Margaret Tudor - The Thistle and The Rose

The Thistle and The Rose

Daughters were important political assets in a world where diplomacy and marriage were closely linked. Even before Margaret's sixth birthday, Henry VII thought about a marriage between Margaret and James IV as a way of ending the Scottish king's support for Perkin Warbeck, Yorkist pretender to the throne of England.

On 30 September 1497, James IV's commissioner, the Spaniard Pedro de Ayala concluded a lengthy truce with England, and now the marriage was again a serious possibility. James was in his late twenties and was without an heir. This was cause for consternation in Scotland, and there had been whisperings of a secret marriage with Margaret Drummond, his mistress. The Italian historian Polydore Vergil said that some of the English royal council objected to the match, saying that it would bring the Stewarts directly into the line of English succession, to which the wily and astute Henry replied:

"What then? Should anything of the kind happen (and God avert the omen), I foresee that our realm would suffer no harm, since England would not be absorbed by Scotland, but rather Scotland by England, being the noblest head of the entire island, since there is always less glory and honour in being joined to that which is far the greater, just as Normandy once came under the rule and power of our ancestors the English."

On 24 January 1502, Scotland and England concluded the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, the first peace agreement between the two realms in over 170 years. The marriage treaty was concluded the same day and was viewed as a guarantee of the new peace.