Tudor (22 page)

Henry duly welcomed the couple on their return to England: he was too fond of his younger sister and of Brandon to deprive himself of their company for long. Other favourites might be cleverer, or wittier, but as another Italian diplomat observed, Brandon's combination of charm and physicality reflected the king's glory.

On 15 May a third wedding was performed before the full court at Greenwich. Officially the nation rejoiced. Unofficially the Venetians observed that there were none of the public demonstrations of joy expected after a royal marriage ‘because the kingdom did not approve'. In a strictly hierarchical society, people were expected to know their place – even if they were the king's best friend. Meanwhile, King Francis was reported to be ‘sore displeased at the loss of the diamond called the Mirror of Naples'.
¹⁹
He scribbled angrily across a sketch of the French queen: ‘
plus sale que royne
' (more dirty than queenly).
²⁰

But it was her sister who was to pay the price of the jewel's loss. Unencumbered by an English wife, as Louis had been, Francis had given Albany permission to take up the reins of government in Scotland and instructed him to send Queen Margaret's younger son, the infant Alexander, Duke of Ross, to be educated in France.
²¹
Scotland and France had a mutual interest in maintaining their old alliance against their English neighbour, and to Henry's dismay, on 26 July 1515, with Albany welcomed in Scotland, the Scottish Parliament approved a plan to remove the princes from Queen Margaret's care. Eight lords were chosen as their guardians, four of whom were dispatched promptly to Margaret at Stirling, to seize the princes.

17

A FAMILY REUNION AND A ROYAL RIVAL

S
TANDING BEHIND THE GATES AT
S
TIRLING
C
ASTLE
, M
ARGARET
held the hand of her three-year-old son, James V, and ordered them opened.
¹
The approaching horsemen were just yards from the gate when she called on them to halt. They reined in their horses sharply. Margaret was heavily pregnant, and standing with her was not only her eldest son, but also a nurse carrying the king's infant brother, the Duke of Ross. Margaret asked the four lords to deliver their message. They replied that they were commissioned to demand the delivery of the king and his brother to them. At that she ordered the portcullis dropped. Through the lattice ironwork Margaret reminded them that the castle had been bequeathed to her ‘by the king her husband, who had made her protectrix of her children'. They agreed to give her six days to consider their demands; then they would return for her sons.

Once the lords had left, Margaret returned to the castle's rooms and her husband, the Earl of Angus. They had little choice, he said, ‘that the children should be given up'. Margaret insisted that they should only do so if the lords agreed she could see her children, otherwise they should seek some other solution. She had lost children before to illness; she would fight to the bitter end for those God had spared. Margaret persuaded Angus to leave to ask the advice of Henry's agents. He had not yet returned when the lords came, once
again, for the children. Margaret told them she would hand them over if they would only be placed with her choice of guardians and she could ‘see them when she pleased'.
²
This request was turned down flat and the Duke of Albany began immediately to cut off her supplies. Margaret soon found herself marooned in her fortress on its sheer rock face above the town.

Angus found Henry VIII's agents convinced that if the duke got his hands on the children they would ‘be destroyed' and a plan had been laid for Angus to return to Stirling and rescue them. He hoped a small force of sixty men would stand a good chance of eluding detection by the duke's forces. Unfortunately, as they reached Stirling they were spotted. Sixteen of the party were killed as they fled, while one messenger got through, bringing desperate advice from Henry's principal agent in the north, Lord Dacre. He suggested she should ‘set the young King of Scots upon the walls in the sight of all persons, crowned and with the sceptre in his hand'. Dacre hoped this would prevent Albany firing on the castle, and even raise the town in her support.

On 4 August 1515 Albany arrived at Stirling with an army seven thousand strong. His cannon included the infamous Mons Meg, a six-tonne muzzle-loading weapon capable of firing gunstones weighing 150 kilograms over a range of two miles.
³
‘Desolate' at the sight, Queen Margaret had no intention of putting her tiny son in the firing line.
⁴
Instead she agreed to surrender the castle and her children. In what time she had left with them she coached James V to ask for favour for himself, his brother and his stepfather. When the men came for him the little boy dutifully handed over the castle's huge keys, and repeated the words his mother had taught him.
⁵
Margaret was placed under guard as James and his infant brother were then taken from her. James was two years younger than his grandfather Henry VII had been when he was taken from his mother, Margaret Beaufort.

Queen Margaret now intended to flee Scotland for England. By the beginning of September she had gained Albany's trust sufficiently
for her to be allowed to travel to Linlithgow Palace, to prepare for the birth of Angus' baby. A few days after her arrival at the palace she fled to Tantallon Castle, three miles east of North Berwick. She had only four or five servants, as well as her husband with her, but Albany soon discovered her departure. The duke needed to validate his claim that he ruled Scotland in the name of all. He could not do that with the queen in exile, and nor did he wish to risk her returning to Scotland with an English army at her back. He sent a message assuring her if she came back he would restore ‘everything' to her within seven days; if she was now too near the birth to travel, she could send her husband as hostage, but as soon as the messenger arrived Margaret and Angus fled on, even leaving behind her baggage and jewels in their hurry.
⁶

By the time the party had reached England Margaret was exhausted. Unable to ride as far as Lord Dacre's house at Morpeth, they stopped at the remote military outpost of Harbottle Castle. Dacre reported to Henry that there, on 7 October, ‘the Queen of Scots your sister . . . was delivered and brought in bed of a fair young lady'. Henry's niece was christened the following day, ‘with such convenient provisions as either could or might be had in this barren and wild country'.
⁷
Like her namesakes and predecessors this child, Lady Margaret Douglas, was to be a key figure in the future of the Tudor and the Stuart royal lines. But her birth had almost killed her mother. The queen proved too weak to be moved even after the religious service that marked a mother's re-entry into society three weeks later, known as churching. She could barely eat and suffered sciatica down her right leg.

It was only late in November that Queen Margaret was able to travel to Morpeth, carried in a litter borne by Dacre's menservants. The house was hung with new tapestries, Dacre's gilt plate was all put out in her honour, and she was still more pleased to discover how active her family had been on her behalf. Margaret's sister, Mary, still called the French queen, knew the Duke of Albany from France, and had extracted public assurances from him on the safety of the princes.
Henry had also sent clothes and other necessities as a public mark of his support.

Dacre was amazed by what appeared to be Margaret's obsessive ‘love of apparel'. She had twenty-two gowns of cloth of gold and silks in his house, and sent to Edinburgh for more. She remained in such pain from her daughter's birth that even sitting up in bed made her scream in agony, so she could not wear them. Instead she had them held in front of her to admire. For five days, Dacre reported, Queen Margaret spoke frequently about her dresses: how she was going to have one made up in purple velvet lined with cloth of gold and another in red velvet lined in ermine. It expressed, perhaps, a wish to return to the security she had known as Henry VII's young daughter, and, later, as James IV's wife. Tellingly the traumatised queen also spoke often of her infant son, the Duke of Ross, and what a good child he was. She spoke of him even more often than of her elder son, the king. Dacre feared that the news, brought by a Scottish delegation, that the baby had died from a fever, would kill her.
⁸

It was March 1516 before Dacre told Margaret. She was so distressed that her husband Angus waited a further two weeks before telling her he had decided to come to an accommodation with Albany. He returned to Scotland in April. Dacre felt that Margaret was deeply saddened by what she saw as her husband's desertion, but she was also anxious to be at court with her Tudor family, for a time at least.
⁹
She had not seen them since she was thirteen, that long-ago girl who had enjoyed cards, dancing, and had listened to the fine new choir singing in her grandmother Margaret Beaufort's chapel at Collyweston. Her excitement mounted as she travelled south, and from Stony Stratford she wrote to tell Henry ‘I am in right good heal, and as joyous of my said journey toward you as any woman may be in coming to her brother.'
¹⁰

On 3 May Queen Margaret entered London ‘with a great company' and rested at Baynard's Castle. When the invitation to see Henry arrived, Queen Margaret found a vigorous young king very different
to their old, careful, father. Where Henry VII had micromanaged state affairs, personally annotating Treasury accounts, Henry VIII delegated the daily grind, only intervening when and where he wanted.
¹¹
He would spend days ‘shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the bar [a form of shot putting], playing at the recorders, flute and virginals'.
¹²
He also loved the joust, which his father had never taken part in. One ambassador described him as ‘like St George on horseback' when he performed; another claimed he had never seen ‘such a beautiful sight'.

The hours Henry VIII spent on such pleasures were never wasted. They lay at the heart of what it was to be a king, binding him to those who would help him win glory on the battlefield. His father had not been well loved, while the affability and largesse of Edward IV had won popular applause, and Henry VIII remained every inch his grandson. The scholar Erasmus thought Henry ‘a man of gentle friendliness' who ‘acts more like a companion than a king'. He had transformed the personnel of the Privy Chamber, filling it with high-born favourites and boon companions in place of the humble servants his father had used. He also expanded the size of Privy Lodgings with his many building projects, so that he would walk freely with his friends in the Privy Gallery or talk in the Privy Gardens. Henry even wrote a song celebrating his pleasure in friendships:

                        
Pastime with good company

                        
I love and shall until I die

                        
grudge who will but none deny

                        
so God be pleased thus live will I

                        
for my pastance

                        
hunt, sing and dance.

Henry's happiness and confidence had been recently boosted by fatherhood. The thirty-year-old Katherine of Aragon was the proud mother of a healthy baby: the three-month-old princess, Mary.
¹³
Henry
had been sure that ‘if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of God the sons will follow' and the couple remained very happy in each other's company.
¹⁴
Erasmus noted Katherine was ‘astonishing well read, far beyond what would be surprising in a woman'. An important part of Henry's kingship was reflected in Katherine's resourcefulness and erudition, as well as her piety. Queen Margaret could see, however, that Katherine's earlier losses to miscarriage and infant death had aged her (as similar losses had also aged Margaret). Even when Katherine was ‘richly attired', and surrounded by a supporting cast of twenty-five ladies on white horses, wearing dresses slashed with gold, she was judged ‘rather ugly than otherwise'.
¹⁵

Queen Margaret had chosen Henry's most trusted councillor, Wolsey, to act as godfather to her daughter and, meeting him, she could not fail to be struck by his charisma. He was now Lord Chancellor and although already forty-five he looked younger, ‘very handsome, learned, extremely eloquent, of vast ability, and indefatigable'.
¹⁶
Margaret must have been particularly pleased, however, to see her sister, the French queen, and have the opportunity to watch Brandon performing in the tournaments given in celebration of her arrival. The feasting went on for a month before Margaret settled in the closed area of large houses near Charing Cross where visiting Scottish dignitaries were usually billeted, and known as Little Scotland.
¹⁷
She wanted to keep in touch with developments in her son's kingdom, and plan her return. The peace between France and England meant that, in due course, King Francis would recall the Duke of Albany from Scotland. Queen Margaret hoped again to be regent for her son, James V, or at least to see more of him.

By April the following year, 1517, Margaret had gained assurances that she could return to Scotland without fear of arrest, injury or impediment. In May she was ready to leave. Henry furnished her with more clothes, jewels, money and horses, and she bid farewell to her pregnant sister. A daughter, Lady Frances Brandon (named after King Francis) would be born in July.
¹⁸
Queen Margaret and her own little
daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas, were escorted across the border in June. She was destined never to see her Tudor family again, although her daughter would one day make a life in England, returning to a very different court.