Chapter I: Front Matter

LIVES

OF THE

QUEENS OF SCOTLAND

AND

ENGLISH PRINCESSES
CONNECTED WITH THE REGAL SUCCESSION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BY AGNES STRICKLAND
AUTHOR OF
THE “LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND.”

“The treasures of antiquity laid up
In old historic rolls I opened.”--BEAUMONT.

VOL I.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
No. 82 CLIFF ST.
1851.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY PREFACE.

LIFE OF MARGARET TUDOR, QUEEN OF JAMES IV.--

PAGE

CHAP. I. 1

II. 40

III. 85

IV. 128

V. 157

VI. 197

LIFE OF MAGDALENE OF FRANCE, FIRST QUEEN OF JAMES V.--

CHAP. I. 249

II. 280

LIFE OF MARY OF LORRAINE, SECOND QUEEN OF JAMES V.--

CHAP. I. 311

II. 346

INTRODUCTORY PREFACE.

The Biographies of Royal Females who have played distinguished parts in the history of a country--especially those who have been involved in the storms caused by revolutions in popular opinion--afford not only instances of lofty and heroic characteristics elicited by striking reverses of fortune, but the most touching examples of all that is lovely, holy, and endearing in Womanhood.

“If,” as the Duchess de Bourbon said to her unfortunate kinswoman, Margaret of Anjou,[1] “a book were to be written on the calamities of illustrious ladies of royal birth,” it would, doubtless, exceed in pathos and dramatic interest all the tragedies in the world. It would form an extensive series of volumes, in which daughters of every family inheriting the fatal distinction of royalty, in every age and country, might find a place: and who more mournfully pre-eminent than MARY STUART, and several of the Princesses connected with the regal succession of Great Britain? Of Queens of England who have fallen by the hand of the executioner, or died broken-hearted exiles in foreign lands, it is unnecessary to speak here, their memorials having already been placed before the reader.[2] While engaged in preparing that series of royal female biographies, materials no less interesting connected with cotemporary Queens of the sister realm were elicited, whose lives, together with those of such English Princesses as were placed in the direct line of the regal succession, appeared desirable adjuncts to the _Lives of the Queens of England_. They are, in fact, links of the same family chain.

However shadowy the catalogue may at first sight appear of forgotten northern Queens, each played her part distinctly, whether for good or ill, and gave a color to the temper of the times in which her lot was cast; each had her separate glories and her griefs.

In consequence of the premature, and, in too many instances, the violent deaths of the Kings of Scotland, almost every reign commenced with a long minority, in the course of which there was invariably a struggle between the Queen-mother and the great nobles of the realm for the tutelage of the infant sovereign, and the exercise of the power of the Crown. The Queen, generally a princess of foreign birth, for such was even a daughter of the kindred royal line of England considered, had little chance against the turbulent magnates, by whom female domination was held in scorn; and it was only through the influence of bribes, intrigues, and fomenting their jealousy of each other, that a Queen-mother ever succeeded in grasping the reins of empire, and then at the expense of life-consuming cares. The old age of a King of Scotland was forty, and very few Queens attained that age.

Who were the Queens of Scotland? This work will, we trust, answer that question satisfactorily, by dispelling the obscurity in which the lapse of centuries, and the translation of the Scottish Court from Holyrood to Westminster and Windsor, have involved the Royal Consorts of the Monarchs of the sister realm.

The things we look upon through the inverted telescope of Time are of course diminished, the lights are misty, and the shades fade into deeper darkness. Yet what we see are like daguerreotype miniatures--reduced impressions of full-sized realities. Daguerreotypes are not beautiful, but true, occasionally precious memorials, where no better likenesses can be obtained.

The Lives of the Queens of Scotland, in the modern series which I have the honor of introducing in the present volume, commence with Margaret Tudor, the consort of James IV. of Scotland, and daughter of Henry VII. of England and Elizabeth of York. Margaret Tudor, like her illustrious predecessor and ancestress, Margaret Atheling, was an English Princess in the direct line of the regal succession of that realm, and a Queen-consort of Scotland. Her posterity by James IV. united the blood of the elder line of the Anglo-Saxon Kings and the Norman Conqueror, blended with that of Bruce-Stuart and Plantagenet-Tudor in one rich stream. James VI. of Scotland, doubly her great-grandson, inherited the realms of England and Ireland as the representative of that princess, whose hereditary rights are now vested in her august descendant, Queen Victoria.

The Life of Mary Stuart, which will occupy two successive volumes of this series, was in preparation long before the publication of that of Elizabeth Tudor, in our Lives of the Queens of England, where it was promised as a companion biography, but a separate work.

Inexorably as the destiny of Mary Stuart was influenced by Elizabeth of England, no one could mix the personal annals of those rival Britannic sovereigns together without producing, as Camden has done, great confusion, and impairing the interest attached to both by violating the individual unity essential to biography; for they were stars shining in distinct orbits, and never visible in the same hemisphere. Their lives ought, however, to be read in succession, because they cast reflected lights upon each other, and are calculated, like the cotemporary biographies in both series, to illustrate the comparative state of society in the sister realms.

My pledge to the public touching the Life of Mary Stuart could not be redeemed till after the arduous undertaking in which my sister and myself were engaged was concluded. The accomplishment of that task occupied several years, in the course of which fresh sources of information connected with the personal history of Mary have been opened both in France and England. So numerous, however, are the works on this subject of ever fresh and undying interest, that although not one of them has been written since the publication of Prince Labanoff’s seven volumes of her letters, and La Mothe Fenelon’s dispatches, we determined not to infringe on the pre-occupied ground and literary property of other authors, by bringing out a new Life of Mary Stuart in three volumes singly, but resolved, proceeding on our own original track, to introduce it into a new series of royal biographies on the same plan as _The Lives of the Queens of England_. The biography of Mary will, of course, be rendered more perspicuous and intelligible by being preceded by those of the three Queens in the present volume, and followed by that of her aunt, Margaret, Countess of Lennox, the mother of the unfortunate Darnley, which is full of curious information bearing on the much contested point of the guilt or innocence of Mary.

The selfish and short-sighted policy of Margaret Tudor, while exercising the functions of Queen-Regent for her son James V., her intrigues with England, the interminable embroilments caused by her marriages and divorces, sowed, as will be shown, the perilous seeds of which her unfortunate descendants, Mary Stuart and Darnley, were destined to reap the bitter harvest.

The Life of James the Fifth’s first consort, Magdalene of France, having important connection with political relations, but no entanglement with political intrigues, comes like a refreshing interlude of sweet and pleasant things between the turmoils and agitations detailed in the more eventful histories of Margaret Tudor and Mary of Lorraine. It is, in sooth, a romantic but carefully verified love-tale of royal romance, blended with the splendid pageantry and costume of the brilliant courts of those chivalric monarchs, Francis I. of France, and the fifth James Stuart of Scotland. The accomplishments and refined tastes of James V., like those of his illustrious ancestor James I., and his own daughter Mary, were unfortunately too much in advance of their era. Lesley, Bishop of Ross, censures the great increase of expense, caused by the march of luxury at this period, as injurious to morals, and inconsistent with the means of the country.

“Here is to be remembered,” he says, “that there were many new ingines and devices, as well of bigging (_building_) of palaces, habiliments, as of banqueting, and of men’s behavior, first begun and used in Scotland at this time, after the fashion they had seen in France. Albeit it seemed to be very comely and beautiful, yet it was more superfluous and voluptuous than the substance of the realm of Scotland might bear forth or sustain: nevertheless, the same fashions and custom of costly habiliments, indifferently used by all estates, excessive banqueting, and sic like, remains yet to these days, to the great hinder and poverty of the whole realm.”[3]

These observations, as Lesley wrote in the reign of Queen Mary, are perhaps even more applicable to the consequences of James the Fifth’s second marriage with the sprightly Duchess-dowager of Longueville, Mary of Lorraine, who presided over the court of Scotland for nearly two-and-twenty years--first as Queen-consort, and subsequently as Queen-Regent--during which period French fashions and French influence gained a natural, but ultimately most unpopular ascendency. The leading events of the stormy period of Mary of Lorraine’s regency are more familiar to the reader than her early history and wedded life, which are the more agreeable for not being mixed up with the religious warfare which convulsed Scotland during her widowhood. Whatever is requisite to be related on the latter subject will be told as briefly as possible in due order of chronology.

Many of Mary Stuart’s countrymen who are now painfully halting between two opinions--an internal conviction that she was rather a victim than a criminal “rugging at their hearts,” and pleading all sorts of extenuating circumstances in her behalf (which, if she were guilty of the crimes imputed to her, is a grave offense against morality),--would rejoice to see her innocence established, if it could be done without dispelling that veneration for John Knox which their church, to the great hindrance of historic truth, makes no less an article of historic than of spiritual faith.

As it is, however, contrary not only to our principles, but to the plan of our royal biographies, to convert historical characters and events into pegs whereon to hang party questions, especially those involving theological differences, which it is the peculiar province of ecclesiastical writers to discuss, we will endeavor to keep John Knox as much in the background as he will allow us. After all, his testimony regarding Mary amounts to nothing beyond harsh words, which, however they may have biased the minds of men, have no real effect as matter of evidence. As members of the Reformed Church, we regard him as a great and honest instrument in the overthrow of the Church of Rome in Scotland. Intent on the mighty work in which he was engaged, John Knox, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, drove furiously--his zeal carried him in many things too far; in fact it intoxicated his reason, by causing him to see through a distorted lens every thing done by Mary Stuart, the daughter of his ancient adversary, Mary of Lorraine.

Since the publication of those valuable national works, Tytler’s _History of Scotland_, and the _Life of Mary Stuart_ by Henry Glassford Bell, Esq., a vast body of her letters and other cotemporary documents has been brought to light by the indefatigable research of Prince Labanoff, the learned contributors to the Maitland and Bannatyne Club Books, and other generous laborers in the cause of historic truth, which supply matter for a more important biography of this Princess than could possibly have been written before the discovery of these papers. These collections, although printed, are, with very few exceptions, inaccessible to the public; and even if the great expense attending the purchase of such as are not confined to private circulation did not place them out of the reach of general readers, they would be unintelligible to readers unaccustomed to the old French and obsolete Scotch orthography. In addition to these, I have been favored with access to the charter-chests of many of the historical families of Scotland, and aided by that zealous and liberal-minded documentarian, Alexander Macdonald, Esq., of the Register House, Edinburgh, with the communication of excerpts from the Royal Exchequer Records of Scotland, and curious items of the Privy Purse expenses of the Queens of Scotland; besides several inedited letters of Queen Mary, discovered by himself, which had escaped the research of Prince Labanoff. An especial meed of thanks is due to John Riddell, Esq., of the Faculty of Advocates, for various important additions to my collections illustrative of the personal history of the Scottish Queens, both in the present series and the medieval.

I have been also indebted to David Laing, Esq., the learned librarian of the Signet Library, for much friendly attention and information, and the loan of valuable documentary works. Nor must I omit to mention my obligations to Frederick Devon, Esq., of the Chapter House, Westminster, and Henry Sharpe, Esq., brother of my lamented friend, Sir Cuthbert Sharpe. Above all, I beg to express my grateful sense of the courtesy of the Honorable John Stuart, in favoring me with the use of Mary’s secret correspondence, recently discovered in the family archives of the House of Moray. Were I to specify all the honored names of the learned noble, and the noble learned, the good, the generous-minded, and the true, who have kindly labored to smooth the difficulties of this arduous undertaking, by opening every source of information, both national and private, and strewing an otherwise rugged path with flowers, not only would the time fail me, but volumes would be requisite to express my appreciation of the gratifying attentions and affectionate hospitalities I have received in Scotland.

The base misrepresentation of the Scottish character which pervaded the coarse literature of the eighteenth century in England, and extended its pernicious influence through all classes of society, was not merely symptomatic of the bad taste and blunted moral perceptions of that soul-degrading period--it was one of the successful organs of party malice, neither more nor less than the reptile tail of the hydra of falsehood, which reared its hundred heads against the Royal House of Stuart, and established the most palpable calumnies by the hardihood of assertion.

The pen is a small instrument, but it is a lever capable of overturning thrones. It is among the pains and penalties of Royalty to experience the fickleness of public favor, and to be occasionally borne down by an unmerited load of obloquy, of which the pen of some incendiary writer has been the exciting cause; but that a whole nation should have been brought to discredit by slanderous tongues and witless pens, is a marvel and a mystery no less strange than true.

As long as Scotland, in consequence of bad roads and tedious traveling, remained a sort of _terra incognita_, vulgar prejudice prevailed among the ignorant and narrow-minded portion of society in England; but Scotland only required to be seen to be appreciated. Strong in native talent, rich in native worth, valiant, persevering, and wise, her sons have been ever foremost in the field of honorable enterprise, whether in deeds of arms, science, jurisprudence, or the industrial arts of peaceful life. In poetry, music, and song, she has certainly never been surpassed. It was, however, reserved for the genius of Sir Walter Scott to draw English hearts and English gold to Scotland, and to knit those bonds of brotherly regard which no act of legislature could do. His graphic pictures of Scotland and the Scotch acted like a spell of enchantment on the imaginations of the English. Those who were able to indulge the enthusiastic feelings which his writings had excited, crossed the Border, rushed into Highland glens, scaled Highland hills, congregated at Scotch hostelries, peeped into Scotch cottages, were invited to partake of Scotch hospitality--and found themselves in a land flowing with milk and honey, not merely in its festive character, but in its kindliness to strangers, which is the glory of all lands.

Yet among the numerous visitors whom the sight-seeing instincts of this age of locomotion have rendered familiar with the ancient seats of Scottish regality, how few know any thing about the Queens who once held their courts within the now deserted walls of Dunfermline, Falkland, Linlithgow, and Stirling!--gems which, even in their desolation, are surviving monuments of the graceful tastes of their founders, and incline the musing antiquary, who realizes in fancy for a moment their pristine glory, to smite his breast and exclaim “Ichabod!” With the exception of Windsor Castle, England has certainly no vestige of palatial architecture which may compare with the royal homes of Scotland, of whose former tenants a few particulars may be no less acceptable to the sons and daughters of the land, than to the southern stranger who visits them.

The Maiden Castle, sitting enthroned on her dun rock, the Acropolis of Edinburgh, at once a relic and a witness of the immutable Past, is full of memories of eventful scenes connected with Queens whose hearts would have leaped with exultation could their eyes have looked on such a vision of national prosperity as the bright New Town, with its gay streets, and shops full of costly merchandise; its spacious squares, crescents, and noble public buildings rising on the outer _ballium_ of that grim fortress whose base is now surrounded by green flowery gardens, for the joyance of a peace-loving generation. Mons Meg and her brethren have lost their vocation through the amended temper of the times, and hold sinecure posts in silence--their destructive thunders being superseded by the din of the railway trains bringing hourly freights of wealth and wisdom to the good town of Edinburgh and its inhabitants.

England and Scotland are now ONE, not merely by the blending of the regal houses of Plantagenet, Bruce, Tudor, and Stuart in the person of James VI., and his accession to the throne of Great Britain in 1603, and the parliamentary act of consolidation in 1707, then miscalled the Union; but truly and effectually by friendship, based on mutual esteem, which has been cemented between the true hearts of the north and south in the present century. Under these auspicious circumstances, the Lives of the Queens of Scotland ought not to be less interesting to English, than those of the Queens of England have proved to Scotch readers.

Each of the Lives in the present series of royal biographies forms a distinct original narrative of individual yet general interest, illustrative of the course of civilization, the progress of the arts, and the costume of the periods to which they belong, calculated to lend a charm to the study of history, which, when truthfully told and philosophically considered, is the noblest school of ethics replete with moral teaching.

Many original royal letters will be embodied in these volumes, with facts and anecdotes carefully verified. Local traditions, not unworthy of attention, have been gathered in the desolate palaces and historic sites where every peasant is an oral chronicler, full of spirit-stirring recollections of the past. These are occasionally connected with themes which were the fountains whence Sir Walter Scott drew his inspiration for the chivalric poetry and romance which has rendered Scotland classic ground. The tastes of those who were the rising generation when the Waverley romances were the absorbing theme of interest in the literary world, have become matured. They require to have history rendered as agreeable without the mixture of fiction as with it; they desire to have it so written, without sacrificing truth to fastidiousness, that they may read it with their children, and that the whole family party shall be eager to resume the book when they gather round the work-table during the long winter evenings.

Authors who feel as they ought to feel, should rejoice in seeing their productions capable of imparting pleasure to the simple as well as the refined; for a book which pleases only one grade of society may be fashionable, but can not be called popular. That which interests peasants as well as peers, and is read with equal zest by children and parents, and is often seen in the hands of the operative classes, speaks to the heart in a language intelligible to a widely-extended circle of humanity, has written its own review, and needs no other.

EDINBURGH, _October 23, 1850_.

MARGARET TUDOR.

THE

QUEENS OF SCOTLAND.

MARGARET TUDOR.