Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

"Then the King of Scotland took the Queen on one side, and they communed together for a long space. She held good manner, [was unembarrassed;] and the King remained bare-headed during the time they conversed, and many courtesies passed between them. Incontinent [immediately] the board was set and served. The King and Queen washed their hands with humble reverence, and after that set them down at table together."

The entry of the royal pair into Edinburgh is thus described; and it seems to have been attended with one remarkable and characteristic circumstance, for she rode behind her destined husband on the same horse: —

"Half way to Edinburgh, James IV. was seen advancing with his company. He was this time attired in grand costume. 'His steed was trapped with gold, and round its neck was a deep gold fringe; the saddle and harness were of gold, but the bridle and head-gear of burnished silver. The King wore a jacket of cloth of gold, lined and bordered with violet velvet and fine black bouge or budge fur; his waistcoat was of violet satin, his hoses of scarlet, his shirt confined with bands of pearl and rich stones; his spurs were long and gilt. He rode towards the Queen in full course, at the pace at which the hare is hunted. On seeing her, he made very humble obeisance, and, leaping down from his horse, he came and kissed her in her litter. Then mounting in his usual gallant fashion, without touching stirrup, a gentleman-usher unsheathed the sword of state, and bore it before his King in regal fashion. The Scottish sword was enclosed in a scabbard of purple velvet, whereon was written, in letters of pearl, God my defende. The like words are on the pommel, the cross, and the chap also. The Earl of Bothwell bore this sword when the royal party reached Edinburgh town.'

"The King placed himself by the Queen's litter, and passed all the time conversing with her and entertaining her, as he rode by her side.

"'Before they entered Edinburgh, one of the King's gentlemen brought out a fair courser, trapped in cloth of gold, with crimson velvet, interlaced with white and red: the King went to the horse, mounted him without touching the stirrup in the presence of the whole company, then tried his paces – choosing to judge himself whether it were safe for his bride to ride on a pillion behind him, which was the mode in which he intended to enter the city.' Likewise he caused one of his gentlemen to mount behind him, as a lady would ride, to see whether the proud courser would submit to bear double or not.

"When he had concluded all his experiments, he decided that it was not proper to trust the safety of his bride to his favourite charger; 'so King James dismounted from him, and condescended to ride on the Queen's gentle palfrey. He mounted, and the Queen was placed on a pillion behind him.'"

The real tragedy and most interesting period of Margaret Tudor's life, is that which preceded and followed the fatal expedition to Flodden, to which the genius of Mr Aytoun has lately added such additional interest in his exquisite ballads. Miss Strickland has also been strongly moved by the same catastrophe. —

"There are traditions still current in the neighbourhood of the beautiful palatial ruin of Linlithgow relative to her parting with James IV.

"Near the King's bed-chamber, and a beautiful little apartment overlooking the lake, supposed to be his dressing-room, is a turnpike stair, at the corner of the east side of the quadrangle erected by James IV. This leads to a lofty turret or mirador, called by popular tradition 'Queen Margaret's Bower.' It is surrounded by a stone bench or divan, and had once a small stone table in the centre. Here the Queen spent in tears the live-long summer's day on which her husband left her to march against England. Here, too, she is said to have passed 'the weary night of Flodden fight,' expecting news of the engagement, which came at last, but too soon.

"The fatal field of Flodden not only made Queen Margaret a widow, but rendered Scotland desolate and almost desperate. All the hope that remained to the people of averting the fury of Henry VIII., and the cruelty of his successful general, centred solely in the Queen – being founded on the near relationship of herself and their infant King to the southern sovereign."

"The Queen convened such of the nobility as survived the red field of Flodden to meet the clergy at Perth immediately. So prompt were all their proceedings, that the young King was crowned at Scone, near that city, within twenty days of his father's death. It was called the Mourning Coronation; for the ancient crown of Scotland being held over on the baby-brow of the royal infant, most of the witnesses and assistants of the ceremony burst into an 'infectious passion' of sobs and tears. They wept not only their own recent losses on the battle-field, but their late monarch, 'who was,' as Buchanan says, albeit no commender of kings, 'dear to all men while living, and mightily lamented by his people at his death.'

"When the first agony of grief was abated at the loss of the King and the terrible slaughter of the best of the nobility and gentry who fought in the serried phalanx of spears about his person, the discovery was made by the Scottish people that no other injury was like to accrue from Flodden fight. It was, to all intents and purposes, one of those bad expenditures of human life called a drawn battle. Had it taken place on Scottish ground, it would have been reckoned another Bannockburn: the English must have retreated, (for they did so on their own ground,) and the Scots would have retained possession of the field. As it was, the English had the moral advantages of being an invaded people; and, as such, their success in making a great slaughter of those who were arrayed in battle on their soil, redounded more to their true glory than is the case in most great victories. But they did not purchase it easily. Stark and stiff as James IV. lay under heaps of slain, he kept possession of that well-stricken field. The despatch of Lord Dacre clearly proves that when the English left the field at nightfall, they were ignorant to whom the victory belonged. Then the Homes and other Border chieftains plundered the dead at their leisure; their countrymen strongly suspected that they slew their King, and turned the scale of victory against their countrymen. There is the more probability in this supposition when it is remembered how inflexibly James IV. had maintained justice on his Borders – therefore he had honestly won the enmity of those rapacious septs.

"Lord Dacre made an excursion of observation, with a party of cavalry, in the morning after the battle of Flodden, to ascertain who possessed the field; he saw the King of Scotland's formidable train of brass cannon dominant over the scene, but mute and motionless; the artillerymen gone; the Scottish cannon and the silent dead were solely in possession of the battle-ground. The thickest heaps cumbered it on the spot where the royal James and his phalanx had fought; the breathless warriors lay just as death had left them, for the marauding Borderers had not dared to pursue their occupation of stripping and plundering in the full light of day."

Queen Margaret, however, did not remain long inconsolable; she had too much of the disposition of her brother Henry VIII. in her to remain long without a husband; and she fixed her eyes on a handsome youth, the Earl of Angus, whom she soon afterwards married, to the no small annoyance of her brother and his subjects. Her marriage with him gave occasion to the following pleasing verses by Gawin Douglas, the uncle of the nobleman thus honoured by the smiles of royalty: —

"Amidst them, borne within a golden chair,
O'er-fret with pearls and colours most preclair,
That drawen was by hackneys all milk-white,
Was set a queen as lily sweetly fair,
In purple robe hemmed with gold ilk-where;
With gemmed clasps closed in all perfite,
A diadem most pleasantly polite,
Sate on the tresses of her golden hair,
And in her hand a sceptre of delight.

So next her rode in granate-violet,
Twelve damsels, ilka ane on their estate,
Which seemed of her counsel most secrete;
And next them was a lusty rout, God wot!
Lords, ladies, and full mony a fair prelate,
Both born of low estate and high degree,
Forth with their queen they all by-passed me,
At easy pace – they riding forth the gate,
And I abode alone within the tree."

Margaret's life, after her second marriage, was a series of adventures and disasters partly occasioned by the turbulent spirit and endless disorders of the times, partly by her own passions. She was a true Tudor in her disposition. Like her brother, "she spared no man in her lust, and no woman in her hate." When she died, at the age of forty-eight, she had already married four husbands, of whom three were still alive. She divorced, not beheaded, when she was tired of her lovers: in that respect she was better than Henry. By the second of these husbands she had a daughter, named Margaret, whose birth took place in the following circumstances, characteristic alike of the age and country: —

"The welcome message of Dacre arrived at Coldstream almost in the last minute that Queen Margaret could be moved. So desperately ill was she taken on the road, that her convoy were forced to stop by the way, and hurry her into Harbottle or Hardbattle Castle, one of the grimmest and gauntest stone-donjons that frowned on the English frontier. It was just then garrisoned by Lord Dacre in person, who had commenced the fierce war on the Borders to which the arrival of the Duke of Albany in Scotland had given rise. The portcullis of Harbottle was raised to admit the fainting Queen of Scotland; but not one Scot, man or woman, Lord Dacre vowed, should enter with her. Here was a terrible situation for Margaret. She was received into the rugged Border-fortress, October 5, and, after remaining in mortal agony for more than forty-eight hours, gave birth to a daughter, the Lady Margaret Douglas, whose name is familiar to every one on the pages of general history, as the immediate ancestress of our present royal family."

The death of Margaret Tudor suggests the following reflections to our author, the justice and beauty of which makes us regret that she does not more frequently speak in her own person, instead of the quaint style of ancient annalists.

"Some of Margaret Tudor's mistakes in government, it is possible, may be attributed to the fact that she is the first instance that occurs, since Christianity was established in the island, of regnant power being confided to the hands of a woman who was expected to reign as femme seule. She had no education, scarcely any religion, and was guided entirely by her instincts, which were not of an elevated character. Her misdeeds, and the misfortunes attributable to her personal conduct, gave rise to most of the terrible calamities which befell her descendants. Some persons among the aristocracy of Scotland followed her evil example of divorce, which caused long and angry litigation concerning the birthrights of their descendants. The fearful feud between the houses of Arran and Darnley-Stuart was of this kind, which deeply involved the prosperity of her granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots. And that hapless Princess was likewise marked as a victim by the cold and crafty Ruthven, on account of his family interests being affected by Queen Margaret's marriages and divorces.

"A succession of tragedies, for three generations, was the consequence of Margaret Tudor's indulgence of her selfish passions. Nor are the woes attendant on contempt of the divine institution of marriage limited to the great ones of the earth. Many a domestic tragedy, though shrouded in the obscurity of every-day life, may be traced to the same cause. Sorrow enters with sin; it desolates the peace of home; and unoffending children suffer for the evil of their parents, whenever persons are found to break, either by wilful passions or litigious contest, the earliest law given by the Almighty."

The second Life in the volume is that of Magdalene of Valois, the beautiful first Queen of James V., the brevity of whose reign of forty days in Scotland was the subject of such lamentation to the country. James went to Paris, in the true spirit of chivalry, to choose and win a Queen in person; and after a rapid and somewhat discreditable homage to Mary of Vendôme, on the banks of the Loire, his inconstant affections were at length fixed by Magdalene daughter of Francis I., whom he soon after married, and who became his much loved but short-lived Queen. Their entrance into Scotland is thus described: —

"The royal voyagers made the port of Leith, Saturday, May 19, being the fifth day from their embarkation, and Whitsuneve. They landed at the pier amidst the acclamations of a mixed multitude of loving lieges of all degrees, who came to welcome their sovereign home, and to see their new Queen. Magdalene endeared herself for ever to the affections of the people by the sensibility she manifested on that occasion; for when 'she first stepped on Scottish ground, she knelt, and, bowing herself down, kissed the moulds thereof for the love she bore the King, returned thanks to God for having brought the King and her safely through the seas, and prayed for the happiness of the country.' This was indeed entering upon her high vocation, not like the cold state puppet of a public pageant, but in the spirit of a queen who felt and understood the relation in which she stood both to the King and people of that realm. A touching sight it must have been to those who saw that young royal bride thus obey the warm impulse of a heart overflowing with gratitude to God, and love to all she then looked upon. The venerable Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and other contemporary poets, who were so soon to hang elegiac wreaths of mournful verse on the early bier of her who then stood among them in her fragile and almost unearthly loveliness, radiant with hope, and joy, and happy love, called her 'the pleasant Magdalene,' and 'the sweet Flower of France.'

"King James blithely conducted his Queen to his palace of Holyrood; and, to increase the universal satisfaction which her appearance and manners had given, the auspicious news quickly spread through Edinburgh, that she was likely to bring an heir to Scotland. Great were the rejoicings in consequence. The ancient prediction 'that the French wife should bring a child the ninth in degree from the left side of the stem of Bruce, that should rule England and Scotland from sea to sea,' was revived in anticipation of the offspring of James V. of Scotland by Magdalene of France, although it would only have been the eighth in descent from that illustrious stock."

Her premature and lamented death is recorded in these feeling paragraphs: —

"The early death of Magdalene was not only a misfortune to her royal husband, but a serious loss to Scotland, and even to Christendom, on account of the enlightened views she had received on the all-important subject of religion. Brantôme tells us that 'she was very deeply regretted not only by James V. but by all his people, for she was very good, and knew how to make herself truly beloved. She had a great mind, and was most wise and virtuous.' The first general mourning ever known in Scotland was worn for her, and her obsequies were solemnised with the greatest manifestation of sorrow of which that nation had ever been participant. The lamentations for the premature death of this youthful Queen, and the hopes that perished with her of an heir of Scotland, appear to have been of a similar character to the passionate and universal burst of national sorrow which, in the present century, pervaded all hearts in the Britannic empire, for the loss of the noble-minded Princess Charlotte of Wales and her infant.

'How many hopes were borne upon thy bier,
O stricken bride of love!'

"The epitaph of this lamented Queen was written by Buchanan in elegant Latin verse, of which the following is a translation: —

'Magdalene of Valois, Queen of Scotland, died in the xvi year of her age.

'I was a royal wife, from monarchs sprung,
A sovereign's daughter, and in hope to be
The royal mother of a regal line;
But lest my glory should exceed the height
Of mortal honour, Death's invidious dart
Hath laid me in my morning freshness here.
Nature and virtue, glory, life, and death,
Strove to express in me their utmost power.
Nature gave beauty; virtue made me good;
Relentless death o'er life too soon prevail'd.
But my fair fame shall flourish evermore,
To compensate for that brief mortal span
By lasting meed of universal praise.'"

Mary of Lorraine, daughter of the great Duke of Guise, and a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, was the second Queen of James V.: she is peculiarly interesting, as her daughter was Queen Mary; and she was the ancestress of our present illustrious sovereign. We have room only, however, for one extract: —

"'Let us,' says an eloquent French writer of the present day, 'enter the grand gallery of the Chateau d'Eu, and contemplate the noble portraits of the line of Guise. There we shall view that old Claud of Lorraine, clad in his heavy cuirass, bearing his long sword, first dyed in blood at Marignan, having for his cortege and companions his six glorious sons; then we shall see Francis of Lorraine, rival of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and conqueror of Calais; near him that Cardinal of Lorraine, eloquent as an orator, gallant and magnificent as a prince, yet an ambitious and cruel priest. And there is the grandchild of Duke Claud, Mary Stuart, angel of grief and poesy, whose charming head bore a crown-regnant, and yet fell beneath the axe of the executioner.'

"The Duke and Duchess of Longueville were both present at the bridal of James V. and Magdalene of France. Little did the Duchess imagine, when she, as the wife of the representative of the brave Dunois, and the eldest daughter of the house of Guise-Lorraine, proudly took high place among the great ladies of France, near the person of the royal bride, that the crown-matrimonial of Scotland – never to be worn by her on whose finger she saw the enamoured bridegroom place the nuptial ring – was destined to encircle her own brow. Far less could she have believed, even if it had been predicted to her, that from her union with that Prince should proceed a line of sovereigns who would reign not only over the Britannic isles from sea to sea, but whose empire, far exceeding that of her mighty ancestor Charlemagne, should extend over India, a considerable section of America, and include vast portions of the habitable globe whose existence was then unknown. Before the anniversary returned of the day that witnessed the nuptials of James and Magdalene, all these apparently impossible events were in an active state of progression."

Miss Strickland has announced in her Preface that two volumes are to be devoted by her to the life of Queen Mary; and that great light has been thrown upon that interesting subject by the important original letters which Prince Labanoff's recent researches and publication have brought to light. We look with impatience for the fulfilment of the promise; for, although nothing can exceed in pathos and interest Mr Tytler's entrancing account of the captivity and death of that celebrated and heroic princess, yet we are well aware that much light has since his time been thrown on the subject, by the zealous labours of chivalrous antiquaries. That she may succeed in vindicating her memory from much of the obloquy which, despite her many great and noble qualities, and matchless charms of person and manner, still oppresses it, is, we need hardly say, our most anxious wish; and if any one can do it, it is herself. But we confess we have little expectation that it is possible even for her chivalrous mind and untiring industry to effect the object. Our present view of this interesting question is as follows: – The strength of the case against Queen Mary, during her reign in Scotland, is such that it remains much the same upon the admitted and incontestible facts of history, though all the disputed points were decided in her favour. No original letters of hers, or others which can be produced – no complete disproval of those which were charged, we believe falsely and treacherously, against her – can do away with her acts, whatever light they may throw upon her motives, or the unparalleled network of treachery, selfishness, and duplicity, with which she was surrounded. Can it be reasonably hoped that any subsequent effort of industry or ability will be able to do more for Queen Mary's memory than has been done by her gifted dramatic biographer Schiller, who, in the awful scene of her last confession to the priest in prison, immediately before being conducted to the block, makes her admit her failings in the indulgence of undue hatred against some, and impassioned love to others; and recount, with sincerity, her stings of conscience for having permitted the King, her husband, to be put to death, and thereafter loaded with favours and bestowed her hand on the party charged with his murder? It is hopeless to deny the magnitude of these delinquencies, though men, at least, should view them with an indulgent eye; for they arose, as Schiller makes her say, on that dread occasion, from the self-forgetfulness and generous feelings which led her to trust in a sex by whom she was forsaken and betrayed.[13 - "Ach! nicht durch hass allein, durch sund' ge LiebeNoch mehr hab' Ich hochste Gott beleidigt.Das Eitle herz ward zudern Mann gezogen,Der treulos mich verlassen und betrogen.""Ah! not through hatred only, but still more through sinful love, have I offended Almighty God! My tender heart was too strongly drawn to man, by whose faithlessness I have been forsaken and betrayed." – Maria Stuart, Act v. scene 7.] Such is our present view of the case; but we have every confidence in Miss Strickland's powers and research, and shall impatiently await the new light she will doubtless throw on that most fascinating and tragic of all biographies.

The truth appears to be, that Mary was a mixed character: no uncommon thing in every age, and especially so in that disastrous and profligate one in which Mary's lot was cast. She was as charming and heroic as her most impassioned advocates would represent, and as impassioned, and in one matter guilty, as her worst enemies allege. Her virtues, however, were her own; her delinquencies, of the religion in which she had been bred, and the age in which she lived. It was the age, and she had been bred in the court, which witnessed the successive murders of the Duke of Guise and the Admiral Coligni at the court of France; the Massacre of St Bartholomew by a French king, and the fires of Smithfield lighted by an English queen. To one period, and that the most interesting of her life, unmixed praise may be given. From the day of her landing in England, her conduct was one of dignity, innocence, and heroism; and if her previous life was stained by the imputation of having permitted one murder, suggested to herself by despair, and recommended by others from profligacy, she expiated it by being the victim of another, suggested by jealousy, executed by rancour, and directly ordered by a cruel relative and a vindictive rival.