Margaret Tudor was the first Tudor princess of England, born in 1489 to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. In an age when royal daughters were usually regarded as less valuable than sons, her parents were genuinely pleased to have a girl, though not for sentimental reasons. Her father had seized the crown by killing the previous king on the battlefield, which meant he could not claim divine right as his foundation of power. His best hope for keeping his throne lay in alliances with other European powers, and those alliances required daughters to marry off to suitable princes.
Before Margaret turned six, she was betrothed to King James IV of Scotland, who was twenty-two. The marriage was meant to seal the Treaty of Perpetual Peace between England and Scotland, ending years of conflict between the two kingdoms. Some of Henry’s councilors worried that the union could pave the way for the Scots to claim the English throne, but the match went ahead. At age twelve, Margaret was married to James through a proxy ceremony, and although she remained in England for two more years, she was legally recognized as Queen of Scots.
In 1503, when Margaret was fourteen, her mother gave birth to a child who died within days, and Queen Elizabeth herself died about a week later. In June, mere months after losing her mother, Margaret followed her father’s orders and traveled to Edinburgh. On August 8, 1503, she and James were married at Holyrood Abbey. James IV was far older than his bride, but he was charismatic, wealthy, and good-humored.
When it came time to ride into Edinburgh, he happily invited Margaret to share his horse. During her marriage, Margaret gave birth six times, but only one child, a son named James, survived infancy. On April 21, 1509, her father Henry VII died at age fifty-two. Margaret’s younger brother Henry VIII took the English throne, and the peace between England and Scotland began to unravel.
England entered into conflict with France, Scotland’s longtime ally, and tensions between the two brothers-in-law escalated quickly. Margaret sided with her husband, which infuriated her brother, prompting Henry VIII to threaten to disinherit her. As James prepared to invade England in support of the French, Margaret began suffering from terrifying nightmares. According to legend, she dreamed of James falling from a great height.
On September 9, 1513, she waited at Linlithgow Palace for news from the enormous, chaotic Battle of Flodden. The outcome was far worse than her fears. Along with roughly ten thousand Scots, King James IV was killed in the fighting. Margaret’s sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, had James’s bloody coat retrieved from the battlefield and sent to Henry VIII as a love token.
With her husband dead and her son still an infant, Margaret became regent of Scotland, ruling on behalf of the little prince as laid out in King James’s will. The court resisted her authority. Many hesitated to accept a female ruler, and Margaret was awkwardly the sister of the man whose army had effectively killed the king. In the spring after her husband’s death, she gave birth to the late king’s last child, a son named Alexander.
Amid the power struggles and personal grief, Margaret fell in love with Archibald Douglas, described by his own family as a young, witless fool. In August 1514, she eloped with him. Under the terms of King James’s will, Margaret could remain regent only while she stayed a widow, so her marriage meant giving up her crown. It soon became clear that Douglas had deceived her from the beginning.
When he married Margaret, he had already been engaged to another woman, and by some accounts, may have already been married. The Scottish court turned against her and demanded she surrender the regency to the Duke of Albany. Worse, the council insisted she leave her sons James and Alexander in their care. Feeling cornered, Margaret handed over her children and decided to leave Scotland entirely.
She appealed to her brother Henry VIII, who helped her escape the wrath of the Duke of Albany. Her brother had his own reasons for helping. At that time, Margaret was his heir, and he needed her in Scotland, influencing the future king in favor of England. As she fled, Margaret was pregnant with her second husband’s child.
Douglas did not accompany her; he stayed in Scotland to make peace with the new ruler. After giving birth to a daughter, Margaret was so ill she could not be moved. Then came another blow. Her infant son Alexander died before reaching his second birthday.
Grief-stricken, Margaret publicly accused the Duke of Albany of poisoning her baby. By 1517, Henry VIII’s pressure had brought Margaret back to Scotland, where her life was about to be turned upside down again. Her husband Douglas had taken up with an old mistress and was living lavishly, charging his expenses to Margaret’s accounts. Upon discovering his adultery, she immediately began divorce proceedings, though in sixteenth-century terms that would take years.
By 1521, with the marriage in open warfare, Douglas controlled her money, barred her from her lands, and kept her from acting in her son’s court. He and his allies had seized control of the government, making him difficult to remove. Margaret found an unexpected ally. When Douglas and his men had taken over the government, they had expelled the Duke of Albany, once Margaret’s enemy.
Now the two joined forces. In November 1521, Margaret waged a successful coup against her own husband, who was humiliatingly stripped of power and his government titles. Douglas could only watch as his wife marched victoriously into Edinburgh alongside their former mutual enemy. Rumors swirled that the queen was having an affair with Albany, and she soon discovered she had welcomed a genuine spy into her household.
A nun named Isabella Hoppringle, a friend of Margaret’s, had been selling Scottish secrets to Henry VIII. When angry nobles threatened to punish both Isabella and her convent, Margaret stepped in to secure mercy on the condition that Isabella stop spying. Isabella promptly returned to spying for the English. England and Scotland continued their pattern of near-conflict, diplomatic retreat, and mutual betrayal.
Finally, in 1524, Margaret’s son James V took the throne. But Margaret still had her own battles. Even after she had ousted Douglas from power, gotten him exiled from two countries, and threatened war to keep him out of Scotland, Henry VIII wanted her to reconcile with her estranged husband. When she refused, Douglas lashed out.
He and his men marched on the Scottish Parliament and attempted to seize control from Margaret and her son. Margaret wrote to the Duke of Albany, saying she would rather team up with him and fight England than take Douglas back. The letter was intercepted by her brother Henry VIII, who gave her such a rebuke that she fearfully retracted her words and began playing nice with Douglas. When Douglas was granted guardianship of the fourteen-year-old King James in 1526, he used the position to turn the boy against his mother and her brother.
He effectively kidnapped the young king, refusing to let him return to Margaret. Her rescue attempts failed, and the boy finally had to escape on his own after three years in his stepfather’s household. When James was reunited with his mother, much had changed. Margaret had taken a new lover, the Scottish nobleman Henry Stewart, and in 1524 she began lavishing him with titles, culminating in the title Lord Methven.
The senior nobility was furious. Margaret barely attended Parliament anymore, and whispers spread that she was concealing an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Her second husband’s endless womanizing finally worked in her favor. She obtained her long-sought divorce on the grounds that Douglas had been engaged to another woman when they married.
At last free, she did exactly what one might have predicted. Just one year later, she married Lord Methven, who proved even more adulterous and wasteful than the man before him. He took a mistress and lived on Margaret’s money, just as Douglas had. Ten years after the wedding, Margaret was petitioning for another divorce.
From June 1528, James V ruled for himself, but his mother played no role in his government. The two did not get along. James had angered Margaret by refusing to let her divorce yet another husband, and she complained about the lack of money he gave her. The real rupture came from Margaret herself.
She had been caught spilling her son’s state secrets to King Henry VIII. In 1543, Margaret spent the rest of her life petitioning her brother to return her younger daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas, who had been raised at the English court and had followed her mother into scandal. The younger Margaret had an affair with a courtier and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. After her release, she remained at her uncle’s court and never saw her mother again.
Margaret spent her later years in dwindling influence, having annoyed her brother, her son, and enough of the nobility that her power faded. Although she and James eventually made peace, they had little time to enjoy it. Shortly after suffering a stroke, Margaret Tudor died on October 18, 1541, at age fifty-one. She had sent for her son James, but he did not reach her bedside in time, and she died without him.
Her legacy proved substantial. Margaret may have introduced her brother Henry VIII to the idea of divorce. When Henry heard that his sister would treat the sacrament of marriage so lightly, he was horrified. He once said it was impossible for anyone to live a more shameful life than Margaret.
Yet after a lifetime of fighting and reconciling, Margaret got the last laugh. Henry VIII died without legitimate grandchildren. Margaret was grandmother to Mary, Queen of Scots, and great-grandmother to James I, who succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne.
Britain’s royal family today traces its descent through Margaret Tudor, the scandalous queen of Scotland.