# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Douglas, Margaret

​DOUGLAS, Lady MARGARET, Countess of Lennox (1515–1578), mother of Lord Darnley, was the daughter of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, and queen dowager of James IV, by her second marriage to Archibald, sixth earl of Angus [q. v.] She was born 8 Oct. 1515 at Harbottle Castle, Northumberland, then garrisoned by Lord Dacre, her mother being at the time in flight to England on account of the proscription of the Earl of Angus (Dacre and Magnus to Henry VIII, 18 Oct. 1515, in Cal. State Papers, Hen. VIII, vol. ii. pt. i. entry 1044; and in Ellis, Historical Letters, 2nd ser. i. 265–7). The next day she was christened by the name of Margaret, ‘with such provisions as couthe or mought be had in this baron and wyld country’ (ib.) In May she was brought by her mother to London and lodged in the palace of Greenwich, where the young Princess Mary, four months her junior, was also staying. In the following May she accompanied her mother to Scotland, but when her parents separated three years afterwards, Angus, recognising the importance of having a near heiress to both thrones under his own authority, took her ​from her mother and placed her in the stronghold of Tantallon. It is probable that she accompanied Angus in his exile into France in 1521. When Angus was driven from power in 1528, he sought refuge for his daughter in Norham Castle (Northumberland to Wolsey, 9 Oct. 1528, Cal. State Papers, Hen. VIII, vol. iv. pt. ii. entry 4830). Thence she was removed to the care of Thomas Strangeways at Berwick, Cardinal Wolsey, her godfather, undertaking to defray the expenses of her maintenance (Strangeways to Wolsey, 26 July 1529, ib. pt. iii. entry 5794). The fall of Wolsey shortly afterwards prevented the fulfilment of this promise, and Strangeways, after bringing her to London in 1531, wrote to Cromwell on 1 Aug. that if the king would finish the hospital of Jesus Christ at Branforth he would consider himself well paid ‘in bringing to London and long keeping’ of her, and ‘for all his services in the king's wars’ (ib. v. entry 365). Shortly after her arrival she was placed by Henry in the establishment at Beaulieu of the Princess Mary, with whom she formed an intimate friendship. This friendship does not seem to have suffered any diminution, even when the Lady Margaret, on the birth of Elizabeth, was made her first lady of honour, and succeeded in winning the favour of Anne Boleyn. Castillon, writing to Francis I of France 16 March 1534, reports that Henry has a niece whom he keeps with the queen, his wife, and treats like a queen's daughter, and that if any proposition were made to her he would make her dowry worth that of his daughter Mary. The ambassador adds, ‘The lady is beautiful and highly esteemed here’ (ib. vii. App. entry 13). By the act passed after the death of Anne Boleyn, declaring the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate, the Lady Margaret was necessarily advanced to the position of the lady of highest rank in England; and although her half-brother, James V of Scotland, was now the nearest heir to the English throne, her claims, from the fact that she had been born in England, and was under Henry's protection, were supposed completely to outrival his. Through the countenance of Anne Boleyn an attachment had sprung up between the Lady Margaret and Anne Boleyn's uncle, Lord Thomas Howard, and a private betrothal had taken place between them just before the fall of the queen. This being discovered, Lady Margaret was on 8 June sent to the Tower. As she there fell sick of intermittent fever, she was removed to less rigorous confinement in the abbey of Syon, near Isleworth, on the banks of the Thames, but did not receive her liberty till 29 Oct. 1537 (Holinshed, Chronicle, v. 673), two days before her lover died in the Tower. The birth of Prince Edward altered her position. Henry, conscious of the questionable legitimacy of the prince, resolved to place her in the same category in regard to legitimacy as the other two princesses. He obtained sufficient evidence in Scotland to enable him plausibly to declare that her mother's marriage with Angus was ‘not a lawful one,’ and matters having been thus settled the Lady Margaret was immediately restored to favour, and made first lady to Anne of Cleves, a position which was continued to her under Anne's successor, Catherine Howard. She, however, soon again incurred disgrace for a courtship with Sir Charles Howard, third brother of the queen, and was in the autumn of 1541 again sent to Syon Abbey. To make room for the queen, who a few months later came under a heavier accusation, she was on 13 Nov. removed to Kenninghall, Cranmer being instructed previous to her removal to admonish her for her ‘over much lightness,’ and to warn her to ‘beware the third time and wholly apply herself to please the king's majesty.’ The renewal of her father's influence in Scotland after the death of James V restored her to the favour of Henry, who wished to avail himself of the services of Angus in negotiating a betrothal between Prince Edward and the infant Mary of Scotland. On 10 July 1543 she was one of the bridesmaids at the marriage of Henry to Catherine Parr. A year afterwards Henry arranged for her a match sufficiently gratifying to her ambition, but also followed by a mutual affection between her and her husband, which was ‘an element of purity and gentleness in a household credited with dark political intrigues’ (Hill Burton, Scotland, 2nd ed. v. 41). On 6 July 1544 she was married at St. James's Palace to Matthew Stewart, earl of Lennox [q. v.], who in default of the royal line claimed against the Hamiltons the next succession to the Scottish throne. Lennox was appointed governor of Scotland in Henry's name (Cal. State Papers, Scot. Ser. i. 46), on condition that he agreed to surrender to Henry his title to the throne of Scotland, and acknowledge him as his supreme lord (ib. 47). Shortly after the marriage Lennox embarked on a naval expedition to Scotland, leaving his wife at Stepney Palace. Subsequently she removed to Templenewsam, Yorkshire, granted by Henry VIII to her husband, who at a later period joined her there. Having escaped from Henry's immediate influence, she began to manifest her catholic leanings, deeply to Henry's offence, who had a violent quarrel with her shortly before his death, and by his last will excluded her from the succession. During ​the reign of Edward VI she continued to reside chiefly in the north, but with Mary's accession her star was once more in the ascendant. Mary made her her special friend and confidante, gave her apartments in Westminster Palace, bestowed on her a grant of revenue from the taxes on the wool trade, amounting to three thousand merks annually, and, above all, assigned her precedency over Elizabeth. It was in fact to secure the succession of Lady Margaret in preference to Elizabeth that an effort was made to convict Elizabeth of being concerned in the Wyatt conspiracy. Elizabeth, notwithstanding this, on succeeding to the throne received her with seeming cordiality and kindness, but neither bestowed on her any substantial favours nor was in any degree deceived as to her sentiments. Lady Lennox found that she could better serve her own purposes in Yorkshire than at the court, and Elizabeth, having already had experiences which made confidence in her intentions impossible, placed her and her husband under vigilant espionage (ib. i. 126). The result was as she expected, and there cannot be the least doubt that Lady Lennox's Yorkshire home had become the centre of catholic intrigues. No conspiracy of a sufficiently definite kind for exposure and punishment was at first discovered, but Elizabeth, besides specially excluding her from the succession, brought into agitation the question of her legitimacy. Lady Lennox manifested no resentment. She prudently determined, since her own chances of succeeding to the throne of England were at least remote, to secure if possible the succession of both thrones to her posterity, by a marriage between her son Lord Darnley and Queen Mary of Scotland, who was next heir to Elizabeth. Though the progress of the negotiations cannot be fully traced, it must be supposed that the arrangement, if not incited by the catholic powers, had their special approval. For a time it seemed that the scheme would miscarry. Through the revelation of domestic spies it became known prematurely. She was therefore summoned to London, and finally her husband was sent to the Tower (ib. For. Ser. 1561–2, entry 644), while she and Lord Darnley were confined in the house of Sir Richard Sackville at Sheen. While there an inquiry was set on foot in regard to her treasonable intentions towards Elizabeth (see Articles against Lady Lennox, fifteen counts in all; ib. For. Ser. 1562, entry 26; Depositions of William Forbes, ib. 34; and Notes for the Examination of the Countess of Lennox, ib. 91). It cannot be supposed that Elizabeth became satisfied of the sincerity of her friendship, but Lady Lennox wrote her letters with so skilful a savouring of flattery that gradually Elizabeth exhibited symptoms of reconciliation. Lady Lennox's protests that ‘it was the greatest grief she ever had to perceive the little love the queen bears her’ (ib. 121), and that the sight of ‘her majesty's presence’ would be ‘most to her comfort,’ induced Elizabeth to try at last the experiment of kindness. She received her liberty, and soon afterwards she and her husband became ‘continual courtiers,’ and were ‘much made of’ (ib. 1563, entry 1027), while the son, Lord Darnley, won Elizabeth's high commendation by his proficiency on the lute. The suspicions of Elizabeth being thus for the time lulled, Lennox was, in September 1564, permitted to return to Scotland, carrying with him a letter from Elizabeth recommending Mary to restore him and his wife to their estates (ib. Scot. Ser. i. 51). Through the expert diplomacy of Sir James Melville, on whom Lady Lennox left the impression that she was ‘a very wyse and discret matroun’ (Memoirs, p. 127), Darnley was even permitted to join his father, and to visit Scotland at the very time that Elizabeth was recommending Leicester as a husband for Mary. Lady Lennox also took advantage of the return of Melville to Scotland to entrust him with graceful presents for the queen, the Earl of Moray, and the secretary Lethington, ‘for she was still in gud hope,’ says Sir James, that ‘hir sone my Lord Darley suld com better speid than the Erle of Leycester, anent the marriage with the quen’ (ib.) The important support of Morton to the match was ultimately also secured by her renunciation of her claims to the earldom of Angus (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. 394). Elizabeth, on discovering too late how cleverly she had been outwitted, endeavoured to prevent or delay the marriage by committing Lady Lennox to some place where she might ‘be kept from giving or receiving intelligence’ (Cal. State Papers, For. Ser. 1564–6, entry 1224). On 22 April she was commanded to keep her room (Holinshed, v. 674), and on 20 June she was sent to the Tower (inscription discovered in the Tower in 1834, reproduced in facsimile in Miss Strickland's Queens of Scotland, ii. 402). In the beginning of March 1566–7, after Darnley's murder, she was removed to her old quarters at Sheen, and shortly afterwards was set at liberty. While her husband made strenuous but vain efforts to secure the conviction of Bothwell for the murder, Lady Lennox was clamorous in her denunciation of Mary to the Spanish ambassador in London (Froude, History of England, cab. ed. viii. 91, 114). For several years the event ​at least suspended the quarrel with Elizabeth. As soon as she learned that Mary had sought Elizabeth's protection, she and her husband hastened to the court to denounce her for the murder of their son, and when the investigation into the murder was resumed at Westminster, the Earl of Lennox opened the new commission by a speech in which he demanded vengeance for his son's death. It suited the policy of Elizabeth that in May 1570 Lennox should be sent into Scotland with troops under the command of Sir William Drury to aid the king's party, and with her sanction he was, on the death of Moray, appointed regent. Lady Lennox, so long as her husband was regent, remained as hostile to Mary as ever. She was the principal medium of communication between Lennox and Elizabeth, and also gave him continual assistance and encouragement in his difficult position. The most complete confidence and faithful affection is expressed in the letters between her and her husband; but it cannot be affirmed that she succeeded in rendering his regency a success; and his death on 4 Sept. 1571 at Stirling was really a happy deliverance to the supporters of the cause of her grandson, the young prince. The last words of Lennox were an expression of his desire to be remembered to his ‘wife Meg.’ Her grief was poignant and perpetual, and she caused to be made an elaborate memorial locket of gold in the shape of a heart, which she wore constantly about her neck or at her girdle (it was bought by Queen Victoria at the sale of Horace Walpole's effects in 1842. See Patrick Fraser Tytler, Hist. Notes on the Lennox Jewel, with a plate of the jewel by H. Shaw). After the death of Lennox a reconciliation took place between Lady Lennox and Queen Mary, but the exact date cannot be determined. Before the death of her husband, the ambassador Fénelon had made some progress in his endeavours to persuade her to ‘agree with the Queen of Scots’ (Correspondance Diplomatique, iv. 34). On 10 July 1570 Mary made the rumour that the young prince was to be brought to England an excuse for writing to her, affirming that she would continue to love her as her aunt and respect her as her mother-in-law, and proposing a conference with her ‘ambassador the bishop of Ross’ (Labanoff, iii. 78). The letter was, however, intercepted, and was finally delivered to her on 10 Nov. in the presence of Elizabeth (ib. p. 79). Mary, in a letter to the archbishop of Glasgow, 2 May 1578, asserted that she had been reconciled to Lady Lennox five or six years before her death (ib. v. 31), which would place the date shortly before or shortly after the death of Lord Lennox. No corroboration has been discovered of Mary's date, but it is plain that the death of Lennox greatly altered Lady Lennox's position in regard to the possibilities of reconciliation. She had no special evidence as to Mary's guilt or innocence not possessed by others; she was under the influence of catholic advisers, and had strong motives for reconciliation with the mother of her grandson.
On 2 May 1572 Queen Elizabeth thanks the Earl of Mar for his ‘goodwill towards her dear cousin the Countess of Lennox, and for granting the earldom of Lennox to her son Charles’ (Cal. State Papers, Scotch Ser. i. 350). In October 1574 Lady Lennox set out with her son Charles for the north, ostensibly with the intention of going to Scotland. Before setting out she asked Elizabeth if she might go to Chatsworth, as had been her usual custom, where upon Elizabeth advised her not, lest it should be thought she ‘should agree with the Queen of Scots.’ ‘And I asked her majesty,’ writes Lady Lennox, ‘if she could think so, for I was made of flesh and blood, and could never forget the murder of my child; and she said, “Nay, by her faith, she could not think so that ever I could forget it, for if I would I were a devil”’ (Letter to Leicester, 3 Dec. 1574). Whether or not Lady Lennox was deceiving Elizabeth in regard to her sentiments towards Mary, she was certainly misleading her in regard to the purposes of her journey northward. If she intended going to Scotland, she was in no hurry to proceed thither. She met the Duchess of Suffolk at Huntingdon, where they were visited by Lady Shrewsbury and her daughter, Elizabeth Cavendish, and on Lady Shrewsbury's invitation Lady Lennox and her son went to her neighbouring house at Rufford. Thereafter, as her son had, as she ingeniously put it, ‘entangled himself so that he could have none other,’ he and Elizabeth Cavendish were hastily united in wedlock. As soon as the news reached Elizabeth, she summoned Lady Lennox to London, and towards the close of December both she and the Countess of Shrewsbury were sent to the Tower. If Lady Lennox had previous to this been unreconciled to Mary, her experience of imprisonment seems to have completely changed her sentiments. While in the Tower she wrought a piece of point lace with her own grey hairs, which she transmitted to the Queen of Scots, as a token of sympathy and affection. She received her pardon some time before the death of her son in the spring of 1577 of consumption, but she did not long survive his loss, dying 7 March 1577–8. She had four sons and four daughters, but all ​ predeceased her, although her two grandchildren, James I, son of Lord Darnley, and Arabella Stuart [q. v.], daughter of Charles, fifth earl of Lennox, survived. Chequered as her life had been by disappointment and sorrow, in its main purpose it was successful, for her grandson, James VI, succeeded to the proud inheritance of the English as well as the Scottish crown. To the very last she sacrificed her own comfort and happiness to effect this end. Whatever might have been her opinions as to Mary's innocence or guilt, she would have refrained from expressing them so long as she thought her main purpose could have been promoted by friendship with Elizabeth. In her last years she ceased to seek Elizabeth's favour, and after her restoration to liberty was not permitted even to hold her Yorkshire estates in trust for her grandson. Mary Queen of Scots, in an unfinished will in 1577, formally restored to her ‘all the rights she can pretend to the earldom of Angus,’ and in September of this year the countess made a claim for the inheritance of the earldom of Lennox for her granddaughter the Lady Arabella (Cal. State Papers, Scotch Ser. i. 395), but the latter claim achieved as little for her as Mary's empty expression of her sovereign wishes. At her death her poverty was so extreme that she was interred at the royal cost. She was buried in Westminster Abbey in the vault of her son Charles. An elaborate altar-tomb with her statue recumbent on it, and a pompous recital of her relationships to royal personages, was erected to her by James VI, after his accession to the English throne, who also ordered the body of Lord Darnley to be exhumed and reinterred by her side. Lady Lennox caused to be painted a curious family group, representing herself, the Earl of Lennox, Lord Charles, the infant James VI, kneeling before the altar, and a cenotaph of Darnley, who is extended on an altar-tomb raising the hands to heaven, words being represented as issuing from the mouths of each crying for vengeance on his murderers. The picture was in the possession of Queen Victoria, and has been engraved by Vertue. A similar picture without Lady Lennox is at Hampton Court Palace. The original portrait by Sir Antonio More, three-quarter length, dated 1554, which was formerly at Hampton Court Palace, has been removed to Holyrood, where it stands in Darnley's presence-chamber. It has been engraved by Rivers and reproduced in lithograph by Francis Work. At Hampton Court there is still a full-length by Holbein with the date 1572.
T. F. H.