Chapter VI: Summary (3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAGDALENE OF FRANCE.