Marie de Guise, Queen and Regent of Scotland

Marie de Guise, queen and regent of Scotland (born 22 November 1515)

As I have noted many times in the years since I began writing this blog, its title--"The Monstrous Regiment of Women"--is drawn from the virulent political pamphlet published by the Scottish religious reformer John Knox. 

Knox published his blistering assessment of female rule, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in 1558. His bitter, almost pornographic, indictment of "gynecocracy" was quickly followed in print by a series of pamphlets that echoed, expanded, disputed, and countered his argument that female rule was unnatural, unlawful, and contrary to scripture.

From Knox's point of view, the political situation could hardly seem worse. Not only had Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne of England, but Mary Stuart, wife of the dauphin of France, had become queen of Scotland, while her mother, Marie de Guise, was acting as regent in Scotland on Mary's behalf.*

Marie of Guise, c. 1537
portrait attributed to Corneille de Lyon

The daughter of Claude of Lorraine, duke of Guise (after 1528), and Antoinette Bourbon, Marie was the couple's firstborn and only child for the first four years of her life.

But after the birth of a son and heir in 1519, her father sent his daughter to the convent Clarisse to Pont-à-Mousson. There Marie joined her paternal grandmother, Philippa of Guelders. After an active career in Lorraine, where she had served as regent for her son, the duke of Lorraine (Claude's elder brother), the dowager duchess had retired there. (As only one more indication of Margaret of Austria's powerful influence for a generation of early-modern women, a young Philippa of Guelders spent time in her court.)

Marie remained in the convent with her grandmother until she was about fourteen years old. After visiting his mother in the convent, the duke of Lorraine must have seen the potential in his niece--he arranged for Marie to leave the convent and to prepare for a life in the French court. She made her first appearance there in 1531. A politically advantageous alliance was soon arranged. 

On 4 August 1534, when she was eighteen years old, Marie of Lorraine was married to Louis II d'Orléans, duc de Longueville and comte de Dunois. Her first child, a boy named François, after the French king, was born just over a year later. But Marie's husband died in 1537, just three years after their marriage. A posthumous son, Louis, was born two months after his father's death--and four months later, the baby was also dead.

Within months, it was clear that a second marriage would be arranged for the young widow. James V of Scotland, whose wife had recently died, was looking for a new queen, as was Henry VIII of England, whose offer was rejected by Marie in December 1537--the English king is said to have told the French ambassador that he was a big man, in need of a similarly sized wife (Marie was quite tall). Marie is said to have replied that, though she was a big woman, she had a very little neck (referring to Henry's execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn).

Happily for Marie, the French king decided to reject Henry's offer and to accept that of James of Scotland. Less happily, marriage negotiations were immediately underway--she was not eager for a second marriage. Despite her wish to delay, by January of 1538, just seven months after her first husband's death, the marriage contract with Scotland was complete.

The couple were married by proxy in France on 9 May 1538. On 10 June, Marie, now queen of Scotland, left France for her new home. As was customary, she left behind her three-year-old son.

After her arrival in Scotland, the new queen worked to reconcile her husband and his mother, Margaret Tudor, whose second marriage, subsequent divorce, and remarriage, had strained relations with the Scottish king. 

 

Marie gave birth to her son James in May 1539 and quickly became pregnant again. The second child was also a boy, but disaster struck in April 1541 when the two young princes died within a week of one another. Margaret, who knew only too well the pain of losing her children, comforted her son and his wife. Margaret Tudor herself died as the year ended, on 18 October 1541.

Double portrait of James V of Scotland and Marie of Guise,
artist unknown

Marie of Guise gave birth to a third child, a girl to be named Mary, on 8 December 1542. But the king of Scotland died just six days later, on 14 December. At her father's death, Mary Stuart became queen of Scotland. 

During the regency of James Hamilton, earl of Arran, Henry VIII made every effort to secure the marriage of Mary, queen of Scots, to his son, the infant Edward, moving from promises and inducements to war, when negotiations failed. Instead, Mary Stuart was betrothed to the French dauphin, another François, and in 1548 the little girl was sent to France to be reared alongside her future husband. 

Marie of Guise, the dowager queen, meanwhile, remained in Scotland. Only after the war with England ended and a treaty had been signed did she travel to France to see her young daughter. In September 1550 she left Scotland for the continent. She landed in Normandy and was able to travel to Longueville to reunite with the fifteen-year-old son from whom she had been separated a dozen years earlier. 

She also reunited with her daughter, the queen of Scotland, and she was able to visit with her recently widowed mother, Antoinette of Bourbon. (Marie's father, Claude of Bourbon, had died in April 1550). But before Marie of Guise returned to Scotland, she suffered one more blow--her son, François, died, still not sixteen years old.

Although the regency of Scotland had been in the hands of James Hamilton, earl of Arran, since James V's death, he was replaced as regent in April 1554. Marie of Guise's position as queen regent was "ratified by the Estates of Scotland." She served as regent until her death in 1560 and seems to have taken to heart the advice of her brother, the duke of Guise, to "deal in Scotland in a spirit of conciliation, introducing much gentleness and moderation into the administration of justice." 

She attempted to steer a judicious middle course for herself, acting in Antonia Fraser's words, "gently and slowly by the use of Parliament," introducing more equitable administration of the law into a country "where administration was either non-existent or archaic in the extreme," aiming for stability in economic matters, and proceeding with "balance and political acumen" in her dealings with the Scots lords, whom she judged to be "jealous and suspicious." She knew the difficulty of her task: "whenever it is a question of meeting out justice or punishment," Marie wrote, the lords "find these things insupportable, thinking always that one wants to give them new laws and change theirs, which in fact have much need of amendment."

Her family predicted that her "tender" methods would result in her failure. Her enemies condemned her as full of "craft and subtleties"; she had a "queenly mind," but "the heart of a man of war." John Knox, her most virulent critic, described her regency in an oft-quoted passage: "a crown [was] put upon her head, as seemly a sight . . . as to put a saddle upon the back of an unruly cow." But her supporters described her differently. The Catholic bishop John Lesley judged her to be a "princess most prudent and very well instructed in sweetness, comely and honest manners and integrity of life":  

Through use and experience, she knew much of our affairs and was very expert, in so far that none was of the nobility and of the common people except very few obscure persons whose engine, mind and manners she knew not perfectly and very well. . . . [S]he did justice with all diligence all her days. . . . [S]he likewise in virtues and many offices of humanity far overcame many other women. . . . [T]herefore she won the hearts of all . . . with wit and wisdom.

Lesley's view was surely as partisan Knox's, but, as Rosalind Marshall writes, "it is interesting to note" that the English chronicler Holinshed's estimation of the regent is much closer to Lesley's than to Knox's: In his view Mary of Guise was "wise and very prudent." During her regency "she kept good justice and was well obeyed in all parts of the realm." 

Marie of Guise, regent of Scotland, died in the sixth year of her regency, on 11 June 1560. She was forty-four years old.

In her extraordinary nineteenth-century history, Lives of the Queens of Scotland and English Princesses Connected with the Royal Succession of Great Britain, Alice Strickland provides an extended narrative of Marie of Guise (whom she refers to as Mary of Lorraine). The biography spans volume 1 and volume 2. 

In her 1969 biography of Mary, queen of Scots, Antonia Fraser (quoted here) writes about Mary's mother, Marie of Guise.

Rosalind Marshall's Mary of Guise (2001) is also quoted here. 

For a more recent biography, see Melanie Clegg's The Scourge of Henry VIII: The Life of Marie de Guise (2016). 

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe. 

Lady Margaret Douglas, Poet and "Progenitor of Princes"

Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox (christened 8 October 1515)

Margaret Douglas was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's older sister--the Tudor princess's first marriage had been to James IV of Scotland. After the king's death, the queen dowager had married Archibald Douglas, the earl of Angus. Margaret Douglas was the only child of Margaret Tudor's second marriage.

Margaret Douglas,
c. 1560-65

As a widowed queen, Margaret Tudor struggled to maintain her role as regent for her young son, who at seventeen months old succeeded his father as James V of Scotland in 1513, after the king's death at the battle of Flodden.

But when the queen dowager married her second husband secretly in 1514, she lost her regency and her guardianship of her two royal sons, the child-king, and his younger brother, Alexander, born in 1514, after his father's death.

In 1515, heavily pregnant with Angus's child and deeply embroiled in the violent political struggles of the Scottish lords, the former queen left the country, undertaking a desperate escape to England.

She took refuge in Harbottle Castle (Northumberland), where her daughter, Margaret Douglas, was born on 8 October 1515. The elder Margaret, too ill after childbirth to travel south to join her brother's court, remained in the castle with her daughter until she recovered enough to make the journey.

In late April of 1516, mother and daughter were finally able to move on to the safety of Henry's court, where they were greeted by Henry's queen, Katherine of Aragon, who had just given birth to a daughter of her own, Mary Tudor, in February. 

But after a year in England, with her husband Angus refusing to join his wife and daughter, Margaret Tudor returned to Scotland and her husband, taking Margaret Douglas with her. The turbulent marriage of Margaret and Angus, despite their brief reconciliation, was not to last.

Back in Scotland, Margaret was allowed to have some contact with her son, James V, but her difficult marriage disintegrated, and by the time the younger Margaret was three, her parents were engaged in a long and bitter struggle. 

Though the two would continue in their attempts at reconciliation, primarily at the urging of Henry VIII, by 1527 the marriage was irretrievably broken, and it was at last annulled by Clement VII--while declaring Margaret Tudor's second marriage invalid, the pope nevertheless declared Margaret Douglas legitimate. (Margaret Tudor would go on to marry a third time, to Henry Stewart, first lord Methven--but that's another story.)

At some point between 1525 and 1528, Angus removed his daughter from her mother's guardianship--although some historians have referred to this as a kidnapping or even an abduction, Angus had every legal right to take possession of his child. Now in her father's custody, Margaret, began to identify not as English but Scottish.

Angus continued to involve himself in the struggle to control the Scottish throne and the person of the young king. By 1528, Angus was not only back in Scotland but once again regent--though he quickly lost power. By the end of the year, the young king escaped from Angus's control and joined his mother. 

Attainted and finding his lands confiscated, Angus managed a truce and fled to England, taking his daughter with him, recognizing her value as a significant political pawn. While Margaret Tudor's son, James V, might be considered an heir to the English king, he was at least technically debarred by reason of his Scottish birth. Margaret's daughter, on the other hand, faced no such bar. She was English--born in Northumberland. 

But once in England, Margaret Douglas was removed from her father's custody and joined the household of her godfather, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, her residence established in Berwick Castle. She remained there until the spring of 1530; after Wolsey's death, she was summoned to her uncle's court.

Her proximity to the throne would shape her turbulent life. In 1530, she was made a lady-in-waiting to her cousin, Mary, whose residence was at the royal palace at Beaulieu. The two would remain lifelong confidantes. 

But in 1533, with the English king's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Margaret Douglas was transferred to the new queen's court, once again appointed as lady-in-waiting. After Elizabeth Tudor's birth, Margaret was a lady of honor to the princess. 

While at the court of Henry and Anne, she met and fell in love with Lord Thomas Howard, the queen's uncle. The two seem to have entered into a contract for marriage. When King Henry discovered the relationship between the two, he regarded it as a dangerous attempt by Howard to gain control of the throne. On 8 June 1534, Henry had the pair arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Howard was attainted for treason, his position becoming increasingly dire after Anne Boleyn's fall and execution in 1536, but he was not tried and executed--he eventually fell ill as a result of the harsh conditions he suffered while imprisoned in the Tower.

For her part, Margaret also fell ill, but she was transferred from the Tower into the custody of the abbess of Syon Abbey.  She was finally released on 29 October 1537, but she would not be reunited with her lover--he died in the Tower just two days later.

The poems that Howard and Margaret Douglas exchanged during their calamitous affair are now part of the collection known as the Devonshire Manuscript--an anthology of courtly lyric poetry composed and compiled by members of the royal court, many of them women. In addition to its significance as a repository of sixteenth-century poetry, the manuscript collection "also provides a unique insight into the precarious position of Renaissance women in, or close to, power."

A leaf from the Devonshire Manuscript

As a result of his niece's actions, the king altered the Act of Succession to make any attempt to "espouse, marry or deflower being unmarried" a female claimant to the throne an act of treason.

Margaret Douglas was released from her confinement in Syon in order to attend the funeral of Jane Seymour, Henry's third queen. Fearing that his long-desired son's legitimacy might be questioned by the Catholic church, given his complicated marital history, Henry VIII had his niece Margaret declared illegitimate--on he grounds that her mother's marriage to Angus had been entered into clandestinely, 

Although legally debarred from the throne, Margaret was welcomed back to court. In 1539, she was appointed as a member of the household of Anne of Cleves, serving as one of the English women who would greet the future queen on her arrival in England. The Cleves married was annulled in 1540.

By that time, Margaret had involved herself in yet another disastrous romantic entanglement, this time with Sir Charles Howard, the brother of Henry's fifth queen, Catherine Howard. (Charles Howard was also the nephew of Margaret's earlier love, Thomas Howard.)

Margaret once again found herself in disgrace, though on this occasion she avoided the Tower and went immediately back to Syon. (For his part, Charles Howard escaped to the continent.) But she was quickly released after Catherine Howard's fall and execution, once more back at court and appointed to the household of Henry's last queen, Katherine Parr.

In 1544, Margaret Douglas at last found a marital prospect of whom the English king approved, and she married the Scottish exile Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox. Although they remained in England, the couple had many interests (and intrigues) in Scotland. (Still fearful of Margaret's claims to the English throne, Henry VIII excluded her from the succession in his will.)

Now the countess of Lennox, Margaret Douglas quickly gave birth to eight children, but only two survived, two sons, Henry Stuart, lord Darnley, in 1545, and Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, in 1555. Meanwhile, during the brief reign of Edward VI, the staunchly Catholic Margaret and her more religiously opportunistic husband largely stayed away from court.

By contrast, she remained at the English court throughout the reign of Queen Mary (1553-58). The first English queen reportedly told Simon Renard, Habsburg ambassador to the English court, that her cousin was "best suited" to succeed her on the English throne.

But after Mary's death, Margaret retired to Yorkshire. Her northern household was a center for Catholic intrigue and numerous political plots. 

Margaret involved herself in many of them--notably angling for the marriage of her son, Darnley, to the widowed Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland. In the midst of her scheming, she was again arrested and imprisoned--unlike her husband, who was sent to the Tower, Margaret was moved south but placed under house arrest at Sheen (the former Carthusian monastery, not far from the palace of Westminster).

The two were held for a year, but by 1563, Margaret Douglas was accepted back at court, perhaps because she could be kept under Elizabeth's watchful eye. But after Darnley's marriage to the Scottish queen, Margaret Douglas found herself once more in the Tower, where she remained until Darnley's murder in 1567.  

Released by Elizabeth, Margaret Douglas witnessed the fulfillment of many of her aspirations when she saw her grandson, Darnley's child, become James VI after his mother, Mary Stuart, was forced to abdicate on 24 June 1567. Margaret's husband, the earl of Lennox, was at last able to return to Scotland, serving as regent for his grandson--at least until his murder on 4 September 1571.

Still the indomitable countess was not to be stopped. With the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, she conspired to marry her second son, Charles, to Bess's daughter, Elizabeth--this couple would give birth to the unfortunate Arbella Stuart. (As noted at the British Library website, "Douglas's disastrous love affair [with Thomas Howard] in turn foreshadowed her granddaughter Arbella Stuart’s experiences almost 75 years later.") In 1574, after the marriage was accomplished, a furious Queen Elizabeth ordered Margaret to the Tower once more.

Having achieved this last marriage, Margaret Douglas "retired" from her political intrigues and matchmaking, dying just a few years later on 9 March 1578. Although she died in poverty, she was given an extravagant tomb in Westminster Abbey, funded by her cousin and adversary, Queen Elizabeth.

The tomb of Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox,
Westminster Abbey

Margaret Douglas did not live to witness her ultimate dynastic triumph, when her grandson James VI of Scotland would ascend to the English throne in 1603, after the death of Elizabeth, becoming James I of England. 

For an excellent essay, I recommend "King Henry's Niece," by Leanda De Lisle. (In her essay she calls Margaret the "progenitor of princes," which I have quoted in the title of this post.)

Louise of Savoy: The "King's Mother" and Regent of France

Louise of Savoy, regent of France (born 11 September 1476)

Louise of Savoy, the daughter of Philip II, duke of Savoy, and Margaret of Bourbon, may be the most amazing woman you don't know much about.*

Louise of Savoy

Her life is entwined with the lives of many of the women whom we have already met. She was related to Anne of France both by birth and by marriage, for example, and was raised with Margaret of Austria, who would, much later, marry Louise's brother, Philibert of Savoy.

Louise of Savoy was at court when Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's younger sister became, briefly, queen of France. And, later still, Anne Boleyn would arrive at the French court, just as Louise of Savoy was acting as regent of France on behalf of her son, who had become king.

Even so, despite such connections, there was little in Louise of Savoy's early life to suggest the role she would later come to play in French politics and government. 

In France, King Louis XI married Charlotte of Savoy in order to secure his border with Italy. To strengthen his alliance with Savoy, he also awarded his new queen's younger brother Philip of Savoy the title of count of Bresse. In 1478, to strengthen his political alliances, he arranged the betrothal of his two-year-old niece Louise to Charles of Angoulême, twenty years her senior.

Louise's mother Marguerite of Bourbon died in 1483, when the girl was seven years old. After the death of his wife, Philip of Savoy sent his daughter to Amboise to be raised and educated by Anne of France, Louis XI and Charlotte of Savoy's daughter. There Louise joined Margaret of Austria, who had been sent to France at about the same time to be raised as its "queen." 

In a 1972 essay about Louise, John F. Freeman describes the education that she would have received under the "supervision" of her aunt; "one may assume," he writes, "she learned the traditional fare of home management and principles of Christian morality." 

Certainly "home management" and "Christian morality" would have been part of her training, but she certainly learned much more, for in that same year, Anne of France became de facto ruler of France as regent for her brother, Charles VIII. In Anne of France, Louise had found a crucial political model and tutor.

On 16 February 1488, when she was twelve years old, Louise married Charles of Angoulême, to whom she had been betrothed ten years earlier. But Louise apparently did not begin living with her husband until 1491, when she was about fifteen. At that point she joined her husband's household at Cognac, which included his mistress Jeanne de Polignac and several illegitimate children. 

Rather than antagonism, the two women, wife and mistress, forged durable bonds, and it might be said that in her husband's mistress Louise found another influential tutor. Jeanne became Louise's "permanent ally" and companion. Louise took into her service Jeanne's brothers.

She also accepted Jeanne's children into her household, while Jeanne, in turn, raised Louise's children, Marguerite, born in 1492, and Francis, who, according to Louise, had his "first experience of earthly light at Cognac" on the afternoon of 12 September 1494. While Jeanne de Polignac "nursed Francis . . . through his first seven years," Louise would later arrange advantageous marriages for her husband's illegitimate children.

But events far away from Cognac were to affect Louise of Savoy's life and her children's future. In 1496, her  husband died, and in 1498 Charles VIII died, leaving no child of his own to succeed him. His successor, Louis XII, married Anne of Brittany, Charles VIII's widow. But until they had children, Louise of Savoy's son Francis of Angoulême became the king's heir presumptive. 

Louise and her children were moved to Amboise, and the new king appointed a guardian for Francis. Louise herself was offered a number of marriage proposals, including an alliance with Alfonso d'Este and Henry VII of England, but she rejected any inducement to remarry. 

The king, meanwhile, had begun to prepare for the succession if he were to die without a son and heir. A daughter, Claude, had been born in 1499; and April 1505, the king arranged for the betrothal of his daughter to the heir presumptive, Francis of Angoulême.

He also made arrangements for the government of France should he die while his successor was still a minor, planning for a regency to be shared by Anne of Brittany and Louise of Savoy. The betrothal of the king's daughter and the king's heir was celebrated on 21 May 1506, when Claude was seven and Francis twelve. 

On 3 August 1508 the young Francis left his mother and Amboise for the king's court at Plessis-les-Tours. By 1509, her daughter, too, was gone; Marguerite left her mother to be married to Charles, duke of Alençon. 

Even though her son's future looked promising, Louise of Savoy could not be sure that he would become king of France--Anne of Brittany might still provide Louis XII an heir. In late 1509, ten years after Claude's birth, that possibility threatened; the queen was pregnant, but the baby, born in April of 1510, was a girl, Renée. In 1512 the queen was again pregnant. In January 1513 she gave birth to a son who did not survive. 

After the queen's death in January of 1514, Francis--and his mother--grew more confident; the heir presumptive's marriage with Claude was celebrated in May of that year. But, despite Francis's doubt that the widowed king would "commit the folly of marrying again," that is exactly what Louis XII did. The wedding of the "extremely old and feeble" king, as Louise of Savoy described him, and Henry VIII's sister, the "young" Mary Tudor, took place in October 1514.

Louise of Savoy as regent,

taking hold of the rudder of state,

detail from a sixteenth-century

manuscript (Français 5715,

 Bibliothèque nationale de France)

Although Louis may still have hoped to produce a male heir of his own to succeed him, by January 1515 he was dead. Louise of Savoy's son became King Francis I, Louise herself recognized as "the king's mother," Madame Mère du Roi. Her status as mater regis was both acknowledged and appreciated by her contemporaries, among them Pope Leo X. 

Charles Brandon, the duke of Suffolk, sent Henry VIII an equally glowing assessment of the king's mother: "Sir, it is she who runs all, and so may she well; for I never saw a woman like to her, both for wit, honour and dignity. She hath a great stroke in all matters with the King her son."

The Venetian ambassador, meanwhile, judged that "the Most Christian King's most illustrious mother . . . would prove the greatest and most faithful friend Venice ever had."

Like the young Henry VIII in England, anxious to win glory for himself shortly after his accession to the throne, Francis I was almost immediately attracted to the possibility of armed conflict. In order to renew French claims in Italy, he began to prepare for a military expedition, designating his mother, rather than his wife, to act as regent of France.

"All the princes and nobles of our blood will accompany us," Francis wrote, "And in consideration of this, we have decided to leave the government of our realm to our well beloved and dear Lady and Mother . . . in whom we have entire and perfect confidence." Because of her "virtue and prudence," she would, he proclaimed, "know how to acquit this trust." 

Francis returned home early in 1516, and thus Louise's first tenure as regent was only a few months' duration, from July of 1515 until the king's return early the next year. Louise continued to be an extremely influential force in her son's government, however, even after the period of her official role ended. Relations with England remained strained, and in 1521 the English ambassador in France suggested to Cardinal Wolsey that he apply to the king's mother for help: 

I have seen in diverse things since I came hither . . . that when the French king would stick at some points, and speak very great words, yet my Lady [Louise] would qualify the matter; and sometimes when the king is not contented he will say nay, and then my Lady must require him, and at her request he will be contented, for he is so obeissant to her that he will refuse nothing that she requireth him to do.

Even so, the ambassador did not consider her influence on her son to be entirely for the good, since he added, "and if it had not been for her he would have done wonders." Francis "eventually agreed" to a "comprimit," or conference, regarding the ongoing dispute, "very grudgingly, and in deference, he said, to his mother." Cardinal Wolsey, for his part, urged English envoys in France to promote "unity, peace and concord": they were to "exhort, stir and move by all means and ways to them possible." Wolsey particularly recommended that they address themselves to Louise of Savoy, "the mother and nourisher of peace."

On 27 April 1522 French troops just outside Milan were defeated by imperial forces at a battle known as "la Bicocca," the name of a nearby country home, and in August English forces invaded Picardy. By October the English were only fifty miles from Paris. Once more Francis went to war. On 12 August 1523 he again appointed Louise of Savoy as his regent. A letter announcing his decision cited Louise's experience and outlined her considerable powers in his absence.

Louise of Savoy's second regency lasted considerably longer than her first, because on 24 February 1525 the French king was defeated and captured at the battle of Pavia. He was taken first to Pavia itself, then on to Genoa. From there he was sent to Naples. By June he was in Barcelona, and in July he was sent on to Madrid, where he would remain until February 1526, when his release was finally arranged.

Just after his capture, Francis wrote to his mother to "inform" her "of the extent" of his "misfortune"; "of everything," he wrote, "nothing is left but my honour and my life." He begged her "not to lose heart," but to "exercise" her "customary prudence." He recommended to her his "little children," who were, he reminded her, also hers. He signed himself her "humble and obedient son." 

Louise responded: "I cannot better begin this letter than by thanking our Saviour that it has pleased him to preserve your honour, your life, and your health." "On my part," she continued, "I shall support the misfortune in such a manner for the succour of your little children and the affairs of your kingdom that I shall not give you occasion for more pain."

To defend France from invasion she mobilized forces for defense, securing the country's borders. She successfully negotiated an alliance with Henry VIII (treaty of the Moore, 1525) and, in Italy, with the pope and the Venetians (League of Cognac, 1526). In upolding the crown's authority, Louise was equally successful. Immediately after the king's capture, some members of the Parlement of Paris were moved to propose an alternate regent, but that effort failed.  

Louise ultimately proved her competency, dealing effectively with the parliament and, to secure her son's release, she made every effort to raise the money needed to ransom the king. The chancellor of France assured the captive king that the "said lady has managed so well that the rea[l]m is on its accustomed footing." 

She then undertook negotiations resulting in the treaty of Madrid, which Francis signed on 14 January 1526. The terms of this agreement were punishing, however: Francis was to renounce all his claims to Italy, his two sons were to be held as hostages by the emperor to guarantee Francis's fulfillment of the terms of the treaty; and, finally, he was to marry Isabel of Portugal, Charles V's widowed sister. 

The French king was finally released from his captivity in March--on the 17th of that month Francis was exchanged for his two sons, the dauphin Francis and his younger brother Henry. With her son's return, Louise's second regency ended.

But, although his sons were hostages to ensure his compliance with the terms of the treaty of Madrid, Francis did not honor his agreement. While negotiating the treaty, Louise had decided that accepting the terms offered was better than the king's continued absence, but once the king had returned to his kingdom, she is said to have advised him "not to observe promises made under duress." 

Peace between Francis I and Charles V was not achieved until 3 August 1529 when the treaty of Cambrai, the so-called Ladies' Peace, was negotiated by the king of France's mother, Louise of Savoy, and the Holy Roman Emperor's aunt, Margaret of Austria. 

A nineteenth-century sculpture of
Louise of Savoy,
now in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris

The two women were more than representatives of their male relatives, however.

They had spent years together as children, both raised by Anne of France; Louise had been sent to the regent by her father in 1483, the same year Margaret had arrived to be raised and educated as "queen" of France.

They were together until 1491, when Margaret was rejected as a wife by Charles VIII. Margaret had ultimately married the son and heir of Isabella and Ferdinand, Juan of Castile and Aragon, but after his early death, she had then married Philibert of Savoy, Louise of Savoy's brother. 

Thus the two women who met to negotiate an end of hostilities knew each other well; each had much to bargain for, and they bargained hard, but the regent of the Netherlands was in the stronger position.

By the terms of the treaty the two women devised, Francis agreed to give up his claims in Italy, to pay a heavy ransom for his sons, and to marry the emperor's sister, whom he had agreed to marry in 1526.

Although the terms were difficult, the treaty of Cambrai was the last political achievement of a determined woman. In a final personal achievement, aging, ill, and increasingly weak, Louise of Savoy traveled to meet the grandchildren whose release she had negotiated, a journey made against the advice of her physicians. The children arrived in France on 1 July 1530, and by Christmas the king was writing that his mother, with "her gout and colics added to her pains of the stomach," was nearing death. She died the next year, on 22 September 1531.

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe.

Anne Boleyn, "The Most Happy"

Anne Boleyn, queen of England (executed 19 May 1536)

Anne Boleyn's story is so well known that I won't add much here--except to point out the deep irony of the motto she selected for her coronation on 1 June 1533, "le pleuse heureuse" ("the most happy").

She was executed at the Tower of London on 19 May 1536.