Chapter VI · SUMMARY. (continued 2)

“Trusty and well beloved friend,” she wrote to Cromwell,[475] “I commend me heartily to you, and has received your writing from the King my brother’s servant, and the joyful tidings that ye have written to me, that God hath had the grace to send a Prince to the King’s Grace my brother; the which I assure you, next the welfare of the King’s Grace my brother, it is the thing in the world most to my grace and comfort, praying God to preserve him in health and long life, as I shall pray daily for. Be the King my dearest brother in good prosperity, I trust I can not be evil. But ye shall understand I have been and is yet heavily troubled, as any jantlewoman may be; and I trust no princes are in that sort entreated.”

In another letter, dated October 30, Queen Margaret again mentioned the birth of her nephew Edward, with congratulatory expressions, and renewed her complaints of her son’s cruelty. Yet she acknowledges that she “was comforted to understand that, on the death of Lord Thomas Howard, her brother had released her daughter, Margaret Douglas, from the Tower.”[476]

A few days afterward, Queen Margaret wrote to Cromwell and to her brother. In the latter epistle she gives the following curious information,—“That though she had provided her judge with four-and-forty famous proofs, as cause of divorce between her and Lord Meffin,” yet her son had undutifully stopped the divorce, “and would not let it be pronounced. For no labor or soliciting by me, my son will not do it, for this cause, as he alledges, ‘that I would pass to England, and marry him that was Earl of Angus;’ and this Harry Stuart, Lord of Methven, causes him to believe this of ME![477] I had liever be dead,” adds Margaret, “for I am holden in great suspicion.” She is indignant at having no residence but a town to dwell in, being then abiding at Dundee.

James V. had at this time set his mind on obtaining a young lion, there being one in Flanders, which his gentleman, Thomas Scott of Pitgarno, had been sent to cheapen; but the agents of Henry VIII. bought it out of his hands. Scott very naïvely says, “My maister is a young Prince delighting in sic things for his pleasure; and he had assured him that, if his uncle knew how he delighted in sic pleasures (young lions), which are not gettable here, in my own simpleness I deemed that the King of England would have suddenly propined his purchase to him, his dear nephew.”[478]

Queen Margaret wrote formally to her brother, December, 1537, by Sir Thomas Erskine and the Abbot of Kinloss, to announce the approaching wedlock of her son and Mary of Lorraine, Duchess of Longueville.[479] In a gossiping interview with Lord Wharton in the preceding October, she had sent to her brother some particulars she had gleaned from her son concerning the new bride’s complexion, stature, and jointure, which will be best related in the life of that Queen.

Queen Margaret never lost the slightest opportunity of begging from her brother, whether in rebellions or rejoicings, marriages or mournings, festivities or funerals; it was always requisite to his honor that some cash should be forthcoming. Her son’s marriage with the fair widow of Longueville gave occasion for one of her most importunate requisitions, not only for money, but for presents of plate.

“Dearest Brother,[480]—Pleaseth your Grace to consider now the coming into this realm of the lady, spouse to your nephew our dearest son; and with her comes sundry strangers, for the which, an’ it pleaseth your Grace, we think to address us at this time, according so far as we may, to the honor of your Grace and our noble progenitors.

“Wherefore, an’ please your Grace to be good brother to us, as to support part with money and some silver-work (plate) as pleaseth best your Grace to do, for we may be chargeable to your Grace before all earthly creature.

“Beseeching your Grace, in our most humble manner, of your Grace’s pardon hereunto, and that it please your Grace to advertise me by this bearer of your Grace’s will anent the same, in writing. An’ if it please your Grace to do such pleasure and honor to me, your Grace’s only faithful sister, your Grace shall more and more deem the same merited as in my possible power. Almighty God conserve your Grace eternally.

“By the evil hand (writing) of your Grace’s humble sister,

“Margaret R.”

From the time of Queen Margaret’s intimacy with her daughter-in-law, Mary of Lorraine, her importunity for divorce ceased. But she wrote another earnest petition to her brother for alms, by Rothesay Herald, promising never again to be “cummersome to your Grace, but to guide myself within bounds to your pleasure and my honor.”[481] Nevertheless she obtained nothing. She wrote again, May, 1540, but whether with better success can not be told: it was probably her last begging letter.

Readers of history have been willfully led, by certain party authors, into the mistake of supposing that every bad Catholic was a good Protestant. A more fatal error for the cause of true religion can not exist; nor can the enemies of Christianity in general receive greater satisfaction than when they find iniquities defended under the plea that they are good for the advancement of some Christian sect or other. To call evil good violates the truth oftener than to represent good as evil; for, alas! poor human nature, in its feeble attempts to do good, too frequently mingles it with some pollution or other. But to represent such conduct as that of Margaret as zeal for reformation is at once an insult to truth and Christianity. After scandalizing all sincere Christians by her attempts to break her marriages, she affected, when she found sickness and age advancing, great piety as a Roman Catholic, to which religion she had been supposed to be inimical. “The young Queen is all Papist,” wrote Norfolk to the Lord Privy Seal, Cromwell,[482] “and the old Queen not much less, as I am informed she hath taken Harry Stuart again (Lord Methven). She is now at Stirling, and therefore Berwick (the herald of Henry VIII.) could not speak with her, whereof I am sorry.”

Queen Margaret authenticates the shrewd remark of her old correspondent, Norfolk, by inditing in the same year an odd letter, still extant in the State Paper Office, which must have been one of her Easter good doings, as it is dated March 1, 1540.[483] “The Queen recommends a poor religious man, Friar Joachim, sometime sacrist of the Holy Sepulcher of our Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, and now monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Grace, situate betwixt the cities of Jerusalem and Damascus, lately come to Scotland with patent letters of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to collect alms for the ransom of the abbot and monks of St. Basil, violently taken and holden in prison by the Saracen infidels in those parts.” Her Saracens, of course, are Arabs. The friar wished to pass through England home, but dared not, without Margaret wrote to her brother in his behalf. But how the redoubtable friar-expeller and monk-killer relished this supplication from his penitent sister has not come to light.

She aimed still at great influence in public life, and was mortified if she found herself disregarded. When Sir Ralph Sadler came to Scotland from Henry VIII., in February, 1540, to negotiate with her son James V., he found her settled in her winter apartments at Holyrood. She was broken in spirit and infirm in health. Sir Ralph had been charged by her brother, Henry VIII., to visit the “old Queen,” and let her know how desirous he was to hear of her health and prosperity. On hearing this message she demanded of the ambassador if he had not a letter from his master, and was displeased and hurt when she found the King, her brother, had neglected to write to her. She said—

“Though I be forgotten in England, never shall I forget England. It would have been a small matter to have spent a little paper and ink on me, and much would it have been for my comfort. Were it perceived that the King’s Grace, my brother, did better regard me, I should be better regarded by all parties here.”

One of her letters to Henry VIII. alludes to political intelligence, which she had surreptitiously sent to him:—

“I trust,” she says, “you will stand my friend and loving brother in that I get no hurt in nothing that I write to your Grace, nor that you will write nothing concerning me, your sister, to the King my son without I be first advertised, and that it be with my advice. Praying your Grace, dearest brother, that it will please you to do this for me, your sister, and I am and shall be ever ready to do your Grace’s will and pleasure. But I am afraid that I put your Grace to great pain and travail to read my oft writing and my evil hand. Praying your Grace to pardon me of the same, and that it will please you, dearest brother, to keep secret any writings that I send, for otherwise it may do me great hurt; which I trust your Grace will not do to me, your sister, seeing I am remaining in this realm, as God knows, whom preserve your Grace. Written at Stirling the 12th day of May.”

Endorsed in a handwriting of the time—“The Queen Dowager of Scotland to the King’s Majesty, 12th of May, 1541.”

It is only too plain that Queen Margaret was playing the old game of execrable treachery, by sending intelligence to Scotland’s most formidable enemy, although the government was now in the hands of her son, instead of the “lords-adversaries,” or her “cousin Albany.” Thus was the ruling passion strong in death; for the same person who, in her first letter, wrote mischief-making gossip to her father concerning her husband, James IV., and Surrey, at a time when she was scarcely experienced enough with the pen to form the characters which conveyed her meaning, now indites cautions, that her correspondence with her brother may not be discovered by “her dearest son.”

Wordsworth has, with his usual admirable skill in psychology, noted the identity of character between the boyhood and after-life of the same man, by the terse line, “The boy is father of the man.” And of Margaret Tudor may as truly be said—the girl was mother of the woman.

Queen Margaret was struck with palsy, Friday afternoon, November 20, at Methven Castle. She had no idea that her sickness was unto death, until a few hours before her decease. She was not under any alarm until Tuesday noon, when she sent for her son, who was at Falkland Palace. Finding she became worse every moment, she prepared for death according to the rites of the Roman Catholic church. Her conscience was uneasy regarding her spouse, Lord Angus; and she commanded the friars, to whom she confessed, “to sit on their knees before the King, her son, and beseech that he would be good and gracious to Lord Angus.” Queen Margaret, moreover, exceedingly lamented, and asked “God mercy that she had offended the said Earl as she had.”[484]

She likewise requested her confessors to solicit her son James V. for her, to be good to the Lady Margaret Douglas her daughter, and that he would give her what goods she left, thinking it right because her daughter had never had any thing of her. She had made no will previously to her mortal illness, and had neither time or memory to dispose of her property after she was convinced she should die. Whatsoever wrong Queen Margaret had done against her husband and daughter, she had not the satisfaction of receiving her son’s promise to right them as far as possible, for she expired before King James arrived at Methven Castle. The King ordered Oliver Sinclair and John Tennant, two gentlemen of his privy-chamber, to lock up all her property. At the time of her death the Queen left in ready money but 2500 marks Scots. Henry VIII. sent Ray, the Berwick Herald, to learn whether his sister was really dead, and whether she died intestate. The herald obtained the above information.[485]

James V. gave his mother a most magnificent funeral. He attended in person to lay her head in the grave, and accompanied her body from Methven Castle to Perth, with a long procession of his clergy and nobility. The burial-place of Queen Margaret was in the Abbey Church of St. John, belonging to the great Carthusian monastery, from which Perth occasionally takes the name of St. Johnston, being situated without the Southgate Port, on the south side of the street where King James VI.’s hospital has since been built. Her coffin was placed in the vault of James I., near his body and that of his Queen Jane Beaufort, founders of the Carthusian monastery. On its demolition by a mob at the Reformation, 1559, it is said that these bodies were transferred to the east end of St. John’s Church. Queen Margaret’s resting-place, with the other royal remains, is supposed to be under a large blue marble slab, carved in two compartments, with a royal crown of Scotland over each, adorned with fleur-de-lis. In confirmation of the falsehood purposely given out, that the family of Gowrie was descended from Margaret, some of them were interred in the royal sepulcher under this stone, particularly the young Earl James, who died in 1566.[486]

Margaret Tudor left two widowers; one the Earl of Angus, then an exile, residing with her daughter Lady Margaret Douglas at the court of Henry VIII. The other was Henry, Lord Methven. She was the mother of a son and daughter by Lord Methven. There is great mystery concerning their identity, as they were kept in the shade, owing to their mother’s manœuvers at the time of her second divorce. Both died early in life. A report is prevalent in history, that Lady Dorothea Stuart, the daughter of Queen Margaret, was the mother of the Earl of Gowrie’s numerous and ambitious family. The report was evidently encouraged by them, but was untrue; the Lady Dorothea was betrothed to Lord Gowrie, but died childless.[487] Burnet quotes a patent in which James V. confirms the barony of Methven to Henry Stuart, his maternal brother, called the Master of Methven, who, with his father (then Queen Margaret’s second widower), was afterward killed, valiantly fighting at the battle of Pinkie, September, 1547.

Some of Margaret Tudor’s mistakes in government, it is possible, may be attributed to the fact that she is the first instance that occurs, since Christianity was established in the island, of regnant power being confided to the hands of a woman who was expected to reign as femme seule. She had no education, scarcely any religion, and was guided entirely by her instincts, which were not of an elevated character. Her misdeeds, and the misfortunes attributable to her personal conduct, gave rise to most of the terrible calamities which befell her descendants. Some persons among the aristocracy of Scotland followed her evil example of divorce, which caused long and angry litigation concerning the birthright of their descendants. The fearful feud between the houses of Arran and Darnley-Stuart was of this kind, which deeply involved the prosperity of her granddaughter, Mary, Queen of Scots. And that hapless Princess was likewise marked as a victim by the cold and crafty Ruthven, on account of his family interests being affected by Queen Margaret’s marriages and divorces.

A succession of tragedies, for three generations, was the consequence of Margaret Tudor’s indulgence of her selfish passions. Nor are the woes attendant on the contempt of the divine institution of marriage limited to the great ones of the earth. Many a domestic tragedy, though shrouded in the obscurity of every-day life, may be traced to the same cause. Sorrow enters with sin; it desolates the peace of home; and unoffending children suffer for the evil of their parents, whenever persons are found to break, either by willful passions or litigious contest, the earliest law given by the Almighty.