List of Illustrations

Unknown woman, by Hans Holbein. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

The Somerley Portrait, attributed to Luca Penni. (Reproduced by permission of Somerley Enterprises)

Unknown woman, by William Scrots, c.1544–55. (© Christie’s Images Limited, 2015)

The only authenticated portrait of Margaret; detail from the Darnley Memorial painting by Livinius de Vogelaare, 1568. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, French School, sixteenth century. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Margaret Tudor, possibly French School, copy of an original portrait of c.1514–15. (The Provost and Fellows of The Queen’s College, Oxford)

Harbottle Castle, Northumberland. (© Daniel Ewen)

Tantallon Castle, East Lothian. (© Kieran Baxter)

Norham Castle, Northumberland. (© Bailey: Jonathan/Arcaid/Corbis)

Henry VIII, artist unknown, Anglo-Netherlandish School, c.1535–40. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, eighteenth-century copy of a portrait attributed to Johannes Corvus (Jan Rav). (By permission of Sudeley Castle)

The Princess Mary, later Mary I, by Master John, 1544. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

Mary Shelton, by Hans Holbein. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, by Hans Holbein, c.1532–3. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Queen Anne Boleyn, attributed to British School, sixteenth century. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Verses copied by Margaret into the Devonshire Manuscript. (By permission of the British Library, Additional MS. 17,492 The Devonshire Manuscript, Margaret Lennox 65 r)

The Tower of London, engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, c.1640. (The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto)

Syon Abbey, by Jonathan Foyle, 2004. (© Dr Jonathan Foyle)

Kenninghall, Norfolk. (Arundel Castle Archives, and reproduced by kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Norfolk)

Thomas Howard, 3^rd Duke of Norfolk, by Hans Holbein, 1539. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

The ‘Man in Red’, German Netherlandish School, c.1530–50. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Marie de Guise, Queen Dowager of Scotland, artist unknown, seventeenth century. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

St James’s Palace, London. (© Cindy A Eve – 3DaysInLondon.info)

The Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. (© WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Stepney Palace. (The Angus Library and Archive, Regent’s Park College)

Wressle Castle. (© Mark Morton)

Temple Newsam, engraving by Johannes Kip, 1707. (© UK Government Art Collection)

The west wing of Temple Newsam. (© Stephen Woodcock)

Settrington, Yorkshire. (© North York Moors National Park Authority)

Jervaulx Abbey. (© Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Queen Katherine Parr, artist unknown, c.1545. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

Miniature of an unknown woman, by Levina Teerlinc, c.1560. (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Anne Stanhope, Countess of Hertford and Duchess of Somerset. (U1590 Z68 – Courtesy of Kent History & Library Centre, Maidstone by kind permission of The Trustees of Chevening Estate)

Elizabeth I, miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, c.1572. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

William Cecil, Lord Burghley, artist unknown, seventeenth century. (© National Trust Images)

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, attributed to Steven van der Meulen, c.1560–5. (© The Wallace Collection, London)

The former Charterhouse at Sheen, pen and ink with watercolour by Antonis van der Wyngaerde, 1562. (WA.C.LG.IV.12b, detail from: Richmond Palace from across the Thames, © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)

Henry, Lord Darnley, and Charles Stuart, by Hans Eworth, 1563. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Henry, Lord Darnley, and Charles Stuart, attributed to Hans Eworth, 1562. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Margaret’s unnamed daughters, from her tomb in Westminster Abbey. (© Angelo Hornak/Corbis)

The Lennoxes’ house at Whorlton, drawing by Samuel Buck, 1725. (By permission of the British Library, MS.914 Lansdowne MS)

The Lennox Jewel, obverse and reverse. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

Mary, Queen of Scots, artist unknown, c.1569. (Reproduced by permission of Blairs Museum)

Henry, Lord Darnley, artist unknown, 1567. (© Alan Spencer Photography)

The Lieutenant’s Lodging (now the Queen’s House) in the Tower of London. (© Sebastian Wasek/LOOP IMAGES/Loop Images/Corbis)

The murder scene at Kirk O’Field. (The National Archives, MPF 1/366)

Coldharbour, London, from Walter Thornbury’s London, Old and New. (Digital Collections and Archives, Tufts University)

Somerset Place, Strand, London. (© Look and Learn)

The Darnley Memorial, by Livinius de Vogelaare, 1568. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

The Darnley Memorial, undefaced copy after Livinius de Vogelaare, c.1568. (The Trustees of the Goodwood Collection/Bridgeman Images)

Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, by Livinius de Vogelaare, c.1568. (© National Trust Images)

John Erskine, Earl of Mar, by John Scougal, after an unknown artist. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

James Douglas, Earl of Morton, by Arnold van Brounckhorst, c.1578. (Scottish National Portrait Gallery)

Stirling Castle. (© Joe Cornish/Arcaid/Corbis)

Barber’s Barn, Hackney, artist unknown, lithograph of 1842. (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

Brooke House in 1920. (Reproduced by permission of the Bishopsgate Institute)

Brooke House, engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1642. (© Look and Learn)

The chapel at Brooke House, engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, 1642. (Reproduced by permission of Historic England)

Wall painting in the chapel. (Reproduced by permission of the Survey of London/British History Online)

Charles Stuart as a child, English School, c.1565. (Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, UK National Trust Photographic Library/Bridgeman Images)

Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox. (Whereabouts unknown. Every effort has been made to trace the owner of this picture, without success. Anyone with information about it should contact the publishers.)

Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury, attributed to Rowland Lockey, 1590s. (© National Trust Images)

Arbella Stuart, artist unknown, 1577. (© National Trust Images)

“A Scottish lady at length in mourning habit’, British School, sixteenth century. (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015)

James VI, King of Scots, by Rowland Lockey after Arnold van Brounckhorst’s original of 1574. (Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, UK National Trust Photographic Library/Bridgeman Images)

Margaret’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. (© Werner Forman/Werner Forman/Corbis)

Margaret’s tomb effigy. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

Introduction

ROYAL TUDOR BLOOD ran in her veins. Her parentage was of ‘high renown’.¹ Her mother was a queen, her father an earl, and she herself was the granddaughter, niece, cousin and grandmother of monarchs. Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, was an important figure in Tudor England, and yet today, when her Tudor relations have achieved almost celebrity status, she is largely forgotten.

Her story deserves to be better known. It is of an extraordinary life that spans five Tudor reigns, and is packed with intrigue, drama and tragedy. In an age in which women were expected to be subordinate to men, and to occupy themselves only with domestic concerns, she stands out as a strong, capable and intelligent character who operated effectively, and fearlessly, at the very highest levels of power. The sources for her life are rich and varied, and many of her letters survive. In writing her biography I am building on research I began in 1974, when, wishing to rescue Margaret from obscurity, I started work on a book about her. But my tale of a forgotten Tudor princess remained untold.

In 2010 I attended a lecture on Margaret Douglas by a good friend, Siobhan Clarke, a Tudor historian who guides in costume as Margaret at Hampton Court. Hearing Siobhan revived my interest at a time when the field of Tudor biography was becoming crowded. It reminded me that Margaret Douglas deserved to be better known. Siobhan Clarke was the ideal person to write her biography, and I tried to persuade her to put pen to paper, but she very generously urged me to tackle the project myself. When I put the idea to my publishers, they realised immediately that the life of Margaret Douglas provides many missing links in the story of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties.

As always, I do my research first from original sources, and evolve theories from that. When I come to look at the secondary sources, I sometimes find that other historians have reached the same conclusions. Where they have come up with valid theories different from my own, I have credited them in the notes.

Paragraphs were not used in sixteenth-century letters, but where I have quoted extensively from contemporary letters here, I have broken them up so that they are easier to read. I have used the National Archives Currency Converter to determine the approximate present-day values of sums quoted in the text; these appear in brackets. Please note that values could change from year to year.

I should like to express my warmest appreciation and thanks to my British editor, Anthony Whittome, and my American editor, Susanna Porter, for their expertise and their wonderful creative ideas, which have enriched the book in so many ways. Thanks are also due to Dan Franklin at Jonathan Cape for so enthusiastically commissioning the book; to Clare Bullock at Cape for her excellent picture research and support; to Jane Selley, for being such an observant and accomplished copy-editor; to Alison Rae, for great proof-reading; to Neil Bradford for his inspired work on the illustrations sections; to Darren Bennett for his superb maps; and to Ceri Maxwell for being such a great publicist. Special thanks go to Dr Josephine Wilkinson for preparing the indexes for both the British and American editions of the book; to Nicola Tallis, who came to my rescue as I was racing to a deadline by searching out and transcribing crucial documents in the National Archives and the British Library; to the historian Linda Porter, for thoughtfully offering to lend me Sarah Macauley’s thesis on the Earl of Lennox, which has proved very helpful.

I wish to acknowledge the huge support I have received from my agent, Julian Alexander, and from my husband Rankin. As the French writer, Antoine de Sainte-Exupery once wrote, ‘One man may hit the mark, another blunder; but heed not these distinctions. Only from the alliance of the one, working with and through the other, are great things born.’

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Readers may find it helpful to refer to the Dramatis Personae here.

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Prologue

IN 1515 THE Palace of Linlithgow, future birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots, was a magnificent royal residence overlooking one of Scotland’s most beautiful lochs. A favoured residence of the Scottish kings, it had been built by successive monarchs around a great courtyard and boasted a fine hall and princely chambers.

It was to this tranquil setting that, in September that year, Margaret Tudor, Queen Dowager of Scotland, Countess of Angus and sister of Henry VIII of England, came to bear her seventh child.

We have no record of her going into confinement – or taking to her chamber, as it was known – but it is likely that she followed the ceremonial observed by her mother, Elizabeth of York, and attended a service in chapel, where she and her household prayed for a safe and happy delivery; after this she would have been served spiced wine and comfits before bidding farewell to the lords and officers in attendance and disappearing with her women beyond the traverse, the heavy curtain that hung over the door to her bedchamber. Here she would remain secluded until after her child was born, and it was assumed that she would rest and take good care of herself in preparation for the birth.

But Margaret Tudor did no such thing. She remained in her chamber for just forty-eight hours, convinced that she was in danger and determined to flee from her enemies. At midnight on 13 September, accompanied only by her second husband, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, his brother, George Douglas, and four or five servants, she left Linlithgow by stealth. It had been agreed with Thomas, Lord Dacre of Gilsland, Henry VIII’s warden of the northern border Marches, that the sympathetic Alexander, Lord Home, would meet Queen Margaret a few miles from Linlithgow with forty ‘hardy and well-striking fellows’, and escort her south to Blackadder Tower, a castle in the Scottish Borders whence she could easily make her escape into England.¹ At the rendezvous, it was decided that, rather than go straight to Blackadder, over sixty miles away, Home should escort the Queen’s party to Angus’s great castle of Tantallon, a spectacular stronghold high on the cliffs overlooking the Firth of Forth, near North Berwick. That still involved a ride of fifty-five miles, and Margaret Tudor, who was nearly eight months pregnant, must have been exhausted when she got there.

But there could be no respite. On 16 September, the party continued on its way south to Blackadder Tower. The regent of Scotland, the Duke of Albany, who was ruling for Margaret’s infant son, James V, had learned of the Queen’s escape and sent a large force in pursuit – and it was not far behind her. Fearful that her flight would undermine his support in Scotland, or that she would return with an English army, he was intent on bringing her back, and ready to offer concessions. But Margaret Tudor later formally complained that he had already declared her and her husband traitors.² Fearing that Albany would besiege Blackadder Tower, she continued south towards Berwick, which lay just across the border with England. Sir Anthony Ughtred, its English governor, had no authority to receive her, so she and her party had to cross back over the River Tweed to Scotland, where she sought shelter at Coldstream Priory.³

Margaret Tudor was now sick and had to be nursed by Agnes Stewart, Lady Home,⁴ and it was probably from Coldstream that she wrote to Henry VIII craving ‘mercy and comfort’.⁵ She had to wait until a messenger had returned from London with express directions from King Henry as to where his sister should be received and made welcome. It would have been a relief when Lord Dacre arrived to escort her into England, because Albany’s forces had already captured Lord Home.

King Henry had agreed that Queen Margaret might be received into England on condition that no Scottish man or woman accompanied her. He was determined that, in his kingdom, his sister should be subject to no outside influence. Moreover, she was to stay in Northumberland until she ‘knew further of his wishes’.⁶ Margaret Tudor therefore had to bid farewell to Angus and the rest of her escort. Before Angus returned north, Dacre made him swear an oath that he would never come to terms with Albany.

The King had designated Dacre’s official residence, Morpeth Castle, as Margaret Tudor’s temporary abode, but Dacre, concerned about her condition, felt that Harbottle Castle, out in the wilds near the village of Otterburn, was more easily accessible. On Sunday 30 September, like a ‘banished person’,⁷ the Queen crossed into England and so to Harbottle.⁸ Her desperate flight ensured that the circumstances of her daughter’s birth were as dramatic as her life would be.

Northumberland in the sixteenth century was wild and remote country, a lawless place scarred by centuries of Scottish raids and border warfare. Unlike the peaceful south of England, where castles were no longer built for defence, medieval fortresses still provided security for local nobles and the officers who commanded the English military presence, which was still a necessity in this unsettled region.

Harbottle Castle stood on a high mound at the head of the outstandingly beautiful Coquet Valley, an area known for its healthy air. It was an old royal fortress, first erected in 1157 by Henry II, and rebuilt in stone around 1200. The name derives from ‘here-botl’, an Old English word for an army building. The rectangular keep was one of Lord Dacre’s residences as Warden of the Marches, whence he governed a large and turbulent area and dealt with the constant border warfare between the English and Scots and local clans. Harbottle was essentially a military base and a prison. Surviving records show that the main accommodation was in the keep, and that the castle was kept in good repair at royal expense.⁹ But it was ill-prepared for a royal confinement.

In the last weeks of the Queen’s pregnancy she ‘lay still at Harbottle’. Dacre was an attentive host, and Margaret Tudor had much cause to be grateful to him, especially after her labour began too soon. It lasted for forty-eight hours.¹⁰ According to her own account, she gave birth ‘fourteen days before her time’, on 7 October.¹¹ The child was a girl.

1

‘A Fair Young Lady’

MARGARET TUDOR WAS the eldest daughter of Henry VII, the first Tudor King of England, and his Queen, Elizabeth, heiress of the royal House of York. She had been born in November 1489 and was just thirteen when, in 1503, in the interest of forging good relations with Scotland, England’s traditional enemy, she had been married to James IV, King of Scots, who was sixteen years her senior and renowned for his lechery. Four of their six children died in infancy, but in 1512 Margaret Tudor bore a son, also called James, who thrived.

However, the following year James IV invaded England, seeking to take advantage of Henry VIII’s absence on a campaign in France. The English were not unprepared, however, and a large force under the command of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, marched north to confront James. The two armies met on 9 September 1513 at Flodden in Northumberland, and by the end of the day King James and the flower of the Scottish nobility lay slaughtered in the field. It was one of the most cataclysmic events in Scottish history, immortalised in ballads such as ‘The Flowers of the Forest’, in which it is claimed that twelve thousand were slain. Nearly every notable family lost at least one of its sons, and the impact of this disastrous defeat would be felt for generations.

Scotland was now under the nominal rule of an infant, James V, and subject to yet another long minority; such had been its fate for more than a century, as king after king had succeeded in childhood. It was a kingdom dominated by huge interrelated families, notably the Stewarts, the Douglases and the Hamiltons, and this age-old clannish system of kinship groupings had nurtured a fierce sense of family. Allowed virtual autonomy during a succession of regencies, the factious Scottish nobility had come to enjoy great power and pursue deadly rivalries. Alliances and loyalties constantly shifted, and blood feuds could persist for centuries.

The great lords were all hungry for power, and it was rare for a widowed queen to be granted custody of her children; nevertheless Queen Margaret was named regent of Scotland during the minority of her son and given the guardianship of the young King and his infant brother. She had been newly pregnant when her husband was killed, and in April 1514, at Stirling Castle, she had borne another son, Alexander, Duke of Ross.

On 6 August 1514, less than a year after her husband’s death, Margaret Tudor secretly married again without consulting the Scottish lords or her brother, Henry VIII. Her bridegroom was Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus – ‘Ard’, as he styled himself¹ – a member of her Council and the head of the faction that supported her rule. Handsome, charming, courteous and accomplished in chivalric exploits, he was the son of George Douglas, Master of Angus, and a widower, having lost his first wife, Margaret Hepburn, the year before. Angus, who at twenty-six was the same age as his bride, was ‘very lusty in the Queen’s sight’.² He was a man of mild temper, dry humour and undoubted courage, and although his enemies saw him as treacherous, he was good at building and maintaining friendships. He was ambitious, wholly committed to the aggrandisement of his family, and hungry for power. Although this was a love match on Margaret Tudor’s part, it was probably prompted more by self-interest on Angus’s.

The Douglas family was an ancient one and could trace its origins back to the Dark Ages. A William Douglas had fought for the Emperor Charlemagne, and Sir James Douglas had carried King Robert the Bruce’s heart to the Holy Land; since then the arms of his descendants have borne a crowned heart. Their crest, which Margaret Douglas would also use, was the salamander. They were an ambitious tribe, into which Margaret’s strong character fitted well, and ‘family envies were strong’,³ leading in 1380 to the clan splitting into two feuding branches, the senior being the Black Douglases and the junior the Red Douglases, to which line the earls of Angus belonged.

The 5th Earl, Archibald ‘Bell-the-Cat’ Douglas, the most powerful noble in the kingdom, had played traitor against King James IV in 1482, allying himself with Henry VII of England, but he was back in favour a decade later, having established the Douglases as the foremost family in Scotland. He had won his nickname – ‘belling the cat’ means performing a challenging task – by getting rid of a royal favourite. But his son, George Douglas, Master of Angus, Margaret Douglas’s grandfather, had perished at Flodden.

The history of the Douglas clan was a violent one; few of its prominent members had died in their beds, and it looked very much as if Angus, who succeeded ‘Bell-the-Cat’ as earl in 1514, might be of their number, for it soon became apparent that he was determined to rule Scotland. His marriage to the Queen, and her subsequent advancement of the Douglases to high offices, excited the jealousy of the Scottish nobility and provoked the pro-French party at court, which was headed by James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, a man renowned for his heroic triumphs in the tournament field; it reignited a centuries-old feud between the Douglases and the Hamiltons, and gave rise to a civil war in Scotland. Scotland had long been allied to France, and both countries had a long history of enmity with England; but Margaret Tudor was determined to continue as regent with the pro-English Angus at her side. Her opponents asserted that, under Scottish law, by remarrying she had forfeited the office of guardian (‘tutrix’) to her under-age children. The Arran-led Council resolved to replace her with John Stewart, Duke of Albany, a grandson of James II and the next royal heir after her sons. Albany was an honourable man and a capable administrator, but he regarded himself primarily as a Frenchman – he had been brought up in France, where he owned vast estates – and was reluctant to take up office in Scotland.

At once the Queen withdrew with her children to the safety of her mighty dower fortress of Stirling, set high on its volcanic crag at the gateway to the Scottish Highlands, against the spectacular backdrop of the Trossachs and the Ochil Hills; whereupon the Scottish lords rose in arms against her. Angus was ousted from power, and Albany, who was still in France, was offered the regency.

Queen Margaret appealed repeatedly to her brother, Henry VIII, for aid, impressing on him that ‘all the welfare of me and my children lies in your hands’.⁴ Henry threatened Scotland with war, while privately urging his sister to escape with her children to England, but she dared not attempt it because her enemies were keeping her under constant watch.

Margaret Tudor was six months pregnant with her first child by her new husband when, on 12 July 1515, the anti-English Albany was formally installed as regent. He treated her with courtesy at first, but when he learned that Angus, fearing for the safety of the young King and his brother, was plotting to send them to England, he laid siege to Stirling, seized the little boys from the Queen, and made himself their custodian. Margaret Tudor had no choice but to consent; her supporters had either fled or been taken, and she herself was now a captive. In grief at losing her sons, she drew up a long ‘remembrance’ of her complaints, which she sent to Thomas Magnus, the English ambassador to Scotland, who was then staying in Northumberland.⁵

Thereafter relations between Queen Margaret and Albany grew ever more tense. He made her write to her brother that she was content, and other letters ‘contrary to her own mind’, and he kept her ‘strict prisoner’ and under surveillance in Edinburgh, so that she was unable to see her sons, whom Albany had ‘in ward’.⁶ He had also deprived her of her revenues, leaving her in extreme poverty.⁷ She entreated Henry VIII to send someone to mediate between her and the Regent; ‘she was in much woe and pain, and besought remedy for God’s sake’.⁸ But Albany was hostile to England, and for years would make every effort to raise an army and attack it. Effectively forcing Margaret Tudor into a position where she felt the need to flee from Scotland was an insult to Henry VIII, who naturally took her part and responded by offering her refuge.⁹

It was to the Queen’s advantage that the birth of her child was approaching, for she was planning to flee to England before it was born. No one would suspect a woman going into seclusion of plotting an escape, for once she had taken to her chamber, she would remain there until she was fit enough for her churching, the ceremony of thanksgiving and purification that marked the end of a woman’s confinement and her return to normal life.

On 1 August Margaret Tudor wrote from Edinburgh to Henry VIII: ‘Brother, I purpose, by the grace of God, to take my chamber and lie in my palace of Linlithgow within this twelve days, for I have not past eight weeks to my time, at the which I pray Jesu to send me good speed and happy deliverance.’¹⁰

Knowing that she could count on the aid of her brother, she sent her trusty servant, Robert Carr, to Thomas Magnus and Lord Dacre to ask them to inform the King of her secret plans, and ask for his assistance, which he had already commanded Dacre to extend to her.¹¹

Lord Dacre was then forty-eight, fierce, indefatigable and politically astute.¹² In 1485 he had fought for the last Plantagenet King, Richard III, against the future Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth, but had quickly made his peace with the Tudor victor, who had made him a Knight of the Bath. Dacre had been serving on the Scottish Marches since 1485, and had been made Warden General in 1509 by Henry VIII. He had fought against the Scots at Flodden, but he had been willing to help Margaret Tudor smuggle her sons into England earlier in 1515. At that time she had expressed fears that Scotland was so infested by robbers as to render travelling dangerous, but that seemed the lesser evil now. Dacre and Magnus assured their master that, ‘notwithstanding her Grace is within six weeks of her lying down, yet she hath ascertained us she hath good health, and is strong enough to take upon her this journey’.¹³

On 1 September 1515 Lord Dacre wrote to Queen Margaret, urging her to make haste to steal away to Blackadder Tower. Its owner, Andrew Blackadder, had fought and fallen under the Douglas standard at Flodden, and his widow and daughters were loyal. Dacre assured Margaret Tudor that, considering she was near her time, this was the best course of action. She would want for neither household goods nor money, and if all went to plan, her children would be safely restored to her and she herself would be restored as regent. Dacre himself would rendezvous with the Queen and escort her through the marsh where Blackadder Tower stood, ‘so that you can resort [there] without any danger’.¹⁴

But on 3 September Margaret Tudor informed Dacre that she had a strategy of her own.¹⁵ Feigning sickness, she obtained Albany’s permission to remove with her husband to Linlithgow Palace for the birth of their child.¹⁶ She and Angus travelled there on 11 September, closely followed by a letter from Lord Dacre informing the Queen that Henry VIII had been advised of her plight, and had confirmed his offer of asylum in England. Everything was now in place for her escape.

After the birth of her daughter Margaret Tudor ‘fell into such extreme sickness that her life was despaired of by all’.¹⁷ Given the drama of her flight and the stress she had suffered, that was hardly surprising.

Dacre evidently thought the birth of a daughter of little importance, and it was not until 18 October that he informed Henry VIII that on ‘the eighth day after that the Queen of Scots, your sister, came and entered into this your realm, her Grace was delivered and brought in bed of a fair young lady’. He added that ‘the sudden time, by God’s provision so chanced’, took them all unawares. His excuse for not writing sooner was that he had been too busy, and he had not thought it worth sending a letter for the sole purpose of informing the King that he had a new niece.¹⁸

The Queen’s child was christened the day after her birth,¹⁹ on 8 October, the ceremony probably being held in the castle chapel; at the font she was given the name Margaret, after her mother.²⁰ Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the minister who was all-powerful at the English court, had been chosen by Queen Margaret as a godparent, in absentia.²¹ Dacre was to explain to the King that the baptism had taken place ‘with such convenient provisions as could or might be had in this barren and wild country’, although everything had been ‘done accordingly as appertained to the honour of the same’, considering the suddenness of the birth.²²

Because she was born in Northumberland, the ‘fair young lady’ started life as an English subject. Her uncle, Henry VIII, had as yet no surviving child to succeed him; his nearest heirs were his sister, Margaret Tudor, and her children, James V and now Margaret Douglas. Although Henry VII, in his will, had not excluded Margaret Tudor’s issue from the succession, James V was not an Englishman; since the fourteenth century there had been a common-law rule against alien inheritance,²³ and a majority opinion in England held that that applied to the royal succession. Hence Margaret Douglas was second in line to the English throne after her mother until such time as Henry’s Queen, Katherine of Aragon, bore a living child – and Dacre was wrong to regard her as a person of little political importance.

On 10 October, three days after the birth, Queen Margaret was sufficiently recovered to write reprovingly to Albany: ‘Cousin, I heartily commend me unto you, and where I have been enforced for fear and danger of my life to depart forth of the realm of Scotland, so it is that, by the grace of Almighty God, I am now delivered and have a Christian soul, being a young lady.’ She demanded to be reinstated in the regency, desiring him ‘in God’s name, as tutrix of the young King and Prince, my tender childer, to have the whole rule and governance’ of them and of Scotland.²⁴

Albany refused, informing her that ‘the governance of the realm expired with the death of her husband, and devolved to the estates’ and ‘that she had forfeited the tutelage of her children by her second marriage’; if she would not listen to reason, he would be compelled to resort to sterner measures to prevent the disunion between the two kingdoms.²⁵

Angus, meanwhile, had entered into a solemn covenant with several powerful, sympathetic nobles to liberate James V and his brother and unite in opposition to Albany. That was sufficiently alarming for Albany to offer the Queen apologies, terms and the return of her jewellery; he said he would even take Angus into favour if she would return to Scotland; but she refused.²⁶

When, on 18 October, Dacre informed Henry VIII of Margaret’s birth, he asked what was to be done with his royal guest. Her lying-in was proving ‘uneaseful and costly’ because all necessities had to be carried some distance to Harbottle, so he was ‘minded to move her Grace to remove to Morpeth’ as soon as she had been churched. Dacre evidently feared that Margaret Tudor would make difficulties about the move, as he suggested to the King that ‘it may like your Highness to signify your mind and pleasure unto her, that we may move her accordingly’.

As soon as he had been informed of his sister’s imminent arrival in England, Henry VIII had sent one of his gentlemen ushers, Sir Christopher Garnish, north with suitably royal clothing, plate and other necessities for her and her child. Garnish deposited these at Morpeth, then travelled to Harbottle with a letter from Henry that was ‘greatly to the Queen’s comfort’. Because she was still lying in, and was expected to keep to her chamber for at least three weeks, Dacre advised Garnish to return to Morpeth and remain until she was fit to travel there and receive her brother’s gifts.²⁷

After Queen Margaret’s churching in late October, Henry VIII wanted her to journey south and join the lavish Christmas festivities at his court, but she was too ill to travel, or even to be moved.²⁸ For weeks she lay bedridden at Harbottle with a ‘great and intolerable ache that is in her right leg, nigh to her body’, which may have been due to sciatica, a trapped nerve or a fracture. It was not until 26 November that she was well enough to travel. Dacre settled her and her infant in a litter and set off for Morpeth Castle, nearly thirty miles south-east of Harbottle, but ‘her Grace was so feeble that all of this way she could not suffer no horses to go in the litter’, so it had to be borne by ‘honest personages of the country’.²⁹ On the way they had to rest for four days at fourteenth-century Cartington Castle, a strong fortress of stone. Their next stop, on Sunday 2 December, was five miles away at Brinkburn Priory, and the following morning they came to Morpeth, where Dacre had summoned local dignitaries to greet the Queen.

The castle at Morpeth had been built in the thirteenth century on a steep bank south of Ha’ Hill, replacing an earlier eleventh-century structure. Its keep, the Great Tower, stood within a bailey surrounded by a curtain wall.³⁰ Dacre had spared no expense to welcome the sister of his sovereign. John Younge, Somerset Herald, wrote: ‘Never saw I a baron’s house better trimmed in all my life: the hall and chambers with the newest device of tapestry, his cupboard all of gilt plate with a great cup of fine gold, the board’s end served all with silver vessels, lacking no manner of victual and wildfowl to be put on them.’³¹

When Henry VIII learned that Queen Margaret had borne her child, he commanded all the important gentlemen of Northumberland ‘to do them pleasure’.³² He lifted the ban on any Scot attending upon her, which meant that Angus was now free to join her at Morpeth and meet his new daughter. Lord Home was of his party. When Garnish visited Queen Margaret in December,³³ bringing a letter from the King assuring the Queen and Angus a warm welcome at the English court, she received him lying in bed, and was much cheered by her brother’s kindness.

In fact Henry was loudly proclaiming to all how badly his sister had been mistreated by Albany, and accusing the Regent of tearing her from her children, insulting and abusing her, stealing her jewels, forging her handwriting, and forcing her, in late pregnancy, to flee for her life. It was reported in France that ‘if the Duke of Albany did not abstain from and make reparation for his injuries to Margaret and her children, Henry would make him do so’, and was already planning to invade Scotland.³⁴ Albany tried to defend himself, protesting that he had had no idea that the Queen had intended to escape, and went on begging her to return to Scotland. The French ambassador added fuel to the flames by claiming that she had been in no danger and had run off in a temper, but no one wanted to listen.

Queen Margaret was still weak on 8 December, when she was carried out of her bedchamber in a chair to inspect the rich gifts the King had sent her. Among them were twenty-two gowns of gold and cloth of tissue, silk and velvet, trimmed with fur.³⁵ Garnish informed Henry VIII that she was ‘one of the lowest-brought ladies, with her great pain of sickness, that I have seen and [es]cape[d death]’, and was suffering such agony in her leg that, when she had to be moved or turned in bed, ‘it would pity any man’s heart to hear the shrieks and cries that her Grace giveth; and yet, for all that, her Grace hath a marvellous mind upon her apparel for her body’.³⁶ She seems to have been more preoccupied with her new wardrobe than with her baby. Showing off the gowns to Lord Home, she cried, ‘Here ye may see that the King my brother hath not forgotten me, and that he would not that I should die for lack of clothes!’³⁷

On 17 December Sebastian Giustinian, the Venetian envoy in London, reported that when Queen Margaret was better, she would ‘by his Majesty’s orders come to the court in London’.³⁸ But at Christmas, although ‘great house’ was kept at Morpeth,³⁹ the intolerable pain in the Queen’s leg worsened. The local physician and surgeon having failed to cure her, Dacre wrote to Henry VIII asking that a royal doctor be sent north.⁴⁰ Apparently – possibly for want of any word on her progress – it was assumed at the English court that the infant Margaret Douglas had died, for on 2 January Cardinal Wolsey informed Giustinian that Queen Margaret ‘is yet most grievously ill, having been prematurely delivered of a daughter, who had subsequently died’.⁴¹ In fact the baby was thriving.

It was not until the end of January 1516 that Queen Margaret began to recover. On 15 March Dacre reported to Henry VIII: ‘She amendeth continually and is greatly desirous to be coming towards your Highness.’ But, fearing for her health, Dacre was keeping back some tragic news. On 28 December a Scottish delegation had brought word from Stirling Castle that the Queen’s favourite son, twenty-month-old Alexander, had died. The cause is not recorded, but in an age long before antibiotics, many children died in infancy, as had four of Alexander’s older siblings. Garnish observed, ‘If it comes to her knowledge, it will be fatal to her,’⁴² and when, in March, Dacre felt that she was sufficiently strong to bear the news, she collapsed in grief. Dacre did not ‘suspect any danger or peril of life’, but he again asked the King to send a physician from London all the same.

Encouraged by an indignant Henry VIII, Margaret Tudor blamed Albany for Alexander’s death, and in her formal complaint against him would state that ‘it is much to be suspected he will destroy the young King, now that her son, the young Duke, is dead, most probably through his means’.⁴³

Two weeks later she suffered another blow when Angus told her that he would not be accompanying her to the English court. ‘More simple than malicious’ (as the French ambassador to Scotland described him at this time),⁴⁴ he wanted to make peace with Albany and secure the restoration of lands confiscated by the Regent. Without even taking leave of his wife, he left her and their daughter and returned to Scotland with Lord Home.⁴⁵ Dacre, who saw this as no less than abandonment, chased the escaping lords as far as Coldstream, but none of his reproaches or pleas could persuade them to return. True to Angus’s expectations, Albany pardoned him, received him and Home into favour, and promised to return his lands, and thereafter Angus remained a close associate of the Regent.

Angus’s sudden departure ‘made [the Queen] much to muse’.⁴⁶ She took it ‘right heavily, making great moan and lamentation’, and looked to her brother for succour, crying that without it, ‘the King her son and she are likely to be destroyed’.⁴⁷ This is the first evidence of a rift between the Queen and Angus, the first sign of the marital strife and power struggles that were heavily to overshadow Margaret Douglas’s childhood.

Meanwhile a temporary peace between England and Scotland had been agreed, and Scottish envoys were on their way to London to discuss terms for Queen Margaret’s return to Scotland. The Queen was to follow in their wake. She was sufficiently recovered to leave Morpeth on 7 April 1516, but the litter and horses sent by Henry VIII did not arrive until four o’clock, so she and Margaret, now six months old, set off the next day. They were escorted by Lord Dacre and others as far as Newcastle.⁴⁸ Here they were greeted by the city dignitaries and Sir Thomas Parr (father of the future Queen Katherine), before proceeding south the next day to Durham, where there was another civic welcome. From here Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, accompanied the Queen’s party to York, where Angus, sent by Albany, unexpectedly caught up with them and asked the Queen if he might join a Scottish embassy that was preparing to enter England. Still disgruntled with him, she refused, whereupon he returned to Scotland.

On 27 April Queen Margaret was at Stony Stratford in Northamptonshire, and on 3 May she reached Enfield, Middlesex, where she stayed at Elsyng Palace,⁴⁹ the home of Sir Thomas Lovell, treasurer of Henry VIII’s household. The next day she rode on to the village of Tottenham, north of London, and it was here, in Bruce Castle, the newly built manor house of a favoured courtier, Sir William Compton,⁵⁰ that Henry VIII was waiting to greet her and his infant niece. Brother and sister had not seen each other for thirteen years. When Margaret Tudor had gone to Scotland, Henry, two years her junior, had been a boy of twelve. Now he was a handsome, athletic, talented and egotistical man of twenty-five, and had been ruling England for seven years. Queen Margaret saw before her a tall, broad-shouldered Adonis with flame-red hair and a beardless chin; Henry would not metamorphose into the bearded, overweight colossus of later years for another two decades.

After a short conversation, the King escorted his sister, his niece and their retinue the rest of the way to the City of London, and at six o’clock that evening Queen Margaret, royally attired and riding a white palfrey, passed in procession along Cheapside, preceded by Sir Thomas Parr and followed by many lords and ladies. Thus she came to Baynard’s Castle by the River Thames, a royal residence that she would have remembered well from her childhood. Here lodgings had been made ready for her and her daughter.⁵¹ After resting there until 7 May, mother and child joined the court at Greenwich Palace.

Henry VIII and his Queen, Katherine of Aragon, received her there joyfully, and with them was the youngest Tudor sibling, Mary, the widow of Louis XII of France. A year before, Mary, the beauty of the family, had caused a scandal by secretly making a second marriage, for love, with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Henry had been furious, and had imposed a crippling fine on the couple before receiving them back into favour. Now there were feasts, revels, jousts and a banquet in the Queen’s chamber.