Mary of Guelders, queen and regent of Scotland: "nubilus et formosa"

Mary of Guelders, queen and regent of Scotland (born 17 January 1433)

The woman who would become queen of Scotland on 3 July 1449, Marie de Gueldres, or, in English, Mary of Guelders, was the daughter of Arnold, duke of Guelders, and Catherine of Cleves. Through her mother, Mary of Guelders had close ties to the Burgundian court--Catherine of Cleves was the daughter of Marie of Burgundy (who became duchess of Cleves through her marriage to Adolph I, duke of Cleves). 

Through her maternal line, then, Mary of Guelders was connected to Burgundy. The duchy of Burgundy was a wealthy and powerful state, one of the most culturally advanced in western Europe. Marie of Burgundy, Mary of Guelders’s grandmother, was the daughter of Philip the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, and the elder sister of Philip the Good, who succeeded his father of duke of Burgundy--thus Philip, duke of Burgundy was Mary of Guelders's maternal great uncle. 

(The Cleves connection is also interesting, in particular to those who love Tudor history, because of one of her descendants--Mary of Guelders's mother, Catherine of Cleves, was the great aunt of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's third wife--the one he divorced.)

Although Guelders was a vassal state of the Holy Roman Empire during this period, it also had critical ties with Burgundy, and Philip of Burgundy offered the duke of Guelders not only his support but a bride, his great niece Mary. Despite these marital ties, Arnold of Guelders would have an uneasy relationship with Burgundy, and Duke Philip eventually turned against him. 

In 1442, during this period of conflict, the nine-year-old Mary of Guelders left her father's court and was sent to Burgundy, where she was placed in the care of Isabel of Portugal, Philip of Burgundy's third wife. There, under the supervision of the remarkable duchess, Mary of Guelders received not only an excellent education, but she could also witness and learn from the political acumen and administrative experience of Isabel of Portugal. 

A possible marriage for Mary of Guelders with Charles, count of Maine, was suggested when she was about twelve years old. A member of the cadet branch of the ruling Valois family, Charles was the son of Yolande of Aragon, daughter of the king of Aragon and duchess of Anjou--the alliance was most likely proposed by the younger Charles's cousin, Charles VII of France. But after Arnold of Guelders informed the duke and duchess of Burgundy that he could not provide the dowry required for his daughter, that match failed to be made. 

But in in 1446, the possibility of a marriage to the king of Scots, James II, arose. While this suggested alliance has been ascribed to the king of France, Charles VII, historian Rosalind K. Marshall notes that "it seems much more likely that the original idea and the initial delicate negotiations were achieved through a network of female connections." 

A sixteenth-century depiction
of the marriage of 
Mary of Guelders and
James II of Scotland
(Lambeth Palace MS 316);
in the manuscript, Mary
is misidentified as "Margaret,"
though she is correctly said to 
be the daughter of the
"Duke of Gelders"

The king of Scotland's mother, Joan Beaufort, was related to Isabel of Portugal (I can't work out the exact relationship--Isabel of Portugal's mother, Philippa of Lancaster, was John of Gaunt's daughter by his first wife, Blanche of Portugal, while Joan Beaufort was the daughter of John of Gaunt's son, John Beaufort, by his third wife, Katherine Swynford.) 

Joan Beaufort, queen of Scotland, died in 1445, however, though it was "not long after" her death that "soundings were being taken" about the potential of an alliance between Scotland and Burgundy. 

By June of 1446, Scottish ambassadors were in Guelders, when Mary of Guelders may have been visiting her father. The next year, Arnold of Guelders was known to be discussing the possibility of the marriage. 

In 1448, James II of Scotland wrote to Charles VII of France, asking the king for advice about a bride--and the king of France suggested Mary of Guelders. But, as Marshall claims, "[n]o doubt" the king of Scotland already knew that Mary was "the chosen bride." 

I have examined the political connections among royal and aristocratic women in the late-medieval and early-modern periods myself, and although I love the idea that the marriage between Mary of Guelders and the Scottish king is the result of the "delicate negotiations" between women, there really is no evidence. One of Isabel of Portugal's great interests as duchess of Burgundy was arranging influential marital alliances, but Marshall notes only that the queen of Scotland and the duchess of Burgundy "were almost certainly in touch with each other." While the potential of a marriage might have been raised by the two women, the death of Joan Beaufort in 1445 would seem to make her role in bringing the alliance to fruition unlikely. 

Meanwhile, as Scottish historian Callum Watson notes, the French king was "a kind of international marriage broker for the Scots during the 1440s":  

It was thanks to King Charles that James II's other sisters were married off to such luminaries as the Duke of Brittany, the Archduke of Austria, the Lord of Veere, and the Count of Geneva. When the time came, Charles also encouraged Philip to apply pressure to Mary's father to accept a match between his eldest daughter and the Scottish king. The union was hugely appealing to the Scots as it provided the royal administration with connections to the courts of Burgundy (through her uncle), Gueldres (through her father), and Cleves (through her mother).

Whoever was responsible for the marriage, the treaty for the marriage was was agreed upon by Philip of Burgundy and James II on 1 April 1449. (And Philip of Burgundy paid the dowry for Mary of Guelders.) In the treaty, Mary of Guelders is described as "young and beautiful" (or, in the Latin of the document, nubilus et formosa). Suitable preparations for Mary of Guelders's wedding to James II of Scotland were soon made. She left for Scotland on 9 June 1449, arriving in Leith, just north of Edinburgh, on 18 June. Her marriage to the nineteen-year-old king took place on 3 July 1449.

Not much is known about Mary of Guelders for more than a decade after her marriage. As the Scottish antiquarian David Laing wrote in the nineteenth century, "During the eleven years that intervened between the . . . marriage of Mary of Gueldres in Scotland with James II in July 1449, and her husband's death, her name is not so much as once mentioned in connexion with any public event."

During this period, as James II's queen, Mary of Guelders received gifts and grants. She made charitable donations. As queens were expected to do, she appeared in parliament to intercede with her husband for those seeking his favor and forgiveness. She gave birth to a short-lived son in 1451, then to another son and heir, who would become James III, in 1451. Two daughters and three more sons followed. So, between her marriage and her husband's death in 1460, Mary of Guelders gave birth to seven children. 

The ruins of Roxburgh Castle
(photograph from 1936)

Mary of Guelders may have been present when her husband besieged and took Blackness Castle in 1453 (the siege and recapture of the castle occurred during the king's conflict with the Douglas clan). 

But the queen was not present in 1460, when James II attempted to retake Roxburgh Castle, held by the English. Nor was he so lucky. He was injured by a piece of shrapnel, but it wasn't from a weapon belonging to the English forces--he was standing too close to one of his own cannons, which backfired. He died on 3 August as a result of his injury.

Nevertheless, the siege of the castle continued. On learning of her husband's death, Mary of Guelders, traveled with her nine-year-old son from Edinburgh to Kelso, near Roxburgh, making sure that the Scots "finished her late husband's work." The castle fell on 8 August, and  James III was crowned at Kelso Abbey on 10 August. Mary of Guelders had Roxburgh Castle razed.

Mary of Guelders, queen of Scotland, would die just three years after her husband, but during this brief time, she was regent for her son, now James III, with the advice of a regency council. Although these men seemed to believe there was "little good" in handing over the "keeping of the kingdom  a woman," the new regent acted ably. 

Later historians would conclude that she was feeble-minded and/or promiscuous--these are assessments of female rule that have appeared consistently throughout my entries on female rulers in this blog. But the reality is (see here and here, for example) that she acted competently in her role as regent, despite disruptive factions in Scotland and pressures from the contending parties in the Wars of the Roses in England. 

Notably, Mary received Margaret of Anjou, in 1460, after Henry VI's queen was forced to flee England. The two women may have considered a marriage between the Lancastrian heir, Edward, and Mary, the eldest daughter of Mary of Guelders. Mary of Guelders again offered shelter to Margaret of Anjou and Henry VI after their defeat at the battle of Towton in 1461, and the Lancastrian pair stayed in Scotland for a year before the political situation in England made the situation too difficult for the dowager queen. 

At this point, Mary of Guelders arranged for the deposed English king and queen to leave Scotland--she paid them to go. At the same time, she seems to have entertained the possibility of a marriage with Edward IV, the Yorkist king who had replaced Henry VI. But nothing came of that, and when Margaret of Anjou returned to Scotland once more, in 1463, the Scottish queen assisted her again before Margaret left in July of that year, seeking assistance in Burgundy.

Mary of Guelders, queen of Scotland, died soon after Margaret of Anjou's departure--according to Bishop Leslie, the queen died on 16 November of 1463--she is known to have become ill in the fall--but the date is recorded by the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland as 1 December 1464, with the year clearly an error. (Her funeral was not held until June 1464.) The December date is conventionally given for her death.

In addition to her political roles, as regent, Mary of Guelders undertook a "programme of building works" that would "articulate and define her power and status." As part of this her architectural program, she founded a hospital on Castle Hill in Stirling and founded the Trinity College Church and hospital in Edinburgh: 

Queen Mary dedicated her foundation to the praise and honour of the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, St Ninian—to whom she appears to have had an especial dedication—and all saints. . . . The buildings included a perpetual college, or collegiate church, which was designed to secure masses for the souls of the queen, her deceased husband, and their families in perpetuity. Mary chose the church as her preferred burial location. 

Her intention was to be buried at her foundation rather than with her husband at Holyroodhouse. As Rachel Delman and Jill Harrison note, this decision "demonstrated that she had ample wealth to afford an impressive burial site indicative of her queenly status": 

It was also a tangible expression of a woman’s personal choice and agency over where and how she and her family were to be remembered at a time when female agency was limited due to the patriarchal power structures of medieval society. The foundation demonstrated Mary’s charity on a grand, public scale through its sophisticated architectural design and its prominent original location on a busy thoroughfare frequented by pilgrims and visitors travelling to and from the continent.

Unfortunately, Mary of Guelders's collegiate church was dismantled in 1954 in order to make way for a railway--the "buildings’ royal significance and the feelings of their nineteenth century supporters appear to have been ignored," and the "powerful narrative" of Mary of Guelders "was forgotten."

For a bit of a happier note, see Rachel M. Delman and Jill Harrison, "Reviving the Trinity: Making Mary of Guelders’ Fifteenth-Century Built Legacy Relevant in Twenty-First Century Scotland," Royal Studies Journal 12, no. 1 (2025), here. I've linked to quotations from this article, above. If you have access, I also recommend Rachel M. Delman's "Mary of Guelders and the Architecture of Queenship in Fifteenth-Century Scotland," Scottish Historical Review 102, no. 2 (2023),  https://doi.org/10.3366/shr.2023.0611. 

I've also linked here to Rosalind Marshall's Scottish Queens, 1034–1714, published in 2003. For what seems to be a revised version of this book, click here.

Fiona Downie's 2006 She is But a Woman Queenship in Scotland 1424–1463 is also forthcoming in a new edition.

Alice Chaucer, Politician and Patron (and Granddaughter of the Poet)

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk (died 20 May 1475)

As an academic, I was trained as a medievalist, and for decades, I taught not only medieval but early-modern literature courses at a liberal-arts university. I continued to teach Beowulf, Chaucer, Malory, Wyatt, Surrey, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marlowe, among many other canonical writers and texts, long after my own research and writing interests had transitioned to women's history and women writers. This site, The Monstrous Regiment of Women, is a post-retirement project that allows me to continue to read and write about women, women's history, and women writers. 

Tomb effigy of Alice Chaucer,

duchess of Suffolk

(parish church of St Mary,

Ewelme, Oxfordshire)

Now here's an admission. I taught an upper-division course in Chaucer for decades, as well as teaching selections from The Canterbury Tales in lower-division literature survey courses. I knew Chaucer had married Philippa de Roet, whose sister, Katherine, later known as Katherine Swynford (her first husband was Sir Hugh Swynford), would become the mistress, then wife, of John of Gaunt, third son of Edward III. Many students over the years found this personal connection--one between the poet and the royal patron whom he served--to be an intriguing one. 

But beyond knowing that Geoffrey Chaucer had married Philippa de Roet, I never thought much about Chaucer's wife, much less his children, except for the claim that his Treatise on the Astrolabe may have been written for his son, Thomas--despite the fact that the piece is addressed to "Lyte Lowys my sone." This reference has resulted in a great deal of speculation. Some critics have argued that "Louis" really means "Thomas," others that the poem may have been addressed to a godson or another child to whom Chaucer was close, while still others have concluded that Chaucer had a second son, named Louis. It's best just to say that the treatise "may or may not" refer to Chaucer's own son.

In fact, it isn't clear exactly how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, though it's generally said that they had four (or three). Certainly they had a son named Thomas, who made an advantageous marriage and had a notable political career. Chaucer and Philippa may have had two daughters, and if they did, these daughters may be Elizabeth (a woman named Elizabeth Chaucy became a nun at Barking Abbey, and Agnes (a woman named Agnes Chaucer played a role in the coronation of Henry IV).

So, as I said, how many children Chaucer and his wife had is not clear--but what is clear is that Alice Chaucer is Geoffrey Chaucer's granddaughter, the child of Thomas Chaucer. About her, historian John Kirby Edges wrote, "Few women ever had a more gradual and successful rise in the world than Alice Chaucer. Born the daughter of a gentleman of no illustrious descent, she became in name a lady by her contract of marriage with a knight; next a countess by her first marriage, and during her [subsequent] marriage she reached the higher dignities of marchioness and duchess." 

Brass rubbing of
Matilda Burghersh,
mother of Alice Chaucer
(Victoria and Albert Museum)

Born about the year 1404, just a few years after her grandfather's death (Geoffrey Chaucer died on 25 October 1400), Alice was the daughter of Thomas Chaucer and Matilda Burghersh, an heiress to a significant estate. Ewelme Manor (Oxfordshire), where Alice Chaucer would spend a great deal of her life, came into the Chaucer family's possession at the death of Sir John Berghersh, Matilda'a father. 

Alice Chaucer's now-famous grandfather, Geoffrey, was the son of a wine merchant who became a courtier, diplomat, and bureacrat, in addition to becoming one of the great poets of the English language. He began his astonishing rise as a page in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, married to Lionel of Antwerp (like John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III). 

Alice’s father, Thomas Chaucer, was able to have a distinguished political career--he served in various capacities under Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V, and was was elected to parliament fifteen times, serving as Speaker of the House of Commons five times. 

While such careers were not possible for a woman, Alice Chaucer nevertheless found advancement through marriage, a career option that was available to women.

When she was about eleven (by October 1414), Alice was married to Sir John Phelip, a man about twenty-five years older than she was. Although his Suffolk family was "of no very great local importance," they had experienced a "spectacular rise" while serving John of Gaunt and Henry IV. Sir John died on 2 October 1415, about a year after his marriage to Alice. As his widow, Alice Chaucer gained control of significant property, including Donnington Castle, which had been acquired by her father and was part of her dowry.

Alice's second marriage was a much more prestigious one--by 30 November 1424, when she is known to be attending a marriage in France with her husband, Alice had become the wife of Thomas Montagu, fourth earl of Salisbury. Salisbury was one of the great English commanders during the Hundred Years War. On the occasion of a celebration of marriage, the duke of Burgundy seems to have been captivated by Alice Chaucer and went so far as to try to seduce her--despite the fact that the wedding being celebrated was his own. Alice did not succumb, though her second marriage was not to last long. Salisbury was wounded at the siege of Orléans, and he died on 3 November 1428.

Two years later, in 1430, the twice-widowed Alice married William de la Pole. Like Thomas Montagu, he was an important English commander--he had also been at the siege of Orléans--and he served Henry VI in several capacities. (He also helped to negotiate the marriage between Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou.) John de la Pole was made earl, then marquess, and, in 1448, duke of Suffolk. As for Alice Chaucer, she became one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting. 

In May 1432, Alice Chaucer was granted the "distinguished privilege" at the feast of St. George of "wear[ing] the Order of the Garter." Like the knights of the Order, the "Ladies had not only the habit of the Order, but they, like the Knights, had also the ensign of the Garter delivered to them. . . . These Garters might be worn by Ladies about their left arm."

But Suffolk's career would end disastrously. His years in service to Henry VI earned him many enemies. In 1450, he was accused of treason, imprisoned in the Tower, and then sent into exile. Before he got too far on his voyage from England--just off the coast of Dover, in fact--his ship was overtaken, and he was beheaded. 

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, had given birth to only one child during her three marriages. John de la Pole was born on 27 September 1442. By the terms of her husband's will, Alice was named the sole executrix of his estates: "above all the earth my singular trust is most in her." During the years immediately following Suffolk's death, Alice too was the focus of a great deal of anger. Much of it was the result of her husband's disastrous actions.

Most significantly, she was implicated in her husband's decision to marry their son, John de la Pole, to Margaret Beaufort. Fears that Suffolk intended to secure the throne of England for his own son by means of this marriage ("presuming and pretending" Margaret Beaufort "to be next inheritable to the crown") had led to the charges of treason brought against Suffolk. Alice found herself charged with treason in 1453, but she was acquitted.

In the same year, her son's marriage to Margaret Beaufort was annulled. In 1458, after years of a close relationship to Henry VI, Alice Chaucer decided to ally herself with Richard, duke of York. A marriage was arranged between John de la Pole and Elizabeth of York, the sixth child and third daughter of the duke and his wife, Cecily Neville. Through this marriage, Alice would become grandmother to eleven grandchildren. 

Throughout the years that followed her husband's death, Alice Chaucer remained a potent force. In her work on women in medieval England, Mavis E. Mate notes, "she continued to dominate politics in East Anglia," where the de la Pole family resided. Beyond her continued political maneuvering, Alice Chaucer was an important patron of the arts and literature. She commissioned tapestries, and she may have commissioned a poem by John Lydgate. Mate acknowledges that Lydgate "ostensibly produced works" for her husbands, but suggests that "in each case the real motivating force behind the commission may have been Alice Chaucer herself." Whether or not she herself commissioned any of Lydgate's work, she was a lover of books and amassed a large library. Notably, she is known to have owned a copy of Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies.

She was also known for her acts of piety. She made donations of books and money to Oxford University, she made contributions to various religious institutions, and she gave alms to the poor. In this last role, she supported God's House at Ewelme, an almshouse that she had founded with her husband, a charity that survives today.

In 1472, not long before her own death, Alice Chaucer was once more in contact with Margaret of Anjou, when the widow of Henry VI was transferred to her "care." After the death of Henry VI and Margaret's defeat at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, the former queen was taken captive by William Stanley and imprisoned in Wallingford Castle and then the Tower of London. She was transferred into the custody of Alice Chaucer and presumably remained with her until the duchess of Suffolk died. (Margaret of Anjou was finally ransomed by Louis XI of France in 1475.)

Alice Chaucer's strenuous efforts to protect--and expand--her son's inheritance helped insurance his future, even while they did nothing for her own reputation. Historian Lauren Johnson claims that Alice Chaucer and her husband were "well matched": "both ambitious, cunning and charming, but willing to be ruthless if necessary." 

And what a future it was--I've already noted John de la Pole's large family. Three of his sons made claims to the throne of England: the eldest, John de la Pole, first earl of Lincoln, was made heir to the crown by his uncle, Richard III, but he died in 1487, at the battle of Stoke, two years after Henry VII claimed the throne; Edmund de la Pole also claimed the English throne and was executed by Henry VIII in 1513; Richard de la Pole, the seventh and youngest, continued the claim but lived on the continent until his death in 1425 at the battle of Pavia. Another son, William, made no claim to the throne but was imprisoned in the Tower for allegedly plotting with his brothers--he remained there for thirty-seven years, dying in 1539.

Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk,
tomb, St. Mary's Church, Ewelme,
showing Order of the Garter

Fortunately for Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, she did not live to see her grandsons' deaths. She died on 20 May 1475 and is buried in St. Mary's Church, Ewelme (Oxfordshire). Her tomb effigy shows her wearing the Order of the Garter on her wrist. 

Information about the remarkable Alice Chaucer is often found by scrounging in the biographies of men--Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry VI, her own husbands. Until now, there has been no biography of her, but one will soon be available: Michèle Schindler's What Is Better Than A Good Woman: Alice Chaucer, Commoner and Yorkist Matriarch will be published in July of this year.

I've linked to Marjorie Anderson's 1945 article, "Alice Chaucer and Her Husbands," above. 

There are also two excellent (but difficult to access) articles about Alice Chaucer as a book collector: Karen Jamback's “The Library of Alice Chaucer, Duchess of Suffolk: A Fifteenth-Century Owner of a ‘Boke of le Citee de Dames’,” The Profane Arts of the Middle Ages 7, no. 2 (1998): 106-35; and Carol M. Meale, “Reading Women’s Culture in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Alice Chaucer,” in Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 1996), 81-101. 

You may also want to check out Rachel M. Delman's "Gendered Viewing, Childbirth and Female Authority in the Residence of Alice Chaucer, duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme, Oxfordshire" (click here). This essay not only provides an unusual account of Alice Chaucer's preparations for the birth of a grandchild, it also includes a great deal of information about the books she owned. (And since it's online, it's more accessible than the two articles I've noted above.)

As for me, I came upon the name of Alice Chaucer in Lauren Johnson's The Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI, from which I have quoted, above. 

 

Redrawing the Lines of Power--Women's Family Trees

 Redrawing the Lines of Power--Women's Family Trees

I have just finished hanging a framed poster that was a recent gift from my son: "Matrilineal Dynasties of Europe." It was a perfect present. As it is described at the UseFul Charts website, "This unique chart views European history in a totally new way by focusing on the female-only lines within royal genealogy. Over 100 queens and empresses shown!"

My really crappy photo of
Useful Charts's beautiful
"Matrilineal Dynasties of Europe"
(published with permission)

It was exactly the kind of family tree I wish I'd had many years ago, when I was researching and writing a book that would eventually be published as The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (2002). 

In the introduction, titled "Redrawing the Lines of Power," I wrote about my frustration with finding so few women on royal family trees. As I now look happily on the new poster hanging on my wall, I thought I might post an early version of my introduction--it was necessarily edited for the book, but I can print here what I originally wrote years ago . . .* 

And so, an earlier version of "Redrawing the Lines of Power," written in 1998, is published for the first time:

Let us now sing the praises of famous men, the heroes of our nation's history, through whom the Lord established his renown, and revealed his majesty in each succeeding age. Some held sway over kingdoms and made themselves a name by their exploits. . . . Some led the people by their counsels and by their knowledge of the nation's laws. . . . Some there are who have left a name behind them to be commemorated in story. There are others who are unremembered; they are dead, and it is as though they had never existed, as though they had never been born or left children to succeed them.

                                                            --Ecclesiasticus 44:1-3, 4, 8-9

Abraham, the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob. Moses and his brother Aaron. David, the father of Solomon, and Solomon of Rehoboam. Like the "praises" of these "famous men" sung by the author of Ecclesiasticus, the historical narrative of western Europe has focused on generations of men. Political histories, biographies, and genealogies trace lines of power from fathers to sons and grandsons, brothers and nephews. 

During the period of English history with which I am most familiar, for example, Edward III is followed on the throne by his grandson Richard II; Henry IV is followed by his son Henry V, who is followed, in turn, by his son Henry VI; Edward IV was to have been followed by his son, who would have been the fifth English Edward, but instead is succeeded by his brother, Richard III; Henry VII is followed by his son Henry VIII, who is followed by his son Edward VI. Then something strange disrupts this narrative. At his death in 1553, Edward VI is succeeded by his sister, Mary I.

The succession of a woman to the throne of England horrified many, including the Protestant reformer John Knox, who concluded that any woman who presumed to "sit in the seat of God, that is, to teach, to judge, or to reign above a man" was "a monster in nature." Women were incapable of effective rule, for "nature . . . doth paint them forth to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish, and experience hath declared them to be unconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment."

Knox published this blistering assessment of female rule, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, in 1558; his bitter indictment of "gynecocracy" was quickly followed in print by a series of pamphlets that echoed and expanded 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, Mary of Guise, was acting as regent in Scotland on Mary's behalf.

Unfortunately for Knox, though, the political situation could get worse, and did, almost immediately. When Mary Tudor died only a few months after the Blast appeared, her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her as queen of England. In France, following the death of her husband Henry II, Catherine de' Medici attempted to become regent of France for her son, Francis II. Outmaneuvered in 1559, she succeeded a year later when Francis died and the dowager queen assumed the regency for her second son, Charles IX. Thus, by 1560, England, Scotland, and France were under the direct "regiment" of women.

I began thinking about this exceptional historical moment after I had the experience of reading, one after another, the arguments against female rule penned by Knox, Anthony Gilby, Christopher Goodman, Jean Bodin, Robert Filmer, and Bishop Jacques Bossuet, among many others, and then, in turn, the defenses of female rule published to counter their extreme, sometimes violent, positions. Much has been written about the political, religious, and cultural factors that shaped this debate, but I was interested in analyzing these texts in a different context. In order to relate theory and practice, I planned to write a series of biographical portraits of the remarkable women whose "regiment" had inspired the debate, exploring the way each of these women achieved, maintained, and manipulated her position even as her right and her ability to do so were contested.

As I considered my project, I was at first uncertain about how to proceed. Aside from Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart and her mother, and Catherine de' Medici, I knew of only two other women to include in my project: Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, and Jeanne d'Albret, the Protestant queen of Navarre, whose son had become Henry IV, hing of France. Would it be possible, I wondered, to find enough female rulers to make a "series" of such profiles possible?

But the more I thought about my project, the more I came to see what had been there all along. These women weren't the first powerful women in early modern Europe. Any analysis of female rulers in the early modern period should really begin by focusing on the lives of four formidable women who died early in the sixteenth century: Isabella of Spain (d. 1504), who inherited the throne of Castile; Lady Margaret Beaufort (d. 1509), who chose not to press her own claims to the English throne in order to promote the cause of her son, Henry Tudor; Caterina Sforza (d. 1509), who seized power in Imola and Forlì to preserve it for her son, Ottaviano; and Anne of France (d. 1522), who acted as a shrewd and politically adept regent for her brother, Charles VIII. The careers of these powerful and successful women seemed to me to provide models for the women who were to follow in the next generation. 

Still, as notable as they were, these weren't the only women to whom Mary Tudor or Catherine de' Medici could look for example. As I searched the indexes of political histories and biographies, I began to find the names of female rulers about whom I knew little or nothing. Despite arguments like Knox's against female rule, and despite the ordinary descent of political power from one man to another, it became clear to me that a whole range of "dynastic accidents" in early modern Europe had resulted in a surprising number of women ruling as queens or functioning as regents. It became equally clear that the lives and political careers of these sixteenth-century queens were hardly without precedent. 

Yet I could find little more than the names of these women at first. How many Blancas of Navarre were there? How many Isabellas of Aragon? Of Castile? Of Portugal? Were Charlotte of Savoy and Bona of Savoy related? If so, how? How did Louise of Savoy fit in? Were Anne of France and Anne of Beaujeu the same woman? What about Mary of Guise and Mary of Lorraine? And why was all this so difficult for me to sort out? I knew that the relationships and connections linking these women couldn't be more complicated than those of the eight Henrys, six Edwards and three Richards I knew so well; the English line of succession from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries has always been easier for me to recite than the names and dates of American presidents. 

But it was hard to find out much about these Isabellas, Annes, and Marys in traditional political history. Like the "unremembered" others in Ecclesiasticus, it was almost as if they "had never existed, as though they had never been born or left children to succeed them." But clearly they had been born, and equally clearly they had left children to succeed them. And despite the familiar narrative of conventional history, they had also had some degree of real "sway" over various kingdoms and principalities. And so, trying to figure out who these women were and whether and how they were related, I began to focus on the family trees in the books I had in front of me. And that's when I began to notice what (or who) was missing.

Like the generations of "famous men" in Ecclesiasticus-- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David, Solomon, Rehoboam--one Henry or Charles followed another in succession, father and son, springing forth as if by spontaneous generation. I searched, sometimes in vain, for women; wives and mothers were simply absent from many of the genealogies appended to the histories and biographies I was reading. I think my favorite is a Valois "family tree" that charts four branches of the family over the course of nearly four hundred years. It looks as if the line of Valois kings (from 1328 through 1547, anyway)--Philip VI, John II, Charles V, Charles VI, Charles VII, Louis XI, Charles VIII, Louis XII, Francis I--managed to do without any wives or mothers at all. Then again, maybe I like best the Habsburg genealogy that begins in the tenth century and continues through the seventeenth century. There are a few wives among nine generations of Habsburg descendants, but, at least according to this family tree, there were no Habsburg daughters born between 950 and the mid-sixteenth century, when Eleanor and Mary show up on one branch.

Meanwhile, in England, the five daughters of Edward III (r. 1327-77) are all too often lumped together at the end of the genealogical line as "daughters," but that at least is an improvement over the tables that chart the descendants of his sons without noting that he had any "daughters" at all. I imagine that "issue," as it often appears on such family trees, could include insignificant males as well as females, but I am suspicious that "other issue" refers exclusively to daughters. I am almost afraid to think of what the disclaimer on one "short genealogical tree" might mean: "The irrelevant branches have been pruned."

Of course not all the family trees I looked at omitted women. The "Kings and Queens of England" poster that is hanging right next to me as I type indicates the wives of Edwards I through III, Henry IV and V, Henry VII and Henry VIII (all six). But why isn't the wife of Henry VI included, especially since she was the strong and powerful Margaret of Anjou (Shakespeare's "tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide")? Edward IV and Richard III are also missing their wives, as are James V of Scotland and his grandson James VI, who becomes James I of England. Then again, to be absolutely fair, while Mary Tudor's husband (Philip II of Spain) is listed, Mary Stuart's husbands, all three of them (Francis, Darnley, Bothwell), are eliminated. Still, this version of the poster is a marked improvement over the previous edition, which left out the wives of Edwards I through III, Henry IV and V as well as Henry VI, and limited Henry VIII to only three of his six wives. If there are rules to determine when women are included and when they are omitted in such genealogies, I haven't been able to figure out what they are.

I must admit I took unexpected pleasure in some of the inconsistencies I found. The Oxford History of England's volume of The Earlier Tudors eliminates all of six of Henry VIII's wives, and while I am, in general, frustrated that so many women have disappeared from royal family trees, I was delighted to see that Henry's entire matrimonial career had been wiped out. Interestingly, his elder brother, Arthur, wasn't given his wife (Catherine of Aragon) either, but his sisters Margaret and Mary are accompanied by their husbands, or at least some of them, at any rate; Margaret has her first two, James IV of Scotland and Archibald, earl of Angus, while Mary has only her second, Charles, duke of Brandon--I don't know why she didn't get to keep her king, Louis XII of France. Henry, for whatever reason, hasn't been allowed to keep a single wife. He looks almost lonely.

Even the most complete family trees, one tracing the Medici family from Giovanni "di Bicci" (1360-1428) and his wife Piccarda Bueri through Giovanni Gastone (1671-1737) and his wife Anne of Saxe-Lauenburg, for example, work patrilineally, tracing descent through the male line. In so many family trees, men's names are set in capital letters or boldfaced or highlighted, their wives' names, when included, are smaller, underneath the names, dates, and titles of the men to whom they are connected, or off to the side, after "m" or "=" to indicate their status as wives. When women marry into a family, their names suddenly appear--but where did they come from? Who were their grandmothers, their mothers, their sisters? And when women marry out of the family, where do they go? Their names are left dangling on the trees of their families, dead ends on the lines of descent. Are they and their descendants the "irrelevant branches" that have to be pruned?

And so, out of frustration, trying to identify the "unremembered" others whose names I had stumbled across, and trying to sort out the connections between them, I set out to draw my own family trees, linking women, generations of mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces. I searched--not always successfully--for the dates of their birth, the dates of their death, the children who succeeded them. As I drew and then redrew my new genealogical tables, I came to see not a series of individual, isolated women who came from nowhere to be swallowed up in the Tudor, Valois, Habsburg, or Medici families, but networks of related women and patterns of connections between them.

Once I had started to redraw the lines, I began to see something else of significance. Mary Tudor can no longer be portrayed as a "monster in nature" who suddenly, and without precedent, dared to assume political power. Mary Tudor's mother, Catherine of Aragon, was not only Henry VIII's first wife, but a queen who had served as regent of England; Catherine, in her turn, was the daughter of Isabella, queen regnant of Castile, who herself was the niece of Maria of Castile, governor of Aragon, and granddaughter of Catherine of Lancaster, regent of Castile. Isabella's elder daughter, Juana (Catherine of Aragon's sister), inherited the crowns of both Castile and Aragon; Isabella's granddaughters included Isabel of Portugal, regent of Spain; Mary of Austria, regent of the Netherlands; and Catherine, regent of Portugal. Among Isabella's great-granddaughters were Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands, and Joanna of Spain, regent of Spain.

I also began to see significant connections and relationships I couldn't always indicate on my redrawn family trees: there were "genealogical" links that went beyond blood ties. Margaret of Austria, who functioned as regent of the Netherlands from 1519 until her death in 1530, had been betrothed at age three to Charles, the dauphin of France; in 1483 she had been sent to the French court where, for ten years, her care and education were directed by the extraordinary Anne, who acted as regent of France for her brother. The betrothal didn't result in marriage; instead, in 1497, Margaret was sent to the court of Queen Isabella of Castile, marrying John, heir to his mother's Castile and his father Ferdinand's Aragon. What was the influence of two such politically adept women on Margaret, who would function so successfully as regent for so many years?

If all this seems confusing, you can see why I needed to redraw family trees. Instead of genealogies that focused on kings and their sons, making clear their relationships and connections, I wanted to draw links that moved backward and forward, tracing queens and their grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, nieces, granddaughters, and grandnieces. I have to admit that I enjoyed the process of constructing these new family trees. I made the names of the four women I identified as models big--really big, with bold boxes around them. Isabella of Castile overpowers her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. She also overshadows him--wherever I could, I put my women on top. I also eliminated every son I could, including Henry VIII's long-desired Edward, as "issue" with which I was not concerned, an "irrelevant branch" I could prune. I kept only those men through whom lines of power descended to a woman. The names of the men who remain on my redrawn genealogies are so tiny I can hardly read them without my glasses. It's somehow very satisfying to see Henry VIII looking so small. Instead of Francis I and Charles V looming so large on the scene, I could see women--generations and generations of women of power.

One of the family trees I drew for The Monstrous Regiment of Women

I could also see the shifting political alliances of early modern Europe from a very different (and revealing) perspective. As I drew my new family trees, I realized that the narrative of early modern European political history looked very different if I focused women instead of men. Men like John Knox might argue against women's right and fitness to rule, but women had and could and did rule--and rule well--even as they were were being told they could not and should not.

I began my research, as I said, afraid that I might not find enough female rulers to make the project worthwhile. Instead, as I worked, I found more and more women whose stories should be included in my project, too many women, in fact, to make the project, as originally conceived, practicable. But my redrawn family trees had also suggested a way of redefining the "biographical" essays I had originally planned. Instead of perpetuating the tendency to identify a single, extraordinary woman and to focus on her individual life and "unique" accomplishments, I decided to explore the relationships among women whose lives occupy a place in and perpetuate a continuing, though largely unrecognized, tradition of political rule. Their careers, like their lives, are intertwined.

The women who assumed political power in succeeding generations in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, and city-states of Italy were far more numerous--and more successful--than I had imagined, but even more surprising than their numbers and their successes is how completely their names and stories have disappeared from the history of early modern Europe. Aside from Queen Isabella, who funded the voyage of Columbus, "Bloody Mary" and good Queen Bess in England, and the romantic Mary, Queen of Scots, I had learned almost nothing about any of these "monstrous" women in a classroom, through a textbook, or from the pages of the histories and biographies I had read on my own throughout the years.

The "story" of early modern European political history has been defined by the lists of "famous men" we have constructed, lists that have "revealed . . . majesty in each succeeding age," lists that have told us who "held sway over kingdoms." There are, indeed, some "who have left a name behind them to be commemorated in story," just as there are "others"--primarily women--who have been forgotten. As far as "history" has been concerned, they are dead--it is "as though they had never existed, . . . never been born, or left children to succeed them."

I have tried here to read the past in a different way and to narrate the story from an alternative perspective. I hope, in fact, to have presented a counter-narrative here--by focusing on the lives and relationships of women, those "others" who did exist, those others who--like theirs fathers, husbands, and sons--did "hold sway" over kingdoms and make themselves names "by their exploits," who did leave children to succeed them, and who, though dead, should not be "unremembered."

My efforts here are not intended to be, and could never be claimed to be, definitive and comprehensive. I have crossed too many chronological, geographical, institutional, and theoretical boundaries to speak authoritatively. Instead, I hope they will be regarded as exploratory and suggestive-- summarizing, contextualizing, and drawing together what is known about female rule and rulers in early modern Europe, perhaps best read as an outline for or a rought draft of a counter-narrative that remains to be written.

By the way, after thinking about it for some time, I decided as I redrew my family trees to let Henry VIII keep two of his six wives--Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, strong and determined mothers whose daughters became queens.

. . . 

If you've read this far, I hope you can see that I've continued the work I began more than twenty-five years ago. In 1998, I wrote, ". . . as I worked, I found more and more women whose stories should be included in my project, too many women, in fact, to make the project, as originally conceived, practicable."

Now, at this site, also named The Monstrous Regiment of Women, I've been able to write about many of the women whose stories I couldn't tell then.

*For the sake of readability, I haven't linked all the names here to corresponding essays on this site--if you use the search function, you will be able to find posts for all of the women named here.

Update, 19 April 2026: It’s now hard to fine this chart at the website, and I am not sure whether it can still be purchased. (To find it, you have to use the search bar, but if you click “buy,” you get a “not found” message. It seems as though you can still download it, and the accompanying “video explanation” is still on YouTube. Why can’t we have nice things?

Margaret Tudor: "Hail, Rose, Both Red and White"

Margaret Tudor, queen of Scotland (born 28 November 1489)

The Tudors have long been a money-making proposition for novelists, filmmakers, and television networks, and while I myself have spent a lifetime fascinated with them too, I have to admit that Henry VIII's poor sisters have been rather neglected in this whole Tudormania thing.

Margaret Tudor, detail
from a painting by Daniel Mijtens,
probably around the time of her
marriage to James of Scotland

Take, for example, the case of Margaret Tudor--while she is a character in the vastly popular television series, The Tudors, it's her name that is used rather than her actual life story.

In the BBC2, CBC Television, TV3 Ireland, and Showtime joint production, Henry VIII has only one sister, not two, and the lives of Margaret and Mary Tudor are tossed into a blender with a lot of nonsense. The result is a character with Margaret's name who is given a great deal of Mary's life experiences to which a lot of unnecessary and confusing idiocy has been added. 

Margaret Tudor deserves better. And so here we go . . . *

Born on 28 November 1489, Margaret was the eldest daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, four years younger than their son and heir Arthur. Her paternal grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, was present at her birth and supervised her granddaughter's education; though the English princess was, as her biographer Hester Chapman notes, "more carefully educated than most princesses of her day," Margaret Beaufort could not interest her namesake "in the intellectual projects for which she herself became celebrated."

In any case, by 1496 the English king was engaged in negotiations to arrange for the marriage of his first-born daughter. Henry VII had established his Tudor dynasty in 1485, with his defeat of Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. But his position was not unchallenged, and among those who were interested in unseating him was Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV and Richard III. 

Despite the fact that Henry VIII's queen was her niece, Elizabeth of York, the dowager duchess of Burgundy continued to intrigue against the king who had defeated and killed her brother. With her support, a young man named Perkin Warbeck had been acknowledged as one of the missing "princes in the Tower," Richard of York. In 1495, as "Richard IV," Warbeck was welcomed to the court of James IV.

The Scots king, evidently believing Warbeck's claims, had arranged for the marriage of the young "king" of England to a kinswoman, Lady Katherine Gordon. In response, Henry VII prepared for war--but he also attempted to gain the support of the Scots king in August 1556 by proposing a marriage with his daughter Margaret. The Scots king "replied," in Hester Chapman's words, "by an attempted invasion."

Margaret Tudor, kneeling,
in her coronation robes,
probably by Gerard Horenbout

But by 1497 James had agreed to withdraw his support from Warbeck, and he negotiated a seventeen-year truce guaranteeing peace with the English king. The marriage of the nine-year-old Margaret and the twenty-five-year-old James was to seal the treaty, but the king's plans were blocked by two formidable opponents: his wife and his mother. 

"The Queen and my mother are very much against the marriage," Henry indicated to the Spanish ambassador at his court, continuing, "They say if the marriage were concluded we should be obliged to send the princess directly to Scotland, in which case they fear the king of Scotland would not wait, but injure her and endanger her health." Margaret Beaufort, whose early pregnancy was widely believed to have permanently affected her ability to have children, prevailed in this dispute, and her granddaughter's marriage was delayed.

The English king was not without some reservations of his own about the alliance. "Supposing, which God forbid, that all my male progeny were to become extinct and the kingdom devolve by law upon Margaret's heirs," he is reported to have reflected at the time of her betrothal. In such an eventuality, "Will England be damaged thereby or rather benefited?" 

But with two sons, the likelihood that Margaret would succeed to the throne as queen of England, while theoretically possible, was not great. And, as the king reasoned, if Margaret were to become queen, England would not suffer: "since it ever happens that the less becomes subservient to the greater, the accession will be that of Scotland to England."

The treaty that negotiated the marriage of King James IV and Princess Margaret was signed on 24 January 1502. The Tudor princess left for her new home in July of 1503, eighteen months later. Before she left England, her brother Arthur died, bringing her that much closer to the throne. 

Since her mother's death quickly followed, preparations for the young queen's departure were made by her grandmother, Margaret Beaufort. The new Scots queen remained with her grandmother at Collyweston for three weeks before setting off on her journey to Edinburgh on 8 July. On 30 July she crossed the border at Berwick. Margaret met her new husband for the first time on 3 August, five days before their marriage was celebrated.

When the new queen of Scotland arrived at Stirling, her dower castle, she found a nursery there already occupied by her husband's seven illegitimate children, including a daughter her own age. Since she did not immediately produce an heir for her husband, eighteen months after their marriage her husband legitimized his eldest son, James Stewart, earl of Moray. But on 21 February 1507, just three months after her seventeenth birthday, Margaret Tudor gave birth to a son.

Illustration of Margaret Tudor
and her husband, James of Scotland

He was baptized two days later and proclaimed "Prince of Scotland and the Isles and Duke of Rothesay," titles that, as Margaret's biographer Maria Perry notes, "clearly distinguished the little Prince of the blood" from that other James, the king's illegitimate son.

But the prince died a year later, on 27 February 1508; a daughter, born on the following 15 July, lived only a few hours. Margaret was pregnant again in 1509 when her father Henry VII died.

When Henry VIII succeeded his father as king of England, Henry VII's earlier questions about Margaret's status as heir to the English throne became more than hypothetical. For the moment, the queen of Scotland was the heir presumptive of the king of England; the child she was carrying might inherit the crowns of both Scotland and England. 

When Margaret gave birth to a son, Arthur, in October 1509, the prince's future thus seemed great. But this child, too, lived only a few brief months; by July of 1510, he was dead. Convinced that the deaths of his first three legitimate children were a judgment by God, James at first planned a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and then considered a crusade. 

Ultimately he settled on a visit to a shrine in Scotland instead. By 1511 Margaret was pregnant again; on 11 April 1512 the birth of another son, christened James, seemed to signal to the Scots king that God's favor had been restored. By May Margaret was pregnant again, for the fifth time, and in June Henry's English armies were routed in Spain.

Thus when his brother-in-law sent an embassy to Scotland, James felt the time was right to press the English king for a legacy due Margaret. In the midst of preparations for his planned invasion of France, Henry hoped to secure peace in the north; he would send Margaret's inheritance "on condition" that James "keep his oath . . . that none of us shall invade the other." 

Henry's ambassador indicated to Margaret that it was her responsibility "to preserve a good understanding between the two crowns." Margaret "promised to do her best for peace," but she also pressed for her legacy, which included jewels that had been left to her by her brother Arthur and a small bequest from her grandmother Margaret Beaufort.

Events overtook James IV of Scotland. In November Margaret's fifth pregnancy ended in the premature birth of a daughter who died within hours. James renewed his plan for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; to secure his safe passage through France, he agreed to send aid to Louis XII; the result was his excommunication. As her husband moved closer to declaring war on her brother, Margaret made one last appeal to Henry, sending him and Queen Catherine gifts and letter in which she addressed the king as "Right excellent, right high and mighty prince, our dearest and best beloved brother." 

"We cannot think that of your mind, or by your command, we are so fremdly [strangely] dealt with," she wrote, indicating that she was "ashamed" over the dispute about her legacy. She continued, "would God had never word been thereof," indicating that the matter was "not worth such estimation as in your diverse letters of the same." She concluded that, as queen of Scotland, "we lack nothing; our husband is ever the longer the better to us, as knows God."

When Anne of Brittany, queen of France, appealed to James IV of Scotland for his support of her husband against England, her appeal was couched in the terms of medieval romance. She sent the Scots king tokens and a request that he do battle on her behalf: "For my sake . . . march forth, were it only but three feet, on to English ground."

And if this failed to persuade him, she sent a more practical second letter enclosing money for his expenses. Margaret attempted to dissuade her husband with tears, accusations of infidelity, and anger: "What a folly, what a blindness . . . to make this war yours! Keep your promise to England, and enjoy peace at home. . . . Should [the French queen's] letters prove more powerful than the cries of your little son?"

Her husband's decision to go to war transformed Margaret from queen consort to queen regent; as he prepared to leave Scotland, James arranged for a regency government to be headed by his wife. The queen, for her part, continued to attempt to dissuade her husband from going to war against her brother, reminding him that the English were "a mighty people" and warning him that her dreams had given her omens of his failure. 

She also suggested a way out of the confrontation. She believed that Catherine of Aragon would accompany the English army, and Margaret proposed a meeting with the English queen: "I hear the queen my sister will be with the army in her husband's absence; if we shall meet, who knows what God, by our means, may bring to pass?" But there was to be no avoidance of conflict for James IV and Henry VIII. Catherine did not come north with her English army, and Margaret did not travel with her husband and his.

The Scots king crossed into England on 22 August. On 9 September he was dead, defeated at the battle of Flodden by the English troops his sister-in-law, Catherine of Aragon, had sent north. His seventeen-month-old son became James V of Scotland. Pregnant again, Margaret acted decisively upon receiving the news of her husband's death. According to Perry, the regent "moved with speed and resolution," securing her son in the safety of Stirling castle and ensuring his coronation twelve days later, on 21 September. 

She seized the treasury, then summoned a council that approved her husband's will designating her as regent, thereby becoming de facto ruler of Scotland. The new king and his mother were "styled" as "James, by God's Grace, King of the Scots and Margaret, Queen of Scotland and testamentary tutrix of the same."

In an interesting analysis of the situation in Scotland in the aftermath of Flodden, Perry writes that the "manhood of a nation had been wiped out." Margaret had become, in Perry's terms, "queen of a country full of despairing widows and fatherless young men." In the tide of violence that erupted, the queen regent acted to defend the country for which she was now responsible. A proclamation designed to prevent the violation of property and of women (a telling combination) was issued on 26 September, followed quickly by a second in the new king's name. 

Recognizing that the "wives and widows" of his father's supporters were "desolate," and acknowledging "their daughters . . . being heirs to them," it made rape and robbery of these women treasonable offences. Since many of these "desolate" women had no legal status, Margaret's council took up their cases, and to replace those council members lost at Flodden, Margaret suggested her own candidates for bishop to the pope. 

She also attempted to repair the break with England. A week after her son's coronation she wrote to her brother Henry asking him not to invade Scotland, and a month later sent a letter to her sister-in-law appealing for her consideration "in the blow" that had "fallen" upon her.

Margaret's position was a difficult one. She had to negotiate between those who desired revenge for Flodden and those who wanted peace. The situation was further complicated by the succession; the heir presumptive to the throne was now John Stuart, duke of Albany, who was in France at the court of Louis XII. 

Margaret's council wanted Albany recalled, though the French king, who said that he wanted to do "everything befitting an ally," cautiously wrote to know the regent's wishes. Henry VIII, meanwhile, saw himself as his nephew's "natural guardian" and wanted the boy sent to England; his ambassador informed Margaret that her son should be "ordered and ruled by the King's Grace."

It seems inevitable that the widowed and pregnant queen would find the question of her remarriage under discussion by both Louis and Henry. Anne of Brittany was ill, and the French king considered marrying Margaret Tudor himself even before his second queen died. By March, when Margaret was eight months pregnant, the English ambassador was writing to Henry that "by sundry reports that are made unto me, I am informed that if the French king be disposed to marry her upon knowledge thereof had, he shall have her at his pleasure." 

Henry, on the other hand, suggested a suitable marriage for his widowed sister might be to the Emperor Maximilian, whose heir Charles was Catherine of Aragon's nephew; the idea that Margaret would "make a good match" for the emperor was also noted in Venice. Both prospective husbands made offers for her hand in 1514, after the birth on 12 April of her second son, Alexander.

Margaret's situation seemed more stable immediately afterward, and the Scots nobility signalled its support of her and her regency: "Madame, . . . we are content to stand in one mind and will to concur with all the lords of the realm to the pleasure of our master the King's grace, your grace and for the common weal." 

But when her brother once again pressed her to send her sons to England--reminding her that, as he still had no children, James V was his heir--dissension was renewed. On 14 August she secretly married Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus. Since the Douglas family was an enormously influential one, her alliance with Angus had serious political implications, suggested by the immediate reaction of the council:

We have shown heretofore our willingness to honour the Queen contrary to the ancient law and custom of this kingdom. . . . We suffered and obeyed her authority the whiles she herself kept her right by keeping her widowhood. Now she has quit it by marrying, why should we not choose another to succeed in the place she has voluntarily left?

Margaret's decision to remarry illustrates one of the many dilemmas of women and rule. A mother's desire to protect her minor son's interests could lead her to ally herself with a powerful man, but such alliances brought risks with them. 

Margaret Tudor was a foreigner in the country of her regency. Although her marriage to James IV had confirmed the intended "perpetual peace" between the neighboring realms, tensions between the countries had persisted; after James IV's death, fear of English domination was renewed, fed by Henry VIII's influence over his sister and his interest in the guardianship of his nephews. Margaret herself contributed to these fears; she seemed to regard herself, in Chapman's terms, "as her brother's Vicereine."

By marrying Angus, Margaret might have intended to neutralize both foreign influence--French and English--and her own foreignness. But the council insisted she had terminated her regency by marrying without its consent; for her part, Margaret argued that James IV's will had not limited her regency in any way. 

She then proceeded to name Angus as co-regent, a move that did not help her situation. In response the council insisted that, by law, a widow who remarried forfeited the guardianship of her children; the nobles wanted Albany recalled and named regent in Margaret's place. Margaret again insisted that she had been named regent by the terms of her husband's will, that this will had made no conditions on her regency, and that it had been confirmed by an act of Parliament.

In addition to her legal position, Margaret counted on support of the people, to whom she could appeal "as the widow of their adored King and the mother of his children." She determined on a more conciliatory course and arranged to meet with the council once more, even agreeing to recall Albany. 

Arriving in Edinburgh on 12 September, she was "wildly cheered" by the people, their evident support convincing several more influential lords to her side. But it was not enough. She would later write that her "adversaries" had continued "in their malice and proceeds in their parliament, usurping the king's authority," as if she and her supporters "were of no reputation, reputing us as rebels." She retreated once more to Stirling with her sons.

By November her situation had become so tenuous that she appealed to Henry VIII for help. "I beseech you that you would make haste with your army, both by sea and land," she wrote in her desperation, noting that she was, as well, "at great expenses . . . and my money is near wasted." Henry's support would "revenge" her enemies, who had already laid siege to the castle of St. Andrews and who threatened a siege against her as well, but Margaret was aware, as well, of the memory of Flodden:

There is some of the lords that dread that your army shall do them scathe, and that their lands shall be destroyed with the fury of the army: wherefore I would that you wrote to them that their lands nor goods shall not be hurt, and, if so be, that they shall be recompensed double and treble.

Her opponents--her "party adversary"--had recalled Albany, and Margaret wanted her brother to prevent Albany's arrival in Scotland. Meanwhile, she planned to "keep this castle" with her children, who were well. In a subtle way she reminded her brother that his own interests lay in defending her and her sons: "The king, my son, and his brother, prosper well, and are right lifelike children." 

She appealed to him by claiming that "all the welfare of me and my children lies in your hands." Fearing that her enemies would "counterfeit" her letters, Margaret closed by telling Henry that if she was compelled to write to him "for concord," the letter would be signed merely "Margaret R." and "no more." If she wrote on her own, she would sign herself "Your loving sister."

But Henry did not enter actively into the conflict in Scotland. He had his own political interests to pursue. As his older sister Margaret struggled in Scotland, he had concluded his war with France. A treaty of peace between the two countries was signed on 7 August 1514, and as part of the peace, Henry arranged for the marriage of his younger sister Mary to the just-widowed Louis XII. 

On 13 August a proxy marriage was celebrated, but the new "queen of France" had only left England in October; thus in November Henry was was not interested in disturbing his relationship with France by invading Scotland. Instead he suggested that Margaret flee with her children and take refuge with him in England.

The Scots queen responded that she would be "gladder" to follow her brother's advice than to be made "the greatest lady of the world," but that it was "impossible to be performed by any manner of fashion" she, her husband, or their supporters could devise. On the one hand she was surrounded by "watch and spies" and feared to "disclose" her counsel to anyone "but God," and on the other she had no money and feared that her "poverty" would force her to "consent to some of their [her enemies'] minds." 

Her letter shows that she had still not given up on the idea that her brother would come to her aid with an army; she could "defend" herself from her "enemies," she wrote, if she had "sufficient expenses to [until] the coming" of Henry's help. Her letter contains, as well, a touching--and carefully calculated--picture of her special plight as queen: "If I were such a woman that might go with bairn in mine arm, I trow I should not be long from you, whose presence I desire most of any man." 

But Margaret was not "such a woman"; she was a queen and, for the moment, regent of Scotland. Relatively quickly, however, her regency came to an end. In January 1515 Louis XII died, and his successor Francis was not so interested in keeping Albany in France. Henry attempted to persuade the new French king to preserve the peace and prevent Albany from leaving; Henry would renew his treaty with France if Francis "would promise not to send the Duke of Albany into Scotland." 

For his part, Francis wanted the treaty renewed without conditions, and he got what he wanted. On 2 April Albany began his trip back to Scotland; on 5 April the English king and the French king renewed their peace treaty.

Albany arrived in Scotland on 17 May 1515, and at first his relationship with the regent was cordial. But on 12 July parliament declared him regent of Scotland, and he was formally invested with the "sword and sceptre" that symbolized his rule. Since it was obvious even to his supporters that his own claim to the throne precluded him from being the best guardian for the young king and his brother, custody of the princes was to be given over to others, selected by the queen but from a slate of candidates forwarded by parliament.  

Even in her defeat, Margaret demonstrated her political skill. She retreated into Stirling castle with her children, her husband, and a few servants. An eyewitness described her defiance of the delegation of lords who came to take custody of her children:

And when she saw the lords within three yards of the gates, she bade them stand, and demanded the cause of their coming. . . . They told her they had come from the duke [Albany] and parliament to demand "deliverance of the king and his brother." Without hesitation, she defied them, and then she caused the portcullis be letten down, and made answer, saying that the castle was her own feoffment, given to her by the king her late husband . . . and that her said late husband had made her protectrix, and given her authority to have the keeping and government of her said children, wherefore she could in no wise deliver them to any person.

"It was," as Maria Perry describes it, "a superb coup de théâtre, calculated to impress the crowds thronging the castle approach." It was, as well, a superb political statement, for the portcullis itself was "a device forming part of the Beaufort arms," which were in turn part of the "royal arms of England." 

Despite her husband's plea for her to surrender her sons and despite her own physical state--she was pregnant again--Margaret would not compromise. She had taken the only action she could take. While she waited for relief from her brother, who failed to come to her aid, and from her husband, who came to her aid but failed, she planned her strategy. 

If she was besieged, she would appear on the battlements, where she would "set the young King upon the walls in the sight of all persons crowned, and the sceptre in his hand," aware that such a display would make it "manifestly known to every person that the war shall be made against the King's own person."

On 6 August, Albany arrived outside Stirling with 7,000 men and heavy artillery, and the queen lost her nerve. She abandoned her plan and surrendered. In another deliberately calculated gesture, however, she made her son, the king, hand over the castle to Albany. In a letter to her brother dated 20 August, she seemed to be pleased with the turn of events, writing that her relations with the new regent were peaceful: "Brother, I am determined that I and my said cousin [Albany] shall take one part, for I know it is most for my profit." 

Through her "diligence" she wrote that she hoped to "keep the peace betwixt the realms" and expressed her desire that her brother would do likewise. She indicated that her children were also well: "I have presence of my children at my pleasure, and enter to them whenever I will." On the same day she consented to Albany's regency, handing over to him "charge and keeping of the King and his brother."

But both her letter and her "consent" had been coerced. She preserved the truth of the situation in a document she entitled "A remembrance of an information by me, Margaret queen of Scots." There she wrote about the disobedience of the lords and their threats to her, indicating that after her husband's death they had tried to force her marriage with Albany. 

As for Albany himself, he had sent "tokens" to her "for marriage": "Whereupon I was driven by force either to steal away and leave my said children or to marry . . . , seeing the suspicion that the said duke was in, and the pretence that his father made before him to the crown of Scotland." Her "tender children" had been forced from her, and all of her supporters, except Angus, had deserted her. She concluded:

And for to say that ever I was agreeable, content, or pleased that the said duke of Albany should come into Scotland, or that ever he did justice, or meddled with justice, but only vexed and troubled me and my friends, it appeareth in the said supplication, which I am ready to justify, point by point.

Her brother again offered Margaret asylum in England, indicating that she would be well provided for; she would lack neither "stuff, household, nor money." She arranged for her escape, outlining the plan in a "credence" given to Henry's representative Lord Dacre and forwarded to her brother. She began by describing the conditions of her life:

First, the said queen sheweth that the duke of Albany hath compelled and constrained her to subscribe and write diverse letters contrary to her own mind, and against all right and conscience; and [he] keepeth her so straitly in Edinburgh that neither she can nor may see nor send to the king and prince her children, nor to other her friends, for her relief and comfort in her causes, and therefore from thence she can make none escape.

Albany had also "withheld" from her "all the profits and revenues of her land," so that she found herself "at extreme poverty." Driven by such circumstances, she wrote, she would attempt to escape Scotland. She would "feign herself to be sick" and leave Edinburgh, retiring to Linlithgow, "with the consent of the said duke," where she would "take her chamber," naturally enough since she was nearing the end of her pregnancy; she was, she wrote, within "six weeks of her lying down." 

On the "first or second night of her coming thither" she would "depart without any man or woman with her" except her husband and "four or five servants" who would "not be privy to any part of her purpose." If her first attempt failed, she would try again, making sure some diversion--some "ruffling"--distracted Albany and his men.

But her initial plan was successful. After staying in Linlithgow for forty-eight hours, she disappeared on 13 September, spending a night in a stronghold that belonged to the Douglas family. She made an attempt to get her sons from Stirling castle, but abandoned that effort and arrived in England, quickly moving toward the fortress of Harbottle. There, on 7 October, she gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Margaret. She wrote to Albany on 10 October announcing the child's birth, asserting once more her rightful place as her son's regent and demanding her restoration.

Margaret's premature labor and delivery had weakened her, and she remained so seriously ill that she was not informed of the death, on 18 December, of Alexander, the younger of her two sons; the news was kept from her until she recovered somewhat. In March she was composing an eight-page catalog of the wrongs she had suffered in Scotland, and the story of her plight elicited much sympathy and support not only in England but throughout the courts of Europe, excepting, of course, in France.

Finally, in April, Margaret was strong enough to leave the north for London; Angus, however, had decided to come to terms with Albany and left for Scotland. The queen was reunited on 3 May 1516 with her brother, whom she had not seen since he was twelve years old.

She spent the next year in England, alternately pleading with Henry for political and financial support and negotiating with Albany for her return to Scotland. Albany, in the meantime, had had his own troubles with the fractious Scots lords and decided to return to France. 

The lords agreed to recall their queen; on 18 May 1517, twelve months after her arrival in England, Margaret Tudor left for Scotland once more, believing that she would resume her position as regent. Instead, when she arrived in June she was denied access to her son and learned that the regency had been offered to James Hamilton, earl of Arran. The grandson of James II, Arran was, after Albany, next in line to the throne. 

She also discovered that her husband had deserted her. In a letter to her "dearest brother" she wrote that she was "sore troubled" by Angus "every day more and more." He had taken control of her property and of her rents so that, she wrote, "I get never a penny." He had also taken a mistress, though she did not tell her brother so directly, alluding instead to another "evil" that she would "cause a servant" to "show Your Grace." She raised the possibility of a divorce, softening the news with something of an apology for the marriage in the first place and suggesting that a remarriage, if it occurred, would come at Henry's advice:

I am so minded . . . , an [if] I may by law of God and to my honour, to part with him, for I wit well he loves me not, as he sheweth to me daily. Wherefore I beseech Your Grace, when it comes to that point, as I trust it shall, to be a kind prince and brother to me, for I shall never marry but where you will bid me, nor never to part from Your Grace, for I will never with my will abide into Scotland.

Henry had not yet embarked upon his own efforts for a divorce, though by then he had begun his relationship with Elizabeth Blount. Nevertheless, he was offended by Margaret's suggestion that she would seek a divorce and occupied with his own personal and political affairs. 

Abandoned by her husband and his supporters, her appeals to her brother ignored, Margaret also found that the Scots lords had no intention of honoring the conditions they had agreed upon for her return; "the cause that I came hither most for was for the king my son's sake," she wrote to her brother, "and I am holden from him like a stranger, and not like his mother, which doth me great displeasure in my heart, considering I have no other comfort here but him." Arran, meanwhile, found himself outmaneuvered by Angus and his supporters and in a reversal took up the queen's cause. Together they decided to negotiate with Albany for his return to Scotland.

Margaret's decision to accept Arran's support and to recall Albany provoked warnings and admonitions from England, but no direct aid. For the first time, as Perry notes, Margaret seemed to see that her future lay in Scotland rather than in England: "I must cause me to please this realm, when I have my life here." 

Later, in explaining her decision, she was to describe her new determination: "I would be contented with" what "was for the good of the king my son's person," she wrote. That is, she had decided "that I should be a good Scotswoman." Thus the political game in Scotland continued. Albany returned from France on 18 November 1521. He seized power immediately, and Angus and his supporters were exiled. Albany and Margaret together resumed control of the government, the duke as regent and Margaret as queen mother. 

In responding to a series of fifteen charges leveled against her in England, Margaret replied in a long letter, written in 1522, to what she characterized as the "right sharp" articles. She began by asserting that, as she had gotten "no remedy" from her brother, she had determined to act for herself; "considering I am mother to the king of this realm," she wrote, she had acted for her son's honor and her own. 

She justified her break with Angus as well, who, "if he had desired my company or my love" would have acted "more kindly" toward her. She had sought Henry's assistance again and again, but it had not been forthcoming; although her brother had supported her "in general words," it "must be the deed" that would help. She rejected a series of rumors about her personal behavior, including one that she had begun a sexual relationship with Albany. She ended with a keen insight into the problems she had caused herself:

I took my lord of Angus against all Scotland's will and did him the honour that I could, where-through I lost the keeping of my sons, my house of Stirling, my rule of the realm which I had by right, that might not have been taken from me, and all this for his sake. . . .

[S]ince I took him at mine own pleasure, I will not be boasted [threatened] to take him now.

But relations between England and Scotland remained strained, and war threatened. Margaret worked ceaselessly to maintain the peace, her efforts earning her Henry's good graces once more. Henry suggested a marriage between his daughter, Princess Mary, and Margaret's son, James V, but the Scots parliament rejected his offer.

In 1523 Henry sent additional troops north and in June commenced a series of border raids. Albany, meanwhile, had been back in France for reinforcements and with those French troops entered England. He was forced to withdraw, and on 31 May 1524 he left Scotland for France, never to return.

After Albany's departure, Margaret wrote to her brother that her twelve-year-old son should "have his proper position of authority and throw off the governance usurped by Albany." Fearful of her intentions and of continued French influence in Scotland, Henry responded by advising Margaret to be reconciled with Angus, who had shown up at the English court and convinced the English king that he would support the English cause in Scotland. 

With Arran's support, she wrote to Henry rejecting his proposal that Angus should return to Scotland and the regency, asking him to "remember well" her many letters to him and "to make not long delay in helping of the king my son to put him to freedom and out of danger of his enemies, for now is the time." She minimized her political power and authority, reminding him, "I am but a woman and may do little." He, by contrast, could affect the situation for better or worse. If he ignored Margaret's advice--"do Your Grace the contrary"--it would affect James V; "the king my son will be the longer from his liberty and his person in danger."

But, as if to contradict her statement that as a woman she could do little, she told Henry that her son "will be ruled by me" and that she had "labored and broken many lords from the ways of the duke of Albany to his [her son's] way that he may be put out of danger and that he and his lords may rule this realm" with, of course, "the help and assistance" of Henry, in whom was "all" her "trust." 

She rejected any notion that Angus would "help" her brother or the cause for peace, attacking as well the idea that Henry should rely on the advice of others: "methinks, dearest brother the king, methinks that he [Angus] nor no other should be heard in that matter so well as I your sister, nor that you may get so much honor to do for their request as for me."

In August James V opened parliament flanked by his mother and the earl of Arran. The boy moved "to deprive the duke of Albany of his government," and after some opposition from Albany's supporters, the lords agreed. But by November 1526 Angus was in Scotland. 

As the parliament met, he seized control of Edinburgh. Margaret and the king were in Holyroodhouse, which the queen defended despite protests that she not oppose with force her "lawful husband." Angus retreated, and the parliament confirmed Margaret's regency.

Louise of Savoy, regent of France for her son Francis, responded to the situation immediately by offering the queen a pension and a renewal of an alliance with France. Margaret rejected the offer, however, and agreed at last to accept a reconciliation with Angus. But her agreement to be reconciled with her husband did not mean she intended to accept him as her husband.

She continued in her suit for a divorce, and she took a lover, Henry Stewart. As a result, her uneasy relationship with Angus broke down. He had custody of the king, and when he faced Margaret's army on the field, he had her son by his side so that she could not attack. The lord of Arran and many of Margaret's supporters deserted her and her cause, joining Angus instead.

Angus controlled the king entirely; he dismissed James's tutor and replaced the young king's household officials with Douglas supporters. On 14 June 1526 he had the king declared of age, but that did not mean that James was to rule. 

Angus defeated all attempts made by Margaret and Stewart to rescue the king. Late in 1527 Margaret finally received her divorce from Angus, and in April 1528 she married Stewart. Her brother was offended by her "foolish and evil" behavior, and in a moment of supreme blindness, since by this time he himself was seeking a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he judged it "impossible for anyone to lead a more shameful life" than his sister. "Turn to God's word," he wrote to his sister, "and for the weal of your soul, avoid eternal damnation. . . . Relinquish the adulterous company of him that is not, nor may not be, of right, your husband."

Despite some initial objection to his mother's remarriage, the young king joined his mother and her new husband in May when he managed to escape from Angus. At last he entered into his majority and his role as king. In recognition of Henry Stewart's support and "for the great love I bear my dearest mother," he created Margaret's third husband the earl Methven. 

Together they besieged Angus and his supporters. Angus eventually surrendered in November 1528, leaving Scotland for England, taking with him his and Margaret Tudor's daughter, the thirteen-year-old Lady Margaret Douglas.

James V set about consolidating his power in Scotland, and for the next eight years, his mother and her husband were his most reliable advisers. Margaret mediated between her son and her brother, for Henry had continued to support Angus, who remained at the English court with Lady Margaret. When the alliance of mother and son was ultimately broken, as it was, the source of their disagreement was, ironically, James's marriage plans. 

The king, then twenty-five years old, wanted to marry his already-married mistress Lady Margaret Douglas of Lochleven, the mother of his son James Stewart. When he discovered that his mother had been in correspondence with her brother about his intentions, he sent her away from court. 

English ambassadors in Scotland reported to Henry VIII that Margaret was "weary of Scotland and fully determined to come into England." She had earned her son's "high displeasure" for having "intermeddled" in his affairs; specifically, she had tried to arrange a meeting between her son and her brother. James had accused his mother of receiving bribes "to betray him" from the English king.

Mother and son were reconciled, however, and the king abandoned his plan to marry his mistress. He arranged for a truce with England and even agreed to meet with his uncle; instead, when he left Scotland he went to France, where he planned to marry Marie of Bourbon, daughter of the duke of Vendôme. Once at the French court, however, he changed his mind, preferring the French king's fourteen-year-old daughter, Madeleine. They were married on New Year's Day 1537 and returned Scotland in May. By July Madeleine was dead.

Margaret, meanwhile, had resumed her role as regent of Scotland while her son was in France. She had also decided to divorce her third husband, Henry Stewart, but when her son returned to Scotland, he put an end to her suit. Pleading poverty and ill-treatment, Margaret turned once more to her brother; she would return to England. 

Then, within months of the death of his first queen, James married another French wife, Marie of Guise. After her arrival in Scotland, the new queen worked to reconcile her husband and his mother. 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 died at Methven Castle as the year ended, on 18 October 1541. She was buried at the Carthusian Priory of St John in Perth. Her tomb was destroyed in 1559 when the priory was sacked by Calvinists in 1559.  A search for the site of her grave (also the site of the assassinated James I's burial) is now being made.

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