MARGARET (1489-1541), queen of Scotland, eldest daughter of Henry VII.,
king of England, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., was born
at Westminster on the 29th of November 1489. Before she was six years
old negotiations were opened, which dragged on for several years, for
marrying the princess to James IV. of Scotland, whose support of the
pretender Perkin Warbeck it was hoped to avert by such an alliance.
Eventually the marriage was celebrated in Edinburgh on the 8th of August
1503. The avaricious Henry VII. gave his daughter a scanty dowry and
quarrels on this head embittered the relations between the two kingdoms,
which the marriage, although accompanied by a treaty of perpetual peace,
did nothing to heal. The whole of Margaret's life after her marriage
with James IV. was an unending series of intrigues, first with one
political faction then with another; at one time in favour of her native
country, at another in hostility to it, her conduct being mainly
influenced at all times by considerations affecting her pocket.
Margaret was crowned at Edinburgh in March 1504. Until 1507 she had no
children; between that date and 1510 two sons and a daughter were born,
all of whom died in infancy; in 1512 she gave birth to a son who
succeeded his father as James V.; in 1514 she bore a posthumous son,
Alexander, created duke of Ross, who died in the following year. A
dispute with her brother Henry VIII. over a legacy claimed by Margaret
was a contributory cause of the war which ended at Flodden, where James
IV. was killed on the 9th of September 1513, having by his will
appointed Margaret sole guardian of her infant son, now King James V.
Scotland was divided mainly into two parties, one in favour of alliance
with England, and the other with France. The leader of the latter was
John Stewart, duke of Albany, next heir to the crown of Scotland after
Margaret's sons; Margaret herself for the most part inclined to the
English faction; and when Albany returned to Scotland from France on the
invitation of the Scottish parliament in the spring of 1514, the
conflict grew almost to civil war. Various projects for Margaret's
remarriage had already been started, Louis XII. of France and the
emperor Maximilian being proposed as suitable husbands for the young
widow, when the queen privately married Archibald Douglas, earl of
Angus, on the 6th of August 1514. The consequences of this marriage were
to alienate many of the most powerful of the nobility, especially the
earls of Arran and Home, and to make Margaret entirely dependent on the
house of Douglas; while it furnished the council with a pretext for
removing her from the regency and guardianship of the king in favour of
Albany in July 1515. Albany had to blockade Margaret in Stirling Castle
before she would surrender her sons. After being obliged to capitulate,
Margaret returned to Edinburgh, and being no longer responsible for the
custody of the king she fled to England in September, where a month
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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