by Linda Porter
After further pageants, dancing and disguisings, which were the essence of court entertainment at the time, there was an elaborate exchange of costly gifts, with the Scottish representatives going home weighed down with gold and silver plate and the lesser gentlemen of their delegation receiving velvet gowns. The heralds of both countries, too, fêted each other and Bothwell left behind the gown of cloth of gold he had worn to represent his king at the betrothal. This display of ceremony, entertainment and largesse at the palace on which Henry VII had lavished money was intended to honour his daughter but also to bring home to the Scots the power and wealth of their new queen’s family. It was a lesson not lost on James IV, who strove mightily to compete when it came time to celebrate the actual wedding in Scotland in the summer of 1503.
For Henry VII, those early months of 1502 were the public witness of the success of a constant battle for survival. He had established his dynasty and safeguarded its inheritance. Alas, it had been very much a false dawn, for the year 1502–3 was to bring unimagined personal tragedy and loss to a monarch who, despite increasing signs that his health was now suffering as the result of the constant rigours of rule, must briefly have entertained the hope that the worst was behind him.
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THERE WERE indications as early as 1501 that Henry’s health was a concern. In July of that year he wrote a very loving but rather troubling letter to his mother, apologizing that he did not write to her in his own hand more often, ‘wherefore I beseech you to pardon me, for verily, Madame, my sight is nothing so perfect as it has been’.9 Failing eyesight became a Tudor characteristic: Henry VIII towards the end of his life and Mary I and Elizabeth throughout theirs had poor vision. But the woes of Henry VII in the spring of 1502 were far greater than his restricted sight. At the beginning of April came wholly unexpected and dreadful news from Ludlow. Prince Arthur had died after a short illness. Arthur was Henry and Elizabeth’s firstborn and all their hopes had been invested in him. A dutiful son, carefully educated and prepared to succeed his father, recently married to a Spanish princess as part of an important diplomatic alliance, was suddenly gone. The shock was immense.
The news was broken to the king at Greenwich by his confessor before dawn on 4 April. Stunned, Henry sent for Elizabeth so that they could face this tragedy together. They had come through years of uncertainty as they tried to establish their dynasty and had outfaced or outlasted each new challenge, but the death of their eldest son was a blow almost beyond endurance. In truth, neither of them had spent much time with Prince Arthur, as was the custom in royal families in those days, but this did not mean that their affection for him as their son was necessarily any the less. And on him they had pinned their hopes for the future, even as their family grew. They lost several children in infancy, including a third son, Edmund, who had been born and died in 1499. Now their family consisted, as the queen reminded her husband, of ‘a fair prince’ and two princesses. She sought to alleviate the king’s distress by reminding him that they were both still young and could yet have more children. When she felt she had calmed Henry sufficiently the queen retired to her own chamber, where the strain and sorrow brought about a complete collapse: ‘Natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart that those about her were fain to send for the king to comfort her. Then his Grace, of true gentle and faithful love, in good haste came and relieved her, and showed her how wise counsel she had given him before, and he for his part would thank God for his son, and would she should do in like wise.’10
It is a rare glimpse of the human pain that afflicted the great as well as the common man in those times when the unpredictability of life was ever present. Henry VII is often depicted as a cold, strange, avaricious man but such generalizations fail to do him justice. The need for the support of his wife and their efforts to comfort each other are touching witness to the depth of their sorrow and to all they had endured as a couple. Elizabeth was no longer the elegant beauty Henry had married for dynastic security in 1486. Childbearing had coarsened her figure and endangered her health, particularly during her last pregnancy and delivery. But she was determined to try once more, to be as good as her word to her husband. A couple of months later she was pregnant again.
During the summer she seems to have spent considerable time in the company of her daughters. Her accounts show a series of items purchased for the young Queen of Scots: a black velvet dress, several pairs of sleeves, furs and more mundane items like strings for Margaret’s lute. They are a touching witness to a mother’s love for a daughter she knew would soon be leaving her. The queen also travelled a great deal in 1502, including a visit to her Stafford relatives in Wales, despite her advancing pregnancy. It was part of her duty as Henry’s queen but it must have taken its toll. Yet there was no immediate cause for concern. The king and queen spent Christmas and New Year of 1502–3 at Richmond, where they were perhaps reassured by the confident prophecy of the Italian astrologer William Parron that Elizabeth would live to be eighty years old. It was to prove a disastrous miscalculation.
There are conflicting views among historians as to where Elizabeth had planned her lying-in before the birth but the queen was in the Tower of London on 2 February 1503 when she gave birth prematurely to a baby girl. Henry had sent urgently for the queen’s physician, Dr Hallysworth, to come from Gravesend in Kent and later summoned another doctor from as far away as Plymouth. He obviously feared for his wife’s health and sought desperately to give her the best care available. But Elizabeth could not, this time, be saved. She died on 11 February, her thirty-seventh birthday, and her last child, Princess Katherine, died just one week later. In the space of less than a year, Henry VII’s world had disintegrated. Overcome with grief, he placed the funeral arrangements in the hands of the earl of Surrey and the financial controller of the royal household, Sir Richard Guildford. Then he left for Richmond to mourn in solitude, there to ‘pass his sorrows and would no man should resort to him but such his Grace appointed, until such time it should please him to show his pleasure’. The king did not, though, forget his wife’s servants at this difficult time, sending them ‘the best comfort … that hath been seen of a sovereign Lord with as good words’.11
Elizabeth was given a lavish funeral, costing the equivalent of over a million pounds today. Custom dictated that the king did not attend (the principal mourner was Princess Katherine, the queen’s sister) and, even if it had been otherwise, Henry was himself seriously ill. A severe throat infection, possibly quinsy, left him unable to eat or drink for nearly a week. Weakened by his loss, the king nearly succumbed. For more than a month he could not perform any official duties. When he did return to court, he was a changed man. And he knew that another parting was yet to come. For, as Thomas More had written in A Ruefull Lamentation on the death of Elizabeth of York, Margaret Tudor was going to leave him as well, to go where they ‘should seldom meet’. The death of her mother could not be allowed to delay the journey of the young queen to her new kingdom, as the marriage treaty stipulated.
Henry was determined that his daughter should have the best of everything to sustain her in her new role. He spent unstintingly on clothing, carriages, furniture and all the trappings of royalty, eager to demonstrate his financial clout, his commitment to his daughter and English prestige. Great care was given to display Henry’s armorial bearings; his badge (the portcullis) and the red rose of Lancaster were displayed everywhere: on Margaret’s bed, chair, litter and liveries. She was provided with a magnificent bed ‘of cloth of gold estate’, with a yellow damask lining for the valance, silk and gold for the fringe, curtains of crimson sarcenet and fifteen yards of green velvet for a counterpane.
The accounts are as minute in detail as one would expect from this most meticulous of kings. No item was too small to be overlooked, including pins, needles and threads. There were warrants for hose, shoes, sheets and bedclothes, for dresses, hoods, riding boots and slippers, as well as altar cloths and a needlew
ork crucifix. Margaret’s staff were to be appropriately arrayed, her ladies in gowns of damask and velvet while her two footmen were supplied with doublets of black velvet and green damask, with ‘the portcullis crowned’, jackets of green and white cloth of gold, crimson hose, two hats and two bonnets and a generous twelve pairs of shoes. Nor were her horses forgotten. Their collars and bridles were listed, as were stirrups of copper and gilt and harnesses of black and crimson velvet. The queen’s litter, in which she would be transported for much of her journey, was covered in cloth of gold. Musicians and heralds were appointed to accompany her as she journeyed north.12 Henry clearly intended that Margaret’s progress to Scotland would afford the opportunity for a great display of Tudor pomp and magnificence. It was a boost sorely needed in the sad summer of 1503.
On 27 June, Margaret and her father left Richmond for her grandmother’s estate, Collyweston, in Northamptonshire. There the Queen of Scots spent eleven days in a comfortable family setting while her grandmother supervised the final preparations, before she began her long journey to Edinburgh. Although father and daughter must have hoped they would see one another again, they knew that such occasions would be rare and might, in reality, never happen. As a parting gift, Henry gave Margaret a beautiful prayer book, inscribed from ‘your kind and loving father’. He asked her to pray for him and reminded her that ‘at all times’ she carried with her God’s blessing and his own. In the circumstances, these words were all the more poignant.13
Henry VII took leave of his daughter on 8 July, entrusting her to the earl of Surrey and his wife, who were to accompany Margaret to Scotland and see her safely and properly installed there. Surrey was, of course, primarily a soldier, and he organized the journey with a military precision that Margaret came to resent long before she crossed the border. The progress was a considerable challenge for a thirteen-year-old, no matter how well trained she was. Margaret was on display relentlessly for three weeks of tiring public events, required to look her best at all times, changing outfits frequently, being gracious to cheering crowds and dining with the great and the good of the towns she passed through. Once in Scotland, she would finally meet her husband, a man more than twice her age, get to know him slightly in carefully orchestrated meetings and then marry him amid great displays of public rejoicing. Thereafter she would be crowned and take up all the new duties that came with queenship. If the prospect daunted her, she did not show it as she set out.
We know a great deal about Margaret’s journey into Scotland because it was faithfully recorded by the Somerset Herald, John Young, who was appointed by Henry VII to accompany her. His detailed descriptions of the procession itself, the lords and ladies who went with Margaret, and her reception in the places she passed through, are a rich source of information about one of the most significant celebrations of Tudor England and Stewart Scotland. Young begins with a description of the Queen of Scots leaving Collyweston, ‘richly dressed, mounted upon a fair palfrey’, and arriving, on the first night of her journey, in Grantham in Lincolnshire. After what was to become a customary greeting from local dignitaries, Margaret spent two nights in Grantham before moving on to Newark. ‘Through all the towns and villages where she passed, all the bells were rung daily. And by the way came the habitants of the country for to see the noble company, bringing great vessels full of drink…’
By 14 July, Margaret was in Yorkshire, where she had a major public engagement at York. Only twenty years previously, England’s second city had been staunchly Yorkist, proud of its association with Richard III. Now it was to receive the daughter of the usurping Tudor and underline Henry VII’s success in establishing a new dynasty. The principal player here was the earl of Northumberland, who now joined the queen’s progress and was to accompany her over the Scottish border. He met her two miles outside the city, resplendent upon a fine horse, ‘with a foot cloth to the ground in crimson velvet, all borded of Orfavery; his Arms very rich in many places upon his saddle and harness, his stirrups gilt, himself arrayed of a gown of the said crimson. At the opening of the sleeves and the collar, a great border of stones.’14
Northumberland was the foremost nobleman of the region and he came supported by many knights in his livery to greet the queen. Margaret and her ladies changed clothes before she entered the city, not on horseback this time, but in her litter. On the next day, Sunday 16 July, she left the archbishop’s palace for the minster to hear High Mass. Margaret was dressed in ‘a gown of cloth of gold, a rich collar of precious stones and a girdle wrought of fine gold, hanging down to the earth’ and her train was carried by the countess of Surrey as she entered the church, which was packed with an attentive congregation of local aristocracy. After hearing Mass, Margaret made an offering and returned to dine at the archbishop’s palace, where the countess of Northumberland was presented to her and received a welcoming kiss.15
The next day Margaret left York with many of the populace straining to see her: ‘the streets and the windows were so full of people,’ wrote the Somerset Herald, ‘that it was a fair thing for to see.’ She continued north towards the Scottish Borders, stopping four days in another cathedral city, Durham. There, after the now customary ceremony in the cathedral (the religious obligations of Margaret’s journey were scrupulously observed), she spent her time in the castle, the abode of the bishop of Durham, at his expense. This outpouring of adulation and costly entertainment also gave the northern aristocracy, frequently looked down upon by their worldlier London counterparts, an opportunity to demonstrate their own importance and power and to have a rare glimpse of a member of the Tudor royal family. Margaret’s mission was not merely the apotheosis of Anglo–Scottish diplomacy. She was also her father’s representative to the northern nobility who had, for centuries, borne the heavy burden of defending the border and deserved the recognition that Margaret’s presence among them indicated. Their loyalty was sometimes suspect and would, if anything, become more so in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. It was not easily bought and the Queen of Scots’ progress into her new kingdom presented a valuable opportunity for fostering a spirit of commitment.
Continuing at a leisurely place, Margaret went via Newcastle (where Northumberland gave a magnificent feast with ‘dances, sports and songs’) and Morpeth to the earl’s fine castle at Alnwick. This stop allowed her a little time for recreation and, proving that she was handy with her bow and arrow, she killed a buck in the earl’s deer park. Berwick, the fortified town on the river Tweed that was held by the English but desired passionately by the Scots, was Margaret’s last stop in England. She stayed here between 29 and 31 July. There she ‘had great cheer’ and the streets of the town, presumably somewhat to the consternation of its inhabitants, were turned into a hunting ground ‘with other sports of bears and of dogs together’.16 This kind of risky brutality was a great entertainment for the Tudor elite. It was also Margaret’s farewell to her native land. On 1 August she and her train passed into Scotland, to go to Lamberton Kirk, as the 1502 treaty specified. There Margaret was greeted by up to a thousand Scots, headed by Bishop Blacader of Glasgow and the bishop of Moray. These Scottish dignitaries bowed down and acknowledged her as their queen. This was Margaret’s first official ceremony in Scotland, exactly a week before the date of her wedding. Once it was over, Northumberland and several other northern lords took their leave, returning into England. But hundreds of horsemen remained to accompany the queen on the final stage of her journey.
Margaret attracted a great deal of attention in her new land. On 2 August, en route to Haddington, she passed by the castle at Dunbar. There were so many people gathered to see her that a way through had to be made by force. Keen, perhaps overly so, to celebrate, the Scots brought with them plenty of drink. The next day the queen arrived at Dalkeith Castle, home of the powerful earl of Morton. She may have been relieved to be away from the press of crowds but by far the most important meeting of her journey awaited her. James IV, in the convention of the day, just happened to be hunti
ng locally when he heard of her arrival and came, as if on a whim, to visit.
In reality, there was nothing unexpected about the king’s arrival and Margaret was well aware that she was about to see her husband for the first time. She and her company were carefully dressed and prepared for the occasion. James arrived wearing a crimson velvet jacket edged with cloth of gold, grand gear, even for a king, for a casual hunting expedition. He was accompanied by his younger brother, James, duke of Ross, the earls of Huntly, Argyll and Lennox and many other Scottish lords, making a total of about sixty people.17 The king’s lyre, rather than the hunter’s crossbow, was slung over his back, in a romantic gesture that signified that he would play music for his lady. Margaret and James met for the first time at the door of the Queen’s Chamber in Dalkeith Castle. After exchanging the ‘great reverences’ of deep bows and curtseys that the occasion required, they kissed, and then took stock of each other.18
Margaret saw a well-built and obviously very fit man of nearly thirty, bare headed but with a long beard, totally unlike her increasingly thin, self-contained and clean-shaven father. Whereas Henry VII was already showing signs of the long illness that would eventually kill him, James Stewart was the picture of active good health. He was not conventionally handsome but there was a brightness in his eye, an evident good nature (though he did not like to be crossed) and an undeniable charm. James knew how to put this little English lass at her ease. For all her grand clothing, jewellery and mastery of the forms and behaviour that were expected of her, she was still very young.
