Chapter VI: Summary (2)

As Queen Margaret and her son paused on their homeward journey, to cast a last look at their flowery palace in the wilderness, flames were seen to enwrap it of a sudden. The Pope’s envoy could not suppress an exclamation of surprise and regret. “It is the custom of our Highland-men,” replied the young King. “Be they never so well lodged at night, they burn their lodging the next morn.” The Queen and her son hunted in the Highlands at various stations till Michaelmas, at which festival they were the guests of Archbishop Beton at St. Andrews.

The young King entirely emancipated himself from the weak control of his mother when he attained his eighteenth year, the period of his majority. He then advanced to great honor one to whom he owed infinite obligations: this was Sir David Lindsay. In the course of the year 1530, James V. drew this inestimable friend of his infancy from retirement, by making him Lord Lion King-at-arms--not by the recommendation of his Queen-mother, as may very well be supposed.

A most flattering embassy was sent to Henry VIII. in the course of the next year, when he found that the young King’s government was too strong to be reversed. Lord William Howard appeared at the palace of St. Andrews, where was abiding the King of Scotland, with a train of threescore cavaliers, many of whom were noted as the most skillful in all games of manly sport, as shooting, leaping, wrestling, quoits, or casting of stones. Queen Margaret was witness to all the trials of skill to which the Englishmen challenged the Scots, and she ever took the part of her countrymen, and wagered on them. “But she and they always _tint_” says our chronicler, Lindsay of Pitscottie. At last, Queen Margaret betted against her son two hundred crowns, that six of these Englishmen would shoot better with the bow, than any half-dozen of Scotchmen, were they picked out of the whole kingdom, nobles, gentles, or yeomen. The challenge ran that the English were to shoot against them, “at _riveris_, the butts or prick-bonnet. The young King, hearing of this _bonspiel_[436] of his mother, was well content. And Queen Margaret laid down ane hundred crowns, and King James laid down the same; and ane tun of wine was to be expended on either side.”

The ground was chosen at St. Andrews, a town long famous for feats in archery. The Scotch archers were “three landed gentlemen and three yeomen, David Arnott of that ilk, David Weams of that ilk, and Mr. John Wedderburne, vicar of Dundee. The yeomen were John Thomson of Leith, Steven Tabroner, and Alick Baillie, who was ane piper, and shot wondrous near.” The Englishmen who figured as their rivals, it may be supposed, were not worthy to be named by the Lindsay, for they were defeated at their far-famed national weapon; and Queen Margaret lost her wager, to the intense delight of every Scotchman present. She accompanied her son to the town of St. Andrews, where they were followed by all engaged in the archery-contest, the young King having determined to expend the whole of the two hundred crowns in a grand feast, at which the archers were to preside, both winners and losers. It was sufficiently rich to console the English for their defeat.

Lord William Howard’s real errand was to persuade the King of Scotland to receive the hand of the Princess Mary Tudor. The Queen of Scotland knew well that the Emperor could not induce her brother to keep Katharine of Aragon in her place as Queen, or the English heiress as Princess. And when they were degraded, what would her son James gain by wedding the illegitimated daughter, but the plea for raising a civil war with England, in maintenance of his Queen’s rights of succession? Margaret had stigmatized her own daughter with illegitimacy, and let her go forth a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth. She, a woman, had not felt feminine tenderness sufficient to plead against blemishing the good name and position in life of her own Margaret: how then could she expect her brother would refrain from visiting his Mary with a similar fate?

Queen Margaret knew her brother, if she did not know herself. She had preceded him by several years in the race of that worst species of profligacy, which scoffs at the sanctity of the marriage tie, and the happiness of the children deriving existence from such union; she therefore treated the disposal of the hand of her niece Mary to her son, nearly as contemptuously as any of the Princes of Europe would have considered a marriage with her own outcast daughter, Margaret Douglas.

Margaret came on the first of June, 1532, to hold a forest court for her dower-lands at Ettrick.[437] She demanded the keys of the fortress of Newark[438] from the castellan Buccleuch, who refused them until he knew King James’s pleasure on that matter. Queen Margaret sent a sharp complaint to her son, who forthwith commanded Buccleuch to deliver the keys to her Grace. Directly it was done she gave them to Methven. Her train amounted to sixty cavaliers and twenty-four foot-runners. She stayed at the Abbey of Dryburgh; from thence she passed to Coldstream, and finished her summer progress at Holyrood. She had never received satisfactory possession of her rich Ettrick dower-lands at any previous time. Methven left his brother James with two hundred troopers, to guard the rights of his royal spouse in Ettrick; and for some few years Margaret found herself lady of her own lands.

Years had rolled on since Margaret had been favored with the slightest confidential communication from her brother Henry VIII. He had as deeply resented her divorce from the Earl of Angus, and her marriage with Lord Methven, as if he had set her the purest pattern of conjugal constancy. The political agitation in which his own repudiation of Katharine of Aragon had involved his own kingdom, he knew, had given unwonted strength to the government of Scotland, which became the rallying point for all discontented with the divorce of Queen Katharine and the disinheriting of Mary. If this state of affairs continued, Henry considered that very serious interruptions might occur to his wedded felicity with his new Queen. Meantime Margaret’s old friend and confessor, Dr. Magnus, earnestly pressed on his attention the policy of renewing his correspondence with Queen Margaret.

The reconciliation between Henry VIII. and his sister Margaret was wholly ratified by Lord William Howard (uncle to Anne Boleyn), who was appointed ambassador to Scotland in the autumn of 1534. His instructions bear an especial clause, directing him to gain the good graces of his King’s “dearest suster, the Queen-mother of Scotland.”[439]

The only portion of Queen Margaret’s long letter of reconciliation bearing directly on the previous coolness between herself and Henry VIII. occurs in these words:--

“Please your Grace,[440] howbeit in time bypast some misadvised
persons have made unkindly report of Ws unto you, without cause
of offense in us, we have and always sal indured and continued
your most loving _cystyr_, intending no less all time of
our life, having sic confidence in you that ye will hold us the
same. Your Grace is our only brother, and Owz your only sister;
and since so is, let no divorce or _contraire_ have place,
nor no report of ill adviset alter our conceits, but brotherly
and cysterly love ever to endure, to the pleasure of God and
weal of us both. And trust no less in me than in yourself in all
and sindrie things at our whole power, as pleaseth your Grace to
command. Beseeching the eternal God to _consarve_ you in
everlasting grace.

“Written with our _awn_ hand at Edinburgh, the 12 day of
December instant, by your Grace awn and only

“Most lovyng and hummyll Cystyr,

“MARGARET R.”

Queen Margaret addressed a longer and more familiar epistle to the all-powerful minister Cromwell, dated on the same day. She narrates more of actual occurrences than usual in her wordy epistles. The ostensible purport of the whole was to convey her loving greetings to her new sister the Queen of Henry VIII., and commend herself to her regard. Communications between Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and Anne Boleyn are rarities in history.

Queen Margaret addressed Cromwell by the title of “My Lord Sacriter,” meaning secretary, “and her dearly beloved friend,” informing him that she had,

“By our dearest brother’s the King’s servitors, Master William
Barlow Prior and Thomas Holcroft, received the King our dearest
brother’s most loving letters, with sundry other honorable
tokens of remembrance, and also ane goodly letter, with ane
loving token from our dearest _cister_ the Queen (Anne
Boleyn), which not only shall be to our honor, but in like
manner unto his Grace and our dearest cistir, exhorting you
most affectuously that ye will in our name thank his grace most
heartily.”[441]

Margaret probably means that it will be an honor to Anne Boleyn to make peace and heal differences between the royal families of Scotland and England. She informs her brother’s secretary that she had summoned her son to receive the envoys; and although King James had been but a very short time convalescent of the infirmity of small-pox and fever, yet he had traveled at the rate of twenty miles each day for eight days; and at the last stage of twenty miles, being unable to proceed, had written to her, his mother, requesting her to send her spouse Lord Methven to convey the English envoys to him for audience. Margaret declares that she had resolved to assist at this important congress, and great merit she takes: “That on the next morrow, being the most troublous weather that WE ever traveled into, WE _com_ to our dearest son, with whom we communed and resolved, so that by the advice of us, and of no other living person, determined and concluded the meeting.” The meeting thus anxiously arranged and superintended by Queen Margaret, was to induce her son’s acknowledgment of her brother’s tardily announced wedlock with Anne Boleyn. The influence of the Queen-mother had evidently been bought with high bribes, and she now looked forward to the pleasing prospect of reaping golden harvests on every possible pretense whereon she could hang a supplication for cash. She proceeds to declare the opposition felt to Henry’s marriage with Anne Boleyn by the Chancellor Beton and the rest of the spirituality of Scotland.

There is reason to believe that the tumultuous passions of young James of Scotland only too eagerly seconded the recognition his uncle demanded of the divorce of Katharine of Aragon and the marriage of Anne Boleyn, for James himself was madly in love with the lady of Lochleven, well known in Scottish history as the mother of James, afterward Regent of Scotland. She was a married woman, but he came to the determination of having her divorced, and following the example of his uncle of England. His mother, whether she knew the scheme that had darted into his brain or not, impetuously carried forward her brother’s plans. Her letter to Cromwell described how the Catholic clergy in Scotland submitted “in silence to the recognition of Anne Boleyn’s marriage, save that they set a black friar to preach before her son in a sermon made expressly to condemn it covertly.” “Which friar,” proceeds Queen Margaret,[442] “we shall not stand content with, because his report in some part concerned our dearest brother and his realm, howbeit the same was colored and not expressly specifying his Grace nor his subjects. We shall remember him (the friar) as cause requireth, but assuredly the King, our dearest son, took no manner _tent_ (heed) thereto.” Margaret concludes her letter to Cromwell with some exercise of generosity in the way of a present, to which, notwithstanding her alledged profusion, she was little addicted; her previous presents, mentioned in her numerous letters, cost her nothing, being the famous falcons, natives of the Scottish isles, called by her “hawks.” Her gift to Cromwell was some kind of jewel. “And in rememberance ye will receive ane little token, and wear the same for our pleasure, as she that standeth to you your friend, at our power, and thinks her no less indebted hearing of your faithful and obedient service done to the pleasure, honor, and wealth of our dearest brother the King, and also your good mind to us, his Grace’s only sister.”[443]

The uncle of Anne Boleyn, Lord William Howard, soon after returned to Scotland, bearing the Order of the Garter,[444] with which it was the pleasure of Henry VIII. to invest James V. The investment is acknowledged by the Bishop of Aberdeen as taking place on March 4, 1534–5. Margaret soon after renewed her old petitions for cash, and by Lord William Howard sent a pressing intimation “that her good services deserved a pecuniary reward, which could be delicately tendered by her brother by way of indemnifying her for her losses on her dower-lands on the Marches.” In order to deserve her fees, she had contrived to elicit from her son intelligence of the secret orders he had given to his ambassador, Sir Adam Otterbourne, then resident at Hampton Court. How he was not to agree to his uncle’s “new constitution of religion,” and that he meant to change the place of meeting to Newcastle instead of York. Margaret wrote down instantly a minute of all her son had told her in confidence, and sent the particulars to her brother. A baser breach of trust she never made. She added, that Sir Adam was directed “not to press for answer in writing, but merely to report cleverly what was remarked.” All these intimations Margaret thought of sufficient moment to be forwarded by post to Berwick, whence they were to be speeded onward. Margaret professed “that her son loved Henry as his _natural_ father,” the more doubtless for the failure of Anne Boleyn’s male heirs. Before the Queen-mother closed her letter, she pumped other articles of Otterbourne’s instructions out of her son; and she adds, “I spake with the King my son ere I directed this letter. Please your Grace to have it close and secretly kept. By my evil hand in haste. Off Edinburgh this 16 day of March.”[445] Lord William Howard, who was again at Edinburgh in March 1535–6, informs his master[446] “that Queen Margaret, and many others beside, had told him that James meant to marry a gentlewoman of Scotland, the lord of Erskine’s daughter, by whom he was already the father of a son.”[447] Lord William then proceeds to give the erroneous tale that the King of Scots “hath found the means to divorce her from her husband, and there is great lamentation made in Scotland as far as men dare. No man was privy to that matter but Sir James Hamilton.” Again that evil person crosses the private history of the royal family of Scotland. Queen Margaret’s own good name had been compromised a dozen years previously, as shown in Lord Dacre’s dispatches. Since then he had assassinated Lennox, and now appears as his young King’s arch-tempter.

Margaret was in consternation at the ruin which her example and that of her brother was bringing on her son. James V. was on bad terms with her; he had discovered her treacherous correspondence, and threatened punishment. His rage broke out when his mother began to discuss his meeting with his uncle at Newcastle. “Her Grace hath been so very plain with him,” wrote Lord William, “that he is very angry with her. Your Highness hath cause to give her great thanks. I humbly beseech your Grace that Sir Adam Otterbourne (the Scottish resident ambassador) do not know that I have _sartyfied_ your Grace that the marriage with France was broken off, or he will cause the King’s Grace your nephew to be angry.”[448]

The King of Scotland was angry, he raged at his mother; and Lord William sent word to his royal master that “the King would not go to York, which Queen Margaret and he had persuaded him to promise.” James V., in an angry interview with his mother, recalled that promise. She remained in consternation. What her son knew, or what he did not, she could not ascertain. Her immediate imprisonment was hinted; yet she was suffered to depart to Doune, near Menteith. Two days after she arrived there, she dated a letter to her brother, assuming “that her son’s displeasure arose because he would not meet his uncle at York, when he chose to appoint Newcastle, on account of the free sea adjacent.”[449]

Margaret’s perplexity continued even up to May 12, when she wrote an invitation for herself, that she might accompany her dearest son to _wesy_ her dearest brother at the expected congress in England--“_wesy_,” it may be guessed, is used by Margaret in the sense affixed to the examinations of the late French passports, which many of our readers will remember they had to send to be _visé_. She owns in her letter that she has heard that Henry VIII. had such important business in hand, “that she could hardly expect him to answer whether he would be pleased for her to _wesy_ him or not; but both she and Lord William were especially anxious for his answer.” No wonder they waited long for their answer, for Henry’s important avocations were connected with the demolition of his former idol, Anne Boleyn, being no other than trying, divorcing, and beheading her. The ambassador, Lord William Howard, who was the uncle of the unfortunate lady, was of course anxious to learn the result of the astounding tragedy. He speaks more, however, of Queen Margaret’s disgrace with the King her son; for his secretary, Barlow,[450] wrote the same day to Henry VIII., saying that “she was then in high displeasure (disgrace) with King James, he bearing her in hand, or accusing her of receiving gifts from her brother to betray him, with many other unkind suspicious words; by reason of which she, greatly discomforted, is weary of Scotland, and fully determined to come to England, so that it be your Grace’s pleasure. She hath signified her mind in writing unto your Grace, and likewise required us to solicit the same. Furthermore, the King of Scotland’s purpose of marriage with the divorced _jantylwoman_ is by no means to be dissuaded, but, against the hearts of all his nobles, is like to be brought to pass (the French marriage taking none effect), whereof no small disturbance is like to rise within the realm.” Reports of Anne Boleyn’s imprisonment were spread in the Scottish court before May 13 (the date of his letter) came to a close. Lord William wrote to Cromwell concerning the astonishment it caused to the Queen and the Scottish court, and begged to have certain information, as he was asked every hour about the Queen of England’s imprisonment, and could give no “_resolute answer_, being ignorant.”[451]

Queen Margaret was not in the most easy state of mind: she had been sternly answered by her son on renewing her importunities for his meeting his uncle Henry VIII.:--“If,” said James V., “your brother means by your aid to betray me, I had _liever_ (rather) it were done while I am in mine own realm than in England!”[452]

Every one who has observed the proceedings of Margaret Tudor will be rather surprised that her son had not addressed his remonstrance to her a few years earlier than the date of Lord William Howard’s letter. As it was, James, whose mind was in a tumult of passion, struggling with the temptation of his unworthy love, and the honest wish to do his duty to his people, was unwontedly severe to his mother; not that his severity by any means came up to her deserts, but she had never before been blamed by him. King James, in fact, was guilty of no severity to his mother, except a few well-deserved reproofs. He took measures, however, for the time to come, in his Council, that she had no power but what she obtained surreptitiously. His vigorous mind ultimately righted itself; the awful tragedy of his uncle’s lawless love for Anne Boleyn was not lost upon him; he broke his bonds “with the divorced _jantylwoman_”[453] (as Lord William Howard calls the mother of the Regent Murray); he determined to marry respectably; but, in hopes of matrimonial felicity, he resolved to see and converse with his wife before he wedded.

At the departure of Lord William Howard from Edinburgh, Queen Margaret was still there, in the Palace of Holyrood, but in disgrace with her son, who retired in wrath to Linlithgow. Henry VIII., doubly engaged in the destruction of his queen, and the wooing of her successor, had no time to write to his sister. Very piteously did Barlow, the secretary of the English ambassador, represent the case of Queen Margaret in these words, addressed to Cromwell, May 25:[454]--“Her Grace Queen Margaret hopes to receive some comfortable answer from the King, her brother, in relief of her sorrow, which is not a little now, and like to be much more grievous.” She wrote an urgent letter to her brother the day of Lord William Howard’s departure, commending him and all his proceedings to Henry VIII.; but the star of Howard had met with its first obscuration in the disgrace of Queen Anne Boleyn.[455]

The projected alliance between the brother of Lord William and Lady Margaret Douglas, there can be little doubt, was communicated by him to the Queen-mother of Scotland during his embassies in 1536; which made her recognize in the premier ducal family of England a future family connection. Henry VIII. sent neither answer nor consolation to his sister, who remained in deserved disgrace with her son, not daring to renew her usual communication of his proceedings.

Some sudden urgency of pecuniary difficulty prompted her to demand the cash she considered that she had earned in the affair of Anne Boleyn’s recognition; for on July 16 she made a bold requisition from her brother of 20,000 merks, “to help her out of perpetual pain, as she had done all she could to further the visit of her son to England, but he could not be induced to come.”[456] As her letter gave not the slightest hint of her son’s voyage to France, which took place a few days afterward,[457] July 24, Henry VIII. and his cunning prime-minister, Cromwell, supposed Margaret had either lost the will or the power to be their spy effectually. They bestowed no cash, but expressed mighty astonishment wherefore she could want such heavy sums “when her state was so prosperous under the protection of her son and Lord Muffin.” In fact, it was utterly out of Margaret’s power to send any intelligence regarding the King, otherwise than might be gathered from any Scottish peasant crossing the Border; for her son kept his voyage in search of a wife a profound secret from the world in general,[458] and from his mother in particular. Margaret was left without power in the government, and was fain to reside on her demesnes in the west of Scotland.

Being thus under a cloud, and in disgrace with her royal son, she gave a portion of remembrance to that other child from whom her divorce from the father had estranged her. While residing at Perth, Queen Margaret heard of the severity with which her daughter had been treated by Henry VIII.; and that not only her unfortunate lover, Lord Thomas Howard, but even the young lady herself was then suffering harsh imprisonment in the Tower for their steadfast adherence to their betrothment with each other. Exasperated by the whole proceedings of her brother and his ministers, Queen Margaret wrote, August 12, 1536, in earnest remonstrance regarding the ill-treatment of her child.[459] She wrote with more eloquence and spirit than usual, reproaching her brother with first encouraging her daughter in plighting her faith to Lord Thomas Howard, and then punishing them both with rigorous imprisonment. Margaret, in the course of her letter, demands with a high hand, that her daughter may be sent forthwith to her in Scotland--if done, “she will answer that her child will never trouble her brother more.” There is a little relief from the selfishness of Margaret’s usual conduct, to find the maternal feelings thus ardently breaking forth through the crust of diplomacy. Queen Margaret, as she afterward affirmed, was struck with such displeasure and indignation at her daughter’s incarceration in the Tower, that it put a stop to her intended journey into England, where she meant to have given her brother the honor and advantage of her society, for the purpose of being re-married to her former spouse, Archibald, Earl of Angus, then at his court.[460] Although she speaks angrily in another epistle, “that any person could believe such a thing of her,” yet, in a third dispatch, she mentions it with complacency. Shakspeare might well have apostrophized her in the words--

“False, fickle, changing woman!”

as he did her grandmother, whose conduct was more excusable.

Her maternal remonstrance was but a spark of high spirit just struck out by circumstances, and extinct forever. She soon recurred to her usual mean mendacity, while Henry VIII., in course of years, received the perpetual complaints of his sister much in the same spirit that pedestrians, on their beat daily, view the petitions of perennial beggars hourly asking relief on the same distress. Margaret perpetually urges her brother for money; perpetually giving as reasons the ill-treatment of her son, or of one or other of her husbands. At this period of her life, she varied her complaints by telling tales of her son, and finishing up the picture of her wrongs with some dark touches concerning her third husband, Harry, Lord Methven.

Her supplication was answered by her brother, in civil terms it is true; yet a vein of quiet sarcasm runs through the composition.

“Dearest sister,[461] you shall understand, that like-as we
would be right sorry to see that our good brother and nephew
(James V.) should not use you in all things as beseemeth a
natural and kind son to use his mother, so you may certainly
persuade yourself, that in case we should certainly perceive
that you were treated otherwise than your honor and the treaty
of your marriage doth require, there shall, on our behalf,
want no loving and kind office which we think may tend to your
relief.”

In thus mentioning her marriage, her brother does not trouble himself with the two husbands she married while Queen Dowager, but merely with the marriage treaty which gave the Princess Royal of England the crown-matrimonial of Scotland.

“But, dearest sister,” continues Henry VIII., “by the report
of Sir John Campbell, whom you recommended as your special
friend, it appeared to us that you be very well _handled_
(treated), and be grown to much _wealth_ (weal), quiet,
and riches; and, on the other side, by your account given our
servant, Berwick, it appeareth otherwise. These tales be so
contrary one to another, that we may well remain doubtful which
of them we may believe. Perceiving also, by other information
received from you, concerning your trouble and evil handling,
both by our nephew, your son, and by the ‘Lord Muffyn,’ that
either your state varies, or else things have not been well
understood.”

Henry VIII., however, ordered Cromwell to call Lord Methven to account for his misdoings; but that noble only answered by asking Cromwell to assure the King of England “that his own _simpleness_ was always ready to serve him in all humility before all princes in the world, excepting his own sovereign lord.” His letter was dated December 11, at Edinburgh.[462] Poor Lord Methven! His few lines were evidently penned in great astonishment as to how he had drawn on himself the wrath of the terrible brother of his queenly spouse.

All the advantage possible to be made of the Queen’s complaints of ill-treatment by her son and Lord Methven was taken by Henry VIII. He hated Methven, because he had reason to know that he was a most faithful servant to James V. But he affected to lend a pitying ear to his sister’s woful representations, and took the opportunity of sending Ralph Sadler to spy in Scotland during the absence of the King, under pretense of the necessity of secret conference on some delicate distress of his dearest sister, Queen Margaret. Sadler went to Scotland, and returned laden with packets of the Queen’s letters and verbal messages concerning a new divorce, as she had come to the resolution of dismissing Lord Methven. She looked long and vainly for answers. At last Harry Ray (the pursuivant called Berwick) came ostensibly to inquire about some friars who had escaped across the Borders, but in reality he was to have secret communication with Queen Margaret, and hear from her lips the condition of Scotland, and whether any mischief could be done in its young King’s absence.

Such was the gist of Harry Ray’s mission, which Margaret deemed was to expedite her second divorce and fourth marriage with “one John Stuart.”[463] For so both history and tradition name the cause of her meditated change of spouses. It must be owned the Queen was constant to the Stuart family. Her hand had already been given to King James Stuart--she had divorced her second spouse, with the hopes of marrying the Regent, John Stuart, Duke of Albany--she had actually wedded Harry Stuart, and she now intended to marry some commoner called John Stuart, if she could succeed in ridding herself of the spouse with whom she had passed the last twelve years. A tradition exists among some of the noblest families in Scotland, that Margaret’s fourth intended husband was no other than that strange character, John Stuart Earl of Arran, who, after effecting a revolution in the minority of James VI., vanishes suddenly from the historical scene in 1584. As Margaret was partial to very young men, Arran might have been her intended spouse in 1536, and yet not have seen sixty at the period of his death. He was one of the Scotch colony of Darnley-Stuarts bred in France, whose general code of morals did no great credit to their adopted country.

The interview between Queen Margaret and her brother’s agent was conducted with the utmost caution. Harry Ray was requested to change his gay gaberdine for a hat and cloak after the fashion of Scotland, and to follow a friend of his, pertaining to Queen Margaret’s service, into the private apartments of royalty at Holyrood. At nine at night it was announced to him that Queen Margaret would give him secret audience. “And there,” he says, “I met her alone in a gallery, no person knowing of the interview but only her said servant.” The Queen at first said, “You are welcome; but I marvel that I hear no word of the letters I sent by Raufe Sadler. I trow my friends forget me! I pray you speak to my lord of Norfolk (the Duke), that he be so good cousin and friend as to remember the King, my brother, to be a kind and loving brother unto me, and to see some way for me, as I shall be a kind and loving sister to him, and at his commandment in all cases.”

Harry Ray, who was not the most diplomatic of all spies, replied, “I shall not fail to do the same;” and then bluntly added, “that the Duke of Norfolk desired her to show him some news.” Small hopes there were of any good to be gained by fishing in troubled waters at that time. Margaret’s answer showed that the Scottish people were unanimously obedient to the vigorous intellect of their young monarch, absent though he was.[464]

“There is not one lord in Scotland,” replied Queen Margaret, “that will speak to the King, my son, good counsel toward England, unless it be he take it of himself. All the lords and council here do verily believe that your ships be gone forth on the western seas, to the intent to seize the King my son. And now the Lords of the Scottish Council have _sitten_ in counsel, for what purpose I know not; but upon their rising they sent away Rosey[465] herald into France, to the King thereof, thinking he would arrive before the departure of King James. The herald was to oversee the country of England as he went through it, and report the same to the King my son.”

The pursuivant said he should declare the same to the Duke of Norfolk, and away he went.

Queen Margaret had not yet spoken her mind to the messenger, as those who are acquainted with her furtive disposition can very well guess. Next evening, at the very same hour, the English pursuivant had again to throw off his gorgeous heraldic tabard, and muffle himself up in Scotch plaid, before he followed his guide into the Queen’s private gallery in Holyrood Palace.

“There shall be nothing done in this realm,” said the Queen, “but the King my brother, and my lord of Norfolk, shall have knowledge of it. The Lords and all the commonalty of Scotland do suspect that ye will make war against them; and if it be so, let my lord of Norfolk make sure of the Commons.”

Margaret meant the common people of England. The destitute poor among them, in their extreme agony at the deprivation of support by the monasteries, without other aid being provided, had lately risen in the rebellion called the “Pilgrimage of Grace,” and were now daily sending invitations to the King of Scotland for assistance. The Berwick pursuivant rejoined, “Hath your Grace any _suspect_ that they are not sure enough?”

“Nay,” answered Queen Margaret; “but I pray you show this unto him--and also, if ye intend war, say, that I pray my lord of Norfolk that he make no war until I and Harry Stuart be divorced. For if the war should be before the said divorce were made, the Lords of Scotland will suffer him to have my living.” There came Queen Margaret to her usual conclusion of self-seeking: war was to be made to square with her own pleasure and inclinations.

Margaret received no answer until the middle of May, when a dispatch arrived from Cromwell,[466] full of general assurances of how earnestly “the King, her brother, had travailed for her contentation in the solicitation of her honorable causes.” The wily minister mentions not the divorce, but presses her for intelligence from Scotland, and sends her a present “of cramp-rings,” as his respectable master had lately consecrated a batch of those useful and valuable articles. Taking artful advantage of Margaret’s grumbling invectives against her son, Henry VIII. had provokingly sent Ralph Sadler on a mission to him when the highly-favored guest and son-in-law of Francis I. The errand of Sadler was to remonstrate with the King of Scotland on the great cruelty of treating his mother so very ill that she was forced, by piteous bewailings, to awaken her brother’s compassion in her favor.[467] How infinitely exasperated James V. must have been may be considered, when the ill-treatment consisted only of his disapprobation of his mother, then in her forty-eighth year, divorcing her third husband to marry a fourth--out of these four husbands three being then alive! According to Queen Margaret’s plea concerning James IV., the whole four might be considered in existence on the best authority!

The Queen, finding that her son and his fair French bride were embarked for return to Scotland,[468] hurried on her divorce from Methven. She had the whole process fairly transcribed, and it was on the very eve of promulgation when James V. landed.[469] When Queen Margaret met her son and his bride, all was joy and serenity for the first few days; which happy order of affairs even outlasted her letter dated June 7, 1537, and written to Henry VIII.,[470] “thanking him for the benefaction of £200,” which sum she had at length extracted from him, that she might appear queenly, for the honor of England, in the eyes of the royal daughter of France. Margaret likewise thanks her brother for sending his “secret servant, Master Sadler,” to her son in France, to complain how ill she was treated in Scotland; that she had spoken at length to James V., who sent an ambassador, the Abbot of Arbroath, to his uncle; and very earnest is Queen Margaret that, although the Scotch envoy was an ecclesiastic, her brother would not fall out with him, “but to take kindly to the said abbot, lest he should make evil report; and that he be well entreated, for he is great with the King my son; and let him understand that it is your will and pleasure that I be honorably entreated and obeyed of my living, seeing I am your Grace’s sister; and this being done, your Grace will be kinder to the realm of Scotland for my sake. These good words may do your Grace no hurt, and me much good; and with the help of God I shall deserve the same at my power.”[471]

As for her new divorce, it was progressing to admiration. “Pleaseth your Grace to know, that my divorce and _partition_ is at the giving of sentence, and proved by many famous folk, to the number of four-and-twenty provers. An’ by the grace of God, I shall never have such a trouble again, and your Grace may be sure I shall _never_ do nothing but by your Grace’s counsel and commandment; for I may do your Grace both honor and pleasure better now as I am. Beseeching your Grace, if I have need, that I lack not your help and supply, which I trust I shall not fail to have, if I be wronged in any thing I have a right to.”[472] Unfortunately for the placidity of Queen Margaret’s temper, directly her proceedings reached the ears of her son, his first care, notwithstanding “all her famous folk, and four-and-twenty provers,” was to quash the whole of the fine scheme.

Long and loud were her invectives on his want of filial duty. It is strange, however, that throughout her correspondence she brings no charge against Lord Methven, excepting “that he spent more of her income than she thought right.” If such cause could be successfully pleaded for dismissing a lord and master, perhaps Queen Margaret’s example would be more generally followed. Tradition affirms, that Lord Methven had been privately married to a young widow, called the Mistress of Sutherland, by whom he had a family nearly the same age as the children he had by the Queen; and that this lady’s offspring were afterward mistaken for hers.

Margaret was on angry terms with her son during the short time his Queen Magdalene lived. Greatly injured she deemed herself, on account of the restriction he put upon the promulgation of “her sentence.” She expresses herself on the subject of her wrongs, in her epistle to “her cousin the Duke of Norfolk,” telling him she thought it--

“Great _on_ kindness that when ye do send in this realm,
that ye will not write or send to speak with me, that I may
hear from you, and you to hear how I am entreated. For, since
the departure of Master Sadler, I have gotten no word neither
from the King’s Grace my brother, nor yet from you, which were
greatly to my comfort to hear from.

“And, dearest cousin, I must make my complaint to you, how I
am heavily done to in this realm, for I have _optaynet_
(obtained) my cause of divorce betwixt ME and the Lord
of Meffen, and it is so far past that the judge has concluded
and written my sentence, ready to be pronounced this twelve
weeks bypast; but the King my son has _stoppen_ the
same, and will not let it be given, contrary to justice and
reason. And he promised, when I gave him my mains of Dunbar
for a certain sum of money, that I should have the sentence
pronounced.

“Thus, my Lord, I trust it be the King’s Grace my brother’s
will, that I have reason done me and obeyed of my living.
Suppose I may not write daily to his Grace, and seeing ye are so
near these parts (_he was at Sheriffe Hutton_), your good
writing and words would do me much good with the King my son, so
that he may understand that his Grace my brother will not suffer
me to be wronged, for I am daily holden in great trouble for the
lack of my sentence!

“Therefore I pray ye, my Lord and cousin, that ye will make some
errand here to the King my son, not saying I did advertise you;
but that everybody speaks of _it_ (_the expediency of her
divorce_), that I should lack justice which is _moder_
to him, which is to his dishonor.

“Thus, my Lord and cousin, ye may help me out of my trouble
through your good writing, for an’ they trust the King’s Grace
my brother will be displeased at this, they will remedy the
same. As for me, I am holden in such suspicion for England’s
(_sake_), that I dare send no Scottish man.

“Therefore I desire you to send some special servant of yours,
that I may speak withal,--praying you, my Lord, to do this at my
request, as ye will that I fare well; and as my special hest is
in you, the sooner ye send it is the better for me.

“And I pray you, my Lord, that you will give credence to Harry
Ray.

“And God have you in his keeping.

“Yours, MARGARET R.”

Endorsed, without date of time or place--“To my Lord and cousin,
the Duke of Norfolk.”[473]

In the midst of the angry controversy between the mother and son concerning her absurd divorce, the hopes that Queen Margaret had long cherished, that the English succession would eventually fall to her line, seemed to be destroyed by the arrival of the news that her brother had an heir born. The Queen dates her letter October 14, acknowledging the information of the birth of her nephew (afterward Edward VI.)--a date scarcely credible, as he was only born October 12.[474]

“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.