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(Redirected from Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox) English noblewoman This article is about the 16th-century countess, Margaret Douglas. For the 15th-century Lady Margaret Douglas, see Margaret Douglas, Fair Maid of Galloway.

Lady Margaret Douglas
Countess of Lennox
Miniature of Lady Margaret Douglas by Nicholas Hilliard, 1575
Born	8 October 1515 Harbottle Castle, Northumberland, England
Died	7 March 1578(1578-03-07) (aged 62) London, England
Buried	Henry VII Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey
Spouse(s)	Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox (m. 1544; died 1571)
Issue more...	Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley Charles Stuart, 5th Earl of Lennox
Parents	Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus Margaret Tudor

Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (8 October 1515 – 7 March 1578), was the daughter of the Scottish queen dowager Margaret Tudor and her second husband Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, and thus the granddaughter of King Henry VII of England and the half-sister of King James V. She was the grandmother of King James VI and I.

In her youth she was high in the favour of her uncle, Henry VIII, but later incurred his anger for her unauthorised engagement to Lord Thomas Howard, who died imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1537. In 1544, she married Scottish nobleman Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox. Her son Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, married her niece Mary, Queen of Scots, and was the father of James VI and I.

Early life

Margaret was born at Harbottle Castle in Northumberland on 8 October 1515. Her mother had crossed the border from Scotland when her father was facing difficulties in Scotland. In October 1528, Angus was threatened by James V of Scotland and sent Margaret back over the River Tweed into England at Norham Castle. After a brief stay at Berwick Castle accompanied by her nurse or 'gentlewoman' Isobel Hoppar, Margaret joined the household of her godfather, Cardinal Wolsey. When Wolsey died in 1530, Lady Margaret was invited to the royal Palace of Beaulieu, where she resided in the household of Princess Mary. Because of her nearness to the English crown, Lady Margaret Douglas was brought up chiefly at the English court in close association with Mary, her first cousin, the future Queen Mary I, who remained her lifelong friend; even when her father fled to England in May 1529 and remained there until 1542, Margaret never entered her father's custody, remaining in royal custody instead. Margaret gave Princess Mary gifts on New Year's Day, in 1543 her gift was a satin gown of carnation silk in Venice fashion. At Christmastime at Greenwich Palace in 1530, 1531, and 1532, Henry VIII gave Margaret the generous sum of 10 marks (£6-13s–4d).

When Anne Boleyn's court was established in October 1533, Margaret was brought to court from the Palace of Beaulieu and appointed as a lady-in-waiting. There she met Anne Boleyn's uncle, Lord Thomas Howard (not to be confused with his brother Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk), and they began their courtship. Thomas was a younger son of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, by his second marriage to Agnes Tilney. By the end of 1535 Thomas and Margaret had fallen in love and become secretly engaged.

King Henry turned against Anne Boleyn in May 1536. When in early July 1536 he learned of Margaret's engagement to Thomas Howard (Anne's uncle), he was furious. Henry had declared his daughters Mary and Elizabeth bastards, leaving Margaret very high in the line of succession; for her to contract an unauthorised marriage was politically outrageous, especially with the son of a powerful nobleman and near kin of the disgraced queen. Both Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret were committed to the Tower of London. On 18 July 1536, Parliament, by an Act of Attainder, condemned Thomas to death for attempting to 'interrupt ympedyte and lett the seid Succession of the Crowne'. The Act also forbade the marriage of any member of the king's family without his permission. The death sentence was not carried out, and Lord Thomas languished in the Tower even though Lady Margaret was required to renounce their relationship by King Henry's Premier Thomas Cromwell. Howard remained in the Tower, where he caught an illness and died on 31 October 1537.

Margaret, as a member of the Royal Family was safe from execution. While in the Tower, Lady Margaret fell ill, and the King allowed her to be moved to Syon Abbey under the supervision of the abbess. There are many reports that her illness was because she was pregnant, and upon learning of it, the King ordered his niece to be confined in the Abbey. She was released from the Abbey on 29 October 1537. According to G. J. Meyer in his work The Tudors, King Henry VIII had interpreted the marriage between Lord Thomas Howard and Margaret Douglas to be an attempt by Lord Howard to "make himself the king of England." However, the many love letters between Margaret Douglas and Lord Thomas reveal a true love affair wrongfully ended by the paranoia of King Henry VIII.

Margaret was restored to favour and given a gilt cup made by the goldsmith Morgan Wolf as a New Year's Day gift for 1539. Margaret and the Duchess of Richmond were appointed to greet Henry VIII's bride, Anne of Cleves, at Greenwich Palace, join her household, and convey her to the king. This would have been a great honour, but instead Henry chose to meet Anne at Rochester.

In 1540, Margaret was again in disgrace with the king when she had an affair with Lord Thomas Howard's half-nephew Sir Charles Howard. He was the son of Thomas' elder half-brother Lord Edmund Howard, and a brother of Henry VIII's fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Catherine Howard gave Margaret a gold "pair of beads", a rosary, as a New Year's Day gift.

In 1543, Margaret was one of the few witnesses of King Henry's final marriage to Catherine Parr, Dowager Lady Latimer, at Hampton Court. Margaret became one of Queen Catherine's chief ladies. Catherine Parr and Margaret had known each other since they both had come to court in the 1520s.

Marriage and diplomacy

In 1544, Lady Margaret married a Scottish exile, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox (1516–1571), who later became regent of Scotland in 1570–1571. In total the couple had eight or nine children, four boys: Henry, Henry, Philip and Charles, and four unnamed daughters, though only two sons—Henry Stuart (1546–1567), born in 1546 at Temple Newsam; and Charles Stuart (1555–1576), who later married Elizabeth Cavendish in 1574—survived to manhood; one of their other siblings was called Philip, presumably after the Spanish king and husband of Margaret's cousin, Mary I. Elizabeth Cavendish, wife of Charles, Earl of Lennox, was the daughter of Sir William Cavendish and Bess of Hardwick.

In June 1548, during the war of the Rough Wooing, Margaret's father, the Earl of Angus, wrote to her with the news that her uncle, George Douglas, and others of the family had been captured at Dalkeith Palace. Her father hoped that she and her husband could arrange that they were well treated as prisoners. The Earl of Lennox forwarded the letter to the Duke of Somerset, writing that his father-in-law would have done better to ask others for help. Margaret wrote to her father from Wressle Castle in March 1549, complaining that he had avoided meeting her husband. She asked him to seek an honourable peace through the acknowledgement of her marriage, "what a memorial it should be to you!" In 1551, Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, visited London, and Margaret came south from Temple Newsam to visit her at Edward VI's court.

During the reign of Queen Mary I of England, Lady Margaret had rooms in Westminster Palace. In November 1553, the queen told the ambassador, Simon Renard, that Margaret was best suited to succeed her to the throne. Margaret was the chief mourner at Queen Mary's funeral in December 1558. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth I of England, Margaret moved to Yorkshire, where her home at Temple Newsam became a centre for Roman Catholic intrigue.

Margaret succeeded in marrying her elder son, Lord Darnley, to his first cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, thus uniting their claims to the English throne. Queen Elizabeth I disapproved of this marriage and had Lady Margaret sent to the Tower of London in 1566. After Darnley's murder in 1567, she was released. Margaret wrote to Mary demanding justice and revenge for her son's death. She denounced her daughter-in-law, but was eventually later reconciled with Mary. Her husband assumed the government of Scotland as regent, but was assassinated in 1571.

On 3 August, the governor of Scotland, Regent Morton wrote to her about the capture of Edinburgh Castle from the supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots. An English commander at the siege, William Drury, had obtained some of the jewels of Mary, Queen of Scots. Morton thought that Margaret was best placed to ask and influence Drury to send the jewels back to him in Scotland.

In 1574, she again aroused Queen Elizabeth's anger by marrying her younger son Charles to Elizabeth Cavendish, the stepdaughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. She was again sent to the Tower, unlike the Countess of Shrewsbury, but was pardoned after her son Charles' death in 1576.

Lady Margaret's diplomacy largely contributed to the future succession of her grandson, James VI of Scotland, to the English throne.

Death and legacy

After the death of her younger son, she helped care for his daughter, Lady Arbella. However, she did not outlive him by very long, and died at Hackney in March 1578. A few days before her death, she dined with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and this led to rumours that she had been poisoned, which were included in the book Leicester's Commonwealth. There is no historical evidence to substantiate this.

Although she died in debt, she was given a grand funeral in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of Queen Elizabeth I, with a hundred poor women in attendance. She was buried in the same grave as her son Charles in the south aisle of Henry VII's chapel in the Abbey. It has been said that her grandson erected the fine monument, but it was commissioned in October 1578 by her executor and former servant Thomas Fowler. Her recumbent effigy, made of alabaster, wears a French cap and ruff with a red fur-lined cloak, over a dress of blue and gold. On either side of the tomb chest are weepers of her four sons and four daughters.

Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester had eight tapestries at Kenilworth Castle in 1588 which had been bought from "Lady Lennox". The subjects included Josias, Demophon and Achilles, and the History of Noah. At his death in 1624, Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox had a bed in his lodgings at the gatehouse of Whitehall Palace that had belonged to Margaret Douglas, and she had "worked" or embroidered the curtains.

The Lennox Jewel was most likely made for Lady Lennox in the 1570s although the date and occasion of its commission is the subject of some controversy. In 1842, the jewel was bought by her descendant, Queen Victoria. The locket, considered "one of the most important early jewels in the Royal Collection", is on display in the Holyrood Palace.

Poetry

Margaret Douglas is known for her poetry. Many of her works are written to her lover, Lord Thomas Howard, and are preserved in the Devonshire MS. Her close friends, Mary Shelton and the Duchess of Richmond, were the main contributors, as well as Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Margaret Douglas

Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Angus

George Douglas, Master of Angus

Elizabeth Boyd

Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus

John Drummond, 1st Lord Drummond

Elizabeth Drummond

Elizabeth Lindsay

Margaret Douglas

Edmund Tudor, 1st Earl of Richmond

Edward IV of England

References

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"Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 4 January 2022.
State Papers Henry Eighth, vol. 4 part 4 (London, 1836), pp. 510, 518 Northumberland to Wolsey, 9 October 1529.
State Papers Henry Eighth, vol. 4 (1836), pp. 509-510, 539–40, 567: Letters & Papers Henry VIII, vol. 4 (London, 1875), no. 4709: Cameron, Jamie, James V (Tuckwell, 1998) pp. 36-7 & fn.24.
^ Marshall, Rosalind K. (2006). Douglas, Lady Margaret, countess of Lennox (1515–1578), noblewoman. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 36.
Maria Hayward, 'Dressed to Impress', Alice Hunt & Anna Whitelock, Tudor Queenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 91.
Nicolas, Nicholas Harris, Privy Purse Expences of Henry VIII, 1529–1532 (London, 1827), pp. 98, 183, 281. It may have been stakes for her to play card games; or for her to give as alms.
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 39.
Head, David M. (2008). Howard, Thomas, second duke of Norfolk (1443–1524), magnate and soldier. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Davies, Catherine (2008). Howard , Agnes, duchess of Norfolk (b. in or before 1477, d. 1545), noblewoman. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Richardson, Douglas (2004). Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 236–237.
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Maria Hayward, "Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII", Antiquaries Journal, 85 (2005), p. 144.
Nichols, John Gough, ed. (1846). The Chronicle of Calais in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. London: Camden Society. p. 170. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
Weir, Alison (1991). The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. p. 437.
Barbara Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford, 2002), p. 225.
Linda Porter. Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr, the Last Wife of Henry VIII, Macmillan, 2010. pg 207-8.
Kimberly Schutte. A Biography of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, 1515–1578, Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
Rosalind K. Marshall, Mary of Guise (London: Collins, 1977), p. 136.
The Tudor Times article about her mentions eight children, with her youngest two called Philip and Charles, who was later Earl of Lennox
Tudor Place states that the couple had nine children.
Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1898), 127–8, 172–3.
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 116–117.
Calendar of State Papers Spanish. Vol. 11. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. 1916.
Stevenson, Joseph, ed. (1865), "Appendix to Preface", Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth. 1559-1560, London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, pp. cxviii, cxix, cxxii
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret, Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 160–161, 200–211.
Allan James Crosby, Calendar State Papers Foreign Elizabeth, 1566–1568 (London, 1871), p. 198 no. 1053.
David Calderwood, History of the Kirk of Scotland, 3 (Edinburgh, 1842), pp. 139–140
John Duncan Mackie, "Queen Mary's Jewels", Scottish Historical Review, 18:70 (January 1921), p. 90
Patrick Fraser Tytler, History of Scotland, 7 (Edinburgh: William Nimmo, 1866), pp. 388–389
Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1571-1574, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1905), p. 604.
Rosalind K. Marshall, Queen Mary's Women: Female Relatives, Servants, Friends and Enemies of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2006), p. 122: Correspondence diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon, 6 (Paris, 1840), p. 319.
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 268.
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), p. 269.
Morgan, Ring (14 March 2018). "Spy chief, lover, poet, plotter - 'a woman lost in history'". The Scotsman. Retrieved 16 June 2020.
"Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox". Westminster Abbey. The Dean and Chapter of Westminster. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
Kent, Francis W.; Zika, Charles, eds. (2005). Rituals, Images, and Words: The Varieties of Cultural Expression In Late Medieval And Early Modern Europe. Brepols. p. 190. the tomb was inscribed, "This work was completed at the charge of Thomas Fowler, the executor of this lady, 24 Oct 1578"
HMC Report on the Manuscripts of Lord De L'Isle & Dudley at Penshurst Place, vol. 1 (London, 1925), pp. 260-1.
HMC 6th Report: W. G. C Cumming (London, 1877), p. 682.
Stedall, Robert (14 March 2014). "Lady Margaret Douglas and the Lennox Jewel". MaryQueenofScots.net.
"The Darnley Jewel or Lennox Jewel c. 1571-8". The Royal Collection. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
^ "The Art of Monarchy: The Darnley Jewel or Lennox Jewel, c. 1571-8". The Royal Collection. Retrieved 27 February 2017.
Morgan Ring, So High A Blood: The Life of Margaret Countess of Lennox (Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 233–5.
Deborah Clarke, 'The Darnley or Lennox Jewel', Anna Groundwater, Decoding the Jewels: Renaissance Jewellery in Scotland (Sidestone Press: NMS, 2024), p. 91.
Aschengreen Piacenti, Kirsten; Boardman, John (2008). Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen. London: The Royal Collection.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lennox". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 419.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Stewart". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 911.

External links

Margaret Douglas: The forgotten Tudor princess, BBC History Magazine, 18 November 2015 at 5:00 pm

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