Helen Carr
The history of princesses and queens has
become well-trodden ground in the women’s history genre, particularly
the Tudors. Linda Porter’s The
Thistle and the Rose, a life of
Margaret Tudor, queen consort to James IV and mother of James V,
provides a refreshing change in subject.
Margaret has had to share the stage with some
of the most famous names and voices of the 16th century: Henry VII and
his queen, Elizabeth of York; Henry VIII and his wives; and, of
course, her namesake, Margaret Beaufort, the formidable Tudor
matriarch who deftly helped place her son, the victor of Bosworth, on
the throne. Margaret Tudor, though less considered in popular history,
held equal if not greater sway in her contribution to history, as
Porter demonstrates in her meticulously detailed biography of the
English princess turned queen of Scotland.
The relationship between England and Scotland was fraught, with two centuries of war played out in the borderlands, a frontier zone peppered with garrisons. Margaret’s marriage to James IV of Scotland was intended to put an end to the fighting. Margaret’s importance to Anglo-Scottish peace has perhaps been overlooked by historians, but to her contemporaries, her marriage was a significant one. Aged 13 (young even by the standards of the time), Margaret travelled from Richmond to Scotland while still in mourning. The recent loss of her mother and her
review by Helen Carr
The Thistle and the Rose: The
Extraordinary Life of Margaret Tudor
brother
Arthur ‘shook the royal family to its core’. Henry VII and Elizabeth
had lived in fidelity, having built a marriage on love as well as
duty, a union following the Wars of the Roses. If Margaret had the
same expectations for her relationship with James IV she would be
disappointed.
James was young, attractive and a notorious
philanderer, with an established mistress. (His reputation later
prompted Walter Scott to suggest that en route to Flodden he seduced
the Lady Heron, resulting in her abandoning the defence of Ford
Castle.) Nonetheless, James doted on his young wife, gifting her an
intricately detailed Book of Hours which later included a miniature of
Margaret kneeling at an altar bearing the words ‘God us Defend’. As
queen, she did her duty and throughout her late teens she was almost
constantly pregnant. Though there was much adversity in her life, the
real tragedy was the loss of nearly all of her eight children, some in
utero, others in the cradle or childhood. The emotional impact of this
must have been unbearable, which perhaps – this being such an
important part of a woman’s life – could have been given more
attention in the narrative.
The couple did, however, have one healthy son,
the future James V. His birth precipitated the death of his father at
the Battle of Flodden in 1513, a scene colourfully described, from the
position of the armies to the detail of the cannons and the eventual
bloody fate of James IV. Noting the atrocity of the battle, Porter
writes: ‘The scene of slaughter was so appalling that, at its height,
the loss of life rivalled in intensity some of the actions of the
Somme.’
It was James IV’s wish that his wife would act
as regent in the event of his death, and she did so with grit. Her
main incentive was the security of her surviving son and, this being a
man’s world, her regency soon felt unsteady. Margaret made the
ill-fated decision to remarry. In a secret ceremony, she wed Archibald
Douglas, a member of one of Scotland’s oldest and most notorious
families. For Porter, this was not a lustful whim but a carefully
considered decision to protect the future of her children, ‘looking to
shore up her power base and build on it’. Her plan rendered her
regency obsolete and she was forced to flee to Henry VIII’s court, but
following a well-timed return to Scotland, she eventually saw to it
that her son was installed as James V.
Telling the lives of women is challenging,
owing to the scarcity of information available. Even for royal women
the evidence is scant. The archive itself is gendered. When the record
has little to offer, there is even greater need for a close reading of
the material that is available. In places, the book might have offered
a bolder, more creative perspective to avoid the story orbiting around
‘great men’.