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Writer's pictureSira Barbeito

Margaret Douglas; a sad example of how true love could ruin you under Henry VIII's rule


(Cover image – © Pinterest)



It was autumn of 1515. A 25 year-old Margaret Tudor, one of Henry VIII’s sisters and former Queen of Scots, was heavily pregnant with her second husband’s baby and running to seek her brother’s protection back in England. Angus, her husband, accompanied her, along with Lord Hume and his wife, galloping for Angus’ castle at Tantallon. Margaret Tudor had lost her sons’ custody and the regency after marrying him, losing all her privileges and freedom as well and forcing her to accept Henry’s offer of protection for herself and the child that was about to come. She hadn’t wanted to accept his help before to preserve her son’s claim to the Scottish throne but by that point she had nothing to lose and lots to gain, since even her jewels had been left behind.


The group made it to Harbottle Castle, which rested just across the English border. It was a rough place to give birth in but that’s what Margaret Tudor, Queen Dowager of Scotland, did there on 8th October 1515, when little Margaret Douglas was born. It’s not clear if her mother chose the name after herself or after her own late grandmother, Tudor matriarch Margaret Beaufort, but what was key is that the girl had been born on English territory, changing forever the history of both countries at play. While at Harbottle, she was told about her younger son Alexander’s passing, which completely devastated her.


Margaret Tudor came down with a bout of sciatica right after the birth and Angus suddenly abandoned his family to return home in order to recover and protect his goods. In the company of Dacre, Margaret Tudor decided to travel in short trips all the way to Morpeth, that was a bit more fit to live comfortably with a new born baby girl. They made their arrival on 23rd November 1515, spending Christmas there, waiting for her health to improve.


It’d take a few months for them to make their way down south to the capital.


One can only imagine how lonely Margaret Tudor must’ve felt. At 26 she had lost a husband and a son, her heir was far away from her care and her second husband had turned on her and made peace with the man who caused her to run away in the first place, Albany. She did, however, seem to agree with Angus’ decision and wrote to Albany asking for her husband’s properties to be restored back to him. Their situation was dire. The money was growing thinner and thinner with each passing day, Angus had rekindled his affair with Janet Stewart of Traquair with whom he was living in Margaret's own castle in Newark, to add insult to injury, and they didn’t seem to get any closer to London’s safety, arriving months later.


The thing was as follows: Henry VIII was almost sure that Katherine of Aragon wouldn’t give him a male heir after baby Mary’s birth and so he started to look at his young nephew James, planning to establish an English regency that could control him and turn the boy King into a puppet. He needed his sister Margaret back in Scotland to achieve that, not in England where she’d become little less than a waste of money, so in December of 1516 the terms of a treaty were settled, permitting Queen Margaret to return to Scotland as Henry VIII wished.


Meanwhile, Margaret Douglas was sent to live under her godfather’s wing, Cardinal Wolsey, moving to the royal Palace of Beaulieu in 1530 after his fall from grace and death to be raised surrounded by Princess Mary and her royal cousins. Unlike her older brother, she’d been born in England, which catapulted her to the top of the nobility, receiving a fitting education and becoming Henry VIII’s favourite niece, never being allowed back into Angus’ custody. Had she been Scottish, this might’ve not happened at all.


Her privileged position didn’t only make her closer to her uncle but to her cousin Mary as well. They had the same age and shared interests besides being brought up together at Beaulieu. Their bond would remain for the rest of their lives though they went through a rough patch when Henry repudiated Mary’s mom to marry Anne Boleyn. Mary was mistreated and they were separated. Both her and Katherine were torn apart from each other too and Mary’s household was dismantled immediately after she was demoted in rank, going from Princess to only Lady Mary.


All the while life continued at court with a new Queen. Margaret Douglas truly had no choice but to do her best to avoid annoying her dangerously temperamental uncle, and so she ended up serving Anne Boleyn as a lady-in-waiting. Once Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was born, one may speculate that Margaret was asked to swear to the Acts of Succession and Supremacy oath that rendered Queen Katherine as Dowager Princess of Wales and Mary a bastard. Moreover, Margaret Douglas became Chief Lady of the Bedchamber to Princess Elizabeth while Mary was sent to serve her baby sister.


Henry offered Margaret Douglas’s hand in marriage instead of Mary’s to François I of France’s son, and it’s reported that she was there at court at the time. This might mean that her position as Chief Lady of the Bedchamber to Princess Elizabeth could’ve been only on paper and not in person, sparing both cousins the sadness of witnessing Mary’s hardships.


By 1535 Margaret had turned 20 and was on the lookout for romance. Even though both her mother and uncle had had talks with possible suitors over the years, there didn’t seem to be any at that point and Margaret Douglas, being her mother’s daughter, took the matter into her own hands. Anne’s court was filled by lots of different people, like Henry Norris or George Boleyn, and Margaret found friends like Mary Shelton and Mary Howard (the latter would go on to marry Henry VIII’s illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy). Amongst them was Lord Thomas Howard, younger son of Anne Boleyn’s great-uncle, the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Margaret Douglas and Thomas met at Anne’s court and they fell in love over the months, writing poems to each other in a manuscript known nowadays as the Devonshire Manuscript.


By the end of that same year they’d gotten secretly engaged.


Margaret Douglas was a high ranking royal and as such, she had to ask for Henry’s approval if not keep herself alone until he could marry her off in a politically profitable match. News didn’t break out until July of the next year, after Queen Anne’s execution. King Henry VIII was flabbergasted and enraged with his favourite niece. Since Katherine and Anne’s demise, both of his daughters were outed from the line of succession, leaving Henry Fitzroy and Margaret Douglas to bear the burden. This engagement, then, was completely out of pocket in Henry’s point of view.


Long story short, the lovebirds were imprisoned in the Tower of London. Margaret must’ve felt terrified. If England’s Queen consort could be beheaded, what was going to happen to Thomas and herself? Well, on 18 July 1536, Parliament condemned Thomas Howard to death for trying to ‘interrupt ympedyte and lett the seid Succession of the Crowne’. An Act of Attainder was passed forbidding any member of the royal family to marry without the monarch’s permission. Margaret Douglas broke the engagement and maybe that’s what saved Thomas from the execution (not from prison, though).


Still kept at the Tower, she fell ill and when her mother learned about her sickness she immediately wrote to Henry to get him to send her daughter back to Scotland with her. Margaret Tudor’s letter reads as follows:


“Dearest brother,


In our most hearty manner we recommend us unto your grace. Please you understand we are informed lately that our daughter Margaret Douglas should, by your grace’s advice, promise to marry Thomas Howard, and that your grace is displeased that she should promise or desire such thing; and that your grace is resolved to punish my daughter and your near cousin to extreme rigour, which we no way can believe, considering she is our natural daughter, your niece, and sister natural unto the king our dearest son, your nephew; who will not believe that you will do such extremity upon your own, ours, and his, being so tender to us all three as our natural daughter is.


Dearest brother, we beseech your grace, of sisterly kindness and natural love we bear, and that you owe to us your only sister, to have compassion and pity of us your sister and of our natural daughter and sister to the king our only natural son and your dearest nephew; and to grant our said daughter Margaret your grace’s pardon, grace, and favour, and remit of such as your grace has put to her charge. And, if it please your grace, to be content she come in Scotland, so that in time coming she shall never come in your grace’s presence.


And this, dearest brother, we, in our most hearty, affectionate, tender manner, most specially and most humbly beseech your grace to do, as we doubt not your wisdom will think to your honour, since this our request is dear and tender to us, the gentlewoman’s natural mother, and we your natural sister, that makes this piteous and most humble request. Farther, please your grace, this bearer will inform. And the Eternal God conserve your grace, as we would be ourself.”


This semi worked as Henry moved her niece out from the Tower and deposited her under Abbess Agnes Jordan’s supervision at Syon Abbey. It would remain like that until 29 October 1537, when she was finally free after Thomas’ death.


Even though she didn’t reign in England nor Scotland, Margaret went on to marry Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, in 1544. From their union, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley was welcomed into the world. Within a few years he’d be married to Mary Queen of Scots and he’d welcome baby James, who would rule over both countries after Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth I died.



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