I'm Bruce Fummey and this is Linlithgow Palace. It's just the place to tell you about a woman,
who went through delivery here, spent her formative years outside Scotland,
left the land of her birth to be married off to a foreign king, had three marriages, each time making
progressively more desperate and ill-considered choices of partner. Men sought to manipulate
her. She involved herself in intrigue, she fled to England to seek safety, only to realise her mistake,
but it was her offspring that unified the crowns of Scotland and its southern neighbour England.
I'm not talking about Mary, Queen of Scots, I'm talking about her grandmother, Margaret. If you're
interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe button
at the bottom right hand side of the screen, in the meantime, let me tell you her story. Margaret came
to Scotland when she was 14 years old, and just like her granddaughter, Mary, 60 years later, she was
arriving from a much grander royal house. Unlike Mary, she came to marry a much older king, James the fourth.
Now in some ways, this first marriage was the big difference between Mary and her grandmother. It's
doubted whether Mary's marriage to the sickly Francis was ever consummated. James the fourth however, was a bit of
a lad, and whilst fidelity might have been a bit much to expect from him, he and Margaret seemed
to get on. Certainly much better than his own mum and dad had. As a father, I've never lost a child.
I can only imagine what that would be like. I can't imagine what it would be like for a mother,
but I'm sure being Queen wouldn't make it easier. You see we often poo poo the challenges of
the privileged, and yet many of us who live in the privileged west, still agonize over our first world
problems. What I'm saying is, tragedy is tragedy, and to have three pregnancies in three years,
the first of which leaves you clinging to life, but to go through another two, and for each of
the three children to die within 12 months of birth, that in any century has got to leave scars.
Here at Linlithgow Palace, in the spring of 1511, James and Margaret finally had a son who survived.
Baby James was 18 months old, and his brother Alexander still in the womb, as Margaret
sat in the palace tower, watching and waiting for her husband to come back home, from fighting the
troops of her brother, Henry the Eighth. He never did. Now that's a lot to happen before you're 24,
and then, imagine you're a single mother, with a stressful job, constantly living under the threat
that the authorities will take your children away. You see James had trusted Margaret enough to give
her the regency in the event of his death, at the disaster that we now call Flodden,
and looking after the new James the Fifth wasn't just being a mum, it was running the country,
and in doing it, in an environment where those around you distrusted you because you
were English. You were sibling to not just any king, but Henry the Eighth, even worse
you were a woman! Now there's a faction that want John Stewart, the French-born Duke of Albany,
to come to Scotland to take on the regency, but Margaret was actually doing a no bad job,
and then she falls for the flatteries of Archibald Douglas. Now for all you Clan warrior or Douglas
types out there, the descendants, the good Sir James, the Black Douglas if your English,
divided into black Douglases and red Douglases. This Earl of Angus was a red one.
Now Clan Douglas isn't the point of the story, but Margaret knows that if she remarries,
she loses the regency, she loses her children, she loses her position and authority.
Now in spite of this, she marries Douglas, and as sure as knight follows queen to queen's pawn two,
she finds her path checked. So she locks herself in Stirling Castle with her two boys.
This was an ill-conceived plan, and before long the new regent arrived, and she had to give up
herself, and her children, and the pro-French faction in Scottish politics. She's now virtually
under house arrest, in a divided country, where her and her son's claims to the throne, make her
a threat to the people who hold power, and this is not Mary, Queen of Scots remember,
this is her granny. So how's she going to extricate herself from this situation? She's now pregnant by
Douglas. She and the unborn child may be a further threat to the prevailing pro-French regime, who
control her eldest son, the king, that's why she and her unborn child are at risk themselves.
She asks the Privy Council for permission to move to Linlithgow Palace for a period
of confinement from Edinburgh Castle, but when she leaves Edinburgh Castle she heads not for Linlithgow,
but Tantallion Castle, the Douglas stronghold down the Forth coast, and then from there, across the
border to England. Now that journey doesn't sound much when you say it like that, but on the run,
with medieval transport, even for the dowager Queen, that's a tough one, and can I just point out,
that for pretty much the whole story so far she's been pregnant, and okay it's not all
been the waddling like a duck, constantly needing a pee, licking coal pregnant, I'm just saying,
if you look down at the timer on your media player, it won't show seconds it'll show trimesters.
Anyway, there in Northumberland, she gives birth to her daughter Margaret Douglas, and she hears
of the death of her younger son, Alexander, back in Scotland. Now I'm not saying that Mary, Queen
Scot's life wasn't tragic, I'm just saying that she had better marketing people than her granny.
Now I'll come back to this new-born daughter later, because she is crucial to the history
of these islands, but Margaret's got other stuff to deal with right now. Her husband, Archie Douglas had
come to England with her, but almost as soon as he got there, he realised that his lands and titles in
Scotland are more important than his now powerless English Princess slash Scottish Dowager Queen.
He heads back to Scotland leaving mother and daughter. Oh but you can't judge history by the
standards of our time. He was still a dick. Now through a series of negotiations, that we don't
have time for, brokered by Margaret's brother, Henry the Eighth, Margaret comes back to Scotland to
find that her husband's taken a mistress. He hadn't married for love at all! What are the chances?
Margaret now has two obsessions; getting back to power, and divorcing her cheating husband.
Now, get this, when Margaret's trying to divorce her husband, brother Henry the Eighth, writes to her to
warn her against divorce, because it would be unseemly. Are you taking the piss Harry?
She manages to ingratiate herself with the Duke of Albany; he's the French regent that took over from
her, remember him? So much so that people think, hold on, are they an item? One of her sons has died in
his care, and the other one's a boy king. I can feel a hunting accident coming on.
Now the boy king's safe, but there are machinations. Margaret gathers support around
her, and when Albany pops back to France, Margaret stages a coup. Boom, she is back in the game.
James the Fifth is appointed as King in his own right, and he starts his period of direct rule,
but he's only 12! I know but mummy's here as the new Chief Counsellor to the King.
There's an hilarious moment when estranged husband, Archibald Douglas, comes back to Scotland after a
period in exile, and she has him fired on with cannon. When the English Ambassador chided her
for this, Margaret, the sister of Henry the Eighth, tells him to go back to England and stop
meddling in Scottish affairs, ho ho, brilliant! It was actually the English Ambassador's gaping mouth
that led to the invention of crazy golf! Anyway, she gets married again, this time to Henry Stewart.
He's one of the Albany Stewarts. This marriage was as big a disaster as the last one.
They settled down at Methven Castle. He became Lord Methven, and gained position at court,
and then the marriage soured. She wanted another divorce but was refused. She tried to flee to
England again, but was captured and brought back to, somewhat sadly, live out her days at Methven Castle.
Now I'm sure that she, like her granddaughter to come, must have looked at some of the choices made
by and for her, and wondered what if. When she died in October 1541, a year before the birth of her
more famous granddaughter, she was buried in the magnificent Carthusian monastery in Perth, but that
was sacked at the Reformation, and so the remains of a woman influential in Scottish history and
central to British history, remain lost to this day, but her story doesn't end there. I said I'd come
back to that daughter born during her short stay in England. Margaret Douglas grew up to have a life
as colourful as her mother. The detail will have to wait for another video, but the key point is that
she married Matthew Stewart, the Earl of Lennox. Their son, the grandson of Margaret Tudor of Scotland,
married Mary, Queen of Scots, the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor of Scotland,
born here in December 1542. Their son of course, was James the Sixth, James the First for
you southerners who came late to the party. This is how central Margaret was to British history.
Mary, Queen of Scots was a colourful woman, but she came from a line
of colourful women. So let's not forget Margaret Tudor, the granny of Mary, Queen of Scots.
If you'd like to understand more about the unlikely series of events that led Mary, Queen
of Scots to reach the throne, then you'd really like this video here. Tha mi an dochas gum bith lath math leibh.
Tiorridh an drasda.