SO HIGH A BLOOD: The Story of Margaret Douglas

Royal cousin, death-risking courtier and skilled political player, Lady Margaret Douglas is the Tudor whose life demands a wider audience. Amidst the Christmas revels of 1530, a 15 year old girl arrived at the court of King Henry VIII. Half-English, half-Scottish, she was his niece, the Lady Margaret Douglas. For the next 50 years she held a unique and precarious position at the courts of Henry and his children. As the Protestant Reformations unfolded across the British Isles and the Tudor monarchs struggled to produce heirs, Margaret had ambitions of her own. She wanted to see her family ruling a united, Catholic Britain. Through a Machiavellian combination of daring, spying and luck, Margaret made her son Henry, Lord Darnley, into a suitor for her niece, Mary, Queen of Scots. Together they had a powerful claim to the English throne, so powerful that Queen Elizabeth I feared they would overthrow her and restore both England and Scotland to the Catholic faith. The marriage cost Margaret her position, her freedom and her beloved son's life. With Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light currently on BBC TV, this book could not have been more timely. From the glittering Tudor court to the Tower of London, Lady Margaret Douglas weathered triumphs and tragedies and never lost hope that her family would rule throughout the British Isles. It was her grandson King James VI of Scotland who united the crowns in 1603. With family trees of the Royal Stewarts and the Earls of Arran and Lennox and the Earls of Angus, the children of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York to explain the cast of characters. To recover the Countess of Lennox, we must return both to the accounts of her actions and to her own words and writings and through them a very different story emerges of hope and dynastic dreams, great triumph and terrible grief enacted in isolated manors and in palace corners by spies, intelligence-gatherers, and by an unshakable woman. 341pp, 16 pages of colour images.