the utmost contempt, reviled her new spouse, speaking of
him disdainfully as “Lord Muffin,”[431] while he called Angus his dear
brother-in-law. Margaret was, however, relieved of the presence of her
troublesome spouse for life: she was full of fondness and gratitude
to Lord Methven for the assistance he had rendered her son, whom she
persuaded to settle on him for life the castellanship of her dower
castle of Doune, in the county of Perth. James V. likewise made his new
step-father general of all his artillery--regarding him with constant
favor, which he well deserved by his fidelity. Soon after Lord Methven
obtained leave of his sovereign to relinquish Doune Castle in favor of
his landless brother, James Stuart, who had served the King faithfully,
and even been left for dead at the battle near Linlithgow, James V.,
with all the generosity of his nature, alienated Doune from the crown,
and settled it on Methven’s brother, to the rage and indignation of
Queen Margaret, who did not mean to lose the income when she settled
it on her new spouse. It was a first quarrel between her and her dear
Harry Stuart; but the offense remained brooding in her mind until it
broke out, long years afterward, according to the malicious nature of
the Tudor race.
“All the time the Court was in Edinburgh, a nightly watch was kept
about the King’s chamber, and even round his bed, by his lords and the
Sheriff of Ayr. One night the King kept watch himself in array (armor),
expecting an inbreak of the Earl of Angus and his party. Upon Tuesday
last,” continues our authority, “the Queen, with the young King,
removed to Stirling for greater security.”[432]
Angus thought fit to suppose that his daughter by the Queen was
included in the proscription of all who bore his name, and when the
young King marched to besiege Tantallan, the Earl fled from thence
with her. Queen Margaret and James V., knowing that she was wandering
from castle to castle on the English border, made sedulous exertions
to recover her from her father, that she might be placed in the royal
establishment; but without effect. The incidents of this lady’s
eventful life and fortunes form the subject of a distinct biography.
Angus and his brother, George Douglas, finally retired with her to
the English court. Before, however, the Douglases were admitted into
England, they had to swear fealty to Henry VIII. as sovereign-paramount
of Scotland.[433] That monarch, in return, gave the Douglas brothers
seats at his privy-council, where, for many years, they continued to
do as much injury to their native land as possible. Magnus, the fast
friend of Angus, wrote to Margaret under the pretense of sending her
“the loving commendations of his master, her right dear and tender
nephew the Duke of Richmond and Somerset,” resident at Sheriffe Hutton,
in Yorkshire (once the doleful prison-fortress of Margaret’s mother
in the days of Richard III.). Richmond had lately sent to his cousin,
the King of Scotland, the _ratches_, fox-hounds, and harriers she
had asked for, likewise those accomplished animals “the blood-hounds,
trained to ride behind men-at-arms on horseback,” whether on pillions
like ladies is a question left to the decision of our learned friends
the antiquaries.
“The dear and tender nephew” must have been a subject of great jealousy
to Margaret, because his royal titles and great establishment plainly
showed that, in case of failure of legitimate children, Henry VIII.
meant to appoint him as his successor. The boy, however, was made by
Dr. Magnus to plead, as by messages throughout a long letter penned
by the latter in his name, “that his aunt, the Queen of Scots, would
please to relent, and not utterly ruin a great noble of ancient blood
like the Earl of Angus.” Margaret, who had returned to Edinburgh, wrote
in answer, acknowledging the kindness of “the dear and tender nephew,”
but explained[434]--
“How much she marveled that the King his father, and himself,
had such great regard for the Lord Angus, when we that _is_
his _natural_ sister sustain such great dolor and wrong.
_Ve_ greatly marvel, considering his offenses made to us,
he (Angus) has not applied him to give us good cause to continue
gude princess to him, which had been his high honor and special
duty, having remembrance of the great honor we did until him.”
The Queen then addressed a long family explanation to her nephew,
Richmond, declaring the injuries done her by Angus, especially in
tearing her “only daughter _attouce_ (at twice) from her, who
would not have been disinherited had she remained to her comfort.”
Margaret makes a distinct paragraph to “her gude and right trast
friend, Master Magnus,” assuring him that she bears no rancor to the
said Earl of Angus; and as a proof that she wished him well, she
advised him to keep safely in England out of the way of the King her
son, and then in time he may recover his favor.
During the disturbances that had distracted Scotland while Margaret
had been struggling for the regnant power with Albany and Angus,
few notations exist of entertainments or fêtes. But as soon as the
young King was invested with his premature authority, affairs took
a different aspect. The most noted of the court fêtes was a grand
Highland hunting given by Queen Margaret’s old friend, the Earl of
Atholl, to her Majesty, in honor of the arrival of the Pope’s envoy at
the court of Scotland. At Atholl the Earl received the Queen-mother,
King James V., and the Pope’s envoy, in the forest, with a degree of
splendor that, as the young monarch declared, left him nothing to
regret at Edinburgh Castle. “Atholl had prepared for the Queen and her
son fair a palace, built in the midst of a green meadow; the structure
was made of fresh boughs, neatly wattled with birks, which were green
under and above.” This palace was divided in four quarters, and in
each quarter a circular room like a block-house, “which was _lofted_
the height of three houses; the floors were laid with green _scarets_,
_spreats_, _medworts_, and flowers, that no man knew whereon he trod,
but as if he were in a garden. The palace within was hung with fine
tapestry and arras, and lighted with fine glass windows at all airths,
and it was as pleasantly decorated as if it had been the palace-royal
at home.”
“Further, this Earl gart make such provisions for the King and his
mother Queen Margaret, and the ambassador, that they had all manner of
meats, drinks, and delicates, that were to be gotten at that time in
Scotland, either in burgh or land--that is to say, all kind of drink,
as ale, beer, wine, both white and claret, malmsey, muscadil, ypocras,
aquavitæ. Further, there was of meats, wheat bread, maise bread, and
_gingerbread_; with fleshes, beef, muttons, lambs, venison, goose,
grice (pig), capon, coney, crane, swan, partridge, plover, duck,
drake, _bussel-cock_ and _pawnes_ (blackcock and moorfowl),
and also the stanks (tanks or ponds) round about the palace were full
of all delicate fishes, as salmons, trouts, eels, and all that could
be gotten out of fresh water, all ready for the banquet. _Syne_
there were proper stewards, cunning baxters (bakers), excellent cooks
and potingers, with confections and _drugs_ for the King and the
Queen’s desserts. And the halls and chambers were prepared with costly
beds, naperies, and vessels, according for a Queen; so that Queen
Margaret wanted of her orders no more than when at home in her palace.
The King and his royal mother abode in that wilderness at the hunting
three days and nights, there being no town nearer than twenty miles
on each side of them.” Among their bills of fare appears the item of
“roasted termagants;” but this alarming dish is supposed merely to
imply roasted ptarmigans. The Earl of Atholl expended one thousand
pounds[435] per day on this regal _fête_ in the solitudes of the
Highlands. It is to be hoped that they were pounds Scots.
As Queen Margaret and her son paused on their homeward journey, to
cast a last look at their flowery palace in the wilderness, flames were
seen to enwrap it of a sudden. The Pope’s envoy could not suppress
an exclamation of surprise and regret. “It is the custom of our
Highland-men,” replied the young King. “Be they never so well lodged at
night, they burn their lodging the next morn.” The Queen and her son
hunted in the Highlands at various stations till Michaelmas, at which
festival they were the guests of Archbishop Beton at St. Andrews.
The young King entirely emancipated himself from the weak control
of his mother when he attained his eighteenth year, the period of
his majority. He then advanced to great honor one to whom he owed
infinite obligations: this was Sir David Lindsay. In the course of
the year 1530, James V. drew this inestimable friend of his infancy
from retirement, by making him Lord Lion King-at-arms--not by the
recommendation of his Queen-mother, as may very well be supposed.
A most flattering embassy was sent to Henry VIII. in the course of
the next year, when he found that the young King’s government was too
strong to be reversed. Lord William Howard appeared at the palace of
St. Andrews, where was abiding the King of Scotland, with a train of
threescore cavaliers, many of whom were noted as the most skillful in
all games of manly sport, as shooting, leaping, wrestling, quoits,
or casting of stones. Queen Margaret was witness to all the trials
of skill to which the Englishmen challenged the Scots, and she ever
took the part of her countrymen, and wagered on them. “But she and
they always _tint_” says our chronicler, Lindsay of Pitscottie.
At last, Queen Margaret betted against her son two hundred crowns,
that six of these Englishmen would shoot better with the bow, than any
half-dozen of Scotchmen, were they picked out of the whole kingdom,
nobles, gentles, or yeomen. The challenge ran that the English were to
shoot against them, “at _riveris_, the butts or prick-bonnet. The
young King, hearing of this _bonspiel_[436] of his mother, was
well content. And Queen Margaret laid down ane hundred crowns, and King
James laid down the same; and ane tun of wine was to be expended on
either side.”
The ground was chosen at St. Andrews, a town long famous for feats in
archery. The Scotch archers were “three landed gentlemen and three
yeomen, David Arnott of that ilk, David Weams of that ilk, and Mr.
John Wedderburne, vicar of Dundee. The yeomen were John Thomson of
Leith, Steven Tabroner, and Alick Baillie, who was ane piper, and
shot wondrous near.” The Englishmen who figured as their rivals, it
may be supposed, were not worthy to be named by the Lindsay, for they
were defeated at their far-famed national weapon; and Queen Margaret
lost her wager, to the intense delight of every Scotchman present.
She accompanied her son to the town of St. Andrews, where they were
followed by all engaged in the archery-contest, the young King having
determined to expend the whole of the two hundred crowns in a grand
feast, at which the archers were to preside, both winners and losers.
It was sufficiently rich to console the English for their defeat.
Lord William Howard’s real errand was to persuade the King of Scotland
to receive the hand of the Princess Mary Tudor. The Queen of Scotland
knew well that the Emperor could not induce her brother to keep
Katharine of Aragon in her place as Queen, or the English heiress as
Princess. And when they were degraded, what would her son James gain by
wedding the illegitimated daughter, but the plea for raising a civil
war with England, in maintenance of his Queen’s rights of succession?
Margaret had stigmatized her own daughter with illegitimacy, and let
her go forth a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth. She, a
woman, had not felt feminine tenderness sufficient to plead against
blemishing the good name and position in life of her own Margaret: how
then could she expect her brother would refrain from visiting his Mary
with a similar fate?
Queen Margaret knew her brother, if she did not know herself. She
had preceded him by several years in the race of that worst species
of profligacy, which scoffs at the sanctity of the marriage tie, and
the happiness of the children deriving existence from such union; she
therefore treated the disposal of the hand of her niece Mary to her
son, nearly as contemptuously as any of the Princes of Europe would
have considered a marriage with her own outcast daughter, Margaret
Douglas.
Margaret came on the first of June, 1532, to hold a forest court for
her dower-lands at Ettrick.[437] She demanded the keys of the fortress
of Newark[438] from the castellan Buccleuch, who refused them until he
knew King James’s pleasure on that matter. Queen Margaret sent a sharp
complaint to her son, who forthwith commanded Buccleuch to deliver the
keys to her Grace. Directly it was done she gave them to Methven. Her
train amounted to sixty cavaliers and twenty-four foot-runners. She
stayed at the Abbey of Dryburgh; from thence she passed to Coldstream,
and finished her summer progress at Holyrood. She had never received
satisfactory possession of her rich Ettrick dower-lands at any previous
time. Methven left his brother James with two hundred troopers, to
guard the rights of his royal spouse in Ettrick; and for some few years
Margaret found herself lady of her own lands.
Years had rolled on since Margaret had been favored with the slightest
confidential communication from her brother Henry VIII. He had as
deeply resented her divorce from the Earl of Angus, and her marriage
with Lord Methven, as if he had set her the purest pattern of conjugal
constancy. The political agitation in which his own repudiation of
Katharine of Aragon had involved his own kingdom, he knew, had given
unwonted strength to the government of Scotland, which became the
rallying point for all discontented with the divorce of Queen Katharine
and the disinheriting of Mary. If this state of affairs continued,
Henry considered that very serious interruptions might occur to his
wedded felicity with his new Queen. Meantime Margaret’s old friend and
confessor, Dr. Magnus, earnestly pressed on his attention the policy of
renewing his correspondence with Queen Margaret.
The reconciliation between Henry VIII. and his sister Margaret was
wholly ratified by Lord William Howard (uncle to Anne Boleyn), who
was appointed ambassador to Scotland in the autumn of 1534. His
instructions bear an especial clause, directing him to gain the
good graces of his King’s “dearest suster, the Queen-mother of
Scotland.”[439]
The only portion of Queen Margaret’s long letter of reconciliation
bearing directly on the previous coolness between herself and Henry
VIII. occurs in these words:--
“Please your Grace,[440] howbeit in time bypast some misadvised
persons have made unkindly report of Ws unto you, without cause
of offense in us, we have and always sal indured and continued
your most loving _cystyr_, intending no less all time of
our life, having sic confidence in you that ye will hold us the
same. Your Grace is our only brother, and Owz your only sister;
and since so is, let no divorce or _contraire_ have place,
nor no report of ill adviset alter our conceits, but brotherly
and cysterly love ever to endure, to the pleasure of God and
weal of us both. And trust no less in me than in yourself in all
and sindrie things at our whole power, as pleaseth your Grace to
command. Beseeching the eternal God to _consarve_ you in
everlasting grace.
“Written with our _awn_ hand at Edinburgh, the 12 day of
December instant, by your Grace awn and only
“Most lovyng and hummyll Cystyr,
“MARGARET R.”
Queen Margaret addressed a longer and more familiar epistle to the
all-powerful minister Cromwell, dated on the same day. She narrates
more of actual occurrences than usual in her wordy epistles. The
ostensible purport of the whole was to convey her loving greetings to
her new sister the Queen of Henry VIII., and commend herself to her
regard. Communications between Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and Anne
Boleyn are rarities in history.
Queen Margaret addressed Cromwell by the title of “My Lord Sacriter,”
meaning secretary, “and her dearly beloved friend,” informing him that
she had,
“By our dearest brother’s the King’s servitors, Master William
Barlow Prior and Thomas Holcroft, received the King our dearest
brother’s most loving letters, with sundry other honorable
tokens of remembrance, and also ane goodly letter, with ane
loving token from our dearest _cister_ the Queen (Anne
Boleyn), which not only shall be to our honor, but in like
manner unto his Grace and our dearest cistir, exhorting you
most affectuously that ye will in our name thank his grace most
heartily.”[441]
Margaret probably means that it will be an honor to Anne Boleyn to make
peace and heal differences between the royal families of Scotland and
England. She informs her brother’s secretary that she had summoned her
son to receive the envoys; and although King James had been but a very
short time convalescent of the infirmity of small-pox and fever, yet he
had traveled at the rate of twenty miles each day for eight days; and
at the last stage of twenty miles, being unable to proceed, had written
to her, his mother, requesting her to send her spouse Lord Methven to
convey the English envoys to him for audience. Margaret declares that
she had resolved to assist at this important congress, and great merit
she takes: “That on the next morrow, being the most troublous weather
that WE ever traveled into, WE _com_ to our dearest son, with whom we
communed and resolved, so that by the advice of us, and of no other
living person, determined and concluded the meeting.” The meeting thus
anxiously arranged and superintended by Queen Margaret, was to induce
her son’s acknowledgment of her brother’s tardily announced wedlock
with Anne Boleyn. The influence of the Queen-mother had evidently been
bought with high bribes, and she now looked forward to the pleasing
prospect of reaping golden harvests on every possible pretense whereon
she could hang a supplication for cash. She proceeds to declare the
opposition felt to Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn by the Chancellor
Beton and the rest of the spirituality of Scotland.
There is reason to believe that the tumultuous passions of young
James of Scotland only too eagerly seconded the recognition his uncle
demanded of the divorce of Katharine of Aragon and the marriage of Anne
Boleyn, for James himself was madly in love with the lady of Lochleven,
well known in Scottish history as the mother of James, afterward Regent
of Scotland. She was a married woman, but he came to the determination
of having her divorced, and following the example of his uncle of
England. His mother, whether she knew the scheme that had darted into
his brain or not, impetuously carried forward her brother’s plans.
Her letter to Cromwell described how the Catholic clergy in Scotland
submitted “in silence to the recognition of Anne Boleyn’s marriage,
save that they set a black friar to preach before her son in a sermon
made expressly to condemn it covertly.” “Which friar,” proceeds Queen
Margaret,[442] “we shall not stand content with, because his report
in some part concerned our dearest brother and his realm, howbeit
the same was colored and not expressly specifying his Grace nor his
subjects. We shall remember him (the friar) as cause requireth, but
assuredly the King, our dearest son, took no manner _tent_ (heed)
thereto.” Margaret concludes her letter to Cromwell with some exercise
of generosity in the way of a present, to which, notwithstanding her
alledged profusion, she was little addicted; her previous presents,
mentioned in her numerous letters, cost her nothing, being the famous
falcons, natives of the Scottish isles, called by her “hawks.” Her
gift to Cromwell was some kind of jewel. “And in rememberance ye will
receive ane little token, and wear the same for our pleasure, as she
that standeth to you your friend, at our power, and thinks her no less
indebted hearing of your faithful and obedient service done to the
pleasure, honor, and wealth of our dearest brother the King, and also
your good mind to us, his Grace’s only sister.”[443]
The uncle of Anne Boleyn, Lord William Howard, soon after returned
to Scotland, bearing the Order of the Garter,[444] with which it was
the pleasure of Henry VIII. to invest James V. The investment is
acknowledged by the Bishop of Aberdeen as taking place on March 4,
1534–5. Margaret soon after renewed her old petitions for cash, and by
Lord William Howard sent a pressing intimation “that her good services
deserved a pecuniary reward, which could be delicately tendered by her
brother by way of indemnifying her for her losses on her dower-lands
on the Marches.” In order to deserve her fees, she had contrived to
elicit from her son intelligence of the secret orders he had given to
his ambassador, Sir Adam Otterbourne, then resident at Hampton Court.
How he was not to agree to his uncle’s “new constitution of religion,”
and that he meant to change the place of meeting to Newcastle instead
of York. Margaret wrote down instantly a minute of all her son had
told her in confidence, and sent the particulars to her brother. A
baser breach of trust she never made. She added, that Sir Adam was
directed “not to press for answer in writing, but merely to report
cleverly what was remarked.” All these intimations Margaret thought
of sufficient moment to be forwarded by post to Berwick, whence they
were to be speeded onward. Margaret professed “that her son loved Henry
as his _natural_ father,” the more doubtless for the failure of
Anne Boleyn’s male heirs. Before the Queen-mother closed her letter,
she pumped other articles of Otterbourne’s instructions out of her
son; and she adds, “I spake with the King my son ere I directed this
letter. Please your Grace to have it close and secretly kept. By my
evil hand in haste. Off Edinburgh this 16 day of March.”[445] Lord
William Howard, who was again at Edinburgh in March 1535–6, informs
his master[446] “that Queen Margaret, and many others beside, had told
him that James meant to marry a gentlewoman of Scotland, the lord of
Erskine’s daughter, by whom he was already the father of a son.”[447]
Lord William then proceeds to give the erroneous tale that the King of
Scots “hath found the means to divorce her from her husband, and there
is great lamentation made in Scotland as far as men dare. No man was
privy to that matter but Sir James Hamilton.” Again that evil person
crosses the private history of the royal family of Scotland. Queen
Margaret’s own good name had been compromised a dozen years previously,
as shown in Lord Dacre’s dispatches. Since then he had assassinated
Lennox, and now appears as his young King’s arch-tempter.
Margaret was in consternation at the ruin which her example and that
of her brother was bringing on her son. James V. was on bad terms with
her; he had discovered her treacherous correspondence, and threatened
punishment. His rage broke out when his mother began to discuss his
meeting with his uncle at Newcastle. “Her Grace hath been so very plain
with him,” wrote Lord William, “that he is very angry with her. Your
Highness hath cause to give her great thanks. I humbly beseech your
Grace that Sir Adam Otterbourne (the Scottish resident ambassador) do
not know that I have _sartyfied_ your Grace that the marriage with
France was broken off, or he will cause the King’s Grace your nephew to
be angry.”[448]
The King of Scotland was angry, he raged at his mother; and Lord
William sent word to his royal master that “the King would not go to
York, which Queen Margaret and he had persuaded him to promise.” James
V., in an angry interview with his mother, recalled that promise. She
remained in consternation. What her son knew, or what he did not, she
could not ascertain. Her immediate imprisonment was hinted; yet she was
suffered to depart to Doune, near Menteith. Two days after she arrived
there, she dated a letter to her brother, assuming “that her son’s
displeasure arose because he would not meet his uncle at York, when he
chose to appoint Newcastle, on account of the free sea adjacent.”[449]
Margaret’s perplexity continued even up to May 12, when she wrote
an invitation for herself, that she might accompany her dearest
son to _wesy_ her dearest brother at the expected congress in
England--“_wesy_,” it may be guessed, is used by Margaret in the
sense affixed to the examinations of the late French passports, which
many of our readers will remember they had to send to be _visé_.
She owns in her letter that she has heard that Henry VIII. had such
important business in hand, “that she could hardly expect him to answer
whether he would be pleased for her to _wesy_ him or not; but
both she and Lord William were especially anxious for his answer.”
No wonder they waited long for their answer, for Henry’s important
avocations were connected with the demolition of his former idol, Anne
Boleyn, being no other than trying, divorcing, and beheading her. The
ambassador, Lord William Howard, who was the uncle of the unfortunate
lady, was of course anxious to learn the result of the astounding
tragedy. He speaks more, however, of Queen Margaret’s disgrace with
the King her son; for his secretary, Barlow,[450] wrote the same
day to Henry VIII., saying that “she was then in high displeasure
(disgrace) with King James, he bearing her in hand, or accusing her of
receiving gifts from her brother to betray him, with many other unkind
suspicious words; by reason of which she, greatly discomforted, is
weary of Scotland, and fully determined to come to England, so that it
be your Grace’s pleasure. She hath signified her mind in writing unto
your Grace, and likewise required us to solicit the same. Furthermore,
the King of Scotland’s purpose of marriage with the divorced
_jantylwoman_ is by no means to be dissuaded, but, against the
hearts of all his nobles, is like to be brought to pass (the French
marriage taking none effect), whereof no small disturbance is like
to rise within the realm.” Reports of Anne Boleyn’s imprisonment
were spread in the Scottish court before May 13 (the date of his
letter) came to a close. Lord William wrote to Cromwell concerning the
astonishment it caused to the Queen and the Scottish court, and begged
to have certain information, as he was asked every hour about the Queen
of England’s imprisonment, and could give no “_resolute answer_,
being ignorant.”[451]
Queen Margaret was not in the most easy state of mind: she had been
sternly answered by her son on renewing her importunities for his
meeting his uncle Henry VIII.:--“If,” said James V., “your brother
means by your aid to betray me, I had _liever_ (rather) it were
done while I am in mine own realm than in England!”[452]
Every one who has observed the proceedings of Margaret Tudor will be
rather surprised that her son had not addressed his remonstrance to her
a few years earlier than the date of Lord William Howard’s letter. As
it was, James, whose mind was in a tumult of passion, struggling with
the temptation of his unworthy love, and the honest wish to do his
duty to his people, was unwontedly severe to his mother; not that his
severity by any means came up to her deserts, but she had never before
been blamed by him. King James, in fact, was guilty of no severity to
his mother, except a few well-deserved reproofs. He took measures,
however, for the time to come, in his Council, that she had no power
but what she obtained surreptitiously. His vigorous mind ultimately
righted itself; the awful tragedy of his uncle’s lawless love for Anne
Boleyn was not lost upon him; he broke his bonds “with the divorced
_jantylwoman_”[453] (as Lord William Howard calls the mother of
the Regent Murray); he determined to marry respectably; but, in hopes
of matrimonial felicity, he resolved to see and converse with his wife
before he wedded.
At the departure of Lord William Howard from Edinburgh, Queen Margaret
was still there, in the Palace of Holyrood, but in disgrace with her
son, who retired in wrath to Linlithgow. Henry VIII., doubly engaged in
the destruction of his queen, and the wooing of her successor, had no
time to write to his sister. Very piteously did Barlow, the secretary
of the English ambassador, represent the case of Queen Margaret in
these words, addressed to Cromwell, May 25:[454]--“Her Grace Queen
Margaret hopes to receive some comfortable answer from the King, her
brother, in relief of her sorrow, which is not a little now, and like
to be much more grievous.” She wrote an urgent letter to her brother
the day of Lord William Howard’s departure, commending him and all his
proceedings to Henry VIII.; but the star of Howard had met with its
first obscuration in the disgrace of Queen Anne Boleyn.[455]
The projected alliance between the brother of Lord William and Lady
Margaret Douglas, there can be little doubt, was communicated by him to
the Queen-mother of Scotland during his embassies in 1536; which made
her recognize in the premier ducal family of England a future family
connection. Henry VIII. sent neither answer nor consolation to his
sister, who remained in deserved disgrace with her son, not daring to
renew her usual communication of his proceedings.
Some sudden urgency of pecuniary difficulty prompted her to demand
the cash she considered that she had earned in the affair of Anne
Boleyn’s recognition; for on July 16 she made a bold requisition from
her brother of 20,000 merks, “to help her out of perpetual pain, as
she had done all she could to further the visit of her son to England,
but he could not be induced to come.”[456] As her letter gave not
the slightest hint of her son’s voyage to France, which took place
a few days afterward,[457] July 24, Henry VIII. and his cunning
prime-minister, Cromwell, supposed Margaret had either lost the will
or the power to be their spy effectually. They bestowed no cash, but
expressed mighty astonishment wherefore she could want such heavy
sums “when her state was so prosperous under the protection of her
son and Lord Muffin.” In fact, it was utterly out of Margaret’s power
to send any intelligence regarding the King, otherwise than might be
gathered from any Scottish peasant crossing the Border; for her son
kept his voyage in search of a wife a profound secret from the world
in general,[458] and from his mother in particular. Margaret was left
without power in the government, and was fain to reside on her demesnes
in the west of Scotland.
Being thus under a cloud, and in disgrace with her royal son, she gave
a portion of remembrance to that other child from whom her divorce from
the father had estranged her. While residing at Perth, Queen Margaret
heard of the severity with which her daughter had been treated by Henry
VIII.; and that not only her unfortunate lover, Lord Thomas Howard,
but even the young lady herself was then suffering harsh imprisonment
in the Tower for their steadfast adherence to their betrothment with
each other. Exasperated by the whole proceedings of her brother and
his ministers, Queen Margaret wrote, August 12, 1536, in earnest
remonstrance regarding the ill-treatment of her child.[459] She wrote
with more eloquence and spirit than usual, reproaching her brother
with first encouraging her daughter in plighting her faith to Lord
Thomas Howard, and then punishing them both with rigorous imprisonment.
Margaret, in the course of her letter, demands with a high hand, that
her daughter may be sent forthwith to her in Scotland--if done, “she
will answer that her child will never trouble her brother more.” There
is a little relief from the selfishness of Margaret’s usual conduct,
to find the maternal feelings thus ardently breaking forth through
the crust of diplomacy. Queen Margaret, as she afterward affirmed,
was struck with such displeasure and indignation at her daughter’s
incarceration in the Tower, that it put a stop to her intended journey
into England, where she meant to have given her brother the honor
and advantage of her society, for the purpose of being re-married to
her former spouse, Archibald, Earl of Angus, then at his court.[460]
Although she speaks angrily in another epistle, “that any person could
believe such a thing of her,” yet, in a third dispatch, she mentions it
with complacency. Shakspeare might well have apostrophized her in the
words--
“False, fickle, changing woman!”
as he did her grandmother, whose conduct was more excusable.
Her maternal remonstrance was but a spark of high spirit just struck
out by circumstances, and extinct forever. She soon recurred to her
usual mean mendacity, while Henry VIII., in course of years, received
the perpetual complaints of his sister much in the same spirit that
pedestrians, on their beat daily, view the petitions of perennial
beggars hourly asking relief on the same distress. Margaret perpetually
urges her brother for money; perpetually giving as reasons the
ill-treatment of her son, or of one or other of her husbands. At this
period of her life, she varied her complaints by telling tales of her
son, and finishing up the picture of her wrongs with some dark touches
concerning her third husband, Harry, Lord Methven.
Her supplication was answered by her brother, in civil terms it is
true; yet a vein of quiet sarcasm runs through the composition.
“Dearest sister,[461] you shall understand, that like-as we
would be right sorry to see that our good brother and nephew
(James V.) should not use you in all things as beseemeth a
natural and kind son to use his mother, so you may certainly
persuade yourself, that in case we should certainly perceive
that you were treated otherwise than your honor and the treaty
of your marriage doth require, there shall, on our behalf,
want no loving and kind office which we think may tend to your
relief.”
In thus mentioning her marriage, her brother does not trouble himself
with the two husbands she married while Queen Dowager, but merely
with the marriage treaty which gave the Princess Royal of England the
crown-matrimonial of Scotland.
“But, dearest sister,” continues Henry VIII., “by the report
of Sir John Campbell, whom you recommended as your special
friend, it appeared to us that you be very well _handled_
(treated), and be grown to much _wealth_ (weal), quiet,
and riches; and, on the other side, by your account given our
servant, Berwick, it appeareth otherwise. These tales be so
contrary one to another, that we may well remain doubtful which
of them we may believe. Perceiving also, by other information
received from you, concerning your trouble and evil handling,
both by our nephew, your son, and by the ‘Lord Muffyn,’ that
either your state varies, or else things have not been well
understood.”
Henry VIII., however, ordered Cromwell to call Lord Methven to account
for his misdoings; but that noble only answered by asking Cromwell to
assure the King of England “that his own _simpleness_ was always
ready to serve him in all humility before all princes in the world,
excepting his own sovereign lord.” His letter was dated December 11, at
Edinburgh.[462] Poor Lord Methven! His few lines were evidently penned
in great astonishment as to how he had drawn on himself the wrath of
the terrible brother of his queenly spouse.
All the advantage possible to be made of the Queen’s complaints of
ill-treatment by her son and Lord Methven was taken by Henry VIII.
He hated Methven, because he had reason to know that he was a most
faithful servant to James V. But he affected to lend a pitying ear
to his sister’s woful representations, and took the opportunity of
sending Ralph Sadler to spy in Scotland during the absence of the
King, under pretense of the necessity of secret conference on some
delicate distress of his dearest sister, Queen Margaret. Sadler went
to Scotland, and returned laden with packets of the Queen’s letters
and verbal messages concerning a new divorce, as she had come to the
resolution of dismissing Lord Methven. She looked long and vainly
for answers. At last Harry Ray (the pursuivant called Berwick) came
ostensibly to inquire about some friars who had escaped across the
Borders, but in reality he was to have secret communication with Queen
Margaret, and hear from her lips the condition of Scotland, and whether
any mischief could be done in its young King’s absence.
Such was the gist of Harry Ray’s mission, which Margaret deemed was
to expedite her second divorce and fourth marriage with “one John
Stuart.”[463] For so both history and tradition name the cause of her
meditated change of spouses. It must be owned the Queen was constant
to the Stuart family. Her hand had already been given to King James
Stuart--she had divorced her second spouse, with the hopes of marrying
the Regent, John Stuart, Duke of Albany--she had actually wedded Harry
Stuart, and she now intended to marry some commoner called John Stuart,
if she could succeed in ridding herself of the spouse with whom she
had passed the last twelve years. A tradition exists among some of
the noblest families in Scotland, that Margaret’s fourth intended
husband was no other than that strange character, John Stuart Earl of
Arran, who, after effecting a revolution in the minority of James VI.,
vanishes suddenly from the historical scene in 1584. As Margaret was
partial to very young men, Arran might have been her intended spouse
in 1536, and yet not have seen sixty at the period of his death. He
was one of the Scotch colony of Darnley-Stuarts bred in France, whose
general code of morals did no great credit to their adopted country.
The interview between Queen Margaret and her brother’s agent was
conducted with the utmost caution. Harry Ray was requested to change
his gay gaberdine for a hat and cloak after the fashion of Scotland,
and to follow a friend of his, pertaining to Queen Margaret’s service,
into the private apartments of royalty at Holyrood. At nine at night
it was announced to him that Queen Margaret would give him secret
audience. “And there,” he says, “I met her alone in a gallery, no
person knowing of the interview but only her said servant.” The Queen
at first said, “You are welcome; but I marvel that I hear no word of
the letters I sent by Raufe Sadler. I trow my friends forget me! I pray
you speak to my lord of Norfolk (the Duke), that he be so good cousin
and friend as to remember the King, my brother, to be a kind and loving
brother unto me, and to see some way for me, as I shall be a kind and
loving sister to him, and at his commandment in all cases.”
Harry Ray, who was not the most diplomatic of all spies, replied, “I
shall not fail to do the same;” and then bluntly added, “that the Duke
of Norfolk desired her to show him some news.” Small hopes there were
of any good to be gained by fishing in troubled waters at that time.
Margaret’s answer showed that the Scottish people were unanimously
obedient to the vigorous intellect of their young monarch, absent
though he was.[464]
“There is not one lord in Scotland,” replied Queen Margaret, “that will
speak to the King, my son, good counsel toward England, unless it be he
take it of himself. All the lords and council here do verily believe
that your ships be gone forth on the western seas, to the intent to
seize the King my son. And now the Lords of the Scottish Council have
_sitten_ in counsel, for what purpose I know not; but upon their
rising they sent away Rosey[465] herald into France, to the King
thereof, thinking he would arrive before the departure of King James.
The herald was to oversee the country of England as he went through it,
and report the same to the King my son.”
The pursuivant said he should declare the same to the Duke of Norfolk,
and away he went.
Queen Margaret had not yet spoken her mind to the messenger, as those
who are acquainted with her furtive disposition can very well guess.
Next evening, at the very same hour, the English pursuivant had again
to throw off his gorgeous heraldic tabard, and muffle himself up in
Scotch plaid, before he followed his guide into the Queen’s private
gallery in Holyrood Palace.
“There shall be nothing done in this realm,” said the Queen, “but the
King my brother, and my lord of Norfolk, shall have knowledge of it.
The Lords and all the commonalty of Scotland do suspect that ye will
make war against them; and if it be so, let my lord of Norfolk make
sure of the Commons.”
Margaret meant the common people of England. The destitute poor among
them, in their extreme agony at the deprivation of support by the
monasteries, without other aid being provided, had lately risen in
the rebellion called the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” and were now daily
sending invitations to the King of Scotland for assistance. The Berwick
pursuivant rejoined, “Hath your Grace any _suspect_ that they are
not sure enough?”
“Nay,” answered Queen Margaret; “but I pray you show this unto him--and
also, if ye intend war, say, that I pray my lord of Norfolk that he
make no war until I and Harry Stuart be divorced. For if the war should
be before the said divorce were made, the Lords of Scotland will
suffer him to have my living.” There came Queen Margaret to her usual
conclusion of self-seeking: war was to be made to square with her own
pleasure and inclinations.
Margaret received no answer until the middle of May, when a dispatch
arrived from Cromwell,[466] full of general assurances of how earnestly
“the King, her brother, had travailed for her contentation in the
solicitation of her honorable causes.” The wily minister mentions
not the divorce, but presses her for intelligence from Scotland, and
sends her a present “of cramp-rings,” as his respectable master had
lately consecrated a batch of those useful and valuable articles.
Taking artful advantage of Margaret’s grumbling invectives against
her son, Henry VIII. had provokingly sent Ralph Sadler on a mission
to him when the highly-favored guest and son-in-law of Francis I.
The errand of Sadler was to remonstrate with the King of Scotland on
the great cruelty of treating his mother so very ill that she was
forced, by piteous bewailings, to awaken her brother’s compassion in
her favor.[467] How infinitely exasperated James V. must have been
may be considered, when the ill-treatment consisted only of his
disapprobation of his mother, then in her forty-eighth year, divorcing
her third husband to marry a fourth--out of these four husbands three
being then alive! According to Queen Margaret’s plea concerning James
IV., the whole four might be considered in existence on the best
authority!
The Queen, finding that her son and his fair French bride were embarked
for return to Scotland,[468] hurried on her divorce from Methven. She
had the whole process fairly transcribed, and it was on the very eve of
promulgation when James V. landed.[469] When Queen Margaret met her son
and his bride, all was joy and serenity for the first few days; which
happy order of affairs even outlasted her letter dated June 7, 1537,
and written to Henry VIII.,[470] “thanking him for the benefaction of
£200,” which sum she had at length extracted from him, that she might
appear queenly, for the honor of England, in the eyes of the royal
daughter of France. Margaret likewise thanks her brother for sending
his “secret servant, Master Sadler,” to her son in France, to complain
how ill she was treated in Scotland; that she had spoken at length to
James V., who sent an ambassador, the Abbot of Arbroath, to his uncle;
and very earnest is Queen Margaret that, although the Scotch envoy was
an ecclesiastic, her brother would not fall out with him, “but to take
kindly to the said abbot, lest he should make evil report; and that
he be well entreated, for he is great with the King my son; and let
him understand that it is your will and pleasure that I be honorably
entreated and obeyed of my living, seeing I am your Grace’s sister; and
this being done, your Grace will be kinder to the realm of Scotland for
my sake. These good words may do your Grace no hurt, and me much good;
and with the help of God I shall deserve the same at my power.”[471]
As for her new divorce, it was progressing to admiration. “Pleaseth
your Grace to know, that my divorce and _partition_ is at the
giving of sentence, and proved by many famous folk, to the number of
four-and-twenty provers. An’ by the grace of God, I shall never have
such a trouble again, and your Grace may be sure I shall _never_
do nothing but by your Grace’s counsel and commandment; for I may do
your Grace both honor and pleasure better now as I am. Beseeching your
Grace, if I have need, that I lack not your help and supply, which I
trust I shall not fail to have, if I be wronged in any thing I have a
right to.”[472] Unfortunately for the placidity of Queen Margaret’s
temper, directly her proceedings reached the ears of her son, his
first care, notwithstanding “all her famous folk, and four-and-twenty
provers,” was to quash the whole of the fine scheme.
Long and loud were her invectives on his want of filial duty. It is
strange, however, that throughout her correspondence she brings no
charge against Lord Methven, excepting “that he spent more of her
income than she thought right.” If such cause could be successfully
pleaded for dismissing a lord and master, perhaps Queen Margaret’s
example would be more generally followed. Tradition affirms, that
Lord Methven had been privately married to a young widow, called the
Mistress of Sutherland, by whom he had a family nearly the same age as
the children he had by the Queen; and that this lady’s offspring were
afterward mistaken for hers.
Margaret was on angry terms with her son during the short time his
Queen Magdalene lived. Greatly injured she deemed herself, on account
of the restriction he put upon the promulgation of “her sentence.” She
expresses herself on the subject of her wrongs, in her epistle to “her
cousin the Duke of Norfolk,” telling him she thought it--
“Great _on_ kindness that when ye do send in this realm,
that ye will not write or send to speak with me, that I may
hear from you, and you to hear how I am entreated. For, since
the departure of Master Sadler, I have gotten no word neither
from the King’s Grace my brother, nor yet from you, which were
greatly to my comfort to hear from.
“And, dearest cousin, I must make my complaint to you, how I
am heavily done to in this realm, for I have _optaynet_
(obtained) my cause of divorce betwixt ME and the Lord
of Meffen, and it is so far past that the judge has concluded
and written my sentence, ready to be pronounced this twelve
weeks bypast; but the King my son has _stoppen_ the
same, and will not let it be given, contrary to justice and
reason. And he promised, when I gave him my mains of Dunbar
for a certain sum of money, that I should have the sentence
pronounced.
“Thus, my Lord, I trust it be the King’s Grace my brother’s
will, that I have reason done me and obeyed of my living.
Suppose I may not write daily to his Grace, and seeing ye are so
near these parts (_he was at Sheriffe Hutton_), your good
writing and words would do me much good with the King my son, so
that he may understand that his Grace my brother will not suffer
me to be wronged, for I am daily holden in great trouble for the
lack of my sentence!
“Therefore I pray ye, my Lord and cousin, that ye will make some
errand here to the King my son, not saying I did advertise you;
but that everybody speaks of _it_ (_the expediency of her
divorce_), that I should lack justice which is _moder_
to him, which is to his dishonor.
“Thus, my Lord and cousin, ye may help me out of my trouble
through your good writing, for an’ they trust the King’s Grace
my brother will be displeased at this, they will remedy the
same. As for me, I am holden in such suspicion for England’s
(_sake_), that I dare send no Scottish man.
“Therefore I desire you to send some special servant of yours,
that I may speak withal,--praying you, my Lord, to do this at my
request, as ye will that I fare well; and as my special hest is
in you, the sooner ye send it is the better for me.
“And I pray you, my Lord, that you will give credence to Harry
Ray.
“And God have you in his keeping.
“Yours, MARGARET R.”
Endorsed, without date of time or place--“To my Lord and cousin,
the Duke of Norfolk.”[473]
In the midst of the angry controversy between the mother and son
concerning her absurd divorce, the hopes that Queen Margaret had
long cherished, that the English succession would eventually fall
to her line, seemed to be destroyed by the arrival of the news that
her brother had an heir born. The Queen dates her letter October 14,
acknowledging the information of the birth of her nephew (afterward
Edward VI.)--a date scarcely credible, as he was only born October
12.[474]
“Trusty and well beloved friend,” she wrote to Cromwell,[475] “I
commend me heartily to you, and _has_ received your writing
from the King my brother’s servant, and the joyful tidings that
ye have written to me, that God hath had the grace to send a
Prince to the King’s Grace my brother; the which I assure you,
next the welfare of the King’s Grace my brother, it is the
thing in the world most to my grace and comfort, praying God to
preserve him in health and long life, as I shall pray daily for.
Be the King my dearest brother in good prosperity, I trust I can
not be evil. But ye shall understand I have been and _is_
yet heavily troubled, as any jantlewoman may be; and I trust no
princes are in that sort entreated.”
In another letter, dated October 30, Queen Margaret again mentioned
the birth of her nephew Edward, with congratulatory expressions, and
renewed her complaints of her son’s cruelty. Yet she acknowledges that
she “was comforted to understand that, on the death of Lord Thomas
Howard, her brother had released her daughter, Margaret Douglas, from
the Tower.”[476]
A few days afterward, Queen Margaret wrote to Cromwell and to her
brother. In the latter epistle she gives the following curious
information,--“That though she had provided her judge with
four-and-forty _famous_ proofs, as cause of divorce between her
and Lord Meffin,” yet her son had undutifully stopped the divorce,
“and would not let it be pronounced. For no labor or soliciting by
me, my son will not do it, for this cause, as he alledges, ‘that I
would pass to England, and marry him that was Earl of Angus;’ and
this Harry Stuart, Lord of Methven, causes him to believe this of
ME![477] I had liever be dead,” adds Margaret, “for I am
holden in great suspicion.” She is indignant at having no residence but
a town to dwell in, being then abiding at Dundee.
James V. had at this time set his mind on obtaining a young lion, there
being one in Flanders, which his gentleman, Thomas Scott of Pitgarno,
had been sent to cheapen; but the agents of Henry VIII. bought it out
of his hands. Scott very naïvely says, “My maister is a young Prince
delighting in sic things for his pleasure; and he had assured him that,
if his uncle knew how he delighted in sic pleasures (young lions),
which are not gettable here, in my own simpleness I deemed that the
King of England would have suddenly propined his purchase to him, his
dear nephew.”[478]
Queen Margaret wrote formally to her brother, December, 1537, by Sir
Thomas Erskine and the Abbot of Kinloss, to announce the approaching
wedlock of her son and Mary of Lorraine, Duchess of Longueville.[479]
In a gossiping interview with Lord Wharton in the preceding October,
she had sent to her brother some particulars she had gleaned from her
son concerning the new bride’s complexion, stature, and jointure, which
will be best related in the life of that Queen.
Queen Margaret never lost the slightest opportunity of begging from her
brother, whether in rebellions or rejoicings, marriages or mournings,
festivities or funerals; it was always requisite to his honor that some
cash should be forthcoming. Her son’s marriage with the fair widow of
Longueville gave occasion for one of her most importunate requisitions,
not only for money, but for presents of plate.
“DEAREST BROTHER,[480]--Pleaseth your Grace to consider
now the coming into this realm of the lady, spouse to your
nephew our dearest son; and with her comes sundry strangers, for
the which, an’ it pleaseth your Grace, we think to address us
at this time, according so far as we may, to the honor of your
Grace and our noble progenitors.
“Wherefore, an’ please your Grace to be good brother to us,
as to support part with money and some silver-work (plate) as
pleaseth best your Grace to do, for we may be chargeable to your
Grace before all earthly creature.
“Beseeching your Grace, in our most humble manner, of your
Grace’s pardon hereunto, and that it please your Grace to
advertise me by this bearer of your Grace’s will anent the same,
in writing. An’ if it please your Grace to do such pleasure and
honor to me, your Grace’s only faithful sister, your Grace shall
more and more deem the same merited as in my possible power.
Almighty God conserve your Grace eternally.
“By the evil hand (writing) of your Grace’s humble sister,
“MARGARET R.”
From the time of Queen Margaret’s intimacy with her daughter-in-law,
Mary of Lorraine, her importunity for divorce ceased. But she wrote
another earnest petition to her brother for alms, by Rothesay Herald,
promising never again to be “cummersome to your Grace, but to guide
myself within bounds to your pleasure and my honor.”[481] Nevertheless
she obtained nothing. She wrote again, May, 1540, but whether with
better success can not be told: it was probably her last begging letter.
Readers of history have been willfully led, by certain party authors,
into the mistake of supposing that every bad Catholic was a good
Protestant. A more fatal error for the cause of true religion can
not exist; nor can the enemies of Christianity in general receive
greater satisfaction than when they find iniquities defended under
the plea that they are good for the advancement of some Christian
sect or other. To call evil good violates the truth oftener than to
represent good as evil; for, alas! poor human nature, in its feeble
attempts to do good, too frequently mingles it with some pollution or
other. But to represent such conduct as that of Margaret as zeal for
_reformation_ is at once an insult to truth and Christianity.
After scandalizing all sincere Christians by her attempts to break her
marriages, she affected, when she found sickness and age advancing,
great piety as a Roman Catholic, to which religion she had been
supposed to be inimical. “The young Queen is all Papist,” wrote
Norfolk to the Lord Privy Seal, Cromwell,[482] “and the old Queen not
much less, as I am informed she hath taken Harry Stuart again (Lord
Methven). She is now at Stirling, and therefore Berwick (the herald of
Henry VIII.) could not speak with her, whereof I am sorry.”
Queen Margaret authenticates the shrewd remark of her old
correspondent, Norfolk, by inditing in the same year an odd letter,
still extant in the State Paper Office, which must have been one of
her Easter good doings, as it is dated March 1, 1540.[483] “The Queen
recommends a poor religious man, Friar Joachim, sometime sacrist of
the Holy Sepulcher of our Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, and now monk of the
Abbey of Our Lady of Grace, situate betwixt the cities of Jerusalem and
Damascus, lately come to Scotland with patent letters of the Patriarch
of Jerusalem, to collect alms for the ransom of the abbot and monks of
St. Basil, violently taken and holden in prison by the Saracen infidels
in those parts.” Her Saracens, of course, are Arabs. The friar wished
to pass through England home, but dared not, without Margaret wrote to
her brother in his behalf. But how the redoubtable friar-expeller and
monk-killer relished this supplication from his penitent sister has not
come to light.
She aimed still at great influence in public life, and was mortified if
she found herself disregarded. When Sir Ralph Sadler came to Scotland
from Henry VIII., in February, 1540, to negotiate with her son James
V., he found her settled in her winter apartments at Holyrood. She was
broken in spirit and infirm in health. Sir Ralph had been charged by
her brother, Henry VIII., to visit the “old Queen,” and let her know
how desirous he was to hear of her health and prosperity. On hearing
this message she demanded of the ambassador if he had not a letter from
his master, and was displeased and hurt when she found the King, her
brother, had neglected to write to her. She said--
“Though I be forgotten in England, never shall _I_ forget England.
It would have been a small matter to have spent a little paper and ink
on me, and much would it have been for my comfort. Were it perceived
that the King’s Grace, my brother, did better regard me, I should be
better regarded by all parties here.”
One of her letters to Henry VIII. alludes to political intelligence,
which she had surreptitiously sent to him:--
“I trust,” she says, “you will stand my friend and loving
brother in that I get no hurt in nothing that I write to your
Grace, nor that you will write nothing concerning me, your
sister, to the King my son without I be first advertised, and
that it be with my advice. Praying your Grace, dearest brother,
that it will please you to do this for me, your sister, and I am
and shall be ever ready to do your Grace’s will and pleasure.
But I am afraid that I put your Grace to great pain and
travail to read my oft writing and my evil hand. Praying your
Grace to pardon me of the same, and that it will please you,
dearest brother, _to keep secret any writings that I send,
for otherwise it may do me great hurt_; which I trust your
Grace will not do to me, your sister, seeing I am remaining in
this realm, as God knows, whom preserve your Grace. Written at
Stirling the 12th day of May.”
Endorsed in a handwriting of the time--“The Queen Dowager of
Scotland to the King’s Majesty, 12th of May, 1541.”
It is only too plain that Queen Margaret was playing the old game
of execrable treachery, by sending intelligence to Scotland’s most
formidable enemy, although the government was now in the hands of her
son, instead of the “lords-adversaries,” or her “cousin Albany.” Thus
was the ruling passion strong in death; for the same person who, in her
first letter, wrote mischief-making gossip to her father concerning
her husband, James IV., and Surrey, at a time when she was scarcely
experienced enough with the pen to form the characters which conveyed
her meaning, now indites cautions, that her correspondence with her
brother may not be discovered by “her dearest son.”
Wordsworth has, with his usual admirable skill in psychology, noted the
identity of character between the boyhood and after-life of the same
man, by the terse line, “The boy is father of the man.” And of Margaret
Tudor may as truly be said--the girl was mother of the woman.
Queen Margaret was struck with palsy, Friday afternoon, November 20,
at Methven Castle. She had no idea that her sickness was unto death,
until a few hours before her decease. She was not under any alarm until
Tuesday noon, when she sent for her son, who was at Falkland Palace.
Finding she became worse every moment, she prepared for death according
to the rites of the Roman Catholic church. Her conscience was uneasy
regarding her spouse, Lord Angus; and she commanded the friars, to
whom she confessed, “to sit on their knees before the King, her son,
and beseech that he would be good and gracious to Lord Angus.” Queen
Margaret, moreover, exceedingly lamented, and asked “God mercy that she
had offended the said Earl as she had.”[484]
She likewise requested her confessors to solicit her son James V.
for her, to be good to the Lady Margaret Douglas her daughter, and
that he would give her what goods she left, thinking it right because
her daughter had never had any thing of her. She had made no will
previously to her mortal illness, and had neither time or memory
to dispose of her property after she was convinced she should die.
Whatsoever wrong Queen Margaret had done against her husband and
daughter, she had not the satisfaction of receiving her son’s promise
to right them as far as possible, for she expired before King James
arrived at Methven Castle. The King ordered Oliver Sinclair and John
Tennant, two gentlemen of his privy-chamber, to lock up all her
property. At the time of her death the Queen left in ready money but
2500 marks Scots. Henry VIII. sent Ray, the Berwick Herald, to learn
whether his sister was really dead, and whether she died intestate. The
herald obtained the above information.[485]
James V. gave his mother a most magnificent funeral. He attended in
person to lay her head in the grave, and accompanied her body from
Methven Castle to Perth, with a long procession of his clergy and
nobility. The burial-place of Queen Margaret was in the Abbey Church
of St. John, belonging to the great Carthusian monastery, from which
Perth occasionally takes the name of St. Johnston, being situated
without the Southgate Port, on the south side of the street where King
James VI.’s hospital has since been built. Her coffin was placed in the
vault of James I., near his body and that of his Queen Jane Beaufort,
founders of the Carthusian monastery. On its demolition by a mob at the
Reformation, 1559, it is said that these bodies were transferred to the
east end of St. John’s Church. Queen Margaret’s resting-place, with the
other royal remains, is supposed to be under a large blue marble slab,
carved in two compartments, with a royal crown of Scotland over each,
adorned with _fleur-de-lis_. In confirmation of the falsehood
purposely given out, that the family of Gowrie was descended from
Margaret, some of them were interred in the royal sepulcher under this
stone, particularly the young Earl James, who died in 1566.[486]
Margaret Tudor left two widowers; one the Earl of Angus, then an exile,
residing with her daughter Lady Margaret Douglas at the court of Henry
VIII. The other was Henry, Lord Methven. She was the mother of a son
and daughter by Lord Methven. There is great mystery concerning their
identity, as they were kept in the shade, owing to their mother’s
manœuvers at the time of her second divorce. Both died early in life. A
report is prevalent in history, that Lady Dorothea Stuart, the daughter
of Queen Margaret, was the mother of the Earl of Gowrie’s numerous and
ambitious family. The report was evidently encouraged by them, but
was untrue; the Lady Dorothea was betrothed to Lord Gowrie, but died
childless.[487] Burnet quotes a patent in which James V. confirms the
barony of Methven to Henry Stuart, his maternal brother, called the
Master of Methven, who, with his father (then Queen Margaret’s second
widower), was afterward killed, valiantly fighting at the battle of
Pinkie, September, 1547.
Some of Margaret Tudor’s mistakes in government, it is possible, may
be attributed to the fact that she is the first instance that occurs,
since Christianity was established in the island, of regnant power
being confided to the hands of a woman who was expected to reign as
_femme seule_. She had no education, scarcely any religion, and
was guided entirely by her instincts, which were not of an elevated
character. Her misdeeds, and the misfortunes attributable to her
personal conduct, gave rise to most of the terrible calamities which
befell her descendants. Some persons among the aristocracy of Scotland
followed her evil example of divorce, which caused long and angry
litigation concerning the birthright of their descendants. The fearful
feud between the houses of Arran and Darnley-Stuart was of this kind,
which deeply involved the prosperity of her granddaughter, Mary, Queen
of Scots. And that hapless Princess was likewise marked as a victim by
the cold and crafty Ruthven, on account of his family interests being
affected by Queen Margaret’s marriages and divorces.
A succession of tragedies, for three generations, was the consequence
of Margaret Tudor’s indulgence of her selfish passions. Nor are the
woes attendant on the contempt of the divine institution of marriage
limited to the great ones of the earth. Many a domestic tragedy,
though shrouded in the obscurity of every-day life, may be traced to
the same cause. Sorrow enters with sin; it desolates the peace of home;
and unoffending children suffer for the evil of their parents, whenever
persons are found to break, either by willful passions or litigious
contest, the earliest law given by the Almighty.
MAGDALENE OF FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
SUMMARY.
Lineage of Magdalene--Curious record of her birth by
her grandmother--Louisa of Savoy--Her christening--Her
governess--Costly nursery-plate--Magdalene’s elder sister
contracted to James V. of Scotland--Early deaths of Magdalene’s
sisters--Death of the Queen her mother--Magdalene proposed
as consort of James V. in place of her sister--Queen-mother
of Scotland’s favorite opposes the match--Captivity of
Magdalene’s father, Francis I.--Magdalene educated by her aunt,
Margaret of Valois--Liberation of her father--Magdalene’s
step-mother--James V. renews his proposals for Magdalene--Death
of her grandmother--Francis I. offers Magdalene to James V.--Her
rivals, the three royal Maries--James V. prefers Magdalene--Her
ill-health--Forbidden to quit France--Her father offers Mary
of Vendôme to James V. instead of Magdalene--James’s romantic
expedition to France--Visits Paris and Vendôme incognito--Secret
reports of his proceedings--Meeting between James and the
Dauphin at St. Sophorin--Affectionate reception of King James
by Francis I. at Lyons--First public meeting between James
and Magdalene--Their mutual love--Her illness impedes their
union--James accompanies Magdalene to Paris--Demands her
formally in marriage--Her younger sister offered to James--He
will have none but Magdalene--Her unexpected recovery--Marriage
articles between James and Magdalene--Her portion--Her jointure
as Queen of Scotland.
The history of Magdalene of France, the first consort of James V. of
Scotland, affords a touching exemplification of the oft-repeated fact--
“The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things.”
The Scotch, in their passionate regrets for the untimely loss of their
midsummer Queen of forty days, have in sooth enshrined her memory in
such an atmosphere of poetry as to render it difficult to speak of her
in that simplicity of sober prose which befits historical biography.
The parentage of Magdalene de Valois was peculiarly illustrious. Her
father was that chivalric and accomplished monarch Francis I., King
of France; her mother, Queen Claude, surnamed the Good, was the eldest
daughter and representative of two reigning sovereigns--namely, Louis
XII. of France, and Anne, Duchess of Bretagne, widow of Charles VIII.
of France. Claude had been affianced in childhood to the Emperor
Charles, when only Duke of Luxembourg; but the King, her father, to
prevent the alienation of the duchy of Bretagne, of which she was the
indisputable heiress, from the crown of France, gave her in marriage
to Francis de Valois,[488] the heir of that realm; thus securing to
her the prospective dignity of Queen-consort of France, and to her
eldest surviving son by that marriage the sovereignty, from which
she was barred by the Salic law. Francis succeeded to the throne of
France on the death of Louis XII. in 1515. Queen Claude was very near
her confinement with the Princess Magdalene, her fifth child, at the
time she had to preside over the splendid fêtes and tournaments at the
congress of Ardres, called the Field of the Cloth-of-Gold, in June,
1520. The courts of England and France separated on the 29th of that
month; Francis and Claude returned to Paris, and subsequently retired
to the royal new-built chateau of St. Germains-en-Laye, where, on the
10th of August, Magdalene first saw the light.[489] Her birth is thus
recorded by the pen of her paternal grandmother, Louise of Savoy, in
her curious chronicle of cotemporary events:--
“In August, 1520, on St. Lawrence’s day, at ten o’clock in the evening,
at St. Germains-en-Laye, was born of the Queen my daughter, Magdalene,
the third daughter of the King my son.”[490]
Francis I. having invited the republic of Venice to christen his
new-born daughter, the Venetian ambassador, as the representative of
that state, bore the infant princess to the baptismal font, and named
her Magdalene. “God preserve the royal sire, the mother, and their
children, in all prosperity!” exclaims their loyal cotemporary, Humbert
Vellay;[491] concluding his sprightly chronicle with the remark,--“This
written above was done before the sixth year of the reign of our King
Francis.”
Anne Boleyn was in the service of Queen Claude at the period of
Magdalene’s birth,[492] and was, of course, present at the ceremonial
of her baptism. Magdalene’s earliest preceptress was Madame de Brissac,
the aunt of Brantôme the historian, and the wife of a brave mareschal
of France. Some articles of plate belonging to the costly nursery
toilet of the infant princess subsequently found their way into the
royal jewel-house of Scotland, and are thus described by a Scotch
cotemporary:--
“Twa lytill culppis of gold, made to Quene Magdalene quhane sho was
ane barne.” In plaun English, two little cups of gold, made for Queen
Magdalene when she was a child. “Item, ane bassing and laver, sic lyk
maid for hir in hir barneheid; the tane of aget, the uther of jespe,
sett in gold, with ane lytill flacone of cristalline of the samyne
sorte;”[493] which, by interpretation, signifies, a basin and ewer, in
like manner made for her in her infancy; the one of agate, the other
of jasper, set in gold, with a little flagon of crystal of the same
fashion.
Magdalene had two brothers older than herself, Francis the Dauphin, and
Henry, Duke of Orleans, afterward Henry II. of France; and one younger,
Charles, who succeeded to that title when Henry became Dauphin. She had
also two sisters older, and one younger than herself.[494] These royal
children of France were all remarkable for their beauty and amiable
qualities. Of Magdalene’s elder sisters, the Princesses Charlotte
and Louise, Brantôme thus speaks--“Death came too soon to allow the
fair fruit of which the hopeful blossoms of their tender childhood
had given such beauteous promise, to arrive at their full perfection;
but, if those Princesses had been spared to reach maturity, they would
have been no whit inferior to their sisters, either in intellect or
goodness, for their promise was very great.”[495]
Two years before Magdalene was born, her future consort, James V.,
was engaged, by one of the articles of the solemn treaty for the
renewing the ancient alliance between France and Scotland, executed at
Rouen, 1518, to marry the younger of these Princesses. The eldest,
Louise, was promised to the Emperor Charles V., but death dissolved
both contracts before the affianced brides were of age to ratify the
pact. “Thus,” says the eloquent Brantôme, after his eulogium on their
precocious endowments, “the beautiful rosebuds are as often scattered
by the wind as the full-blown flowers of the same tree; but those that
are torn away in their immaturity are regretted a hundred times more
than those which have bloomed their day, and the misfortune is the
greater.”
Independently of the reasons of state policy, which rendered
matrimonial alliances with the united royal houses of France and
Bretagne desirable, the princes of Europe were eager to secure consorts
from the nursery of the good Queen Claude, who was considered a model
of maternal wisdom and conjugal patience. Instead of exciting factions
by complaints of the neglect of her royal husband, and the insolent
treatment she experienced from his haughty mother, Louise of Savoy,
she bore her wrongs with unruffled equanimity, and exerted her queenly
influence only in the cause of virtue and religion. She sought and
found her best consolation for her matrimonial infelicity in the
performance of works of piety and charity, and devoting herself to the
education of her children, and the moral government of her household,
which was considered the most correct and best regulated of any court
in Europe.
Magdalene was unfortunately bereaved of her mother when only four years
old; but the first seeds of virtue had been implanted in her infant
bosom--the bias toward good had been given; and doubtless this early
and judicious training of the tender child in the right way was the
foundation of all the amiable qualities for which she was afterward
distinguished.[496]
Queen Claude died at Blois, on the 20th of July, 1524--a disastrous
year for the royal house of Valois, marked by the revolt of the
Constable Bourbon, and a combination of all the princes of Europe
against France. The death of Magdalene’s royal mother had been preceded
by a domestic conspiracy against King Francis, involving the intended
destruction of his posterity. Brion, one of the King’s personal
confidants, in his speech to the Parliament of Paris, announcing the
discovery of this treason, used the ludicrously chosen expression,
“that the traitors had intended to make minced pies of the royal
children of France.”[497]
In the autumn of the same year there was a proposal, at the suggestion
of the Regent Albany, who, though he had quitted Scotland, still had
considerable influence in the councils of that realm, for a renewal
of the ancient alliance with France, according to the articles of the
Treaty of Rouen. By one of these articles, Francis I. had engaged to
give his younger daughter, with a fair portion, to the young King of
Scots; and as that Princess was dead, it was now proposed that her
next sister, Magdalene, should take her place, with a French province
for her portion, and twenty thousand crowns per annum as a pension.
James V., who was thirteen years old, had, in the interim, received an
embassy from his uncle Henry VIII., offering to bestow the Lady Mary,
his only child, and at that time reputed the heiress of England, in
marriage--apparently a much more advantageous match, and more suitable
to him in age than the _petite Madame de France_.
Jehan de Plains, one of the envoys from the French court, writes
from Edinburgh “that the Scotch secretary of state boasts that the
King of England had offered his daughter to King James, and that for
the security of his person, if he would meet him at York, Henry had
proposed to give up six of the most considerable persons in England as
hostages.”[498] The droll blunder of the Scotch diplomatist, in having
used the term _gros personnages_ instead of _grand_--whereby
Henry appears to offer six of the fattest persons in England as
sureties for his good faith--is slyly recorded, but without comment, as
the ludicrousness of the equivoque speaks for itself.
The Queen-mother of Scotland, intent only on serving her own purposes,
encouraged both proposals, writing the most abject letters to her
brother Henry one day, expressive of her deep sense of the honor
proposed to her son, and the next to Francis, assuring him “of the
delight it would give her to see a union between their dear children.”
The proposed marriage with Magdalene de Valois was far more popular
with the people of Scotland than that with Mary Tudor; and while the
negotiation was pending, the citizens of Edinburgh lighted bonfires and
made public rejoicings for the capture of Milan by Francis I. in the
commencement of his Italian campaign,[499]--an ephemeral and deceitful
success, which was too quickly followed by the fatal battle of Pavia,
where the royal father of Magdalene was defeated with great loss, and
taken prisoner. This disastrous event occurred February 25, 1525.
Francis, who was severely wounded, announced the bitter tidings of his
calamity to his mother in an autograph letter, containing only these
memorable words,--“Madame, all is lost but honor”[500]--a sentence
not more characteristic of the spirit of that chivalric prince than
descriptive of the state of his realm. France was at that time in a
perilous position, convulsed by the base practices of traitors within,
and exposed to the attacks of powerful foes without.
The Imperial eagle, “with her two beaks, that she might the more
devour,” hovered over the long-contested duchy of Burgundy, and the
fair provinces of the south, on the one side; the lion of England was
in readiness to assert his dormant but unforgotten claims to Normandy
and Aquitaine, if not to the sovereignty itself, on the other; and even
the Switzer was contemplating the annexation of a territory beyond the
Alps.
The reins of government were in the hands of the most unpopular woman
in France--Louisa of Savoy. The army was destroyed; the nobility
dispirited by the loss of sons, brothers, or fathers; tears were in
all eyes, and gloomy presentiments in every heart. Among the few,
indeed, who were unconscious of the portentous aspect of the political
horizon, and insensible of the perils that threatened to lay the throne
of the Valois dynasty in the dust, were those whom it most deeply
concerned--the children of the captive representative of that royal
line.
One of the effects of the disastrous position of the fortunes of
Francis I. was the nullifying of the treaty for the projected marriage
between his daughter, Magdalene, and the young King of Scots. Up to
that moment Magdalene’s grandmother, Louisa of Savoy, had kept up an
affectionate correspondence with the Queen-mother of Scotland, for the
continuance of the Scotch alliance, and the future marriage of James V.
and the Princess Magdalene; and of such vital moment did it appear to
Louisa that she had actually agreed to allow Margaret Tudor, the said
Queen-mother, a pension of 40,000 crowns per annum, for her good-will
and assistance in this matter. Henry VIII., however, contrived to break
the treaty, by offering his daughter Mary as a consort for the young
James; and officially notifying to Louisa of Savoy, and her council of
regency, that unless the contract between the Princess Magdalene and
his nephew, the King of Scotland, were abandoned, he would withhold
his promised aid for the liberation of Francis I. Louisa reluctantly
yielded to the force of circumstances; and caused her secretary to
write a friendly letter to Queen Margaret, resigning Magdalene’s claims
to the hand of the King of Scotland, and signifying her acquiescence to
his union with Mary of England.[501]
To Magdalene, the loss of a doll would have appeared a far greater
misfortune than the matrimonial disappointment which her royal
sire’s calamity involved. She was at that painful epoch happy in the
cherishing care of her kind aunt, Margaret of Valois, the widowed
Duchess of Alençon, better known in history by her subsequent title of
Queen of Navarre. This accomplished princess, the only and tenderly
beloved sister of Francis I., took upon herself the nurture and
education of his motherless daughter, and more than supplied to her
the place of the maternal parent, of whom Magdalene had been so early
bereaved.
The mental powers of Margaret of Valois were, indeed, of a much
higher order than those of the deceased Queen. Her sister-in-law,
Claude, was a good woman, but Margaret was both good and great. Her
learning, her genius, and lofty grasp of intellect, rendered her the
most distinguished female of the age--an age which could boast of
the daughters of Sir Thomas More, of Vittoria Colonna, Katharine of
Aragon, and Katharine Parr. In the all-important matter of religion,
too, the change from Claude to Margaret was doubtless highly beneficial
to Magdalene; for Claude’s devotion to the practice and principles of
the Papal church amounted to superstition, but Margaret’s enlarged
mind made her a Christian of the church universal; and though she
departed not from the faith in which she had been educated, she
eschewed its abuses and exclusiveness. She raised her voice against
persecution, then the besetting sin of the monarchs of Christendom;
and she protected with her all-powerful influence the champions
of the Reformation.[502] The illustrious sister of Francis I. is
supposed to have imbued the mind of her royal niece with the same
liberal principles[503] that rendered herself the friend of religious
toleration, not from political motives, as the watchword of a party,
but on the divine grounds of Christian love and moral justice.
Alarming reports of the state of Francis’s health induced Margaret to
consign her young pupil to other care for two months, in order to pay
him a visit of sisterly sympathy and consolation. Francis was at that
time incarcerated in a gloomy fortress in Madrid, debarred from air
and exercise, hopeless of ever beholding his country or his children
again. After languishing for several months in that painful state of
“hope deferred which maketh the heart sick,” he was attacked with
fever, which threatened to terminate his imprisonment and his life
together. In this sad condition his faithful sister, on her arrival,
found him. Her indignant representations induced the Emperor to visit
his unfortunate captive. The company and tender attentions of his
beloved sister, who had brought him cheering tidings of the fair
promise of his children, contributed to restore Francis to health and
spirits. The clear-sighted Margaret, however, after she had conferred
with Bourbon, and visited the Emperor Charles at Toledo, perceived
that there was no real intention of releasing her brother, unless on
conditions derogatory to his honor as a gentleman, and his duty as
a sovereign. She therefore devised a plan for his escape, which, if
it had succeeded, would have completely outwitted the cold-hearted
imperial jailer. Margaret had made arrangements without the castle
which would have insured the success of her scheme, if an accidental
quarrel between his only two French attendants had not ended in one of
them, named Clermont Champion, betraying the project to the Emperor.
That prince intended to revenge himself on the fair deviser of the plot
by detaining her as a prisoner, the term of her safe-conduct having so
nearly expired that he judged it would be impossible for her to reach
France without its being renewed, which he had made up his mind to
refuse. Margaret, however, having timely notice of this unchivalric
design, left Madrid privately, and, traveling night and day, succeeded
in crossing the frontier of Navarre one hour before the expiration of
the time specified in her passport.[504]
Margaret sought consolation for her unsuccessful efforts for her royal
brother by resuming her maternal care of his young daughter, Magdalene.
Francis finally purchased his liberty at the price of subscribing a
most humiliating treaty, and giving up his two eldest sons, Francis the
Dauphin, and Henry, Duke of Orleans, as hostages for its performance.
Though Magdalene was too young to participate in the agitation and
anxiety which these eventful changes excited in the bosoms of those
nearest and dearest to her, the separation of her two elder brothers
from the infant royal circle, to be sent into the hostile land of
Spain, was a circumstance likely to fill her eyes with tears, and to
awaken strange and mysterious apprehensions for those loved companions
of her infant years. On the 18th of March 1526, Francis, escorted by
fifty Spanish officers, arrived at Fontarabia, on the banks of the
Bidassoa, which bounds the Spanish frontier, at the same moment that
his two boys appeared with a similar escort on the opposite bank,
under the charge of the Mareschal Lautrec. Both parties embarked
simultaneously, and met in a large barge, which was anchored for that
purpose in the center of the stream. There the exchange of the father
for the sons took place. Francis, who appeared afraid of trusting his
own feelings, folded his children together to his heart in a brief but
passionate embrace, blessed them, then breaking from their innocent
endearments, precipitated himself into the boat they had just quitted,
and in a few moments landed on the French shore. His horse being in
waiting for him, he mounted, and, waving his plumed cap above his head,
shouted “I am a King once more.”[505]
At Bayonne he was met and welcomed by his mother, his sister Margaret,
and his children, of whom Magdalene and an infant prince and princess,
both younger than she, were all that now remained to Francis of his
once numerous and promising family--at least in France, for the Dauphin
and the little Duke of Orleans were now both in the possession of
the Emperor. Regardless of the peril in which he was involving his
princely boys, Francis violated the treaty for the performance of
which they were the hostages, and the war was resumed with redoubled
fury. Reproaches, revilings, and defiances to decide the quarrel by
single combat, were exchanged between him and the Emperor; till at
last, finding it impossible to agree even as to the time and place of
a personal encounter, they wisely referred their differences to female
arbitration. Francis named his mother, Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of
Angoulême, and Charles his aunt Margaret, Governess of the Netherlands,
as their respective plenipotentiaries. These Princesses, neither of
whom were celebrated for dove-like attributes, met at Cambray, and
astonished all the statesmen and ecclesiastics of Europe by arranging
between the bellicose rivals an amicable treaty, which, in memory
of their mediation, was called the Ladies’ Peace. Francis agreed to
complete his marriage with Charles’s sister, the Queen-Dowager of
Portugal; and Charles to restore the sons of Francis, on condition of
being paid two millions of crowns as their ransom. This peace, which
gave a step-mother to Magdalene, was proclaimed in the autumn of 1529.
Hitherto Magdalene had resided with her aunt, Margaret of Valois,
who had contracted a second marriage with Henry d’Albret, King of
Navarre, and whose court was the resort of all that was brilliant and
intellectual. Anne Boleyn was one of Margaret’s ladies, at the very
time Magdalene was under the care of that accomplished Princess;[506]
and though the great difference in age probably prevented any thing
like friendship, they were certainly domesticated together for several
years. Their acquaintance was thus necessarily of very early date,
yet there was no similarity in manners or character between the young
French Princess and the lively English maid of honor. The premature
deaths of her mother and two elder sisters, combined with her own
peculiar delicacy of constitution, had impressed Magdalene with the
salutary conviction of the uncertainty of human life: the captivity of
her royal father and brothers had shown her enough of the vicissitudes
of fortune to induce habits of reflection even in childhood, and she is
said to have been pensive and sensitive beyond her years.
Magdalene, after her father’s second marriage, resided with his Queen,
Eleanora of Austria, who proved a kind step-mother; and though
she never succeeded in winning the love of her faithless lord, who
probably could not forgive her for being the sister of his enemy, she
conciliated the affections of his children.
There was an attempt in the spring of 1531, on the part of James V. of
Scotland, to renew his suit for the hand of Magdalene, by sending James
Hay, Bishop of Ross, and Master Thomas Erskine, Secretary of State,
ambassadors to France, March 26th, for treating of marriage, says the
cotemporary Scotch authority, “betwixt our King’s Grace and the said
King of France’s dochter.”[507] Magdalene was, however, too young at
that period to be betrothed to her royal suitor.
On the 22d of September, the same year, died Magdalene’s grandmother,
Louisa of Savoy, Duchess of Angoulême. It was fortunate for Magdalene
that she was educated by her noble-minded aunt, instead of being
brought up under the influence of a princess of the vindictive temper
and inconsistent conduct of her grandmother, who, while she scrupled
not to kindle the fires of persecution against the Reformers, under
the pretext of zeal for the Church, was in the practice of habitual
disobedience to its prohibition against unhallowed attempts to pry into
futurity.
James renewed his suit for the hand of Magdalene by his ambassadors in
the spring of 1533, the Princess being then in her thirteenth year.
Francis replied very affectionately by letter, expressing the pleasure
and satisfaction it would afford him to complete the ancient bond of
alliance between himself and the King of Scotland by this marriage.
“Provided,” writes he to the latter, “you shall think good to wait till
such time as our very dear and well-beloved daughter Magdalene be of
sufficient age to complete the said matrimony now contracted between
you; but if, in the mean time, either you or your subjects should think
such delay injurious to your realm, then we will give you the choice
among all our nearest relations, or any other match in our dominions,
for a consort, promising to give such lady the rank of a daughter of
our own, and to endow her suitably.”[508]