Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 8 August 2023

The marriage of King James IV and Queen Margaret 1503


520 years ago, on August 8th 1503, King James IV of Scots married Margaret the daughter of King Henry VII of England in the abbey church of Holyrood. 

The King was thirty and his bride a few  months short of her fourteenth birthday. Concern about ensuring the safe delivery of children led the new Queen’s grandmother the formidable Lady Margaret Beaufort, influenced no doubt by her one very difficult pregnancy aged thirteen, and aware of King James’ existing brood of illegitimate children to insist on delaying the consummation of the marriage for a time. As it was only one of their children, King James V,  was to live to adulthood. 

Margaret’s journey from Richmond began in May and was recorded in considerable detail together with the wedding celebrations by Somerset Herald, John Young. The events in and around Edinburgh were lavish and cost about half of the new Queen’s dowry. King James appreciated that he needed to display the appropriate level of magnificence both to his own subjects and to his wife’s countrymen.

King of Scotland James IV
King James IV of Scots
Detail of a painting dated to 1620-38 and attributed to Daniel Mytens based on a portrait contemporary to the King.

Image: onthisday.com
Queen Margaret from the Recueil d’Arras

Image: Wikipedia 

The marriage was a return to the policy pursued, without success, by the bridegroom’s father King James III of peace secured by a royal marriage with England. For all its promise this marriage was to end a decade later when the King was killed, along with so many of his nobility at the battle of Flodden when he invaded England as an ally of France.

Nonetheless the marriage did lead a century afterwards in 1603 to the Union of the Crowns in the person of King James VI, who was descended twice over from Queen Margaret through his paternal grandmother the Countess of Lennox. From the personal Union there flowed the parliamentary Union of 1707.

To mark the anniversary the Royal Collection Trust had an online lecture about the wedding by Dr Lucy Dean, which I booked into. This was extremely interesting and showed how the extensive surviving records can be correlated about the clothes made for the couple, the repairs to the King’s crown and sceptre and the preparation- just to be prepared - for the King’s tomb at Cambuskenneth. 

The Royal Collection Trust lectures I have booked into have been well worth hearing and can be found on the RCT website.
King James IV of Scotland, attended by St James, from the Book of Hours of James IV and Margaret Tudor. This book of hours was a gift from James to his bride on the occasion of their wedding in 1503.  It is currently held at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

Image: Wikimedia 

Detail of the miniature of Queen Margaret at prayer on f. 243v of the Prayer Book of King James IV of Scotland, c.1503, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Cod. 1897 Han 

Image: philippagregory.com

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