Margaret Douglas

by Mary McGrigor

  Notes

  1 State Paper Office, Archibald Earl of Angus to the Countess of Lennox, Edinburgh, 10 June 1548 (date given as that of Gregorian Calendar adopted in Great Britain in 1752)

  2 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princess, pp.300–1

  3 State Paper Office, Lennox to Somerset, Scotland, 27 June 1548

  22

  THE FALCONER MESSENGERS

  Matthew Lennox had been granted land in Yorkshire, surrendered to the Crown by the sixth Earl of Northumberland following his family’s involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace. In addition to this Matthew had been made castellan, or governor, of Wressil Castle near Stamford Bridge in the East Riding, where he and Margaret kept up what can only be described as a provincial court.

  Wressil Castle, built between 1380–90 by Sir Henry Percy, Earl of Worcester, in the time of Richard II, was renowned as one of the most magnificent houses north of the Trent. A quadrangle building with five towers, one at each corner and a fifth over the gateway, it was surrounded by two moats, within which lay a terraced formal garden.

  In addition to land in Yorkshire, the Lennoxes also received the Percy residence at Hackney near London. This was of course most useful when both had periods of attendance at the young King Edward’s court. In the absence of a queen, however, ladies-in-waiting were redundant; Margaret, who with a growing family was finding it increasingly difficult to combine the roles of mother to her children and servitude to a monarch, was given leave to abandon her position and retire to her Yorkshire home.

  The family’s main base was Temple Newsam, core of the widespread estates. From there, as then was customary, she moved her household to the other houses of Temple Hirst and Wressil Castle for the purpose of collecting rents and using the farm produce with which much of them were paid. Also, when not in occupation, the vacant houses were cleaned from top to bottom, a process which, with so many occupants, was essential at the time.

  It would seem that the Douglas visitors, who must have arrived in the late autumn of 1548, were still ensconced in one of the Lennox houses in Yorkshire, most probably Wressil Castle, when, on 16 February of the following year, Margaret had another letter from her father, to tell of the deaths of his two baby sons. He gave no reason as to what had killed them, but it is known that the winter that year was exceptionally cold, so only the slightest infection could have developed into something serious as the ice cold wind from the North Sea howled through cracks in Tantallon’s ancient walls.

  Now once again his heiress, Margaret replied to her father’s letter, not, as he might have expected, with commiseration but instead in a renewed tirade against his treatment of her in the past. Heading her missive ‘the King Majesty’s Castle of Wressil’, and dating it 15 March 1549, she told him, in no uncertain terms, what she thought both of him and of and his brother George, whom she strongly suspected, with reason, of being after the inheritance which was once again hers.

  My Lord

  After my humble commendations, and desiring of your blessing, this shall be to signify to you the great unnaturalness which you show me daily, being too long to rehearse at all points, but some I will declare.

  Now the worst of all, my Lord, is that, being near you, and most desirous to have spoken with you, yet you refused it, and would not, wherein you showed yourself not so loving as you ought to be, or else so unstable that anyone may turn you. For divers times you have said you would be glad to speak with your son. [Matthew Lennox]

  My Lord, remember he hath married your own daughter, and the best child to you that you ever had, if you call to mind your being here in England. Howbeit, your deeds show the forgetfulness thereof, insomuch that you are so contrary to the King’s Majesty’s affairs that now is, his father being so good and so liberal a prince to you, which ought never to be forgotten.

  But now my Lord, I hear say that you have protested never to agree with England, insomuch that the most part of your friends are slain; but whom can you blame for that but only your own self-will? For if you had agreed to this godly marriage, there needed no Christian blood to be shed.

  For Gods sake, remember yourself now in your old age, and seek to have an honourable peace, which cannot be without this marriage. And what a memorial it would be to you for ever, if you could be an instrument for that.

  If I should write so long a letter as I could find matter with the wrong of your part and the right of mine, it were too tedious for you to read, but for as much as I purpose, God willing, to come to Carlisle shortly, after Easter, I will keep it in store to tell you myself, for I am sure you will not refuse coming to me, although my uncle George and the laird of Drumlanrig speak against it, who I know would be glad to see you in your grave, although they flatter you to your face.

  My uncle George hath said, as divers Scotchmen have told me, that though you had sons, he would be heir and make them all bastards; but my Lord, if God send you no more sons, and I live after you, he shall have little part thereof, or else many a man shall smart for it.

  Thus leaving to declare to you father of my mind till I may speak with you myself, I commit you to the keeping of Almighty God, who send you long life with much honour.

  By your humble daughter

  Margaret Lennox1

  Despite Margaret’s plea to meet him, Angus did not go to Carlisle. Instead he made his falconer, James Lindsay, write to his daughter’s falconer, a fellow Scotsman called William Paterson, that he had ‘a promising cast of the famous Tantallon hawks for his mews, if his Lord would send him across the Border for them’.

  William Paterson, largely unnoticeable in his working-man’s clothes, arrived safely at Tantallon. Taken into the kitchen, he regaled the servants and his fellow falconer with all his Yorkshire news. Then, hearing of his arrival, Angus sent him a message to meet him at dawn the next morning in the centre of the castle green.

  As the light of the rising sun slanted across the North Sea, they met in the centre of the grass grown court where listeners were safely out of range.

  To anyone glancing from a window, they must have seemed a strange pair. The earl, still erect despite his age but with his once red hair and beard now turned grey, a doublet thrown over the steel breastplate to protect him against the wind. Beside him, the falconer in his homespun breeches and linen smock, edging closer to hear his words.

  Firstly he asked for news of the family, in particular the little Lord Darnley, a prodigy, so he had been told. Then, dropping his voice to a whisper, he asked, ‘Is there no secret thing thou are bidden to show me?’

  ‘Nothing special,’ said Paterson, ‘but to fetch the hawks,’ but then he added significantly that his master, Lord Lennox, while glad to hear he was in good health, hoped that he would be ‘more kind to him nor he had been in times past …’

  Paterson must have been previously to Tantallon, for Angus then instructed him to tell Margaret that she ‘is the thing in the world I love best, and my Lord her husband, and that young boy there – for my children are dead that thou sawest’.2

  Notes

  1 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princess, pp.304–5

  2 Letter from the Earl of Lennox in Stevenson’s Illustrations of the Reign of Queen Mary, Maitland Club book. Also Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses, p.307

  23

  THE GOLDEN BOY

  Margaret’s anxiety for the welfare of her young son is the more understandable given that his elder brother had died in her absence when only a few months old. Not unnaturally, both she and Matthew adored this boy, who, largely as the result of so much attention, is known to have been precocious from an early age. The fact that his grandfather had heard of it even in Scotland, shows that he was already remarkable both for his height – he was exceptionally tall for his age – and for his scholastic achievements which proved him a clever child. In addition to this, with his fair hair and blue eyes, he was an unusually handsome boy.

&nbs
p; Margaret and Matthew did have other children, eventually eight in all, but none that could hold a candle to Henry, at least in their eyes. Henry, moreover, was healthy, something unusual in Tudor times when ailments of all kinds, particularly smallpox and the dreaded sweating sickness, caused devastating mortality particularly amongst the young. At least a third of all children died within their first year.

  Matthew, and particularly Margaret, who was much the stronger character of the two, envisaged a spectacular future for this greatly treasured son, who, through his parents, had a claim to the thrones of both Scotland and England. A brilliant marriage was a prospect, perhaps even with the little Queen of Scotland, now, thanks to her French mother’s wisdom, safely conveyed to France. The focus of his parents’ ambition, Henry seemed to be heading for what, by anyone’s standards, had to be a fortunate life.

  Not only his parents loved him. From an early age, almost from the moment of his birth, William Taylor, the man specially chosen by his mother, slept in a truckle cot beside his bed. Then, as he reached the age of 4, his mother found him a tutor, this time a cleric, a Scot named John Elder, a native of Caithness, who, having studied in the universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen and Glasgow, had become a canon in the Collegiate Church of Dumbarton. He had followed Matthew to England on the forfeiture, by the Scottish government, of the Lennox estates. However, it was on the recommendation of Matthew’s brother, Robert Stuart, the Bishop of Caithness, that Elder was recommended for the all important position of tutor to the young Lord Darnley, Henry’s title from birth.1

  Once in England, having sworn his allegiance to Henry VIII, Elder had won his way into favour by addressing a ‘Proposal’ for the uniting of Scotland and England through the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to Henry’s son Prince Edward. Decrying the Scottish bishops, and in particular Cardinal Beaton, as agents of the devil or ‘Beelzebub’s fleshmoners’ in his words, he promised the support of the Highlanders, of whom he said he was one.

  This ‘Proposal’ given to Henry on an illustrated parchment scroll, was written in an exceptionally fine hand, although not in the italic script that his pupil, at that age no doubt reluctantly, was forced to learn. Elder also taught Henry Latin, which he began at the age of 5, but it was another tutor, Arthur Lallart, who was hired specifically to teach him French. This language must have come easily to him, his father being bilingual and his mother having learnt to speak it, if not fluently, when as a young girl she allegedly spent some time with her father in France.

  The ritual of the Lennox household, as has been described by a contemporary, was no less grand than that of a royal household of the Catholic faith. First thing in the morning the family and their servants attended Mass in the private chapel. Then, as the members of the family retired to their own apartments, the servants began laying out the trestle tables in the Great Chamber. Catholic families dined early, it being necessary to starve before Mass. The earl’s table, standing on a carpet beneath a cloth of state, and the knight’s table below it, were set with knives and spoons, forks being then a novelty and not in common use. The servants, sitting below the silver salt dish, while given a knife to cut their meat, had otherwise to make do with their fingers. The Yeoman of the Pantry set wine on the sideboard while the Yeoman of the Buttery produced the ale. Then it was the turn of the Carver, to cut slices of bread from each loaf and taste them to make sure they were not poisoned, an ever-present fear. This done, the Carver, together with the Sewer and the Cup-bearer, went downstairs through the Great Hall to the kitchen from where they emerged, bearing huge platters of food. On state occasions they were joined by the chief officers of the household, the Steward, Comptroller and Treasurer, the whole process being so extended that dishes, by the time they reached the Great Chamber, must have been distinctly tepid, if not actually stone cold.

  Nonetheless this did not seem to matter, for dinner was a happy occasion with much conversation and laughter amongst the adults and even the Lennox children, who are known to have dined with their parents from quite an early age. Indeed, it was largely for their benefit that Margaret had retired from court, being determined, above all things, to oversee the education and development of Henry, her precious son.

  Henry Darnley was nearly 6 when the Queen Dowager of Scotland, Mary of Lorraine, came to London in November 1551. His mother, Margaret, as half-sister to the late King James and aunt to the reigning king, had to be summoned to court; her husband, although equally well connected, had been exiled as a traitor to Scotland and thus was not be presented to her, as neither was his young son.

  Margaret, although deeply offended, had no choice but to comply. Her rancour was mollified, however, when Mary of Lorraine received her most warmly at the Bishop of London’s palace. There also was her cousin Frances, daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk, from whom she had inherited her beauty. Now the Marchioness of Dorset, Frances came with her daughter, Lady Jane Grey, who in contrast to herself was a shy and serious girl, devoted to the reformed religion. Together they escorted the Scottish queen from the Bishop’s palace to the presence of the young Edward VI. Mary of Loraine then insisted that it was Margaret who should sit beside her in the carriage during the stately procession from St Paul’s to Westminster and again on the return.

  It was while she was in London, or very shortly afterwards, that Margaret received a desperate plea from her father, beseeching her to come and see him while he was still alive. It was no use asking Mary of Lorraine, who at that time was not the Regent of Scotland, for a passport, so instead she applied to the Duke of Northumberland, who had now succeeded the Duke of Somerset as Lord President of the Council. He discussed the matter with his confidential man of business, the lawyer William Cecil.

  I pray you, remember what I showed you concerning the Lady Lennox, you and I seeming to be of one mind. Nevertheless as I hear no word mentioned of her husband, who, if he mind to remain here, and also keeping her childer within the realm and circumspectly looked to in her absence, the danger can be nothing. And further, I remember that her husband dare not come within the realm of Scotland, because of a deadly feud between the Governor’s [Arran’s] blood and him.2

  Northumberland concluded by expressing his doubts as to why she wanted to go to Scotland at all.

  Marry touching her father’s inheritance I am sure she can have no profit … except she would refuse her habitation here, and remain there, as I doubt not but all my lords do know it to be likely and true. Wherefore it museth me to think what the occasion should be that moveth her father to seek to have her come so far only to speak with him; but some mystery there must be in it, whatsoever it be, as knoweth the Lord, who have you in his keeping. At Chelsea, this Sunday, the 11th of December, 1552.3

  The king’s council, despite the views of its president, did not grant the visa immediately. Persisting, she tried again in the following spring of 1553. This time, having agreed to all Northumberland’s stipulations, she put forward the reason for urgency in that she was again expecting a child and wished to get back from Scotland to her own house, in time for her lying-in.

  Northumberland, now much involved in arranging the marriage of his son Guildford to Lady Jane Grey, wrote once more to Cecil telling him to expedite the passport of the Lady Margaret Douglas, as he still termed her, to Scotland by the 8th April, actually the next day.4

  Margaret reached Tantallon, in all probability travelling in a litter due to her pregnancy, in time to see her father before he died. With her went her priest, Sir John Dicconson, who stayed with him to give him the extreme unction of the Roman Catholic Church, the faith to which she herself so resolutely still adhered.

  She may still have been in Scotland when the news came that on 6 July 1553 her nephew, Edward VI, had died of the tuberculosis with which he had struggled so bravely during what was, even in those days, a tragically short span of life.

  Notes

  1 Bingham, C., Darnley, p.52

  2 Strickland, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and En
glish Princesses, pp.310–1

  3 State Paper Office, Domestic Records, Northumberland to Cecil. Dated Chelsea.

  4 Ibid., dated 7 April 1552

  24

  ‘A MOST VICTORIOUS AND TRIUMPHANT PRINCESSE’

  It soon became plain that Northumberland had a reason for speeding Margaret’s visit to Scotland. Knowing that the king was fatally ill, he wanted her out of the way. While Henry was dying, Northumberland had persuaded him to make a ‘Devise of the Succession’, which excluded his half-sisters and left the Crown to Northumberland’s daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, through whom, he believed, he would reign supreme.

  At Temple Newsam in Yorkshire, Margaret, while still in her lying-in chamber, waited with great anxiety to hear what had become of Princess Mary. Soon came word that she was at Kenninghall in the south of Norfolk, the house confiscated from the Duke of Norfolk, still held prisoner in the Tower. From there, on 9 July, Mary had written to Queen Jane’s council in London demanding that they denounce her as, by her father’s will, she herself was the rightful queen. Under Northumberland’s dominance, the council promptly, as was expected, repudiated her claim; it was then learned that he was heading to Norfolk with an army to take Mary prisoner and convey her to the Tower.

  Nothing, it seemed could save her. Margaret waited in acute anxiety, while Matthew, apparently unwilling to commit himself to what seemed a hopeless cause, waited to see what would occur. Then, almost unbelievably, they heard the most wondrous news. Men throughout East Anglia were rising, surging like an unstoppable tide to support Mary in her bastion of Kenninghall.