The Tudor Society
  • #OTD in Tudor history – 10 April

    Portraits of Pope Gregory XIII and James V

    On this day in Tudor history, 10th April, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, gave birth to a son who’d become James V of Scotland; Pope Gregory XIII, who’s known for the Gregorian Calendar, died in Rome; and sea captain Sir Bernard Drake died, probably from typhus…

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  • May 9 – James V and Marie de Guise marry by proxy

    On this day in Tudor history, 9th May 1538, King James V of Scotland married Marie de Guise, or Mary of Guise, by proxy.

    James V was the son of King James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of King Henry VII, and Marie was the daughter of Claude, Duke of Guise, and Antoinette of Bourbon. They’d both been married before. Marie had been married to Louis II of Orléans, Duke of Longueville, who died after less than 3 years of marriage, and James had been widowed just months after his marriage to Madeleine of France.

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  • May 9 – Henry VII’s remains go to St Paul’s, a proxy marriage for Marie de Guise, and colonist William Bradford

    On this day in Tudor history, 9th May 1509, the remains of King Henry VII were taken to St Paul’s to prepare for his burial at Westminster Abbey.

    I share an account of the journey to St Paul’s…

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  • 17 July – Lady Glamis and a plot to poison a king

    On this day in history, 17th July 1537, in Scotland during the reign of King James V, Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, was burnt to death.

    She was accused of plotting to poison the king!

    Find out more about what happened, and why James V hated her family, in this edition of #TudorHistoryShorts…

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  • 9 May – A proxy wedding for Marie de Guise and James V

    On this day in Tudor history, 9th May 1538, Marie de Guise, or Mary of Guise, got married to King James V of Scotland. However, the groom was not present.

    Find out more in this #TudorHistoryShorts video…

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  • 14 December – Mary, Queen of Scots is queen!

    On this day in Tudor history, 14th December 1542, six-day-old Mary, daughter of King James V and his second wife, Marie de Guise, became Queen of Scotland – Mary, Queen of Scots.

    King James V, who had ruled since 1513, was just 30 at his death.

    Find out what happened to James V, and how Mary became queen at such a young age, in today’s talk.

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  • 10 April – The birth of King James V of Scotland

    On this day in Tudor history, 10th April 1512, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, eldest daughter of the late King Henry VII, and sister of King Henry VIII, gave birth to a boy who would become King James V of Scotland.

    Find out more about James V, his life and reign, and his relationship with his uncle, King Henry VIII, in today’s video

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  • Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis (c.1504 – 1537)

    On 17th July 1537, Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis, was burned to death on the castle hill at Edinburgh after being found guilty of two counts of treason. She had been charged with plotting King James V of Scotland’s death (by poison) and assisting and corresponding with her brothers, Sir George Douglas and Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.

    So who was Janet Douglas, and what led to her brutal death?

    janet Douglas was the daughter of the Scottish nobleman, George Douglas, Master of Angus, and his wife, Elizabeth Drummond. Janet was born c. 1504 and her father died at the Battle of Flodden on 9th September 1513. Janet’s siblings included Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, who married Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV, and Sir George Douglas of Pittendriech. Janet married John Lyon, 6th Lord Glamis, when she was about sixteen years of age, in 1520. The couple had four children before Lyon died in 1528. Janet married her second husband, Archibald Campbell of Skipness, younger son of Archibald Campbell, 2nd Earl of Argyll by July 1532. The marriage was childless.

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  • 14 December – A death, an accession and a burial

    On this day in 1542, James V died at Falkland Palace in Falkland, Fife, Scotland, after being taken ill following the Scots’ defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss on 24th November. It is not known what killed him – some argue that it was a nervous collapse, and others that it was a virus.

    While James was on his deathbed, his consort, Mary of Guise, gave birth to a daughter, and it was the six-day-old baby who became Mary, Queen of Scots on her father’s death. John Knox and the chronicler Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie both recorded that James uttered the words “it came wi a lass, it’ll gang wi a lass” (“it came with a lass, it will end with a lass”) as he lay dying, referring to how the Stuart dynasty began with a girl, through Marjorie Bruce, Robert the Bruce’s daughter, and how he feared it would now end with his daughter, Mary. However, the Stuart dynasty actually ended with another girl, Queen Anne, in 1714, and it is not known that James actually ever said these words.

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  • The coronation of Mary of Guise

    Thank you to Heather R. Darsie for this article on Mary of Guise (Marie de Guise), who was crowned Queen Consort of Scotland on this day in 1540.

    Mary of Guise was born on 22 November 1515 to Claude of Lorraine, the Duke of Guise, and Antoinette of Bourbon. She was the eldest of twelve children. Mary was first made a wife in 1534 at the age of eighteen when she married the Duke of Longueville. She had two sons with her first husband, the second of whom died young. The Duke of Longueville passed away in 1537 when Mary was only twenty-one. She was then courted by both Henry VIII of England and James V of Scotland.

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  • 24 November 1542 – the Battle of Solway Moss

    Thank you to Heather R. Darsie, our regular Tudor Society contributor, for today’s article. Over to Heather…

    Happy Thanksgiving to our American members! Today also marks the 474th anniversary of the Battle of Solway Moss, a border skirmish that took place on the English side of the border with Scotland on 24th November 1542. This was the last of a series of such battles that arose from a falling-out between Henry VIII of England and his nephew, James V of Scotland.

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