Margaret’s awkward situation, though she seems to have been happy in the care of the custodian of Berwick, remained for a time unsolved. Eventually, however, her aunt, the beautiful Mary, Duchess of Suffolk and former queen of France, was told, presumably by Wolsey, of the straights to which the girl was reduced. Subsequently, Mary prevailed on her brother King Henry to allow her to come to England, on the promise that she would look after their homeless and neglected niece.
Forthwith Margaret travelled to England, escorted by Captain Thomas Strangeways himself. She is known to have stayed with her aunt over Christmas, and one wonders what the gentle, sophisticated Mary made of this long-legged girl with a tangle of red gold hair and who, now on the verge of womanhood, walked and rode like a man. Still more must she have puzzled over her niece’s south Scots accent, which, so unlike the musical tongue of the French, was quite uncouth to the ear. The duchess did her best to tame her, and Margaret, unused as she was to the tender care of a woman so different from her ever grumbling aunts, began to enjoy the warmth and luxury of her new, if temporary, home.
It must have been with genuine sadness that she was forced to leave, when, at the beginning of the following year, 1529, Henry ordered that she should be taken to Beaulieu in Essex to live with his daughter Princess Mary.
Notes
1 State Papers, Vol.IV, p.533
2 Ibid.
3 Strangeways to Wolsey, 20 July 1529
6
THE COUSINS
To the girl of 15, used as she was to rough living in draughty, insanitary Border castles, it must have seemed that she was entering fairyland as her coach rumbled up the mile-long tree-lined drive.
Her uncle, the king, had bought the estate some fourteen years before in 1517 from Sir Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne, upon whom Henry had already set his eye. Determined that his heiress, Princess Mary, although at that time just a year old, should have all the splendour of her status as his heir, the king had transformed the building into a palace.
Beaulieu, as Henry called it, meaning beautiful place, was certainly imposing to behold. Built round no less than eight courtyards, it was fronted with a façade that was 550ft in length, in the centre of which stood two massive gatehouse towers. Henry had used the latest style of architecture, imported from Rome, based on a series of perfect squares. This was the first of his palaces, created to emphasise his might. Traces of its magnificence were discovered when in 2009, nearly 500 years later, Channel 4’s Time Team came to investigate the site whilst making a documentary. Discovering an intricate system of Tudor drains where the western range would have stood, they conjectured that this must have been the nursery built for the little princess.
Now Princess Mary was no longer in the nursery but had moved into the great state rooms of the palace. Impressed as she had been by the comfort and splendour of her aunt’s house, Margaret had never before known or seen such magnificence as the interior of the building to which, as a guest, she now came.
Instead of the bare draughty walls of the Border keeps she was used to, with pieces of hide stuck into holes and cracks to keep out draughts, she now lived in rooms hung with tapestries, glowing with a myriad of colours, and heated with fires. Now, instead of eating mainly with her fingers, she dined using cutlery off silver and gold plates. Most luxurious of all were the hip-baths. Used as she was to washing in cold water drawn from burns and rivers, which were sometimes even covered with ice, the warm water, scented with rose oil, was something of which she had dreamed. In her new robes, paid for by her uncle Henry, she learned to walk with short steps, to curtsey and even, under a dancing master, to do stately pavanes and gavottes.
By the time of her arrival, her cousin, the Princess Mary, just a few months younger than herself, had reached the age of 14. The contrast between the two girls could not have been greater, both in physical appearance and in character. Mary was small and dark haired. She had the sallow skin of her Spanish descent and was so thin that her collarbones showed clearly above the square-cut bodices of the dresses fashionable at that time. Most noticeably, she spoke with a voice so deep that those hearing but not seeing her might take her for a man.
Mary did not have good health. Her frequent headaches were brought on to some extent by too much reading, peering short-sightedly into books. Also, aware of her physical weaknesses, her lack of self-confidence made her so shy that she feared showing affection even to those she most loved.
Margaret, on the other hand, was tall, with the red gold hair of her Tudor mother and skin still tanned from riding for long hours exposed to wind, rain and sun. She was also bold and, some claimed, imperious in her manner. Moreover, she was openly outspoken and unafraid to speak her mind. Defiant of criticism, she nonetheless showed great deference to Lady Salisbury, who, besides being Mary’s godmother, was both a near relation and a devoted Catholic, these being the reasons why King Henry had appointed her as head of his daughter’s household. Now a dowager of 63, this formidable, if saintly, lady was, as the daughter of the 1st Duke of Clarence, the last of the royal house of Plantagenet which had ended with the death of Richard III.
A peeress in her own right, she had been married to Sir William Pole, a cousin of Henry VII, but had been left so penniless on his death, with five children to support, that the king had paid for her husband’s funeral. Later, however, when an act of parliament had restored her family’s lands, she had become one of the richest women in England. A lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, her high birth and irreproachable character had proved her to be eminently suitable to take charge of the princess, who, until a son should be born to him, remained Henry’s heir. Nonetheless, her own son, Reginald Pole, paid for by Henry to study theology in France and Italy during his family’s penury, had subsequently incurred his wrath. Offered the Archbishopric of York if he would support his divorce from Catherine, Reginald had stubbornly refused, returning to self exile abroad.
He had left his mother under suspicion. Many Catholic families in the north of England were known to be hostile to the divorce. Margaret Salisbury, a direct descendant of the Plantagenets, was in Henry’s eyes a likely figurehead in the very possible outcome of a civil war.
Pious as Lady Salisbury, Princess Mary’s governess, Margaret Bryant, had been with her almost since she was born. Mary, a natural linguist, was now fluent in French and Latin and of course in Spanish, her mother’s native tongue. Margaret must have learnt at least some French if, as is thought, she had stayed in France with her father for a period of about three years. Nonetheless, her education otherwise had been of the most basic kind. She spoke with the strong accent of the Lowland Scots, and both her cousin Mary and her governess, now teaching Margaret as well, found it almost as bad as deciphering a foreign language in their efforts to understand what she said.
The ladies of Mary’s household, used as they were to refinement, must have listened in horror and amazement to Margaret’s stories of her adventures with her father in the Scottish Borders. Hearing of her wanderings from one rough fort to another and of how at times both she and her aunts had slept in barns and even open fields, they must have shivered at the thought.
For Margaret, who could barely speak the King’s English, the struggle to learn both Latin and French, the languages then highly essential to anyone in royal circles, must have been great. Hardly less onerous were the sewing lessons, beginning with seams and then progressing to tiny stitches of embroidery. Margaret, glancing from the windows, and probably pricking her thumb, must have longed to be out on the back of a horse instead of being forced to sit stitching in a room, over heated, even in summer, by a fire.
Yet frustrated as she then was by a lack of freedom, she was to look back on those days at Beaulieu as some of the happiest of her life. One thing above all that made it so was the joy shown by Mary on her arrival. Used as she was to loneliness in the austere atmosphere of an ageing household, dominated by its strict chatelaine, Mary rejoiced in the company of this strong, confiden
t cousin who had lived a life so adventurous compared to her own. Together they talked of their ambitions, of their hopes of soon finding suitors and inevitably, as most girls do, of the so far hidden joys of sex and of whom, in their own young opinions, were the most desirable and dashing men at court.
In Mary’s eyes no one equalled her father, whom she openly adored. But sometimes her moods were saddened, and as they walked together in the garden, their duennas trailing behind, Mary whispered to Margaret that she was deeply afraid. Her father had a new mistress. There had, of course, been others, notably Bessie Blount, who had actually borne him a son. But this woman was different. She was scheming and determined to get him so that she could be queen. Margaret tried to console her, but Mary was a realist and she cried at night for her mother, whom she so steadfastly loved.
Mary wept in bewilderment, confused in her loyalty to her parents, both of whom she adored. To Margaret she told her amazement that anyone as brave and good as her father, whom she idolised, could be so cruel to her mother because she had failed to give him a living son. Her mother had tried so hard to achieve what was her wish as well as his own. She had so nearly done so when her first son, another Henry, had lived for fifty-two days. Devastated by his death, as were both his parents, Henry had then made her regent when he went to France with his army. The Scots, seizing at the chance of his absence, had been about to invade, whereupon, despite being heavily pregnant, she had ridden north in full armour, on an eye-catching white horse. After the battle of Flodden she had actually sent Henry a bloodstained coat, reputed to be that of James IV.
She had been so brave, Mary said, and was it surprising that under these circumstances she had given birth prematurely to another son who lived but a few hours? Yet another had been stillborn and two other girls had died within days. Thus it was only Mary who had survived as her father’s heir. The injustice done to her mother, so much loved by the people of England, was almost more than she could endure.
It was Margaret who should have been Henry’s daughter, as Mary very well knew. Margaret was so strong and courageous that she could hold even the strongest pulling horse, while she herself was so nervous that she could only manage an ambling palfrey or, better still, a docile mule. Margaret, with her red gold hair and the height which gave her such presence, was every inch a Tudor, while Mary, with her Spanish descent, had very little resemblance to the statuesque father whose approval she so desperately craved.
The first notice of King Henry’s attention to his niece ‘Marget’, as was his pet name for her, appears in the Privy Purse Expenses, where it is noted that the king ordered £6 13s 4d to be given to ‘the Lady Margaret Anguish to disport herself this Christmas’. The gift, although probably to buy material for seamstresses to make her new clothes, would also have been designed to allow her to give the customary presents to her servants. In addition it was essential to have enough money to gamble at cards, then such a major distraction in most large houses in the land.
Margaret spent that Christmas of 1530 with her uncle King Henry at Greenwich Palace. It proved to be a family gathering for with them was Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, for the last time presiding as queen.
The king is reported to have shown great affection for his niece, admiring both her striking looks and her bold spirit, with which, when they went hawking, she rode even faster than did he. Also, trained by her father with the Tantallon hawks, she could fly the falcons and make them return to her, to the admiration of even the experts who thought falconry the right of men.
Aware of his fondness towards her, she begged him to grant her the great favour of allowing her father and her other uncle, his brother George Douglas, almost his amanuensis, to come to court. Henry acquiesced, as ever with his own ends in view. The Privy Purse proves that on 15 December in the following year of 1531, the Earl of Angus, on leaving Greenwich Palace, was given the sum of £46 13s 4d; at the same time, his daughter, as in the previous year, received money ‘for playing at cards and other diversions of the season’.
In addition to this, when the court moved to Waltham, Margaret’s uncle, George Douglas, to ensure his loyalty, received £100. Henry, who never did anything for nothing, had now seen a way to achieve his declared intention of becoming the ruler of Scotland: subsidising the Douglasses to confront the Regent Albany, then the Scottish agent in France, with no less than £1,000.
Specifically, it was stated that the king’s benefice was ‘to supply the sustenance of both the Earl of Angus and his daughter’. This meant that for the first time in her life Margaret was freed from the charity of relations. Now, within the precincts of Beaulieu, she could have her own household, independent of anyone else.
Firstly, and most importantly, she had her chaplain, a Roman Catholic priest named Charles. In addition, in charge of her wardrobe was Peter, who was ‘wonderfully skilled with a needle’, and below him another man named Hervey, as well as three maids. Outside in the huge block of stables, to look after her horses, she had three grooms.
No one expressed more joy over the change in Margaret’s fortunes than did Princess Mary, who, in addition to being her first cousin and almost the same age, had become her closest friend and confidante. Mary was relieved to know that Margaret had at least some substance at a time when her own family conflicts threatened the stability of her life.
7
‘THE KING’S WICKED INTENTION’
The Christmas spent at Greenwich Palace in the previous year of 1531 was proving to be the last period of happiness that Mary was to know for some time. It was now six years since her father, King Henry, had set his heart on marrying the auburn-haired, black-eyed Anne Boleyn, then a lady-in-waiting to her mother, the queen.
Determined to acquire an annulment of his marriage on the grounds that she had formerly been married to his elder brother, Arthur – which he conveniently interpreted to be wrong in the eyes of God – he had tried, unsuccessfully, to make her retire to a nunnery. Upon her refusing to do so, he had then sent his secretary, William Knight, to Pope Clement VII to sue for an annulment on the grounds that the dispensation, issued by the previous Pope, had been granted on false pretences.
Much to the sorrow of both Princess Mary and Margaret Douglas, his goddaughter, both grateful for of his kindness, Cardinal Wolsey, castigated for his failure to gain the king’s ambition, had been dismissed as chancellor in 1529. Incensed, he had then begun plotting against Anne Boleyn, communicating with the Pope to that end. When discovered, Henry had ordered his arrest on a charge of treachery, but he had died of terminal cancer before being forced to stand trial.
Soon came rumours of the king’s determination on divorce. Mary, tight lipped in her sorrow, began to refuse to eat. Margaret, disturbed by Mary’s misery and concerned for the Spanish queen, whom even through short acquaintance she had learned to love so well, tried only to help her cousin by assuring her that divorce would be prohibited by the Pope in Rome. Lady Salisbury, devoted both to the queen and to the Catholic faith they shared, went about straight faced, while the household over which she presided waited in fear for news.
Soon after that Christmas at Greenwich, Queen Catherine was ordered to leave the court. Shortly, her old rooms in Greenwich Palace were given to Anne Boleyn. In the New Year Mary went to visit her mother, who was now living in The More at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. This magnificent mansion, on the south side of the flood plain of the Colne Valley, dated originally from the thirteenth century and had been rebuilt by Cardinal Wolsey. He had added two wings and the formal gardens in 1522. Nonetheless, despite her new home being one of the grandest houses in England, large enough to hold her 200 servants, Catherine was deeply resentful at being moved from her old apartments in Greenwich Palace to make way for Anne Boleyn. Voicing her indignation in a letter to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, she told him that: ‘My tribulations are so great, my life so disturbed by the plans daily invented to further the King’s wicked intention … my treatment is what God kn
ows, that it is enough to shorten ten lives, much more mine.’1
Henry was determined to keep his still not divorced wife and their daughter apart, convinced, with some reason, that Catherine was plotting against him and that she meant to involve Mary in her schemes. To make matters worse, he then discovered that Catherine was carrying on a secret correspondence with the Pope, who ordered him to put Anne away and take Catherine back. Apoplectic with rage, Henry declared that neither the Pope nor the Holy Roman Emperor had any right to dictate to the king, now God’s anointed head of the Church of England. Catherine, accused of conspiracy, was moved from the More to Hatfield, built by Cardinal Morton but seized by Henry from the Church.
Soon afterwards, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, died, the Boleyn’s own chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, was appointed to fill his place. On 23 May 1533, Cranmer, convening over a special court to debate the validity of King Henry’s marriage to Queen Catherine, declared it to be illegal on the grounds of her previous marriage to his brother. Forthwith he proclaimed the legality of his marriage to Anne Boleyn.
Princess Mary and all of her household reacted with horror to the news. Deeply saddened by the callous insult to her mother, she refused, as did Lady Salisbury, to acknowledge the new queen. Further distress was to follow when, less than a month later, it was learned that Mary, Duchess of Suffolk – the Queen Duchess, as she was always known – had died at her home, Westhorpe Hall in Suffolk, on 25 June.
Both Princess Mary and Lady Margaret Douglas, her nieces who had loved her, were deeply saddened by her death; Margaret in particular remembering how when, homeless and an outcast from Scotland, she had welcomed her to Westhorpe in that winter of 1526.
Margaret Douglas Page 4