Louise of Savoy was almost forty, still in her prime, when her son François I inherited the French throne. There seems from the first to have been a sense that the business of government – at least in these early stages of his reign – was at least as much her concern as her son’s. ‘A boy’s best friend is his mother’ might have been the motto for early modern monarchs. England had recently seen two new rulers – Edward IV and Henry VII – treat their mothers as mentors (and unlike those two, François had not had to fight for his crown).
As the main officers of state were confirmed in their office (as François’s brother-in-law, Alençon, his sister Marguerite’s husband, was declared second person of the realm and Bonnivet Admiral of France), several of Louise’s trusted officials were also given important places. She herself was given estates – the duchy of Angoulême, that of Anjou, the counties of Maine and Beaufort and the barony of Amboise – that made her hugely wealthy.
Nor was the earlier governess of the French royal family, Anne de Beaujeu, forgotten. Her son-in-law, the Duc de Bourbon, was made Constable of France. This would be an appointment with consequences, since the amalgamation of Bourbon’s own lands with those Anne’s daughter Suzanne stood to inherit made a huge and potentially controversial land mass right in the centre of France. Anne, like Louise and Marguerite but unlike François’s wife, the pregnant Claude, accompanied François to his coronation in Rheims.
As Louise of Savoy’s Journal had it:
This day of the Conversion of St Paul 1515 my son was anointed and consecrated in the church of Rheims. For this I hold myself grateful to the Divine Mercy, by which I am amply repaid for all the adversities and inconvenience which came to me in my early years and in the flower of my youth. Humility has borne me company and Patience has never abandoned me.
The humility was not evident to all. Charles Brandon wrote of Louise to Henry VIII: ‘it is she who runs all and so may she well; for I never saw a woman like to her, both for wit, honour and dignity. She hath a great stroke in all matters with the King her son.’
A Venetian envoy asked the veteran Marshal Trivulzio who really held power in the land; who controlled the king? The answer was that Louise of Savoy,
lays claim to managing everything, not allowing him to act without her concurrence . . . it is his mother, with Madame de Bourbon [the still-active Anne de Beaujeu] and Boisy [François’s former governor, Bonnivet’s brother], who really manage everything. It is a great pity to see him under petticoat government. But what can you expect, the way he lives? He does not get out of bed until a little before noon. Then, after dressing and hearing mass, he goes straight to dinner. Immediately afterwards he withdraws to his mother. Then, after a short while with the council, he plunges into amusement which goes on incessantly until supper time.
Venice now knew to whom to apply. ‘The Most Christian King’s most illustrious mother’ was soon assuring the Venetians her son would prove ‘the greatest and most faithful friend’ their city had ever had.
The year before her son’s accession, Louise of Savoy had been at Blois when the ceiling of her room came down. ‘I think it was a sign that the whole of this house was destined to rest on me’, she wrote later in her Journal, ‘and that I was divinely appointed to have charge of it.’ But in many ways it would be a burden, as well as an opportunity. When the Venetian envoy added that François’s mother ‘applies all her energy to accumulating money’, it was a reputation that would cling to Louise. But perhaps it was also the result of what one writer called Louise’s avidity for security; something Louise shared with Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. But Henry had shared his mother’s close-fistedness, while Louise faced the very real problem of how freely her son could spend, not least on the expensive sport of war.
On Louise of Savoy, inevitably, fell much of the task of helping to sort out the difficult relationships of François I’s reign. His relationship with Charles V, as ruler of the Netherlands, seemed in the short term to be assured by Charles’s betrothal to Louis XII’s four-year-old daughter Renée (yet another royal marriage destined never to take place). Louise hoped also to bring the pope to her side, by arranging the marriage of his Medici brother to her half-sister, Philiberte of Savoy.
But the three-way relationship between the French crown, the papacy and France’s secular and religious bodies had long been edgy. In 1516 François, surely with Louise’s advice behind the scenes, hammered out with Pope Leo an agreement known as the Concordat of Bologna, which gave François the right to nominate his own religious officials. This, however, put him into conflict with the Paris parlement and with the faculty of theology at the university, which had previously been involved in making such appointments.* The parlement was likewise outraged that the king’s sister Marguerite and her husband Alençon had been given an annual pension of twenty thousand livres and the lucrative right to name the head of each of France’s trade guilds, as well as the duchy of Armagnac, which the parlement held to be inalienably attached to the French crown itself.
Marguerite’s role in her brother’s quarrels with both his parlement and his religious authorities would have later consequences, not least for Marguerite. But for the moment, his generosity meant her husband Alençon accepted that her place would now be largely at her brother’s court, where she took on many of the ceremonial duties of a queen, just as her mother accepted much of the workload of a king. In story four of the Heptaméron Marguerite wrote of a young prince (‘fond of the ladies, of hunting and generally enjoying himself’) whose wife ‘was rather difficult and did not enjoy the same things as he did, so he always used to take his sister along as well’. Her letters to him were most often signed as François’s most humble and most obedient subject and sister, or ‘et mignonne’, darling.
Queen Claude was shy, plain and afflicted with a limp, and almost solidly pregnant, with deliveries in 1515, 1516, 1518, 1519, 1520, 1522 and 1523, though only two of the children outlived their parents. But it seems Louise of Savoy – and surely Marguerite too – valued Claude for what she could do for François and they could not. Though the near-contemporary biographer the Seigneur de Brantôme wrote that Claude was bullied by her mother-in-law as well as ignored by her husband, there is no evidence that she resented her treatment; she had, after all, grown up partly under Marguerite’s and Louise’s, wing.
The relationship between mother and son was so close that when François ran a thorn into his leg, Louise wrote that ‘true love forced me to suffer the same pain’. So her feelings about her son’s natural venturesomeness were mixed. She was terrified when he had a boar captured and set loose in the courtyard at Amboise, only to kill it himself with one blow of the sword. It was infinitely worse when it became clear François was determined to pursue his ambitions for the disputed territory of Milan, to which he had an hereditary claim.
When François left for the Italian wars, taking all the nobles of his blood with him, he announced that his mother would act as regent while he was away:
We have decided to leave the government of our realm to our well beloved and dear Lady and Mother, the Duchess of Angoulême and Anjou, in whom we have entire and perfect confidence who will by her virtue and prudence, know how to acquit this trust.
Though the Italian wars would prove to be an endlessly enduring business, François’s efforts in 1515 met with impressive success. In September, the Battle of Marignano was, said one observer, a battle of giants, in which François’s forces achieved an overwhelming victory over the army of Swiss mercenaries assembled by the Sforzas, the current rulers of Milan, in alliance with the Papal States. Never had there been seen so spirited and cruel a battle, François boasted to his mother. Louise, with Claude, immediately went on pilgrimage to Notre Dame de la Guiche to give thanks for the preservation of ‘him, whom I love better than myself, my boy, glorious and triumphant Caesar, subjugator of the Swiss’. On 10 October, François entered Milan in triumph, the very model of a young warrior king.
The pattern of Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century was one of three young men sowing their oats: François I, the Habsburg Charles and Henry VIII of England. Each had a woman – mother, aunt or wife – standing behind him. And if the last years had seen several women trying to juggle the demands of power with their female destiny, Louise seemed to have been the most successful.
* There has long been debate over whether Anne Boleyn, appointed to Queen Claude’s household, remained there for the duration of her stay in France, or whether she was transferred to that of Marguerite, who seems a more likely mentor. But Marguerite’s involvement in her brother’s court perhaps makes the distinction unnecessary, and we can assume Anne would at the very least have been acutely conscious of the doings of so charismatic a figure.
* The Paris was by far the most powerful of France’s seven parlements – a provincial high court, rather than a legislative assembly. François’s voice in it was his chancellor, Duprat, a long-standing associate of Louise’s.
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‘One of the lowest-brought ladies’
Scotland, England, 1515–1517
For Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret Tudor, things had long been going badly. But an event such the death of Louis XII in France had an effect far beyond his own country, even in distant Scotland, France’s ‘Auld Ally’.
As long ago as the autumn of 1513, Henry, in England, had been receiving agents’ reports that the Scots lords ‘were not pleased that the Queen should have rule, as they fear she will comply too much with England’. Even when, in February 1514, Margaret managed to push through an uneasy peace with England, not everyone on her council was happy.
But when in March 1514 the summoning of the Scottish parliament exhibited her to the people in the eighth month of her pregnancy, she was cheered to the rafters, the more so since her gracious speech left most of the real business of the session to others and allowed the parliament to take control of all the main fortresses in the country. As the madonna, the mother, the dead king’s relict, she was welcome in the country. It was when she tried to overstep those bounds that there was a difficulty.
On 30 April she gave birth to a second son, Alexander, Duke of Ross. In England Henry and Katherine of Aragon, who had possibly suffered a miscarriage the previous autumn, still had no living child. That Margaret Tudor’s offspring would succeed to the throne of England looked more likely than ever. In the summer she emerged from her confinement and on 12 July the Scottish nobles signed a unanimous statement in support of her regency. ‘Madame,’ it ran, ‘we are content to stand in one mind and will to concur with all the lords of the realm to the pleasure of our master the King’s grace, your grace and for the common weal . . .’ Yet within a few weeks, the situation had changed completely.
On 14 August, in a secret ceremony, Margaret Tudor was married for a second time, to the Earl of Angus. Roughly her own age (twenty-four) he was a scion of the powerful but controversial Douglas clan, and hated by most of the other nobles.
History has often chosen to see Margaret as a fool for love, seduced by a pretty face, and so it might have been. Or she may, like other women in this story, have been determined to avoid her male relations marrying her off again for their own purposes. But it is also possible that she was trying to bolster her authority.1 Throughout the last century the Douglases had almost rivalled the Scottish crown. But if that were her motive, then she could hardly have chosen more unwisely.
On 26 August the council demanded that Margaret Tudor should summon John Stuart, Duke of Albany, from France to become Governor of Scotland; to take her place, basically. Most councillors were behind a demand that she should surrender the Great Seal and issue no further proclamations. By the middle of September they were questioning whether it were even appropriate that she should remain in charge of her son, the baby king, James V. The provisions of her husband’s will had been dependent upon her not remarrying. Now that was forfeit, as Lord Home trenchantly put it:
We have shown heretofore our willingness to honour the Queen contrary to the ancient law and custom of this kingdom. We have suffered and obeyed her authority the whiles she herself kept her right by keeping her widowhood. Now she has quit it by marrying, why should we not choose another to succeed in the place she has voluntarily left?
The Lyon Herald was sent to inform Margaret that she was to be deposed from the regency. He addressed Margaret not as ‘the Queen’s Grace’ but as ‘My Lady the King’s Mother’, the title her grandmother and namesake Margaret Beaufort had borne so proudly. Margaret Tudor took it less kindly. And her new husband’s grandfather and mentor, old Lord Drummond, boxed the herald’s ears, a staggering breach of propriety.
Margaret dismissed Drummond’s insult to the Lyon Herald and, more seriously, nominated her husband Angus, whose own uncle called him a callow young fool, as her co-regent. Angus proved the truth of the description by attacking the lord chancellor, who had made clear his disapproval of the match, and seizing the Great Seal. The outraged nobility stopped Margaret’s dower rents, while the lord chancellor and his followers rode to Edinburgh and took possession of the city.
This was civil war, or something very like it. Margaret and Angus promptly fled with Margaret’s sons to Stirling Castle: ‘my party adversary continues in their malice and proceed in their Parliament usurping the King’s authority as I and my lords were of no reputation reputing us as rebels’, was how she put it to her brother Henry VIII.
The Scottish lords would have allowed her to keep charge of her sons if she gave up her regent’s powers but Margaret Tudor was having none of it. Her sons were ‘right lifelike’ (lively) she assured Henry. But she ended her letter: ‘If you send not soon succours in men and money I shall be super extended.’ She urged her brother to send an English army to where her husband was trying to relieve the besieged Castle of St Andrews. The army was to be proclaimed a peacekeeping force and the Scots told that ‘their lands and goods shall not be hurt and they shall be recompensed double and treble’. But she was, essentially, inviting an enemy to occupy their country.
‘Brother, all the welfare of me and my children rests in your hands’, she wrote. She warned that her adversaries were forging her signature and Henry should take as genuine only those letters signed not just ‘Margaret R’ but ‘your loving sister Margaret R’. In late January 1515, Henry VIII sent word that she should flee to the border but Margaret quailed at the practical difficulties, and at the implications for her and her son’s power.
‘God send I were such a woman that might go with my bairns in my arms’, she wrote back. If that had been so, then ‘I should not be long from you’. But she was a queen, and the death of the old French king, Louis XII, while making her sister Mary a merry widow, had dramatically weakened Margaret’s position, depriving her a family connection to the French throne.
The promise King Louis had made to his bride’s brother, Henry VIII, to keep the Duke of Albany in France, and away from rivalry with Margaret in Scotland, had died with him. On 2nd April 1515 Albany set out from the French court.
From the time Albany arrived in Scotland, in answer to the council’s summons, to separate Margaret from her son, the king, it was, as the Venetian ambassador wrote, François I who was likely to be blamed ‘for this cruelty’. The French ambassador in London wrote to François’s mother, Louise of Savoy, asking to be recalled and warning that the opinion on the London streets was that Henry VIII should declare war on France to avenge the insult to his sister.
When Albany reached Scotland there came the inevitable tussle for control of the young king. A cul
tivated man, wealthy from his marriage to a great French heiress, Albany spoke little English, and less of the Scottish idiom than Margaret herself, but nonetheless, he set conscientiously and ably about his responsibilities.
Albany was to appoint four guardians from a selection of peers made by the council, and Margaret was to vet his choice. It was a dramatic public scene when the child was handed over to his new mentors. In the forecourt of Stirling Castle, Margaret Tudor stood, holding the young king by the hand, Angus by her side, her younger son in a nurse’s arms. But as the representatives of the council approached, Margaret formally called on them to declare the cause of their coming, and ordered the portcullis dropped in their faces. Requesting six days to consider parliament’s plan, ignoring her husband’s urging that she should comply, she retreated into to the formidable and easily defensible bulk of Stirling, while her rattled husband Angus withdrew to his own lands.
Albany of course followed her, determined to take Stirling by siege, however long it took. When Margaret saw the forces and the heavy artillery Albany had assembled against her, she was frightened enough to comply. Even then she caused the little king to be the one who handed over the castle’s keys; a defeat with dignity. While Albany set off after Angus and his family, Margaret was taken back to Edinburgh under guard. On 2 August she signed a statement declaring her wish that Albany should indeed ‘have the charge and keeping’ of both her sons; forced to do so, she later declared, by Albany’s ‘crafty and subtle ways’.
Once again her brother Henry VIII’s representative urged her to flee south, to withdraw from Edinburgh ‘with all the politic ways and wisdom you can use’. This time Margaret agreed. She was heavily pregnant with Angus’s child and had told Albany that she proposed to ‘take her chamber’ for the child’s birth at Linlithgow. Arriving there she claimed to be ill, so that Angus would be allowed to visit her. When darkness came, they slipped away with a handful of servants, riding hard despite Margaret’s pregnancy. Before dawn they reached the Douglas’s Tantallon Castle, close to the border.
Game of Queens Page 11