by Linda Porter
The wedding of James V and Madeleine of France took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, amid much pomp and festivity, on New Year’s Day 1537. The bride, on her father’s arm, walked on a raised platform hung with cloth of gold into the splendid Gothic nave, where all the French royal family and James’s Scottish entourage witnessed the ceremony and nuptial Mass. But though no description survives of what bride or groom wore, the overall splendour of proceedings was captured by Sir John Wallop. Writing to Lord Lisle, the governor of Calais, he commented: ‘The King of Scots’ entry and marriage was very triumphant; the entry on New Year’s Eve and the marriage the next day. That night there was a banquet at the palace and the lady princesses of France were never in so rich apparel … the King of Scots never saw such a sight.’ And he went on to add, more ominously, of James, that ‘the honour showed him here makes him set more by himself.’19
Festivities followed over many days, with jousts, tournaments, balls and masques. James was evidently in no hurry to leave France. He loved the châteaux of the Loire and Fontainebleau and his keen intelligence and artistic eye took in everything that he was seeing. His kingdom was tiny and poor compared with France but he knew for sure that he wanted to model his court and palaces on what he saw during his long stay there. But finally, once the spring came and the weather for travelling improved, he knew that it was time to go. So he prepared to take his delicate young wife and the rich array of gifts – the jewels, tapestries and plate – that her father had lavished on her back to her new home. When all was ready, King James and Queen Madeleine set sail from Dieppe in the second week of May 1537. Even then, the conditions were unkind. Storms delayed them and they had to anchor one night off Scarborough on the north-eastern coast of England, waiting for the high winds to moderate. It had been a difficult four-day crossing for Queen Madeleine when she at last set foot on Scottish soil on 19 May. She took up residence in Holyrood Palace, but it was soon apparent that her health was deteriorating and her French attendants began to fear for her survival.
James, too, could not fail to notice that his new wife was in a serious condition. He sent for her French doctor to attend her, cancelled the summer progress, delayed her state entry into Edinburgh and postponed her coronation. Plans were made for the queen to visit Balmerino Abbey in Fife, which had ‘the best airs of any places in the kingdom’, but by now Madeleine was beyond any help that fresh air could give her. Confiding in the young French poet Ronsard, who was one of her pages, that she found Scotland ‘very different from her sweet France’, Madeleine clung on to life, as brief days of remission allowed some respite, while her underlying condition inexorably worsened. She finally breathed her last at Holyrood on 9 July 1537, having been James’s wife for seven months and resident in Scotland for just seven weeks.
The story that she died in James V’s arms is probably fanciful. Royalty stayed away from deathbeds in those days. But on the day of her death James wrote at once to notify Francis I of the sad news – and to assure him that ‘I wish never to be anything but your good and humble son.’ He also informed Francis that he was sending David Beaton on a diplomatic mission but he did not mention that, however much he grieved for Madeleine, ‘my most dear companion’, he had already instructed Beaton to find him a new French wife.
* * *
THE DUCHESS of Longueville had been one of the ladies whose rich clothing and glittering jewels were remarked upon by Wallop in his report on the wedding of James V and Princess Madeleine. Marie de Lorraine (or Mary of Guise, as history knows her) was the eldest of the twelve children of Claude, duke of Guise, and his wife, Antoinette de Bourbon. She had an impressive pedigree, being a descendant on her mother’s side of the crusading French king Louis IX (St Louis), and the family were becoming increasingly powerful. Competent and highly ambitious, the Guises were a dynasty unto themselves and, as such, aroused feelings of resentment as the older noble families of France watched their seemingly inexorable rise at the French court. Their enemies viewed them as upstarts and questioned their loyalty. Some said they were not really French at all, for their lands lay in what is now eastern France, in territory that had been part of the Holy Roman Empire for many centuries and was not, in fact, formally joined to France until the eighteenth century.
These considerations did not stop the Guises as they continued to gain power and influence. Mary had made a splendid marriage in 1534 to Louis d’Orléans, duke of Longueville, and their relationship appears to have been a happy one. Longueville was a considerable landowner in the Loire and Normandy and he settled on his wife the castle at Châteaudun which she seems to have particularly favoured. A son was born in 1535 and Mary was again pregnant in the spring of 1537, living at Châteaudun while her husband travelled through his estates in western France. From there, he wrote to her that he was unwell and that his doctors had diagnosed chicken pox. Alas, his illness was much more serious and he died in early June 1537. Mary gave birth to another son in August of that year and learned soon afterwards, to her considerable shock and displeasure, that she would not be a widow for long. Francis I had offered her to James V as his new wife. But while negotiations were continuing – and it was still unclear where the dowry demanded by James would come from – Henry VIII entered the contest for the duchess’s hand.
Recently widowed himself when his third wife, Jane Seymour, died after giving birth to the long-awaited heir, Prince Edward, in October 1537, Henry VIII was definitely interested in Mary of Guise as a possible queen consort. And why should he not have been? The lady was renowned for her beauty and wit, had spent some years at the French court and acquired all the requisite skills to carry off the role of queen with grace and dignity; she was intelligent and well educated and had already shown that she could produce sons. If all this were not enough, she was a member of a leading European family whose stock was on the rise. Henry had serious reasons to woo her and, despite the impression sometimes given that the Guises were horrified by this unexpected suitor, Henry’s approaches were taken seriously. Claude de Guises, though a close friend and brother-in-arms of Francis I, was a younger sibling in the Guise family and the possibility that his daughter might become queen of England was a very attractive one. Francis I, however, did not see it that way. Conscious of resentment among the French aristocracy towards the Guises, he did not want to give them too much power. There was no telling where things might stop if Mary married the king of England. In his mind, she was an ideal choice for James V, keeping the Scottish monarch close to France without Francis having to offer his younger daughter as a replacement for her dead sister. He had lost one child to Scotland and was not inclined to lose another. And, preoccupied as he was with the struggle against Charles V, he wanted this marriage question settled as soon as possible.
Nevertheless, as a desperate search continued to find the money for Mary’s dowry, the duchess was able to stay longer with her son, Francis, and to mourn his baby brother, who died at the age of four months. This was a difficult time for Mary, who had lost a husband and child in the space of six months and now found that her future was decided without any account being taken of her own feelings. This was, of course, the lot of most noble ladies at the time. When it came to marriage they were valuable goods to be disposed of and their desires, generally considered fanciful if not downright improper, were completely disregarded. For the House of Guise, her second marriage was an opportunity to advance the family’s fame and fortune. The fact that she was being sought by two kings was no doubt flattering to Mary herself, but she had no say over the outcome. All that she knew was that she would be a queen in a foreign land who had once enjoyed a brief, affectionate marriage as a French duchess.
Once the haggling over the dowry was settled (Mary’s father, in a sign that the Guises were not enthralled by the Scottish match, had initially refused to give any money at all towards his daughter’s marriage portion), a betrothal ceremony took place at Châteaudun in the spring of 1538. But James V was not going t
o come to France for a second time to bring his wife back home in person. His role at the spousing ceremony was taken by the Borderer Lord Maxwell, who gave Mary a ring considerably less impressive than the one that had adorned the slender finger of the consumptive Madeleine. The bride’s mother, meanwhile, attempted to encourage her daughter with gushing comments on the physical attractions of James V, saying he was so handsome that she was in love with him herself.
Mary of Guise took a tearful leave of her little son in early June 1538. She knew that it was unlikely that she would spend much time with him again. His dukedom and the role of grand chamberlain which he had inherited meant that his future lay in France and he was brought up by his grandmother in the castle at Joinville, on the banks of the river Marne, where Mary had spent part of her childhood. Mary’s destiny lay elsewhere, in a role she could never have envisioned when she married the duke of Longueville, expecting to enjoy the life of a French noblewoman. On 10 June, accompanied by her father Claude and sister Louise, she set sail from Le Havre and landed at Balcomie Castle on the coast of Fife in eastern Scotland six days later. James V was waiting with a large party of noblemen to give his new wife an appropriate greeting: ‘The whole lords, both spiritual and temporal, many barons, lairds and gentlemen … received the Queen’s grace with great honours and merriness, with great triumph and blitheness.’20 A long period of uncertainty was finally coming to an end and on 18 June James and Mary were married in the cathedral of St Andrews. Great celebrations followed and then the new queen was taken on the traditional tour of her Scottish lands, as the young Margaret Tudor, Mary’s mother-in-law, had been thirty-five years before.
Mary of Guise adapted speedily to her changed situation. She expressed delight at Linlithgow Palace, saying it was as fine as any castle in France, and was tactfully positive about everything she saw in Scotland. Though homesick in the first few months, she was too busy to become depressed and her deep religious faith supported her throughout the period of her adjustment. She made a formal entry into Edinburgh in mid-November, entertained by pageants similar to those that had been devised by Sir David Lindsay for her unfortunate predecessor. The Scots were well pleased by their French queen, a tall, healthy young redhead who celebrated her twenty-third birthday shortly after her formal entry into the capital. It was expected that she would continue her success in producing sons, thus ensuring the stability of the Stewart dynasty.
Though James V and Mary of Guise made a handsome royal couple, there does not seem to have been any great warmth between them. James could charm quite readily but he was not going to change a lifestyle of philandering for monogamy, no matter how attractive his French wife was. Like Margaret Tudor, Mary was forced to accept her husband’s illegitimate children and the realization that he would not give up his mistresses for her. Perhaps it was this shared experience that drew the two women together, for Mary was considerate and respectful in her dealings with James V’s mother, restoring Margaret to something like the role of official queen mother. Margaret had continued to correspond regularly with Henry VIII and to complain about her diminished standing and financial difficulties, to the point that Henry disregarded these as habit rather than a reflection of his nephew’s neglect. Her third marriage failed as her second had done, though with somewhat less acrimony, and Margaret felt very overlooked until her daughter-in-law’s arrival. She was pleased to be godmother to the first child of James and Mary, Prince James, born in early 1540. In that year, which saw Henry VIII make a brief and disastrous diplomatic marriage of his own to Anne of Cleves, it seemed that the King of Scots, secure on his throne, successful in his government and presiding over a richly cultured court, had much reason to rejoice.
CHAPTER TEN
Solway Moss
‘Finally mine espial sayeth that the said king will not make war against any other realm, but liveth in fear to defend his own, for the king’s nature, his disposition and his qualities are not given to war; but daily labouring in his mind covetously for profit.’
The report of an English spy on James V’s intentions, May 1542
THE VISITOR TO THE VILLAGE of Falkland in Fife is immediately struck by the sight of a fairy-tale Loire château in miniature. A typically French Renaissance exterior is matched by an elegant interior and lovely gardens. This distinctive residence, the courtyards of which have been described as ‘a display of early Renaissance architecture without parallel in the British Isles’, is grand yet still intimate. Given to Mary of Guise on her marriage to James V, it was well equipped for both leisure and more active pastimes such as hunting in the nearby countryside. The palace was also favoured by Mary’s daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, who would later scandalize her male courtiers by donning breeches to play tennis on what is now the oldest surviving tennis court in Europe.
Mary of Guise soon discovered that, while the climate of her new country might be less forgiving than the milder airs of the Loire, there was much to please in Scotland. French influence was everywhere and this gave her hope for the future. James made an effort to improve his ability to speak her language and to impress her with the magnificence of his court and building programme. Falkland was part of a major effort of restoration and improvement at the Scottish palaces. In the year 1539, more than sixty masons were employed at the palace each month, under the watchful eye of John Scrymgeour, the king’s principal master of works, who was a local man. But continental craftsmen were used as well: the sculptor of the statues for the chapel buttresses was Dutch and one of the plasterers was French.
The architectural programme of James V achieved a great deal in the fourteen years of his personal rule and encompassed all the leading residences. But it was at Stirling that James V’s vision of his dynasty and Scotland’s place in the European order was perhaps most fully realized. A new palace block was constructed, the features of which owed something to both Burgundian and French styles, and its interior was sophisticated and magnificent. James’s palace has been superbly renovated and is one of the finest examples of a sixteenth-century interior in Britain. Reopened in 2011, anyone who seeks to understand this king’s desire to leave his mark and hold his own with the great continental courts should go and see it. The ceilings are particularly fine, as are the tapestries, specially commissioned to match the originals which adorned the walls in the 1530s and 1540s. All of this would have been admired by the elite of Scottish society and politics, as well, of course, as the representatives of foreign powers waiting in the presence chambers of the king and queen for that all-important interview that might change their fortunes or cement diplomatic negotiations.
Also on display in the palace is the superb sequence of wooden carvings known as the Stirling Heads, which show us the faces of real people at the court, including jesters, and a succession of kings and queens. The carvings, roundels of oak cut from trees in distant Poland, probably date from around 1538, when construction on the new palace commenced, and appear to have been the work of several talented woodcarvers – one French and at least two of whom were Scottish. They originally adorned the ceiling of the King’s Inner Hall. Most of them survived a near disastrous removal in the late eighteenth century and today they remain as a unique testament to the court of James V.
In Scotland’s capital, rebuilding continued apace. The palace of Holyrood House was extensively remodelled. Disliking Edinburgh Castle, which had uncomfortable reminders of the period of Angus domination and was largely used as an arsenal during James V’s reign, the king started work at Holyrood within months of his assumption of power in 1528. Over several phases, he spent a total of about £12,000 (nearly £2 million in today’s money) on this, his main residence. At Linlithgow, he made a new entrance from the south, constructing an outer gate beside the church of St Michael, where his father had worshipped before the battle of Flodden. Above it were the insignia of the chivalric orders to which James belonged, evidence, in the words of sixteenth-century historian John Leslie, of how important this was to his self-image
: ‘for an evident sign and token to all posterity, the king’s arms [were displayed] upon the port of the palace of Linlithgow, with the rest of the arms from whom he received them, with the ornaments of St Andrew which are the proper arms of our nation, our king himself caused there to affix very artificiously with cunning craft…’1 It is not clear whether the Order of the Thistle was one of those originally displayed at Linlithgow. Some historians trace its origins as a piece of Stewart iconography to the fifteenth century, when it appeared on the coins of James III, and a portrait of James V (admittedly not from life, but probably based on an earlier painting) shows him wearing a collar with the thistle badge. But whether he founded a formal order of chivalry or not, the thistle as a Stewart emblem became increasingly common during the sixteenth century.2
Situated above a sea loch and influenced by both English and Burgundian styles, Linlithgow became Mary of Guise’s favourite palace, though its style was closer to the palaces of Henry VIII than those of Francis I and it was not part of her jointure. The magnificent fountain in its courtyard, which can still be seen today, may, however, have been completed to please her.
All of James V’s palaces had extensive gardens, managed by a substantial staff of gardeners, and were well provided with flowers, walks, archery butts, pools for fish and wildlife – mostly birds, but there were two bears and a wolf at Stirling and a fox and some French wild boar at Falkland. Fresh air and exercise were considered beneficial to health and the surroundings of a royal residence were an important part of the enjoyment of those who lived there. But in the winter it was the interior furnishings and entertainments that mattered more.
