Margaret Tudor (29 November 1489 – 18 October 1541) was Queen of Scotland from 1503 until 1513 as the wife of James IV. She then served as regent of Scotland during her son's minority, and fought to extend her regency. Margaret was the eldest daughter of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the elder sister of Henry VIII. Through her descendants, the House of Stuart eventually acceded to the thrones of England and Ireland, culminating in the "Union of the Crowns" under her great-grandson James VI and I in 1603 following the death of her niece Elizabeth I.
Margaret married James IV at the age of 13, in accordance with the Treaty of Perpetual Peace between England and Scotland. Together, they had six children, though only one of them reached adulthood. Margaret's marriage to James linked the royal houses of England and Scotland. Following the death of James IV at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, Margaret, as queen dowager, was appointed as regent for their son James V. A pro-French party took shape among the nobility, urging that the king's closest male relative and third in line to the Scottish throne, John Stewart, Duke of Albany, should replace Margaret as regent. In seeking allies, Margaret turned to the Douglases, and in 1514 she married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, with whom she had one daughter, Margaret Douglas. Margaret's marriage to the Earl of Angus alienated other powerful nobles, and by the terms of her late husband's will, also meant that she could no longer act as regent. Thus, the Duke of Albany took her place as regent. In 1524, Margaret, with the help of the Hamiltons, removed the Duke of Albany from power in a coup d'état while he was in France. She was again recognised by the Parliament of Scotland as regent, then later as chief counsellor to James V when he came of age.
In 1527, Pope Clement VII approved the annulment of Margaret's marriage to the Earl of Angus. The following year, she married Henry Stewart, whom the King created Lord Methven. Through her first and second marriages, Margaret was respectively the grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.
Margaret was born on 29 November 1489 at the Palace of Westminster in London to King Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York. She was their second child and firstborn daughter. Her siblings included Arthur, Prince of Wales, the future King Henry VIII, and Mary, who would briefly become Queen of France. Margaret was baptised in St. Margaret's, Westminster on St Andrew's Day. She was named after Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, her paternal grandmother.
She was placed under the supervision of the Lady mistress of the royal nursery, Elizabeth, Lady Darcy, and her nurse was Alice Davy, who later joined the household of Catherine of Aragon.
On 30 September 1497, James IV's commissioner, the Spaniard Pedro de Ayala concluded a lengthy truce with England, and the marriage with Margaret became a serious possibility. James was in his late twenties and still unmarried. Pedro de Ayala heard that both Elizabeth of York and Margaret Beaufort opposed the marriage, contending that Margaret was too young to become a mother. The Italian historian Polydore Vergil said that some of the English royal council objected to the match, saying that it would bring the Stewarts directly into the line of English succession, to which the wily and astute Henry replied:What then? Should anything of the kind happen (and God avert the omen), I foresee that our realm would suffer no harm, since England would not be absorbed by Scotland, but rather Scotland by England, being the noblest head of the entire island, since there is always less glory and honour in being joined to that which is far the greater, just as Normandy once came under the rule and power of our ancestors the English.
On 24 January 1502, Scotland and England concluded the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, the first peace agreement between the two realms in over 170 years. The marriage treaty was concluded the same day and was viewed as a guarantee of the new peace. Margaret, who was still a child, remained in England, but was now known as the "Queen of Scots".
The marriage was completed by proxy on 15 January 1503 at Richmond Palace. Henry pledged a £10,000 dowry, while James promised his bride £1,000 Scots per annum, together with lands and castles yielding a further yearly income of £6,000. The Earl of Bothwell was proxy for the Scottish king and wore a gown of cloth-of-gold at the ceremony in the Queen's great chamber. He was accompanied by Robert Blackadder, archbishop of Glasgow, and Andrew Forman, postulate of Moray. The herald, John Young, reported that "right notable jousts" followed the ceremony; prizes were awarded the next morning, and the tournament continued another day.
The new queen was provided with a large wardrobe of clothes, and her crimson state bed curtains made of Italian sarcenet were embroidered with red Lancastrian roses. Clothes were also made for her companion, Lady Catherine Gordon, the widow of Perkin Warbeck. The clothes were embroidered by John Flee. In May 1503, James IV confirmed her possession of lands and houses in Scotland, including Methven Castle, Stirling Castle, Doune Castle, Linlithgow Palace and Newark Castle in Ettrick Forest, with the incomes from the corresponding earldom and lordship lands.
Later in 1503, months after the death of her mother, Margaret left England for Scotland; her progress was a grand journey northward. She brought with her a large retinue, including, among others, Elizabeth Denton and Eleanor Verney. She left Richmond Palace on 27 June 1503 with her father Henry VII, and they travelled first to Collyweston in Northamptonshire. At York a plaque commemorates the exact spot where the Queen of Scots entered its gates. After crossing the border at Berwick upon Tweed on 1 August 1503, Margaret was met by the Scottish court at Lamberton. At Dalkeith Palace, James came to kiss her goodnight. He came again to console her on 4 August after a stable fire had killed some of her favourite horses. Her riding gear, including a new sumpter cloth or pallion of cloth-of-gold worth £127 was destroyed in the fire. At a meadow a mile from Edinburgh, there was a pavilion where Sir Patrick Hamilton and Patrick Sinclair played and fought in the guise of knights defending their ladies.
On 8 August 1503, the marriage was celebrated in person in Holyrood Abbey. The rites were performed by the Archbishop of Glasgow and Thomas Savage, Archbishop of York; Margaret was anointed during the ceremony. Two days later, on St Lawrence's day, Margaret went to mass at St Giles', the town's Kirk, as her first public appointment. The details of the proxy marriage, progress, arrival, and reception in Edinburgh were recorded by the Somerset Herald, John Young.
One English guest recorded the menu of the banquet in a copy of the Great Chronicle of London. Dishes included solan geese with sauce, baked apples and pears, and jelly moulded with the arms of England and Scotland. In the English parliament, Thomas More opposed Henry VII's plan for a tax to recover expenses for the wedding. Margaret's crown was made by an Edinburgh goldsmith, John Currour; in the days following the wedding, Currour also provided her with rings, a heart of gold, an image of the Virgin Mary, and a gold cross.
By her marriage contract, Margaret was allowed a household with 24 English courtiers or servants. These included her cook Hunt, her chamberer Margaret, John Camner who played the lute, her ushers Hamnet Clegg and Edmund Livesay, and her ladies in waiting, Margaret Dennet, Eleanor Johns, Eleanor Verney, Agnes Musgrave, and Elizabeth Berlay. Some of her ladies in waiting had been members of the household of Elizabeth of York. Richard Justice and Harry Roper worked in the wardrobe, making her sheets, washing clothes, mending her tapestries and perfuming them with violet powder. Roper had been Page of the Beds to Elizabeth of York, and Justice was her Page of Robes. Roper returned to England to serve Catherine of Aragon. Elizabeth Maxtoun, a Scottish woman, washed the queen's linen. Rich fabrics were provided by an Italian merchant Jerome Frescobaldi. After a few years, she employed a Scottish cook Alexander Kerse. Some members of her household were described in a humorous poem by William Dunbar, Ane Dance in the Quenis Chalmer.