The Thistle and the Rose: The Extraordinary Life of Margaret Tudor
One of the most interesting facts that I learnt from this latest of Dr Porter’s excellent books, is that there are more extant letters from Margaret than from all of Henry VIII’s queens combined. Which makes it all the more surprising that this is the first modern full-length biography of the Tudor princess who became a Stewart queen. In the early chapters we learn of how Margaret was educated and trained to be a queen and hear of the growth of the sibling rivalry (largely instigated by him) that developed between Margaret and her brother, later Henry VIII. That Margaret, married just before her fourteenth birthday successfully put her education into practice as a highly effective, popular, and loyal queen consort to James IV cannot be doubted. His trust in her, exemplified by his will making her tutrix to their son, was a tribute to her intelligence and skill.
Unfortunately, although Margaret, like all her family, was intelligent, resourceful, courageous and ambitious, when she had to take up the regency after the disastrous battle of Flodden that saw her husband killed at the hands of her brother’s army, she was handicapped by her youth, her gender, and her nationality. Porter explores Margaret’s driving force – her desire to promote peace and alliance between England and Scotland, which was the very purpose of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace that had created her marriage. Unfortunately, she was hampered by the men who should have supported her, her second husband, the Earl of Angus, and her brother. Henry VIII, who consistently undermined Margaret’s position, refused to listen to her advice about Scottish affairs, and took Angus’s part against her. All topped off with him sending sanctimonious messages to her when she sought an annulment at the very time he was doing the same.
One of the criticisms continually levelled at Margaret is her concern about her financial affairs and her jewels and clothes. Given that she was consistently robbed by her second and third husbands, it is hardly surprising that she wanted her property rights restored and she had every right to complain. Porter explains that the preoccupation with jewellery and clothes has to be seen in the context of sixteenth-century ideas about the importance of ‘magnificence’ and display as part of kingship. These were not personal baubles but statements of power and authority, and for a royal person to lose them was the equivalent of Samson having his curly locks cut off.
Leaving aside the personal story of Margaret, what comes through, based on Dr Porter’s usual excellent scholarship, is a much more nuanced understanding of Scotland as a political entity. She dispels the idea that the country was no more than a murky, fog-ridden backwater with an uncouth ruling class. Instead, she positions it as a part of Renaissance Europe: certainly small, but not without political heft. She also shows that, far from the internal polity collapsing in the wake of Flodden, the nobility and Margaret pulled together to continue government.
