August’s Tudor Times Person of the Month is Margaret Tudor. Listen to the podcast below, and visit the Tudor Times resources available.
Full Biography: http://tudortimes.co.uk/margaret-tudor
Guest article on Margaret and the Battle of Flodden: http://tudortimes.co.uk/guest-articles/margaret-tudor-and-the-battle-of-flodden
Book review on Sisters to the King: http://tudortimes.co.uk/sisters-to-the-king
Order on Amazon UK Sisters to the King
Or on Amazon US The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuous Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France
Very Rough Transcript of Episode 53: Tudor Times on Margaret Tudor
Speaker 1: (00:00)
Hey, it’s Heather. And I want to remind you about our very special tours to the UK. In 2017, we’ll be doing tours focusing on the even song experience. The evensong service comes from Kramarz book of common prayer from the mid 16th century. It’s been dubbed the atheists favorite service because it requires so little and it gives so much it’s simply divine choral music sung in some of the most historic chapels, abbeys and cathedrals in England. We’ll be spending 10 days visiting places like Cambridge, Oxford bath, the Cotswolds, Winchester, and Windsor with walking tours, free time to explore and then gathering back each afternoon for the even song service. If you choose to attend, it will be 10 days of beautiful countryside, historic cities and villages. And so, so much music invite you to go to England cast.com/tours for full itinerary and pricing information. Again, England cast E N G L a N D C a S T England cast.com/tours. Thanks so much. And now
Speaker 2: (01:18)
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English history podcast. I’m your host, Heather Tesco, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible.
Speaker 1: (01:27)
It’s a pathway to understanding who we are our place in the universe and our connection to our own humanity. This is episode number 53. It’s another joint episode with Melita Thomas of Tudor times on Margaret Tudor. Just a quick note that the Renaissance English history podcast is a proud member of the Agoura podcast network and the Gore podcast of the month for August is Alison Galocks, the unapologetic capitalist, leave your ego and politics at the door and build substantial value for your business. With the unapologetic capitalist, learn more at www dot unapologetic, capitalist.com. And as always, you can get show notes and more information about the Renaissance English history podcast@wwwdotenglandcastenglandcastenglandcast.com, where you can also sign up for my mailing list. Mailing list subscribers receive an extra mini cast each month, as well as cool stuff like book giveaways, news, and lots of other fun stuff for this particular episode as well.
Speaker 1: (02:36)
You can also get lots more information on margaret@wwwdotTudortimes.co.uk. So I’ve just read you like three URLs. If you’re still with me. Yay for you. Let’s introduce Malita and talk about Margaret Tudor. So Malita Thomas is a co founder and editor of Tudor times a website to Tudor and Stuart history in the period from 1485 to 1625, you can find it@Tudortimes.co.uk Melita, who has always been fascinated by history ever since she saw the 1970s series, Elizabeth R with Glenda Jackson also contributes articles to BBC history, extra and Britain magazine. So Lolita tell us about Margaret’s life and why you chose her as the person of the month.
Speaker 3: (03:30)
Well, we chose Margaret because until recently there’s been huge focus on Henry the eighth and generally his first two, why ifs, but now people are becoming a lot more interested in the other players at the Tudor and Stuart Cortes, Margaret, who was the eldest son of Henry. The seventh is one of the most significant figures politically as it was her marriage to James, a fourth of Scotland that finally brought about the union of the crowns and 1,603 Margaret herself was a very frequent letter writer. So there’s plenty of material to work from. And she had a very interesting and turbulent life, particularly after she was widowed very young. Um, we also wanted to choose Margaret because we try to have a balance between men and women and English and Scots people to, to give a sort of an all around balance to the whole politics of the era.
Speaker 3: (04:22)
So Margaret’s life. Well, she was a princess of England, as I say, daughter of Henry, the seventh and Elizabeth of York. And she was married young to James, the fourth of Scotland, and lived a very comfortable life as queen consort of Scotland until when she was not quite 24, her husband James was killed at the battle of Flodden by an army of her brother, Henry the eighth. So Margaret was, was a very difficult position. She was a queen of Scotland, but she was a princess of England and she was widowed with a small son and a good deal of suspicion of her by the Scots, not surprisingly given that it was her brother who had, whose army had killed, not just their King, but a huge number of sculpts snowballs died at flooding. It was an absolutely disastrous battled for the country. Um, uh, Margaret as a young woman and an English woman was definitely somewhat suspect, but her husband, James had obviously trusted Margaret and she had been left as governor of his son, James a fifth until, or until such time as she remarried now, for some obscure reason, Margaret chose to remarry quite quickly.
Speaker 3: (05:38)
And the Scott’s Nobles and parliament were very, very eager at that time to throw off her, her rule. And they invited the Duke of Albany, who was the next day to the throne to come from France, where he’d been living and become Regent. Now, Margaret was very resistant to being overlooked. She both for political reasons, obviously she wanted to be Regent. She clearly felt that that was her her role as, as the mother of the young King, but also she was very concerned about the safety of her sons. She had two sons, one born after her husband died, and she had been aware all through her childhood of what had happened to her mother’s brothers, the princes in the tower who disappeared and their Regent suddenly became King himself. So Margaret was extremely concerned that that’s what would happen to her boys. In fact, she was, she was not right in that.
Speaker 3: (06:38)
Albany was actually a very honorable man and he had no intention of usurping the throne, but it’s easy to see why she was so nervous about it. So Margaret now no longer region of Scotland was forced to hand the boys over. And she became so unhappy with the situation and the difficulties that she had. Her second husband, the Earl of Angus encountered that she decided she would return to England. So she well escaped from Scotland essentially because Albany didn’t want her to leave, but she snuck out in the middle of the night and slept across the border to England, where she had another child, lady, Margaret Douglas. She spent about 18 months in England, partly in the North. And then she went down to London for the first time, since she’d left home 11 years before, but after a while, it became apparent that her brother was far more interested in her returning to Scotland and trying to take the Regency back than he was in keeping her, uh, living in idleness in, in London. So she returned to Scotland and she came to an agreement with Albany and things would have gone smoothly enough apart from the fact that she and her second husband, Angus, they weren’t happy together. I mean, it’d been obviously a marriage perhaps of love on her part, but ambition on his. And when she discovered he was living with another woman, it became very difficult for her to accept that. So she tried to part from him,
Speaker 4: (08:17)
Which created
Speaker 3: (08:19)
A certain amount of rather hypocritical complaint from Henry the eighth at a later date when she tried it
Speaker 4: (08:25)
Getting a divorce. So
Speaker 3: (08:28)
There was a long period in the late 1510s when Albany was hoping to return to France. And there was only the politics and Scotland is so complicated at the time. It’s very difficult to find out exactly who was doing what and why they were doing it, but there was sort of endless power struggles. Really Angus wanted to take over. Margaret wanted to be in charge. Albany felt duty bound to hold onto his position. So, so there’s sort of a good date of going backwards and forwards. Eventually Albany actually did leave Scotland, but it didn’t work out quite as Margaret planned because Angus kidnapped effectively James and ruled
Speaker 1: (09:14)
Well. So let’s go back to her. Let’s go back to her, the Alliance with Scotland and her marriage. What, how was that marriage important with the diplomacy of Henry the seventh? Why did it come about, what did he hope to achieve with it? What was her role with that?
Speaker 3: (09:29)
Well, it’s no news to anyone that England and Scotland had been locked in an on off conflict for 200 years before Margaret’s birth. Scotland was always threatened by its more powerful neighbor and historically had allied with France whenever possible. Uh, Scotland would take advantage of English unrest, particularly during the Wars of the roses to try to improve its position. So in the 1490s, when Henry the seventh was threatened by the Perkin Warbeck rebellion, uh, James, the false mounted, a couple of quite successful raids into Northern England, even managing to proceed nor on castle with Henry’s ambassador inside it eventually though James and Henry concluded that there was more to be gained by peace. Henry had had trouble raising enough to taxation, to actually fight in the borders and had been faced with rebellion from the South in Cornwall. When he, when he tried to raise, uh, raise money for, for an army into Scotland.
Speaker 3: (10:30)
So Henry and James then concluded terms for the first peace treaty between the countries for generations. And previously peace was maintained by a series of truces rather than an actual treaty. This was known as the treaty of perpetual peace. And it was to be cemented by the marriage of Margaret who was Henry’s eldest daughter to James. And there was quite a big age gap between the two. Um, James was about 16 years older than Margaret, but of course in those days, that sort of thing was no bar to, um, to marriages. In fact, Margaret did a bit better than her sister Mary, because she married, she married at 13 to a man of 30, whereas Paul Mary was married at 18 to a man in his fifties. And James was actually a very attractive and charismatic man. So, so it wasn’t quite as bad as it might’ve been for a young girl
Speaker 1: (11:25)
That, um, lady Margaret Beaufort had actually been involved in trying to have her not go up to Scotland until she was a bit older. And that was in part because of the trouble that lady Margaret had had with her own childbirth of Henry. Um, is there truth to that?
Speaker 3: (11:47)
Yes. Yes, that’s absolutely true. It, I think it must’ve been a very traumatic experience. Margaret Beaufort, that that was obviously shared with, with her family, because there’s a number of examples in the Tudor family of reluctance to marry the girls, uh, to young princess Margaret
Speaker 5: (12:08)
Was okay,
Speaker 3: (12:10)
Well, according to the law, a girl could be married at 12. That was, that was considered the, the, the minimum acceptable age for marriage. But as time was passing, people felt that that was, that was fine to be married in theory, but consummation shouldn’t shouldn’t take place too early. So what, uh, Henry the seventh, I mean, Henry the seventh was actually quite glad perhaps to have an excuse to, um, prevaricate a bit because he always liked to prevaricate just in case a better deal came along, but he did make it clear to the Scott’s ambassadors that, uh, lady Margaret, and also his wife Margaret’s mother Elizabeth of York, were reluctant for her to travel to Scotland too early in case James quote would not wait and would damage her health. So it was agreed that Margaret would not be married, um, in physical fact until she was closer to 14.
Speaker 3: (13:09)
So the, the treaty allowed for her to be married by proxy when she reached the age of 12, but then not to travel to Scotland until, uh, September of 1,503 in, in the event, she went a little bit earlier. She left in June of 1503 and she would have turned 14 in November of that year. So she was married a couple of months before her 14th birthday. It does seem that probably, uh, James, they may have consummated the marriage on the first day, but she didn’t fall pregnant for another two or three years. So it’s, it’s possible that the marriage was consummated to make it back allied. But after that, that he, he, he left her to, to grow up a little before, um, you know, resuming sort of normal, married life. Interesting.
Speaker 5: (14:04)
So the diplomacy
Speaker 1: (14:07)
Did this last into Henry the eighth time. How did things change once Henry the eighth became King?
Speaker 3: (14:13)
Well, everything went downhill then, um, Henry Henry, the eighth Margaret’s brother, he had a very different view of the world from, from that of Henry the seventh, perhaps perhaps a more old fashioned view. Henry the seventh was very much a man for peace and trade, but Henry the eighth dreamed of military glory. And ideally he wanted to reconquer France and emulate his hero Henry the fifth. And he also liked to think that Scotland was a vassal state to England and, uh, rather offensively to his brother-in-law in 1512, the, uh, the English parliament announced that that Scotland was a vassal state. So obviously something that was likely to appeal to the neighbors. Um, yes. So in 1513, or sort of over, over the period of 15, 12 to 13, Henry became part of an extremely complex set of European alliances that were joined in a league against France.
Speaker 3: (15:15)
Uh, the Pope, uh, the King of Spain Henry’s father-in-law and England were all allied against France. So James was, was in a cleft stick, uh, Scotland and France had been in Alliance for two or 300 years and sooner or later he was going to be forced to choose between France and England and Margaret of course, you know, it was a shocking position for her. Uh, she’d been extremely well treated by James. She was a queen of Scots. She was, um, had a son and you know, who one day would be King of Scots himself. And she obviously had a duty to her husband and children. And she had also had a personal quarrel with, with her brother who for some reason that is quite obscure, was withholding a legacy that Margaret was do. Now, the actual history of this legacy is, is a bit convoluted.
Speaker 3: (16:09)
There’s different information as to what it was and what it’s. And nobody seems to know what the value was, but it, you know, it was felt to be very petty on the part of, of Henry the eighth to withhold this money or jewels or whatever it happened to be from Margaret. So, so she was, um, you know, sort of personally offended as was James who felt that Henry was spiting him, you know, through it, through being unkind to Margaret. However, you know, the whole point of Margaret’s marriage had been to keep the peace. So, you know, it was difficult for her, but she, at that time appeared to be standing with her, her husband and by the middle of 1513, although James had made huge efforts, probably quite genuine to, um, broke some sort of
Speaker 4: (16:56)
Peace, you know, the, the, the European
Speaker 3: (16:59)
Politics, which were fundamentally about the domination of Italy, you know, there was no way he was going to persuade the Pope, not to be in league against France. So, so it was all a bit, uh, you know, it was wasted effort, really. However, James felt that he was obliged to support France because Henry was invading. And, um, that was, that was the terms of, of the, of the treaty. Uh, so yes, I mean, James was perhaps not, and he was, uh, he was not a good general. He rushed into the forefront of battle rather than protecting himself, but he was a man who was much, much loved by his people. And probably by this one day, you know, the battle of flooding was, was a complete disaster. Yeah. Tell me about how, how Margaret’s life was affected. It was stir flooding. Her life was completely overturned by the battle of Flodden.
Speaker 3: (17:58)
Uh, up until that point, as I say, she’d been a, you know, a queen consort and loved and respected as the King’s wife. And he treated her very well. But now at the age, she wasn’t, she wasn’t yet 24. When, when the battle of flooding happened, she was widowed. And suddenly from being a queen console was, was, you know, a stranger in a foreign land. Again with her brother is seen as the aggressor, James had left instructions in the event of his death. She should, um, act as Regent for their son or two tricks as it was, as it was called governor and two tricks. And she immediately did the right thing. She had the young baby James, he was about 17 months old and other James confusingly. He was crowned as James the fifth, and she had the support of the Scots council and also the parliament of Scotland, the estates of Scotland, but she was pregnant at the time.
Speaker 3: (18:58)
And Margaret, she had a number of childbirths and they were all very difficult and painful, and she was ill for, for a while after all of them. So when her second son Alexander was born in spring of the following year, she was, she was ill and, um, unable perhaps to be, as Don went in government, as you might have liked. And then for some reason, she decided to remarry, which instantly disabled her from, from being, being governor. And perhaps had she been older and possibly not English. It might have been that the Scott’s loads would S would have accepted her remaining in the role, but as it was, they were determined to replace her with the Duke of Albany. So, you know, the rest of her life really became a struggle, not just for, for power, but for money. Um, Margaret, unfortunately, as I say, she, she wrote an awful lot of letters and probably 90% of them are complaints about money.
Speaker 3: (20:05)
Uh, Scotland was not a rich country. She felt that she hadn’t been given her dollar rights, either the money, she and lunch, she should have been given on the death of James the fourth. But although one immediately feels sorry for her. You then discover that actually James, the fourth had handed over a very large sum of money to her that he’d received from the King of France. And instead of putting it into the treasury, as she should have done, she kept it. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the Scott’s Lords weren’t that keen to give her any more money, but yeah, money, money became a, an overriding problem for Margaret and you know, much of her life seems to be concerned about it.
Speaker 1: (20:52)
Yeah. Tell me a little bit more about this political situation that she found herself in at the time. I, I know from having looked at, at James the sixth slash first and the stories with Mary queen of Scots and it Scotland’s politics at the time were really difficult to navigate. That’s putting it mildly.
Speaker 3: (21:14)
Yes, absolutely. They, although the, all their, no one ever tried to, or, you know, it was very rare for rebellion against the Stuart Kings, no one ever really tried to overturn them yet. There was permanent low level niggling against the centralization of power by the King feuding. And quite, I dunno as a little bit of a traditional pattern of family feuds and clan feuds and blood guilt was, was still very strong in Scotland. So it was considered perfectly acceptable for Nobles to feud amongst themselves and, you know, quite often, um, you know, kill each other without it necessarily being seen as something that the government ought to have any control over. Uh, and there was also the matter of, you know, poverty. It was not a rich country and a number of Scott’s Nobles actually took quite significant bribes, particularly from England, but also from France.
Speaker 3: (22:16)
Uh, so there was always the tension between the pro English and the pro Scott’s and sorry, the pro English and the pro French Nobles. There was a lot of low level border warfare between England and Scotland, which both sides, um, indulged in. And I think the English probably seeded more of it with, with hard cash. You know, they’d paid people to raid Scotland, but it was much, much closer to the center of Scottish power, so much more on the King’s doorstep. Whereas for the English Kings, you know, it was all happening, you know, turning 50 miles away for the Scottish Kings. It was just down the road. So it was much more a part of sort of mainstream political life. So there was, there were lots and lots of different factions, lots and lots of different clans, feuding and families arguing amongst themselves and much less centralization of power than in that. Then what Margaret was used to it, her father’s was caught. So when she married the of Angus article Douglas, that instantly upset everybody who didn’t like the Douglas’s and there were quite a few people who didn’t like the diagnosis. Um, so, so she, she aligned herself with one group rather than being seen to be above them.
Speaker 1: (23:38)
Yeah. Talk to me about why she remarried
Speaker 3: (23:40)
And it’s difficult to know because I mean, it’s a bit like when Mary queen of Scots married both, well, you think, you know, what was she thinking? Um, Linda Porter in her book, crown of thistles, um, postulates that Margaret was actually forced into it, uh, perhaps not, you know, absolutely by, by violence, but that, you know, there was a good deal of pressure exerted on her. I would tend to think that she chose to do it. And the reason I think she chose to marry Douglas, um, well Douglas had the olive Angus, is that at a later date when they proved unhappy her complaint against him was that he was that he didn’t love her. So that seems to me to be the indication of a marriage that she thought was was one of, lot of, rather than a, you know, a political match. Well, Douglas was extremely powerful that she thought that choosing, you know, one, one of the Nobles above the rest would give her, uh, military and financial support and that, you know, that that was her plan.
Speaker 3: (24:42)
She was going to, to one of them and she just patented like Douglas better, but, or possibly, it was just the impulse of a moment, you know, perhaps it was, he was just good, old fashioned lost it. It was not, it was not the most politically sensible move she ever made. That’s that’s for certain, but you know, you, she was getting flipped around, but she was, she was just a young woman. I mean, still only 24. She’d had, I think, five or six childbirths, by the time she married anger, she’d lost four children. She’d, she’d only had a baby in, in the spring and she married him in the August. She’d been widowed the year before, you know, I mean, it’s very probable. So she had postnatal depression or, you know, Pratt, she just wasn’t thinking straight.
Speaker 4: (25:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: (25:32)
She was alone I suppose. And wanted, you know, wanted support, which she certainly wasn’t getting from my brother. Yeah. It’s kind of, it’s one of those things like with Mary queen of Scots, where you think, what, what, what was the point of this? Where, where did you think this was going to get you? And of course it’s so easy with hindsight to say it was a bad marriage, but had Angus perhaps been a better husband to her, or perhaps if he’d been a bit older, he was only 24. So he was probably bouncing off the walls with testosterone. Yeah. Um, yeah, sure. Yeah. So did she ever really become Scottish or was she always English at heart? I think, I think she was, I think she would have become more Scottish. And so if, if James had, she was a good Scottish queen console, I think, and she obviously identified with his interests up until the battle of Flodden.
Speaker 3: (26:26)
But after that, perhaps, perhaps because the Scott’s notables effectively turned against her and preferred Albany, her, her only power really was, was being the sister of the King of England. That was her only bargaining point. And of course she had been brought up like all or good English, princesses to hate and fear France. So Scotland being allied to France was always going to be a difficult one for her. Although at times she did toy with it and she did keep threatening to Henry that if he didn’t support her suitably, that she would effectively defect to the French party. Yeah. I think it was, it was, it was hard for her to, to overcome that. And we also have to remember that the idea of a, of a nation state was not really how, how they thought about things. Um, you know, what was important to, to Margaret was her son being King of Scots rather than necessarily the benefit of the people of Scotland per se.
Speaker 6: (27:35)
So
Speaker 3: (27:35)
What do we know about her later life? What was her later life like? Well, as I, as I said before, she, she had this little jaunt back into England when she escaped because she was, she was genuinely worried about Albany. Um, so she spent a year or 18 months at the court of Henry, the eighth with her, her sister, Mary, the French queen, uh, her sister-in-law Catherine of Aragon. And, you know, clearly had quite an enjoyable time apart from a lack of cash, but she then returned to Scotland. And the, the, the difficulty was the marriage with Angus, because for some reason, uh, Henry, they tended to prefer Angus to his own sister. And, and you know, whether it was a sort of a male female thing, you know, he couldn’t possibly believe a woman’s word, but that, and that doesn’t seem altogether like, or whether they just, you know, whether there was some sort of sibling rivalry, which has been suggested, but Henry’s idea of the perfect outcome was Margaret has regions of Scotland, uh, dancing to his tune with Angus being the strong man that, that was, you know, what he wanted to happen.
Speaker 3: (28:44)
Whereas Margaret refused to live with Angus once she returned to Scotland, because he had set himself up in one of her castles with her dowel money and his mistress. So she was not willing to compromise on that one. Not a good, no, absolutely not. Um, so as I said before, I mean, she did try to compromise with him. And then when Albany came back from France, she then actually realized that Albany was probably her best bet have a good life in Scotland because he was, he treated her very respectfully. He was willing for her to see her children. So presumably the fear that, well, actually her one child by then is as poor Alexander died young. Uh, I think her fears, her fears sort of calmed down and he, he tried to get her money money’s restored to her. So in fact, it was rumored that Albany and Margaret were actually having an affair.
Speaker 3: (29:40)
And so when she decided that she wanted to have her Irish Landers or not old, uh, it was so heavily resisted by the English in Rome, uh, because they thought she would end up marrying Albany. So yeah, I mean, th th th th the plot thickens, whichever way you look, uh, uh, Albany gave up and discussed and went back to France, Angus took control of James for about 18 months, and wouldn’t let him see Margaret and, you know, sort of controlled the whole government, but he was not popular. And there were a number of, you know, sort of it’s minor Ella in mean civil war. Wouldn’t, wouldn’t be a fair description, but there were a couple of armed incidents and, you know, some more, more feuds were started when at the battle known as cleanse the Causeway, Angus has men killed the brother of the Earl of Aaron.
Speaker 3: (30:32)
So that created a long running feud between the Hamiltons and the Douglas’s. And then in another attempt to free James from Angus, his clutches, the ale of Lennox was killed, which then created a, a feud between the Douglas’s and the Lennox Stewart. So, you know, it’s all, it’s all happening. I know it’s all good fun. So Margaret, so Margaret event essentially came up with a plan to divorce Angus on the grounds, bizarrely, not that, um, he had been pre contracted to marry the woman he was living with, which would have been a fairly standard excuse that he wasn’t free to marry. But with the suggestion to the Pope, that when she’d married, Angus James [inaudible] was still alive, that he’d survived the battle of Flodden for three years. And nobody seemed to know quite where he was or what had happened to him. But that, that was the story.
Speaker 3: (31:29)
And she asked for a D yeah. Interesting. Yes. So how did she explain where he had been? She didn’t really, I mean, there had been rumors after the battle that James in fact had not been killed. And the reason that it was possibly questionable first, it was questioned whether it was killed on the battlefield or whether he was killed after, which would have been a shameful thing to do. So let us hope that the, of, sorry, didn’t didn’t do anything so shameful because it was, it was fine to kill somebody on the battlefield, but you didn’t, you didn’t murder people afterwards. So James, his body, what they thought was James, his body was not wearing the iron belt that James always wore. Now James wore an iron belt in for pennants because his father had been killed possibly after a battle, uh, in a rebellion that was actually led by her.
Speaker 3: (32:32)
Funnily enough, um, Angus has grandfather another, another elevate Angus at which James himself had been present as a young man and following which he was, he was crowned as James support. So you always felt very guilty about his father’s death. And he wore this, this iron belt, which was not on the body that was stated to be his after the battle of Flodden. Now, of course, from a practical point of view, he’d probably have taken it off to fight. So, you know, hardly a proof and people were always very keen for, for Kings to have survived battles or to survive being murdered. I mean sure. But anyway, that was, that was Margaret story. The Pope, in fact, didn’t, didn’t go for that request. Although he did grant an annulment, this was early 15, 27 on the grounds that Angus hadn’t been free to marry. And Marie was absolutely beside himself at the idea of, of Margaret seeking a divorce and even wrote her rather pompous letters about the indissolubility of matrimony.
Speaker 3: (33:35)
Even at the very same time he was, he was hoping to have his marriage annulled, but obviously that, that sort of thing didn’t bother Henry. So having, having different way absolutely completely different in his case. Yes. So having got rid of Angus, she married again, another, I had a choice, a chap called Henry Stewart, James, the fifth, who was now into his teens and had more or less taken over, um, the government for himself by then, he didn’t really approve, but he accepted his mother’s remarriage and, uh, gave the chapter a title. So it became Lord methane. Uh, but unfortunately he didn’t turn out to be a brilliant husband either because he also, um, spent Margaret’s money on his mistresses. As she tried to divorce, she tried to divorce him later, but, uh, James, the fifth absolutely put a stop to it. He wasn’t going to have his mother making a complete laughingstock of them all.
Speaker 3: (34:34)
So she was forced to put up with meth and then they seem to actually get on all right. By the end. Yeah. So once, once James had taken over for himself to begin with in the, in the early days of his sort of personal rule, when he was still in his mid team, he did take Margaret’s advice to a degree, but he was definitely his own man, James, the fifth and Margaret was very keen that he should be on good terms with her brother. She hoped and try to engineer a meeting between the two Kings. She also was very keen on the idea that James fifth should marry his cousin, Mary who in the late 1520s was Henry the eights likely heir, uh, James fifth was not so keen on the idea. And he wanted to preserve the, the, the F the French Alliance and James absolutely hated Angus, and he wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
Speaker 3: (35:34)
And he was very pro French rather than pro, uh, which was probably quite distressing for Margaret, because she could see that, you know, there was no way that there was going to be a real rapprochement between, between the countries, towards the end of our life in the late 1530s, James, his second wife, Maria gaze was almost the ideal daughter-in-law actually, she was, she was very, um, generous and kind to Margaret and sort of brought her into the fold of the family a lot more. Uh, so Margaret’s last years were perhaps, um, a bit happier. She had, uh, although, uh, heartbroken, they were all heartbroken when James and Marie’s two, two little boys died on the same day, which, I mean, you can’t imagine anything more shocking. Can you, your two children dying on the same day? Um, and then Margaret died in October, 1541, probably from a stroke. She put, she asked for, she asked James to come to her on her death bed, but he didn’t make it in time.
Speaker 7: (36:40)
Mm mm Hmm.
Speaker 3: (36:44)
So is there, is there anything else we should know about? Um, she, she left beautiful clothes and I mean, some of the touches that she was a great musician and she, she loved music. And that was one of the things she had in common with, with James the fourth. Uh, they spent a lot of time and money with, um, she played the lute, she played the clever chords. Uh, I mean, she, she, she was really very much cut out to be a late medieval queen. You know, she liked presiding over tournament’s and, uh, listening to a menstrual and I’m not decrying her political abilities, but she, she was very well suited to that, that role that she’d been brought up for. Um, you know, women’s education by and large was not welds to fit them, to be Queens console, not generally to be, to be rulers or Regents. And although there were very successful women, Regents, Margaret didn’t seem quite to have the hang of it.
Speaker 3: (37:44)
So where can we go to learn more about there aren’t enough? There are many biographies of her. There’s the good old standby Agnes Strickland’s lives of the Queens of England. And she did. She also wrote a number on the, um, the Queens of Scotland. And Margaret’s covered in that, um, as always with Strickland, there’s, there’s quite a lot of original material, but she’s very, very romantic in the, in modern books. There’s Mariah, Perry’s sisters to the King, which is a 200 biography of Margaret and her sister, Mary. Um, it’s, it’s okay. It’s not one of the, one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. Um, but it certainly does give the, um, most of the important information about her life. Other than that, Margaret Margaret tends to appear as a, as a bit part player and other, other biographies as Linda Porter’s crown of vessels that I mentioned earlier, which is more sympathetic towards her as is the [inaudible] to, to the family story, which covers Margaret.
Speaker 3: (38:51)
And yeah, so those two they’re the most up to date works. Um, although they don’t concentrate on her, there’s Rosalyn, Marshall’s Scottish Queens, which has a chapter on her and also Roselyn Marshall’s, uh, the Queens women, which talks all about all of Mary queen of Scots female relatives, which I think covers Margaret as well. And of course there is, there is a full, um, biography of her on our two times website. Of course there is. So people should go there first to check that out. And that there’s a, that’s the usual list of sources and bibliography that they can, I can have a look at something more in depth. Thank you again to Melita Thomas for taking the time to tell us all about Margaret Tudor. For more information on Margaret, go to www.Tudortimes.co.uk, or you can check out the resources available on the England cast site@wwwdotenglandcast.com. I’ll be back in about two more weeks to wrap up the series on Tudor rebellions. And we’re gonna kind of just bring everything from the first two episodes together and look at how the rebellions impacted our particular 16th century monarchs and the monarchy longterm. We’re just going to pull together and synthesize all the stuff we’ve been talking to talking about in this mini mini series.
Speaker 3: (40:17)
Thank you so much for listening and I will talk with you again soon. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 2: (40:30)
[inaudible].
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
