Lord Lennox

In 1531, Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, aged 15 and feeling threatened by the Hamilton clan headed by Lord Arran, sailed for France and joined the Royal Guard, became a naturalised subject of the French King and changed the spelling of his surname from Stewart to Stuart. 

 In 1543 he returned to Scotland and began paying court to Marie de Guise, the Dowager Queen of Scotland. Reported as a handsome, charming and gallant man, or, in the words of the times, "well-proportioned with lusty and manly visage, and carried himself erect and stately, wherefore he was very pleasant in the sight of gentlewomen." She was said to have enjoyed his company, which was not surprising since he spoke her native tongue fluently and was skilled in playing the lute. 

Both she and Cardinal Beaton thought Lennox would support them against the ambitions of Arran, but they discovered him to be unreliable and driven by self-interest, which was understandable when his livings in France were denied him and he had little that brought him money in Scotland. The lands that should have belonged to him had been scattered among the greedy lords when he left for France. Marie refused to marry him, and eventually he defected to the English to see if overtures from Henry VIII would pay off. In return for his support against the Scots, Henry VIII bestowed on him the hand of his niece, Lady Margaret Douglas.

The wedding took place in July 1544 at St James's Palace in London. Born the same year as Lennox, Margaret was the daughter of Henry VIII's elder sister, Margaret Tudor (widow of James IV and grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots) by her second husband, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus. She was close enough to the  English throne to be controlled by Henry, and yet he allowed a  marriage between her and Lennox that could only reinforce the dynastic claims of both parties. Of course, at that time Henry had his beloved Prince Edward, and two daughters to follow him in the succession. 

Their marriage seems to have been a love match: he was said to be 'far in love', and in his letters addressed Meg as 'mine own sweet Madge' or 'my Meg', told her she was his 'chiefest comfort', and signed himself 'Your own Matthieu and most loving husband'. 

Margaret was a devout Roman Catholic, so Lennox, who had been reared in the old faith but recently favoured the new religion, tempered his views to please her and also King Henry. Religion was a matter of expediency with him.

Regretably I cannot find a picture of  said Lord Lennox, certainly not one that is listed with certainty as him, so I have included a picture of my own taken on a trip to Stirling Castle on a grey day a couple of years ago. I was there familiarising myself with the place because I was, and still am, writing about Stirling and the Dowager Queen, Lord Lennox and  Meg Douglas. 

The blood royal

Marie de Guise

Queen's Courier is a stand-lone story that follows on chronologically from Abduction and Fair Border Bride. The main protagonists include three real characters - Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, Mathew Stewart, fourth earl of Lennox and Marie de Guise, Queen Dowager of Scotland,

None are particularly well known, and yet it is Mathew and Margaret's off-spring, Darnley, who sired the child who would one day rule both Scotland and England, and whose blood has come down to every sovereign since.

The year 1515 was the year all three were born, though in Mathew's case there is some evidence that he was a trifle younger than the two ladies. Marie was born in France and brought up almost as a French princess, part of the illustrious de Guise family. Mathew was born in Scotland, great grandson of James II of Scotland. Meg was born in England, in the remote castle of Harbottle on the southern side of the Anglo-Scottish border, daughter of Henry VIII's elder sister Margaret Tudor and her second husband Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.

Archie and Margaret divorced in 1527 and Meg moved south into the English court where she was accepted as a princess of the blood. Mathew's father was killed by a member of the Hamilton clan, forcing Mathew and his brothers to escape to France. This was the cause of the constant hatred between Governor Arran and Mathew twenty years later. Marie de Guise married the 2nd Duke of Longueville, but became a widow at a very young age and was then chosen to become the second French bride of James V after the death of the fragile Princess Madeleine. Marie and James produced two sons who both died in childhood, leaving only a daughter - the daughter who married Darnley and added her blood to the royal line.