Margaret Douglas
1515 – 1578 · Generation XXIII · Countess of Lennox
Margaret Douglas (1515–1578). Countess of Lennox. Married Matthew Stewart in 1544. One of their children is recorded in this archive. A daughter of Margaret Tudor by the Earl of Angus, she was raised largely at the English court beside her cousin, the future Mary I, who remained her lifelong friend. Her secret betrothal to Lord Thomas Howard, discovered in 1536, enraged Henry VIII; both were sent to the Tower, where Howard died the next year. Of the eight or nine children she bore Lennox, only two sons reached adulthood. Mary I once named her the best-suited successor to the throne, but under Elizabeth her Yorkshire house, Temple Newsam, became a hub of Catholic intrigue. Pushing her son Darnley’s match with Mary, Queen of Scots, earned her the Tower again in 1565, and a further spell followed her younger son Charles’s match with Elizabeth Cavendish. Her poems to Howard survive in the Devonshire Manuscript, and her diplomacy did much to smooth her grandson James VI’s road to the English throne.
Place in the family
- Margaret Douglas was a niece of King Henry VIII.
- The archive records 108 of her descendants, across 17 generations.
Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → Margaret Douglas.
Parents
- Archibald Douglas (1489 – 1557)
- Margaret Tudor (1489 – 1541)
Siblings
- King James V of Scotland (1512 – 1542) (half)
Partners
- Married Matthew Stewart (1516 – 1571) in 1544 — one child together
Children
- Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1546 – 1567)
Life
- 1515 — Born
- 1544 — Married Matthew Stewart
- 1578 — Died