[BITList] Fwd: Queen of Scots

[John Feltham]

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Margaret  [Margaret of Denmark]  (1456/7?-1486), queen of Scots, consort of James III, was the only daughter of Christian I of Denmark-Norway (1448-1481) and Dorothea of Brandenburg. That Maundy alms were given to seventeen people at Easter 1474 probably indicates that Margaret was then aged seventeen and was born in 1456 or 1457. Almost from birth she played a key role in Scoto-Danish diplomatic schemes, which continued intermittently from late 1458 until the treaty of Copenhagen of 8 September 1468. Under this treaty between Scotland and Denmark-Norway, Margaret was to marry James III, king of Scots. It also brought to an end, as part of Margaret's dowry, Scottish payments of the Norway 'annual', the 100 merks that had been due each year since 1266 for the Western Isles, a sum which the Scots had long neglected to pay. The most significant part of the treaty resulted from King Christian's financial difficulties: as he could not afford the bride's dowry of 60,000 Rhenish florins, he pledged first Orkney (1468) and then Shetland (May 1469) to Scotland for the entire sum owed. Christian had every intention of redeeming his pledge and the islands, but subsequent political events made this impossible.

As soon as Margaret reached the marriageable age of twelve, she was brought to Scotland and married to James III at Holyrood Abbey on 13 July 1469. In the summer of 1470 the queen accompanied her husband on a northern progress, spending a full month in Inverness. Earlier that year the king had granted her the barony of Kilmarnock for life, specifically to pay for her gowns and headgear. In 1478 she was confirmed in the dowry promised her under the treaty of Copenhagen, namely a third of the property and revenues of the crown. This included the lordships of Galloway, Ettrick Forest, Strathearn, Strath Gartney, and Linlithgowshire, the castles of Threave, Stirling, Doune, and Methven, Linlithgow Palace, and much else. She spent a good deal of time at Stirling, though her eldest son, the future James IV, was born at Holyrood on 17 March 1473. She later gave birth to two more sons: James Stewart, duke of Ross, early in 1476, and John, earl of Mar, before 12 July 1480.

Margaret played an important, if rather enigmatic, political role. A short biography of the queen, written within a few years of her death by the Bolognese Giovanni Sabadino, credits her with more ability than her husband in governing the realm, claims that she and his brother (clearly Alexander Stewart, duke of Albany, is intended) imprisoned him for the good of the kingdom, and comments that James III was unwilling ever to see her during the last three years of her life. These assertions, though undoubtedly exaggerated in transmission, have some substance. Following the Lauder crisis of 1482, when James III was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, Albany visited the queen at Stirling; they discussed the education of the heir to the throne, and Albany later played a part in releasing King James from captivity. Collusion between Albany and Margaret would certainly explain the king's subsequent mistrust of his wife, and there is no firm evidence that the two met again after 1482. Margaret of Denmark died at Stirling Castle on 14 July 1486 and was buried in Cambuskenneth Abbey later that month; rebel propaganda which spread to Denmark in 1488 alleged that she had been murdered, possibly poisoned by the king's familiar John Ramsay. This was clearly untrue; but James III's abortive efforts in 1487 to secure his wife's canonization may have been inspired partly by growing rumours of foul play.

Norman Macdougall 

Sources  G. Burnett and others, eds., The exchequer rolls of Scotland, 7-9 (1884-6) + T. Dickson, ed., Compota thesaurariorum regum Scotorum / Accounts of the lord high treasurer of Scotland, 1 (1877) + S. B. Chandler, 'An Italian life of Margaret, queen of James III', SHR, 32 (1953), 52-7 + B. E. Crawford, 'Scotland's foreign relations: Scandinavia', Scottish society in the fifteenth century, ed. J. M. Brown (1977), 85-100 + BM, MS 17 Dxx, fols. 299-308r + APS, 1424-1567 + T. Riis, Should auld acquaintance be forgot ... Scottish-Danish relations, c.1450-1707, 1 (1988), chap. 9 + N. Macdougall, James III: a political study (1982) + CEPR letters, vol. 14 + TKUA, Skotland, Danske Rigsarkiv, Copenhagen, A1, 1 + N. Macdougall, James IV (1989) + J. Norton-Smith, ed., James I of Scotland: the king's quair (1971), xxxiii
Likenesses  H. van der Goes, altarpiece, 1478, Royal Collection [see illus.] · S. Armorial, double portrait, 1591 (with James III), NL Scot. · watercolour (after H. van der Goes), Scot. NPG




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