Chapter VI: Summary (1)

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.