by Linda Porter
There was, however, one idea that came up for repeated consideration for the next eight years that seems to have originated with Cromwell. This was the desirability of a meeting between the two kings. First suggested to the bishop of Aberdeen in April 1534, it was raised again during successive English missions to Scotland. James V, not wishing to alienate either his European allies or his uncle, repeatedly stalled during 1535. Cromwell tried to involve Queen Margaret, whose counsel James no longer took, and he also sent a diplomat of more overtly reforming views to bring pressure on the King of Scots, but James would not be drawn.
He could not, however, ignore the fact that his own orthodox religious views were no longer shared by all of his countrymen. Scotland prided itself on its links with Europe and was no more impervious to the arrival of new religious ideas than was England. Scottish believers in reform may have lacked the springboard of the divorce and they faced the opposition of a king who did not share his uncle’s desire – or need – to change the status quo, but they were as passionate and committed as their counterparts in England. The first Scottish religious martyrdom of the Reformation had taken place early in 1528, just before James assumed power in his own right, and was a high-profile case. The victim was Patrick Hamilton, a younger son of one of Scotland’s leading families, nephew to both the duke of Albany and the earl of Arran. A young man of gentle disposition and considerable learning, he had lived in Germany and been much influenced by Martin Luther. His fearless preaching and Lutheran ideas were unacceptable to the authorities and particularly to Archbishop James Beaton. Hamilton was brought to trial, found guilty of heresy and sentenced to immediate death by burning. His shockingly bungled and prolonged execution – it took him more than six hours to die with a fortitude that profoundly moved even those who had not agreed with him – did not quell the spirits of those Scots who shared his beliefs, but it did make living in England an attractive option. Many decided to base themselves there and were welcomed by Henry VIII.
Similarly, English Catholics who could not accept Henry’s changes found themselves drawn to the idea of moving to Scotland. So there arose a new element to add to border tensions, the so-called ‘Confessional Border’, which compelled both Henry VIII and James V to face the truth that a new kind of opponent would be harboured in each other’s country. The importance of this development is easily overlooked but it caused further friction in the already uneasy relationship of Henry and James. For while, in these early days, it constituted a further barrier between the kings of England and Scotland, it also pointed towards the development of a more profound underlying change in the relationship of the two countries. They were ‘so near neighbours, dwelling within one land, compassed within one sea, allied in blood and knit in Christ’s faith.’14 The prospect was already there that, in the future, religion might act as a unifying force between peoples that would be as significant for the history of the British Isles as the personal rivalries of the Tudor and Stewart dynasties.
Henry might have bought his nephew’s goodwill by agreeing to give him a place in the succession and marrying him to Mary, though James himself pointed out that an illegitimate daughter is damaged goods. But such an offer was never seriously on the cards. The Treaty of Rouen had promised James a French bride, but Francis I did not, for some time, offer one of his daughters. Instead, he proposed Marie de Bourbon, duchess of Vendôme, a member of the junior branch of the French royal family. Even negotiations for this match stalled for a while and James, in the spring of 1536, intimated a startling change of plan. He would not pursue a French marriage but instead intended to wed his mistress, Margaret Erskine, mother of his illegitimate son, James Stewart.15 This sudden petulance may have been inspired by a real love of Margaret, who appears to have been one of his more serious amours, coupled with annoyance at Francis I’s continued prevarication and some resentment of the attitude of his own council, who were pressing him to find a wife.
In taking this step the Scottish king had, perhaps, followed more closely his uncle’s marriage difficulties than was wise, for there was a considerable impediment: Margaret Erskine was already married. James readily obtained a Scottish divorce for Margaret from her husband, Robert Douglas of Lochleven, but, like Henry VIII, did not want to proceed to a marriage that would have legitimized his bastard son as the heir to the Scottish throne without full papal authorization.
But James’s nerve did not equal that of his uncle. When Pope Paul III declined to give a dispensation for Margaret Erskine, James swiftly abandoned the idea of marrying her. It had been tempting but he would not put his throne at risk. Besides, he was a king and no doubt his own pride told him that the woman who was to become his queen should be of appropriate rank, and preferably French. Prudently, he had made no official announcement to the French of his intention to marry within Scotland, so negotiations could be resumed without embarrassment. Margaret Erskine’s reaction to this change of heart is unclear but it seems that she smarted because of it for many years. Both she and her son were to play significant parts in the downfall of Mary Queen of Scots, James V’s only legitimate offspring.
King James did not hesitate to put Margaret Erskine aside once the pope refused her a divorce. He did not want to face a debacle like the one that had overtaken his Uncle Henry. The Boleyn marriage had failed to produce a male heir and foundered on tensions between the couple that grew bad enough for Henry to decide she must be removed. Anne went to the block at the end of May 1536, accused of adulteries that she probably had not committed, and Henry was left with two illegitimate daughters as his sole offspring. He was also beset by a Catholic rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, that threatened the progress of religious reform, the security of his border with Scotland and, indeed, his throne. Once again, his nephew, young, ambitious, healthy and confident, was his heir whether he liked it or not. And it was high time that the King of Scots found a wife. Small wonder, then, that Henry was anxious about James V setting out in person to find a French bride.
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ON 23 JULY 1536, King James V embarked from the port of Leith with a small flotilla, apparently heading north. He had told very few people of his real destination and had not taken his mother into his confidence. In reality, he was headed for France, but by a circuitous route that would take him around the northern and western coasts of Scotland, thus avoiding the possibility of being intercepted by Henry VIII’s vessels. But as the ships passed the Hebrides and sailed south a tremendous Atlantic storm blew up, scattering the vessels. Faced with the real danger of shipwreck, Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, who was accompanying the king, took the decision to make for safety at the port of Whithorn in Galloway. James, evidently a good sailor, had slept throughout the worst of the tempest and was greatly annoyed by Hamilton’s actions. Yet he was not deterred from his original intention. The king made his way back to Edinburgh, visited a shrine near the city to pray for a better voyage, gathered more men, ships and supplies and set sail again from Kirkcaldy on 1 September. This time he was better equipped, with a fleet of six ships and five hundred soldiers for protection. He was also accompanied, as befitted a king, by the earls of Arran, Argyll and Rothes, by Lord Fleming, his chamberlain, and by a rising star in Scottish politics, David Beaton, nephew of James Beaton and keeper of the privy seal, as well as a number of other lords and high-ranking churchmen. This time James was not hindered by adverse weather conditions. He sailed unobstructed down the east coast of England and out into the Channel, landing at Dieppe in Normandy on 9 September. He would be absent from Scotland for nine months.
It says a great deal about how successful James had been in establishing royal authority since 1528 and his confidence in the state of his realm that he was able to leave his country for such a long period. He nominated a regency council which consisted of his chancellor, Gavin Dunbar, and five other leading churchmen and nobles to govern while he was away and administration functioned perfectly well under their guidance. So James was able to begin his French adv
enture without any domestic worries. This was an exciting time for the King of Scots. Between September 1536 and May 1537, at the height of his powers and physical health, he was able to enjoy himself as a much fêted visitor to a foreign land, the respected monarch of a small country that had suffered through the uncertainties of his minority but was now asserting itself once more in Europe. During his time in France he learned much and was greatly influenced by the monarchical style of Francis I and his brilliant court. He returned to Scotland full of ideas and enthusiasm for absorbing the best of what he had seen into his own culture. And his success, which culminated in a marriage with Madeleine, the French king’s elder daughter, would surely have greatly pleased his father, James IV.
Matters did not, however, go so well at the outset. James’s intended bride, the one with whom a marriage contract had been negotiated in March 1536, was Marie de Bourbon, daughter of the duke of Vendôme. Although the Treaty of Rouen of 1517 had stipulated a daughter of Francis I as future wife to the King of Scots, Francis had been nervous about honouring it. Unwilling to cause offence to Henry VIII (to whom he had actually promised that there would be no union between one of his daughters and James V), Francis no doubt thought that he had dodged the issue altogether when he suggested Marie as an acceptable alternative. After the marriage contract was prepared, with the Duke of Albany representing James V in his last service to his cousin, Francis must have hoped that all would now proceed smoothly.16 But he had not counted on James’s own desires entering into the equation. For whether spurred on by his interest in chivalry or possibly uneasy about accepting a second-string wife, however well connected, James determined to go and visit the lady incognito, and to do so without loss of time. The day after he landed in Dieppe, he set out for St Quentin, in Picardy, where Marie was living with her father, the governor of the region.
James apparently arrived at the Vendôme court in St Quentin wearing the clothes of one of his servants. This would have allowed him to inspect Marie, at least briefly, without formality, but such disguisings were also part of a long chivalric tradition of how fair ladies should be wooed. Henry VIII disastrously employed an identical tactic at his first meeting with Anne of Cleves in 1540. On that occasion, Anne failed altogether to recognize the bulky figure dressed as Robin Hood but Marie de Vendôme was not so easily fooled. She had already been sent a portrait of James V as part of the marriage negotiations, and immediately made him a deep curtsey of reverence. Evidently observant and, of course, well trained, we know little else about Marie. But despite James and his entourage being generously received over a period of eight days, the meeting did not go well. There was something about Marie, or her father’s court, or maybe simply the strength of James’s underlying determination to take no wife other than the daughter of a French king, that meant that James decided he could not go ahead with the marriage to Marie. So this unfortunate French noblewoman became the second lady to be built up for consideration and then rejected by James within a year. Some commentators afterwards said that he had dismissed her because she was lame or deformed and that she had been so overwhelmed by the loss of her suitor that she became a nun, but there is no firm evidence for any of this speculation.
James went back to Rouen, where the Scottish royal party had based itself during the Picardy escapade, and then set out for Paris. He was now determined to marry Princess Madeleine, but he could not take matters further while the French king was away from his capital. Continued fighting with Charles V in northern Italy had threatened southern France and, in an attempt to deny any succour to an invading imperial army, the French had laid waste to Provence, much to the fury of its inhabitants, who saw their livelihoods destroyed as the price of the long-running struggle between Francis and Charles. Francis had gone south to inspect the damage his army had wrought on their own countrymen and to try to calm feelings in the region. He was also much afflicted by the sudden death of the dauphin, his eldest son, who, it was believed, had been poisoned. The arrival of James V on French soil was unexpected but could also be turned to Francis’s advantage, since it seemed to send a clear signal to Charles V that Scotland was keen to renew the Auld Alliance and that the days of rapprochement between James V and the emperor were over.
In Paris, while awaiting the return of Francis, James appears to have acted like any visitor seeing this fine city for the first time. The population of Paris was about half a million, perhaps more, in the mid-sixteenth century, whereas that of James’s capital, Edinburgh, was a mere fifteen thousand. James had never seen anywhere like it. He was greatly impressed, not just by its size and scale, but by the huge array of merchandise, food and drink available. He shopped almost compulsively, purchasing quantities of rich textiles and jewellery, still trying to hide his true identity. An ill-humoured observer reported to Sir George Douglas back in England that he was ‘running up and down the streets of Paris, buying any trifle himself, he thinking no man knows him’,17 when they were all only too aware of who he was. For a time, James fell ill, as tourists who overindulge often do. When he recovered, impatience to meet with Francis got the better of him and he set off south, eventually coming across the French king in the Loire, at Chapelle near St-Symphorien-de-Lay, on the road between Lyon and Roanne. Greeted and treated like a son, the personable and eager James was at last able to persuade Francis that he should be permitted to marry his daughter.
Apart from the diplomatic difficulties that might ensue if he broke his word to Henry VIII, Francis I had good reason to be reluctant about marrying Madeleine to James or, indeed, to marrying her outside France at all. Aged sixteen, she had long suffered from very poor health, with recurring debilitating fevers, and her delicate constitution gave rise to anxiety. How would she stand the long journey to Scotland and the cold, damp climate when she got there? In fact, the princess was already mortally ill with tuberculosis and was probably not long for this world wherever she lived, though in an age when deep religious belief and medical ignorance combined to make hope triumph over despair, no one, including Madeleine, was willing to acknowledge that she might not last another year. Despite his misgivings, and considerable internal opposition to the Scottish marriage from the powerful Guise family, who wanted Madeleine to marry the nephew of the cardinal of Lorraine, Francis finally gave the match his blessing after taking James to meet Queen Eleanor and his two daughters at Amboise. He still hoped that the King of Scots might be persuaded to take Marguerite, the more robust younger daughter, but James was determined and so, it appears, was Madeleine. She apparently said that she wanted to be a queen and she got her wish.
This does not mean, despite flowery contemporary poems and fulsome descriptions of the young couple’s mutual devotion by Victorian writers, that James V’s marriage to Madeleine of France should be seen as a love story. The idea that the pair fell passionately in love is the stuff of historical fiction. James had calculated that she would bring him political advantage and, in so far as she had any real say in the matter, Madeleine no doubt would have preferred to be Queen of Scots than to make a less prestigious political marriage in France. The young couple do seem to have liked one another, as might have been expected given James’s good looks and Madeleine’s grace and charm. The only surviving portrait of her from this time, which may be more stylized than accurate, shows a rather dumpy young woman who certainly does not look as if she is at death’s door. Facially, however, there is a strong resemblance to her father, whose prominent nose Madeleine had evidently inherited. She was not a beauty and the state of her health did not suggest that she would easily give James the legitimate heirs he needed, but still he pressed ahead.
Once Francis had assented, the marriage contract was quickly drawn up and signed at Blois on 26 November and the wedding day set for 1 January 1537. The contract stipulated Madeleine’s dowry – a matter of probably as much interest to James V as his bride herself – at 100,000 gold crowns (around £16 million in today’s money), with a further 30,000 francs (over £2 million
today) a year for the King of Scots. In return, Madeleine was given two Scottish earldoms, Falkland Palace and other lands. Henry VIII knew all about these developments from his resident ambassadors in Paris but, his throne under threat from the Pilgrimage of Grace, had been powerless to influence his nephew or halt the course of events.
James had outmanoeuvred his uncle and his victory was almost complete. On 22 December, Henry wrote, perhaps through gritted teeth, a letter of formal congratulation: ‘Having certain knowledge from those parties of your determination and conclusion for marriage with the daughter of our dearest brother and perpetual ally the French king, our office, our proximity of blood and our friendship towards you have moved us to congratulate with you in the same and to desire Almighty God to send you that issue and fruit thereof that may be to your satisfaction and to the weal, utility and comfort of your realm.’ Coming from a man who, at that time, had broken with Rome, divorced one wife and executed another, yet was still without a legitimate heir, these set phrases have a certain poignancy.
His nephew made a formal entry into Paris on the last day of 1536 and was received by the parliament of Paris, where his almost complete inability to understand the native language, or utter even a few gracious words of thanks, was duly noted. The lawyers who made up this assembly were not the only ones to find the Scottish king very taciturn. Stephen Gardiner and Sir John Wallop, the English ambassadors, commented on the uncommunicative James by indulging in a little witticism at his expense: ‘His wife shall temper him well, for she can speak, and if she spake as little as he, the house should be very quiet.’18
