The Forgotten Queen (31 page)

Though I utilized all of the research as was at my disposal at the time, this, as with all of my works to date, is a dramatic interpretation meant to entertain. It is not intended to be consulted for scholarship. For a deeper study of the historical, military, and political events surrounding Margaret Tudor’s life, please look to the “Further Reading” section I have provided as a starting point.

Robert Barton did bring two “Moorish lasses” to the court of James IV in the early part of the first decade of the sixteenth century. It is true that Margaret Tudor enjoyed choosing gowns to accentuate the beauty of “Black Ellen.” The fates of the dark ladies, whose origins were likely in Guinea, remain unknown. They faded off the records of the Scottish treasurer in the 1520s.

Robert Barton remained an integral member of the government of James V till his death in 1540.

Margaret Tudor did claim to have had dreams prophesying the death of James IV. She spent her last years in relative peace with Harry Stewart and was active at the court of James V at the indulgence of her very patient daughter-in-law. She proved a great comfort to James V and Marie de Guise during the mourning of their two infant princes. Margaret died at Methven Castle in 1541 of a stroke, missing the birth of the princess who would become the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, a woman whose life would parallel her grandmother’s in many ways.

Margaret left her possessions to her daughter, the neglected Margaret Douglas, but her wishes were never carried through and her humble estate reverted to the Crown. Her last words were an appeal to be remembered to the Earl of Angus, whom she believed she had wronged. Harry Stewart went on to marry his Janet, and the Earl of Angus wed Margaret Maxwell. Margaret Douglas married the Earl of Lennox and remained involved in court intrigue for the whole of her life. Her imprisonment in the Tower of London in 1536, where her first love, Lord Thomas Howard, ultimately perished, would not be her last.

James V died in 1542, a year after his mother. He remained haunted by the execution of Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, for the rest of his days.

Despite a turbulent life that some have regarded as an embarrassing sequence of bad judgments, Margaret Tudor had the last laugh, albeit posthumously, when the union between her grandchildren fulfilled her father’s long-ago prophecy. Her grandson by Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry, Lord Darnley, son of her daughter, Margaret Douglas, became not only James VI of Scotland but also James I of England when he inherited the throne from his cousin Elizabeth I.

England and Scotland became one kingdom at last.

Chapman, Hester W.
The Thistle and the Rose: The Sisters of Henry VIII.
New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971.

 

Dawson, Jane E.
Scotland Re-formed, 1488–1587.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.

 

Harvey, Nancy Lenz.
The Rose and the Thorn: The Lives of Mary & Margaret Tudor.
New York: Macmillan, 1975.

 

Mackie, R. L. King James IV of Scotland: A Brief Survey of His Life and Times. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.

 

Moffat, Alistair.
The Reivers: The Story of the Border Reivers.
Edinburgh: Birlin, 2008.

 

Perry, Maria.
The Sisters of Henry VIII.
Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2000.

 

Thomas, Andrea.
Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland, 1528–1542.
Edinburgh: John Donald, 2005.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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