by Linda Porter
The possibility of a match between James IV and Margaret was first raised by Henry VII in 1496, when he was trying to detach James from Perkin Warbeck. The King of Scots did not take up the offer at this point, perhaps because he was still hoping for a grander Spanish marriage. Margaret’s age was also a stumbling block and would remain a cause of concern to Queen Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort. Henry himself voiced their worries (though he was also playing politics) when he told Pedro de Ayala:
I am really sorry that I have not a daughter or a sister for him [James IV]; for I have loved him most sincerely since the conclusion of the peace … but I have already told you, more than once, that a marriage between him and my daughter has many inconveniences. She has not yet completed the ninth year of her age, and is so delicate and weak that she must be married much later than other young ladies. Thus it would be necessary to wait at least another nine years.
This was surely an exaggeration. Margaret may or may not have been small for her age in 1498 when this conversation took place, but waiting a further nine years seems excessive. But the king went on to explain that his concerns were shared by his wife and mother, saying that they were ‘very much against this marriage. They say if the marriage were concluded, we should be obliged to send the princess directly to Scotland, in which case they fear the King of Scots would not wait, but injure her, and endanger her health.’2 There spoke the voice of Margaret Beaufort, who did not want her granddaughter to endure the kind of sexual trauma that had been visited on her at too young an age.
Henry VII also had another, more glorious, union to negotiate and he made this his priority in the closing years of the fifteenth century. His heir, Prince Arthur, was being prepared for the throne in his own household at Ludlow. A marriage had been arranged between Arthur and Katherine of Aragon, youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. This union was vital to Henry’s foreign policy. Scotland and England were officially at peace, Margaret was still too young to live with James IV as his wife, and her brother’s future was more important. Arthur and Katherine were married at St Paul’s Cathedral in November 1501, amid great rejoicing. The way was now clear for completion of the prolonged diplomatic discussions between England and Scotland that would, it was hoped, bring to an end years of hostility between the two countries and send Princess Margaret Tudor to Scotland as its queen.
Margaret’s future husband does not seem to have minded the delay, nor does he seriously appear to have considered looking elsewhere for a wife. This may be because domestic disorder was now well in the past and he ruled over a stable kingdom that had seen its stock rise internationally. He had two brothers as potential successors, though most rulers in those days wanted sons, rather than siblings, to inherit their thrones and his growing brood of bastard children were proof of his ability to beget legitimate offspring once he did marry. More tellingly, he had also taken a new mistress, with whom he seems to have been very happy, and she would prove more durable than any of her predecessors.
Her name was Janet Kennedy. This cousin of Lady Katherine Gordon was probably born around 1480, making her about twenty years old when she became the mistress of James IV. She had grown up in the south-west of Scotland, in Ayrshire, where the Kennedy family, proud of their Gaelic background and traditions, lived. Janet came from a well-off family with connections to the court but she probably received little formal education, though she may have been able to read. Wed by the age of sixteen to a Gordon kinsman of her mother, Janet had a daughter in 1496. The marriage did not last long. The concept of marriage in fifteenth and early sixteenth-century Scotland was much more fluid than might be supposed; divorce was very rare but the ending of relationships and the taking up of new partners was not. It was even possible to remarry while a previous spouse was still alive and the Church seems to have turned a blind eye to this flagrant sin, especially if the parties involved were well connected politically. By 1498, Janet had moved on to become the mistress of the forty-seven-year-old Archibald, earl of Angus, a much more important and influential man than her first husband. He was also married but this did not stop him from making generous grants of land to Janet which, it was noted in the official documentation, were because of his ‘singular affection and love for her’. But the earl’s devotion to his teenage mistress was not returned for long. Perhaps because she was often about the court with Angus, Janet came to the attention of the king. In 1499 she abandoned Angus for a greater lover, James IV himself. At about this time, Angus fell out with his monarch, though it is not clear whether Janet was the cause of their disagreement. He remained out of favour for a decade. But Janet Kennedy had definitely arrived.
No portrait of her survives but she was evidently a young woman whose looks and personality attracted attention and she had won the king’s heart. James was never shy of acknowledging his amours and was a responsible parent to the three illegitimate children he had already sired. Janet lived openly with him at Stirling Castle throughout all the time that diplomatic discussions were going on for his English marriage and she travelled to other parts of Scotland in his company as well. James paid her expenses, gave her costly clothes and gifts and the castle of Darnaway in the north-eastern part of the country. She was a feminine influence in what was otherwise a very masculine court. Janet appears to have been a keen horsewoman and James’s gifts of a black horse and sumptuous riding clothes allow tantalizing glimpses of her life and interests. She was, like most women of her background, a keen embroiderer, a pastime that she shared with the king himself. For James was also handy with a needle and thread, as Janet’s biographer has pointed out, and the treasurer’s accounts show that gold threads, sewing silks, needles, thimbles and linen cloth were purchased, ‘for the king to broider with’.3 This conjures up a delicious image of the physically restless, daredevil King of Scots sitting quietly with his mistress on a light-filled summer’s afternoon, both with their heads bent over their needlework in an unexpected picture of domestic bliss.
As the new century dawned, James IV was confident and eager, a king well in control of his country and always looking to enhance its prestige. The Spanish ambassador, like other foreign visitors, was much taken with Scotland and its king. The country was, he noted, ‘very old and very noble and the king possesses great virtues and no defects worth mentioning’. Ferdinand and Isabella had asked to know more about this distant northern land and its monarch, a young man who could potentially jeopardize their aims in Europe if he distracted England too much. And it is to Pedro de Ayala that we owe the detailed description of James IV that brings him very much to life:
He is of noble stature, neither tall nor short, and as handsome in complexion and shape as a man can be. His address is very agreeable. He speaks the following languages: Latin (very well), French, German, Flemish, Italian and Spanish. He likes, very much, to receive Spanish letters. His own Scotch language is as different from English as Aragonese from Castilian. The king speaks, besides, the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland and on the islands. It is as different from Scots as Biscayan is from Castilian. His knowledge of languages is wonderful. He is well read in the Bible and in some other devout books. He is a good historian. He has read many Latin and French histories and profited by them, as he has a very good memory. He never cuts his hair or beard. It becomes him very well.
Ayala went on to comment that James was a good son of the Church, saying all his prayers, not eating meat on Wednesdays or Fridays and not riding on Sundays ‘for any consideration, not even to mass … he gives alms liberally but is a severe judge, especially in the case of murderers … his deeds are as good as his words. For this reason and because he is a humane prince, he is much loved.’ Temperate in eating and drinking, neither prodigal nor avaricious, he was also blessed with good judgement. But he was not perfect: ‘I can say with truth that he esteems himself as much as though he were Lord of the world,’ and he was very fond of war, which was profitable to both James and Scotland. Even allowing for Ay
ala’s partiality, for he was clearly entranced both by the country and its king, this is a portrait of an impressive man.4 No longer the uncertain boy who felt guilty for having brought about his father’s death, James had blossomed into one of the leading monarchs of his day. An extensive and ambitious building programme at the major palaces of Scotland visibly underlined his success and was certainly on a par with Henry VII’s own achievements in this respect. Scotland might be smaller and chillier than England but its royal homes were magnificent and James spent generously on Linlithgow, Stirling, Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace. He was a fitting husband for an English princess from a new dynasty, even if the nobility of England were convinced of their own innate superiority over the Scots.
Although she could never be his wife, Janet Kennedy’s love affair with the king may partly explain why James was in no hurry to finalize his own wedding. Romantic historians of the past, taken in by lurid tales of the demise of his earlier mistress, Margaret Drummond, who died with two of her sisters in mysterious circumstances in 1502, have wrongly assigned the king’s slowness to an affair that was over some years before. Yet even as Janet gave birth to a son, later created the earl of Moray, and another daughter by the king, James and she must both have known that she could not continue by his side indefinitely. When the three agreements known as the Treaty of Perpetual Peace were signed in London on 24 January 1502, Margaret Tudor’s arrival in Scotland was still eighteen months away, but that she would become, at last, the wife of James IV was no longer in doubt.
The signatories at Richmond Palace that winter’s day were four churchmen and two soldier-politicians, a mix typical of the time, when most diplomats were also men of the cloth. The Scots were represented by Bishop Robert Blacader, Lord Patrick Bothwell and Andrew Forman, soon to be bishop of Moray. The English signatories were Henry Deane, archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Fox, greatly experienced in Scottish matters and now holding the see of Winchester, and Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey. These men all knew one another from previous negotiations or diplomatic exchanges and it was they who hammered out the details of the agreements that would unite James IV and Margaret Tudor.5 There were also two other treaties. One, for ‘Peace and Friendship’, supported by interested European parties including the kings of France and Spain, the Austrian emperor, Maximilian, the Hanseatic League and the Brandenburg merchants, demonstrated the importance attached to an Anglo–Scottish peace by Europe’s key players.
There was also a connected, and less well known, third treaty, dealing with the highly contentious area of the Borders as well as introducing measures to police the seas, where piracy was rife, and to regularize naval traffic. For while the overriding aim of these treaties was to bring about a royal marriage, the importance of day-to-day justice in the Borders could not be forgotten. This was where the reality of the new Tudor and Stewart friendship would be put fully to the test. The established system of Border courts and their regular meetings had managed to continue even with the interruption of war in the 1490s but there was a residue of bad blood on both sides. New, detailed legislation set out procedures governing the apprehension and punishment of cross-border raiders and those accused of homicide would be tried by a mixed panel of Scottish and English jurors. There would be regular supervision of the Border courts with greater involvement of local lords and appointments of men learned in civil law. Despite the popular impression of continued lawlessness in the Borders, this legislation did lead to a period of comparative tranquillity in the final years of Henry VII’s reign, with considerable cross-border cooperation in dealing with gangs of marauding thieves.6
The marriage treaty itself dealt with loftier matters. Margaret’s dower was set at £10,000 (the equivalent of nearly six million pounds in today’s money), one third of which was to be paid on her wedding day and the remainder two years after. This was a welcome sum for the always cash-strapped Scottish treasury. James’s financial obligations to his wife were also set out: he was to endow her for life with lands and other income yielding £2,000 per annum (just over a million pounds today) and she was to have £1,000 Scots or the equivalent of just over £300 sterling at her own disposal (about £174,000 in today’s money).* A healthy income and the twenty-four English attendants she was permitted as part of the agreement would help keep Margaret in the manner to which she had become accustomed.
This all seemed well and good but there was a more serious underlying issue that exercised the minds of Henry VII and his advisers as the treaty discussions neared completion. It was a question that was bound to be raised but could not really be answered except hypothetically. Supposing that the marriage led to the eventual succession to the throne of England by the children of James and Margaret? At the time the treaty was signed, Henry VII had two apparently healthy sons and Arthur, the elder, was just married and expected, in due course, to produce heirs of his own. The possibility that Margaret’s line might one day rule England seemed remote but could not be entirely discounted. Interestingly, the English king did not see this outcome as necessarily undesirable. The Scottish historian John Leslie reported that Henry said that if such a thing did happen – which God forbid – England would be unscathed: ‘in that case England would not accress unto Scotland but Scotland would accress unto England, as the most noble head of the whole isle.’7 Henry went on the give the example of Normandy coming into English hands centuries earlier, a disingenuous parallel surely and not one that the Anglo-Saxons would have recognized. But then a marriage between Margaret and another foreign prince might produce an even less desirable outcome, with England the satellite of some European power. Henry was not in the mood for further speculation and voices of opposition to the Scottish match were silenced. All was ready for the first public and ceremonial aspect of the treaty, a further show of Tudor display that would set the seal on twelve months of glorious diplomatic achievement, the high point of Henry VII’s reign.
Margaret’s proxy wedding to James IV took place at Richmond the day after the treaty was concluded, on 25 January, St Paul’s Day, in the year 1502. Though not as splendid an occasion as the wedding of Arthur to Katherine of Aragon two months earlier, it was still a considerable spectacle. In attendance were ambassadors from Spain and Venice, papal and French diplomats, three archbishops of the British Isles – Blacader of Glasgow, Deane of Canterbury and Savage of York – as well as the bishops of Winchester, Chester, Rochester and Norwich. The English nobility was headed by the young duke of Buckingham, who was accompanied by nineteen earls and lords, including Lord Stanley, Henry VII’s stepfather, and a further twenty-eight bannerets and knights. The ladies present included the six-year-old Princess Mary, younger daughter of the king and queen, and Elizabeth’s sister, Katherine, as well as Lady Katherine Gordon, who had hoped to be a queen in England but was now witness to the betrothal of a young English princess who would become Queen of Scots. Surprisingly, missing from the roll call is the king’s mother, now countess of Derby. Since Margaret Beaufort’s husband was present, we can only assume that her health or extremely difficult travel conditions kept her away, since she had always taken a keen interest in family matters and in Margaret’s marriage in particular. The newly wed Arthur and his Spanish wife were already established in their separate household in Ludlow, leaving Prince Henry as the senior royal male present after his father. The prince had appeared enthusiastic at his brother’s wedding but a story was put around subsequently that he was much less enthralled by the realization that his sister, as Queen of Scots, would take precedence over him. Theirs became a difficult relationship and the seeds of their rivalry and mistrust may have been built on this childish resentment of a sister’s elevation to a position that Henry did not, at this stage, believe he would ever occupy. And on this day it was Margaret, twelve years old and destined to wear a crown, who was the focus of attention.
The royal family first heard High Mass together in the chapel of Richmond Palace, followed by a ‘notable sermon’ made by the bishop of Ch
ichester. From there, they proceeded to the Queen’s Great Chamber, a magnificent room in Henry VII’s newly built palace, where the details of the betrothal ceremony itself were enacted. Once it had been formally established that papal dispensation was given (Margaret and James were distantly related) and that there was no impediment on either side, Margaret was asked by the archbishop of Glasgow whether she was content to undertake this marriage without compulsion and of her own free will. Well-rehearsed, the princess answered: ‘If it please my Lord and Father the King and my Lady my Mother the Queen.’ Henry indicated that she had both their blessings and Blacader read the words of the betrothal, by which Lord Bothwell undertook marriage with Princess Margaret on behalf of his sovereign, ‘James, by the grace of God King of Scotland’. Margaret replied:
I Margaret, the first begotten daughter of the right excellent, right high and mighty prince and princess, Henry, by the grace of God King of England, and Elizabeth, Queen of the same, wittingly and of deliberate mind, having twelve years complete in age in the month of November last be past, contract matrimony with the right excellent, right high and mighty prince James, King of Scotland, the person of whom Patrick, earl of Bothwell, is procurator; and take the said James, King of Scotland, unto and for my husband and spouse, and all other for him forsake, during his and mine lives natural; and thereto I plight and give to him, in your person as procurator aforesaid, my faith and truth.8
Margaret was now technically Queen of Scots, though she knew that another, greater ceremony awaited her on her arrival in Scotland. But the date of that was still some way off, as it had been agreed that she would not cross the border into Scotland before 1 May 1503. Meanwhile, there was much to celebrate. This first stage of the marriage in Richmond was followed by anthems and peals of trumpets and two separate feasts, one for Henry VII and the Scottish dignitaries and another, more intimate and affectionate, for Elizabeth of York and Margaret. ‘The queen,’ it was reported, ‘took her daughter the Queen of Scots by the hand and dined both at one mess covered.’ Bells rang in London to celebrate the betrothal; there were street bonfires and wine supplied to the citizenry, giving an air of festivity despite the winter season. On the afternoon of 25 January was the first in a series of jousts at which the duke of Buckingham and other courtiers figured prominently. One of these gentlemen, perhaps half-noticed by the little Princess Mary, was Charles Brandon, who would one day become her second husband. Margaret herself, in her first official act as a queen, gave out the prizes.