Besieged by an English army, Mary of Lorraine, the Queen Regent, died in Edinburgh Castle on 11 June 1560. Shortly afterwards a deputation of Lords of the Congregation, consisting of the Earls of Morton and Glencairn and Maitland of Lethington, rode from Scotland to London to thank Queen Elizabeth for her support to their cause. James Douglas, son of Angus’ brother, George Douglas, and therefore Margaret’s first cousin, had achieved the Morton earldom through marriage. While in England he thought it expedient to make a visit to Margaret in Yorkshire.
This was not the first time that James Douglas, now through his marriage to the insane Elizabeth Douglas, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Morton, had come to stay with the Lennoxes. Born c.1516, he had been in his early thirties when taken prisoner by the English army while besieging his Palace of Dalkeith in 1548. ‘Sore hurt on the thigh’, taken as a hostage to England, he had been freed together with some of his relations at the intercession of his uncle the Earl of Angus on the condition that they remained under house arrest in one of his daughter’s houses, which in this case seems to have been Wressil Castle.
It may have been through conversation with James, at that time styled Master of Morton, that Margaret had first become aware of her father’s intention to bypass her own rights to inheritance by making him his heir. His reasons for this seemingly gross infringement of his daughter’s constitutional rights, can only be put down to her husband’s attack and sacking of the Douglas stronghold of Drumlanrig Castle in the name of the English King Henry. Construing this as treachery, Angus had determined that his land and titles in Scotland should remain with the Douglas family in the person of James Douglas, son of his brother George.
Margaret Lennox, however, since the death of his two infant sons, had remained her father’s heiress. Plainly it was to obtain her permission to relinquish her inheritance that her cousin James Morton came to see her, choosing a propitious moment when aware that her husband, Matthew Lennox, was not at home.
James was now a middle-aged man of 44. His portrait shows him a true Douglas, thin faced, with the red hair and beard so typical of his kin. A high stove-pipe hat crowns his head and he wears a doublet topped by a ruff, so fashionable at the time.
He must have been very persuasive, or it may have been due to filial obedience to the father, who despite his recent cruelty had been the idol of her early years, that Margaret agreed to allow her rightful inheritance to pass to him.
Matthew, however, was furious. Returning to discover what had happened, he realised at once that his wife had been deceived. Raging with anger against Morton, her father and the Douglasses as a whole, Matthew declared the agreement to be totally null and void.
Notes
1 Chalmers, G., Mary Queen of Scots, founded on a manuscript by Whitaker, J., Manchester historian (London, 1818)
2 Deposition of William Forbes concerning the Lady Lennox, 9 May 1562
30
ARREST
Shortly after Morton’s visit, Allan Lallart reported that Mary Queen of Scots had taken ship from France. Margaret waited, torn with anxiety in the knowledge that English warships, known to be off the coast, would certainly intercept the vessel and probably take her prisoner. But no such catastrophe occurred. The next she heard was that the ship had landed safely at Leith. Forbes, within earshot when this happened, saw Margaret sit down and raise her hands to heaven, exclaiming ‘How God preserves that Princess at all times.’
Reported to Elizabeth, this gave even further reason for offence. Alan Lallart, however, was despatched at once to Scotland, purportedly to meet the Comte d’Aubigny, who in fact had stayed behind in France. But Alan recognised Lord Gorland, Matthew’s youngest brother, who he asked to introduce him to the queen.
Accordingly, just as Mary was about to mount her horse to ride from Stirling to Perth, Lallart pushed his way through her attendants. Then, kneeling before the slim young queen standing tall above him, he paid the Lennoxes’ respects, before making the request that their Scottish estates might be returned to them.
The queen, according to Lallart, stated ‘That she was but newly returned to her realm, therefore she could not give me such an answer as she would; but all she might do for my lord and my lady, her aunt, she would do at proper time and place, desiring my lady to be always her good aunt, as indeed she knew her to be, with remembrance to them both.’1
William Forbes, the spy at Settringham, believing himself discovered, convinced that Margaret was now plotting against him, wrote to Lord Gray, commander of the English army in Scotland, ‘that she wrote to Queen Mary against myself’. Then, in another letter to Cecil, which he doubtless showed to Queen Elizabeth, he poured out the most venomous accusations against the woman who had employed him, trusting him implicitly so it seems.
She frequenteth, by messengers, witches and hath one in her house, that for this two years has told her that she shall be in great trouble, and yet do well enough, for she hopeth for a day the which I trust she shall never see, her doings being espied betimes. She loveth neither God nor the Queen’s Majesty, nor yet your honour.2
In addition to this extraordinary diatribe, Forbes solemnly declared that he had heard Margaret say that Lord Robert Dudley had killed his wife.
This, it would seem, proved the last straw for Queen Elizabeth, who passionate in her defence of Robert Dudley, would never allow even a whiff of scandal to be attributed to his name. On the excuse that Margaret could be called a traitor for daring to correspond with the queen of a country with which England was officially a war, she ordered the arrest and detention of all of the Lennox family, together with their household staff.
The blow came at Christmas 1561. The family were gathered at Settrington, as doubtless Cecil had guessed, when, with a clattering of hoofs and blowing of trumpets, Queen Elizabeth’s messengers arrived with a summons to travel to London immediately. Children, priests, tutors, servants, even the girls sent to board, all had to attend. No excuses were viable. Neither was any delay.
The weather was so cold that the coaches could only move slowly, jolting over frozen ruts in the road. Inside, the passengers, huddled together, moaned over their plight. Margaret in particular lamented, knowing what it would cost. She was all too aware that on arrival, she would have to pay for whatever accommodation could be found. The sweating sickness was then rampant, influenza another risk, and it is thought that two of her little daughters succumbed on that journey although nothing records their deaths.
As they travelled Margaret made plans and told her eldest son Henry exactly what he must do. Arriving in London, some of the entourage were deposited in the prison of the Gate House in Westminster while the Lennox family were housed in Margaret’s own suite of chambers in Westminster Palace. In the short winter’s day, it was dark by the time the travellers, tired and stiff, climbed out of the carriages which had carried them so far. Then suddenly there was an outcry from the people receiving them. Where was Lord Darnley? He was not with them? Where on earth had he gone?
Margaret pretended astonishment. She thought he had been behind in one of the other coaches. She had no idea where he was. Only one thing emerged for certain. Henry, Lord Darnley, over 6ft tall and hardly missable, had, nonetheless, disappeared.
Notes
1 State Paper Office MS
2 Endorsed by William Cecil, ‘William Forbes contra Lady Lennox’, State Papers Office MS
31
‘A VERY WISE AND
DISCREET MATRON’
Henry Darnley was next heard of in France. How he got there remains a mystery. Most probably in disguise, hidden below decks, having made most of the journey by boat.
There is no doubt that Queen Elizabeth and Cecil, once they heard of Henry’s being in France, realised that somehow his mother had devised a plan for his going there to court the now widowed Queen of Scots. Unable to punish him personally, their wrath fell on his parents. Margaret was ordered to stay in her rooms in Westminster while Matthew, handed over to the Maste
r of the Rolls, was placed under close arrest in the Tower.
Margaret, her son Charles and, it is thought, her surviving daughter, were then once more held as house prisoners by Sir Richard and Lady Sackville, the queen’s great aunt and uncle, in the Charterhouse at Sheen. From there, Margaret, frantically worried about her husband, reportedly utterly despondent in the Tower, wrote repeatedly to Cecil. In one letter, headed ‘Sheen, May 14, 1552’, she begged him:
Good Master Sekretory
After my right hearty commendations, this is to require of you some comfort concerning my husband’s liberty, either to be clearly out of the Tower, which should be most to my comfort, or else at the least some more liberty within it. I have staid in troubling you, for that my hope was to have had some good news. For that I myself do know the Queen’s Majesty to be of so gracious, so good, and gentle nature, that if her Highness had been moved for my Lord and me, she would have had some pity of us ere now, considering the long time of trouble we have had, which has been since Christmas. Wherefore I shall beseech you to move her Majesty in this my humble and lowly petition, and that my lord may come to his answer again, for that ye sent me word by Fowler that he stood to the denial of all things laid to his charge. I trust he will not contend or deny any thing of truth, and in so doing my hope is her Majesty will be his good and gracious lady, who never meant to willingly to deserve the contrary. As knoweth God who has you in his keeping.1
Fowler, Margaret’s messenger, returned a week later with Cecil’s answer, which was so unsatisfactory that she wrote to him again on 21 May, demanding to know on what charges they were held.
I have received your answer by my man Fowler, but nothing touching the petitions in my letter, for that ye say there is new matter both against my lord and me, which, when it shall please the Queen’s Majesty, I shall be glad to understand, not doubting, with God’s grace, but both my lord and I shall be able to acquit ourselves, if right may take place – that our accusers may be brought before us. I assure you I am weary of this life, and would fain receive some comfort from her Majesty; for, as methink, we have had enough punishment for a great offence … wherefore I shall desire you to be my friend in being a means to the Queen’s Majesty, of yourself, for my lord and me, for I think her Highness will give better ear to you than to my letter … Not withstanding, as her Highness pleasure is I am content; but I shall pray to Him, who is the champion and defender of the innocent to inspire her Majesty’s heart toward me according to the good nature I know her Majesty to be of. Declaring this unto her shall bind my lord and me to be yours assuredly.2
This appeal did at least force the members of the Star Chamber into action. Cecil was told by Queen Elizabeth to examine Lady Lennox on the allegations of the spy in her household, William Forbes. The notes that he wrote confirm the questions asked of her, which include the sayings of her fool, the other servants and most notably the letters which she and her husband had written to Mary Queen of Scots. What transactions, they demanded to know, had taken place between them and Lord Seton to further their son’s suggested marriage to the queen?
She was also asked about her supposed connections with Nostradamus relating to the gift of second sight. When St Paul’s steeple was burnt how many men had been killed in St James’s Park? More significantly, she was asked to explain her assertion that ‘touching the right of the Crown, she would give place to none of the rest’. Cecil himself told her that the Star Chamber was investigating the legality of her claim to the throne of England through her mother. Once again, the old assertion of her parent’s supposedly illegal marriage was being dragged up by an Alexander Pringle, who, not surprisingly, turned out to be an agent of the man hanging like an evil genii over the family, Margaret’s nephew, James, Earl of Morton.
Knowing that the Berwick herald, Harry Ray, although now an old man, could testify to her mother’s statement on her deathbed that she had been legally married to Angus at the time of their daughter’s birth, Margaret wrote again to Cecil, insisting that: ‘Even as God has made me, so I am, lawful daughter to the Queen of Scots and the Earl of Angus, which none alive is able to make me otherwise. Without doing wrong.’3
On the 12 July Margaret did receive an answer from Cecil to the effect that ‘the Queen would not grant the Earl of Lennox more liberty in the Tower while he used himself as he did’, in other words until he showed more humility to his jailers.4
At this point, Margaret was herself very ill with what appears to have been influenza, which gave her ‘terrible pains in her head’. However, she was much more worried about her husband than about herself. Told of Matthew’s worsening condition in the Tower, she now became convinced that, like her former lover Thomas Howard, he would die. Desperate, she made another appeal, this time to Queen Elizabeth herself, begging her to allow Matthew to share her own imprisonment at Sheen or, if this was not possible, to allow him at least to have what she called ‘the liberty of the Tower’, to walk about the building and perhaps even stretch his legs on Tower Green.
Needless to say, it met with no response. ‘My lord’s sickness,’ she told Cecil, ‘comes only by close keeping and lack of comfort; so that, if it might please her Majesty to suffer him to come to Sheen and to be here as I am, we should think ourselves much bound to her Highness, for otherwise I know he can not continue without danger to of life.’5
On 22 July she tried again, asking Cecil to beseech Queen Elizabeth to have consideration of herself, her poor kinswoman, ‘… and of my husband, who is in close prison without comfort to his nature, and as her Highness knows, not very healthful, having a disease which solitariness is most against, as heretofore, to my comfort, her Majesty hath willed me to cause him always to be in company.’6
This last appeal, which seems to have reminded Queen Elizabeth that she herself had once told Margaret that Matthew should never be left alone, did at least draw out an answer as to why she had committed them to prison. It was her conviction, as by now they must have guessed, that they were aiming at a marriage between their son Henry and Mary Queen of Scots.
Fortunately, Henry’s tutor, Arthur Lallard, had sworn under oath that his only reason for going to Scotland to see Queen Mary and Matthew’s young brother, Monsieur d’Aubigny, had been to ask for the return of Lennoxes’ property sequestered by the Scottish Government.
On 24 July, Margaret wrote to Cecil, telling him that while she could not answer for her husband unless she was permitted to see him that ‘for my part, except it was for the schoolmaster’s going into Scotland without the Queen Majesty’s leave, I can remember no offence’.7
This produced a sharp retort from Queen Elizabeth: ‘That the submission of Lord Lennox must, and not by his wife’s teaching.’8
Cecil then advised Margaret to appeal to other members of the council, which she did most reluctantly. She was ‘not accustomed to write to a Council’, so she said. Nonetheless she did write to both the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and to Lord Pembroke.9
By now, to add to her worries, Margaret was extremely short of money, and on the same day she wrote again to Cecil telling him how she was placed.
Good Master Secretory
I can not cease but trouble you still, till I may receive some comfort, praying you to remember my intolerable griefe, which ariseth divers ways, as well as by my lord’s imprisonment, and mine, being thereby separated, as also by impoverishment, which daily increaseth to our utter undoing: as first being in great debt before the beginning of this trouble, and then coming up upon the sudden, having naught but upon borrowing to sustain my charges leaving all goods, though small they be, as well as cattle and household stuff and grounds, without order which now goeth to ruin and decay for lack of looking to, having not any trusty servant [to] spare to redress the same, certain being in prison, and the rest few enow to attend our business here besides. Then the great charges we are at in these parts – one way with my lord and his servant’s imprisonment, another way with mine own and children’s, and thos
e attending on me and them.
That having naught but upon borrowing to suffice the ordinary charge since my coming up [to London] which shift I have so long made that now it faileth. An’ for the small portion of living my lord and I have, the revenue thereof is far unable to suffice the half of the ordinary charges we now be at, beside that we were before hand of divers of our bailiffs, as occasion enforced us into. All of which considered, making my moan to you, my trust is that ye will be a mean to shorten the time of my lord’s trouble and mine, beseeching ye, so soon as ye may, to participate the promises of the Queen’s Majesty, having confidence that her Highnesses good nature is such that she will not see me utterly impoverished now in my old age, being her Majesty’s poor kinswoman … From Sheen this Saturday.
Your assured friend to my power,
Margaret Lennox and Anguse.10
Margaret’s pleas remained unanswered, but in October 1562, Queen Elizabeth succumbed to smallpox of which she very nearly died. For weeks, as her life remained in danger, speculation raged as to whom would succeed her in the then imminent expectation of her death. Would it be the Queen of Scotland, or one of the queen’s first cousins, namely the Lady Katherine Grey or the Countess of Lennox? In fact it would be none of them. Surprisingly, Elizabeth survived. On 25 October Margaret, yet again writing to Cecil, said, however insincerely, ‘Thanks be to God of the Queen’s amendment, which is no small comfort to me.’11
She wrote again on 12 November asking him to renew her supplication to the queen that Matthew might be released from the Tower. The queen knew how ill her husband was and how bad it was for him to remain in the Tower, so cold and damp at this time of the year; if only he could be transferred to Sheen to be with herself and their children, she would be quite content.
Margaret Douglas Page 14