The Marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland

Image Credit: the Ruins of the Holyrood Abbey Church 

(CC BY-SA 3.0 license)

On August 8, 1503, Margaret Tudor, Henry VII's eldest child, and King James IV of Scotland were married in Holyrood Abbey's church. History Today describes the preparations and the wedding:

Margaret’s train on the journey north by York, Durham, Newcastle and Berwick was headed by the Earl of Surrey, with his Countess as the princess’s chaperone. John Young, Somerset Herald, was sent along to make an official record. The ladies rode on palfreys or were drawn on litters, escorted by gentlemen, squires and pages, with trumpeters, drummers and minstrels. The party crossed the border into Scotland on August 1st, 1503, to be greeted by the Archbishop of Glasgow and a thousand Scottish lords and gentlemen ‘in rich jewels and massy chains’. At Dalkeith Castle on August 3rd, King James himself, in a crimson velvet jacket, rode in with a train of horsemen. Margaret curtsied deeply and he bowed low and they kissed in greeting. They talked together privately and sat together at supper and afterwards he played to her on the clavichord and the lute. Two nights later she played for him.

On Monday August 7th, they made a state entry into Edinburgh, both of them in cloth of gold trimmed with black velvet or black fur. To tremendous cheers and the clangour of bells they rode in on one horse, with Margaret riding pillion behind the King, escorted by two hundred knights and pausing to witness numerous pageants. The union of the thistle and the rose was celebrated next morning in the chapel of Holyrood-house. Margaret wore a gown trimmed in crimson and the Countess of Surrey bore her train, while James was magnificent in white damask with crimson satin sleeves. After the marriage ceremony conducted by the archbishops of Glasgow and York there was a nuptial mass and a short coronation ritual, with the King’s arm round his new queen’s waist much of the time. There followed a splendid feast of fifty or sixty dishes including roast crane and roast swan, and then dancing and supper until finally at last ‘the King had the Queen apart and they went together’. Edinburgh blazed with bonfires that night.

More about Margaret Tudor, who would bear James IV six children and serve as Regent for their only surviving child named James (the second son born given that name), after the king was killed at the battle of Flodden Field in 1513, here.

Holyrood Abbey has a fascinating history. It was an abbey of Augustinian Canons founded by King David I in the twelfth century. During the Scottish Reformation, a mob destroyed the altars and plundered the church and the abbey was suppressed. The abbey was restored for the coronation of Charles I in Scotland, rebuilt further during the reign of Charles II, and as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains, it was truly a royal abbey and church and is much associated with Mary, Queen of Scots:

From the middle of the fifteenth century the abbey was the usual residence of the Scottish kings, and James V spent considerable sums on its repair and enlargement. In 1547 the conventual buildings, as well as the choir, lady chapel, and transepts of the church were destroyed by the commissioners of the English Protector Somerset, and twenty years later Knox's"rascal multitude" sacked the interior of the church. Queen Mary's second and third marriages took place at Holyrood, as well as other tragic events of her reign. From the Reformation to the Restoration little was done to Holyrood, but about 1670 the adjoining palace was practically rebuilt by Charles II. His Catholic successor, James II, ordered the nave of the church to be restored for Catholic worship, and as a chapel for the Knights of the Thistle; but he had to abandon his kingdom a year later. The nave roof was vaulted in stone in 1758, but fell in shortly afterwards, and all that remains of the once famous abbey church is now the ruined and roofless nave, of the purest Early English architecture, with some remains of the earlier Norman work.

Felix Mendelssohn was inspired by his visit to Holyrood Abbey's ruins to compose his third symphony, The Scottish Symphony. This website transcribes his impressions of the ruins:

It is clear from Mendelssohn’s letters even before their tour that he intended to write a symphony based on his Scottish experiences and the opening of the work came to him on the evening of 31st July 1829 when "In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved; a little room is shown there with a winding staircase leading up to the door; up this way they came and found Rizzio in that little room, pulled him out, and three rooms off there is a dark corner, where they murdered him. The chapel close to it is now roofless; grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything around is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony."

When I listen to the symphony thinking of Mary, Queen of Scots' life and adventures, joys and sorrows, controversies and sad end, it creates the most dramatic images in my mind. The same would apply to Margaret Tudor, married, widowed, remarried, etc!

Erasmus and More Meet Prince Henry

From Tea at Trianon comes this link to a painting by Frank Cadogan Cowper:

The painting shows the interior of the medieval palace of Greenwich: a man in black kneels before three small children in gorgeous apparel. Behind him and to the right, a tall manstands in profile, leaning on a stick. The story is a charming one, and it is true. Erasmus of Rotterdam was the most famous scholar of his day. In 1499 he was visiting England. He was in Greenwich one day with his young friend Thomas More, who made him an intriguing invitation.

"I prithee, bear me company to a certain great house nigh to here. There thou shalt find friends, who have a great desire to see thee." - More.

The house turned out to be the royal palace, and the 'friends' were the royal children. One of them was the future Henry VIII, who was eight years of age at the time. The infant prince promptly demanded that the great scholar should write them a poem - which he did.

Cowper was a pre-Raphaelite painter who specialized in historical scenes.

Tomorrow, when I talk about the Catholic Church in England before the Reformation on my Radio Maria program on "The English Reformation Today", I will be discussing the reforming efforts of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, the latter of whom invited Erasmus to come to England during a subsequent visit to teach Greek at Cambridge. The meeting depicted above took place during Erasmus' first visit:

Erasmus visited England for the first time in the summer of 1499. He came in the company of young William Blount, lord Mountjoy, who had been one of his pupils in Paris. He seems to have resided, for a while, in London with Sir William Say, his pupil’s father-in-law; then, at a country-house belonging to lord Mountjoy at Greenwich. He spent about two months at Oxford in the college of St. Mary, an establishment for students of the Augustinian order presided over by prior Richard Charnock. He was back in London in the beginning of December; and, after a round-about journey by Dover, Calais and Tournehem, he arrived in Paris sometime about the end of January, 1500. His visit had been short, lasting about six months, just long enough to make him acquainted with the most prominent scholars in England; and his correspondence enables us to judge of the progress which the classical renascence had made there.

In a letter to Robert Fisher, “the kyng’s solicitor at Rome,” he instances four scholars whom he cannot praise too highly—John Colet, William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre and Thomas More. These men had learning neither hackneyed nor trivial, but deep, accurate, ancient Latin and Greek.

"When I hear my Colet, I seem to be listening to Plato himself. In Grocyn, who does not marvel at such a perfect round of learning? What can be more acute, profound and delicate than the judgment of Linacre? What has nature ever created more gentle, more sweet, more happy than the genius of Thomas More? I need not go through the list. It is marvellous how general and abundant is the harvest of ancient learning in this country."

Author Michael Davies describes the relationship between Erasmus and St. John Fisher thus:

Erasmus admired the holiness of John Fisher's life, and there can have been few men that he respected more. In a letter to a priest in Rome in 1512 he wrote: "Unless I am sadly mistaken, he is the one man at this time who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning, and for greatness of soul." In 1516 Erasmus published his Novum lnstrumentum. This was the Greek text of the New Testament with Erasmus's own translation into Latin. This work was the cause of Fisher deciding to learn Greek at the age of forty-eight, and he had the good fortune to receive his first instruction from Erasmus himself; who stayed with the bishop in Rochester for ten days in the same year. Fisher then went on to learn Hebrew. The fact that he was able to gain a good working knowledge of these languages despite his time-consuming duties as bishop, chancellor, and counsellor to the king provides a striking indication of his tenacity of purpose.