Customer Reviews

A Biography of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox,(1515-1578): Niece of Henry VIII and Mother-In-Law of Mary, Queen of Scots (Studies in British History, V. 62)

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Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, daughter of Margaret Tudor, Dowager Queen of Scotland and Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus is one of those reasonably minor, in a historical sense, Tudor relatives, who nevertheless for dynastic reasons are still important. This is the first independent biography of Margaret.

Her story can be found in other books such as Tudor Cousins: Rivals for the Throne in abbreviated form but this is the first book to concentrate on her alone. One thing it does seem to highlight is really how little is known about Margaret even now, a fate not uncommon especially with female royal relations which often leads to rather thin biographies, and if it wasn't for all the historical background that is filled in I think this would be a rather slender volume. On thing that did annoy me about this was the author's tendency to assume Margaret's reactions to thing with sentences such "she must have felt", "would have done" etc which was not actually backed up by evidence.

For the reader in search of primary evidence on Margaret probably this book's biggest asset is the a copy of Margaret's poems from the Devonshire manuscript which contains a collection of court poetry from the court of Henry VIII, including some of Margaret's work. However, for it's contents this is an extremely expensive book, which is a great pity as it will restrict the amount of people able to access it but if you are after more detailed information on both Margaret and Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox then this is a good place to start.