Margaret Drummond (mistress)

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Margaret Drummond (c. 1475 – 1502) was a daughter of John Drummond, 1st Lord Drummond and a mistress of King James IV of Scotland. She was a great-great-great-great-niece of the Margaret Drummond who was King David II's second queen.

Her untimely death has been the subject of a very persistent romantic legend.

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[edit] Circumstances of death

She had been a mistress of King James IV of Scotland, and they had one daughter, Margaret. However, the king had several mistresses in his time, their relationship had ended a few years earlier, and actually seems to have been shorter lived than his relationships with either Marion Boyd or Janet Kennedy.

It is definitely known that in 1502 she died of food poisoning, along with her sisters Eupheme and Sibylla, while staying with her parents. As a general rule, claims of poisoning made in relation to a historical figure who died after a sudden illness should be treated with caution, but in this case, with three people who presumably died shortly after eating the same meal, the contemporary judgement should be accepted. The three sisters are buried together in Dunblane Cathedral. This did not cause a great deal of suspicion at the time; standards of food hygiene are unlikely to have been very good then, and cases of accidental food poisoning have happened in any period.

[edit] Murder theories

It has been widely suggested in recent years that Margaret Drummond was murdered, either by English agents or by pro-English elements in the Scottish nobility. Many believe that James IV was planning to or had already secretly married Drummond, and her death was necessary in order to allow or force the King to marry the English princess Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York. The "Marriage of the Rose and Thistle", as the poet William Dunbar described it, brought about the Union of the Crowns exactly 100 years later, as it enabled their great-grandson James VI of Scotland to claim the English throne upon the death of Elizabeth I through his descent from Henry VII.

Had James IV married Margaret Drummond instead of Margaret Tudor, the Union of the Crowns might never have taken place and Scotland might have remained an independent country. This idea has been the theme of numerous historical novels and popular histories.

Serious historians are skeptical of the theory. Her death was probably a case of accidental food poisoning, a common cause of death at that time. The idea that James had to be pressured to marry Margaret Tudor is dubious. As Scotland was the less important and poorer country, it is more likely that James IV pressured Henry VII to give him his daughter. It is also clear that negotiations for the marriage had been taking place for some time before Margaret Drummond died.

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