There’s no escape from the Tudors if you’re a teenager with an interest in history. The AQA A level syllabus begins in 1485 with Henry Tudor settling in to the newly vacated throne. This is what students are expected to know about him:

• Henry Tudor’s consolidation of power: character and aims; establishing the Tudor dynasty
• Government: councils, parliament, justice, royal finance, domestic policies
• Relationships with Scotland and other foreign powers; securing the succession; marriage alliances
• Society: churchmen, nobles and commoners; regional division; social discontent and rebellions
• Economic development: trade, exploration, prosperity and depression
• Religion; humanism; arts and learning

I’m willing to bet that regular readers of the History Jar could make a good answer to most aspects of the syllabus and are probably quite relieved that I don’t have the Wars of the Roses on my mind. Today however, Scotland and Henry VII – mainly because no one is permitted to photograph the Stone of Destiny which is currently held in Perth Museum and Scone Palace is a Victorian edifice.

Even during the Wars of the Roses the old hostilities between the English and their Scottish neighbours had continued. In 1480, by which time the Yorkists looked secure on the throne, Edward IV even invaded Scotland and intermittent border raids had continued unabated. In 1485, Henry VII’s claim to the throne was tenuous and his cashbox was empty. He needed to secure his borders and make treaties that were beneficial to the Tudor dynasty as well as to the economic prosperity of his new realm. Most of all, he needed his royal house, the Tudors, to be recognised as England’s rightful kings by Europe’s other rulers.

The Treaty of Perpetual Peace was signed between England and Scotland on 31 October 1502 at Westminster by Henry VII and at Glasgow Cathedral by James IV on 10 December. It was the first attempt in about 170 years to bring warfare between the two countries to an end. The treaty was sealed with a marriage between James IV of Scotland, aged 30 years, and Henry VII’s eldest daughter, Margaret Tudor, aged 12 years.

The two monarchs did not start out on quite such good terms. When James IV, aged 15 years, was crowned king of Scotland 1488, Henry continued to face revolts from Yorkist claimants to the English throne, including Perkin Warbeck. King James used this instability to his advantage, invading England in 1496 and 1497. Margaret of Burgundy (a.k.a. the aunt of the missing Yorkist Edward V and his brother Richard) sent envoys to Scotland in 1488 to ensure good relations with the new Scottish king and perhaps ferment trouble for the new English monarch. Henry was required to play a long term strategic game. In November 1492 the Treaty of Etaples agreed among other things, that the French would no longer offer support to the pretender.

In November of 1495, Perkin Warbeck, who Margaret of Burgundy, recognised as the younger of her two nephews, arrived in Scotland. The king who was a similar age to Warbeck (and this is not the post to consider whether he was the missing prince or a pretender) welcomed him to court. He went so far as to have taxes collected to pay Warbeck an allowance of £1,200 per year and in January of 1496, Warbeck married Lady Katherine Gordon, a daughter of the Earl of Huntly who was related to the king by marriage. None of this went down particularly well in England and it’s impossible to know whether James truly believed Warbeck to be the prince or not. Warbeck was certainly at home in the royal court suggesting that his grasp of manners was either instilled from birth or the son of a boatman had been given some very thorough lessons. What is certain is that James intended to use his guest as a pawn in his attempt to regain the town of Berwick-Upon-Tweed which was in English hands as well as gain an advantage over his English neighbour.

James and Warbeck came to an agreement that if the Scots backed an invasion and Warbeck won the crown that Berwick would become Scottish once more, the loan for men and equipment would be paid back and there would be a healthy interest to be paid. Plus, of course, Perkin would owe the Scots for his Crown. Unfortunately when the Scots crossed the border in September 1496 there wasn’t an outpouring of popular Yorkist support and the Scottish king returned home. Furthermore, Margaret of Burgundy was no longer able to offer overt support for the Yorkist cause as the Intercursus Magnus of February 1496 provided for improved economic relations between Burgundy and England. Even worse it turned out that Henry VII wasn’t quite the push over that James might have supposed. The English king gave orders to the Earl of Surrey to raise an army to confront the Scots. The matter was brought to an end with the Treaty of Ayton in 1497 which saw Henry agreeing to marry his eldest daughter to the Scottish king. Henry did not want war, he wanted a peaceful settlement and security. Wars cost money which he preferred not to spend. In addition, he was busily disarming his aristocracy. He didn’t want to have to permit northern lords to continue with their bad old habits of retaining men and crenelating their walls – even if it was to keep the Scots out. It meant that, in Scotland, James maintained his country’s Auld Alliance with France at the same time as entering negotiations with the English. Henry might always be outflanked if he ended up going to war with either of the two kingdoms.

In September 1497 Warbeck sailed to Cornwall with his wife in a ship provided by James in an attempt to gather more support for his claim. For James it meant the opportunity to wash his hands of an increasingly unwelcome guest and to begin fresh negotiations with Henry VII. In all fairness he had not yielded to pressure to hand Warbeck to the English in return for payment. Nor for that matter was James IV totally convinced he wanted to marry Margaret who was still only a child (think of the importance of an heir to the Scottish throne). Not that it mattered so long as the Treaty of Ayton held while there were negotiations between the two realms.

James IV had a perfectly nice mistress, thank you very much. He was in love with Margaret Drummond, the eldest daughter of John, Lord Drummond – though don’t go running away with the idea he was a one man woman. By 1496 Margaret, who gave the king a daughter, had her own apartment in Stirling Castle and while his council were talking about the benefits of an Anglo-Scottish alliance, James was thinking marrying Margaret who came from a relatively unimportant family. There were even rumours of a secret marriage having taken place.

In 1501 Margaret, who was at her family home at Drummond Castle in Perthshire, became unwell, as did two of her sisters, Euphemia and Sybella, following their breakfast. The three of them died. Suspicion pointed at Euphemia’s widower, John Fleming, 2nd Lord Fleming but whether they were poisoned so that the way was cleared for the Anglo-Scottish marriage to go ahead or wether it was a case of accidentally food poisoning is another matter.

The way was clear for a proxy marriage between Margaret and James to take place at Richmond in January 1503 by which time Margaret’s brother Arthur was dead – Elizabeth of York would die the following month. All that stood between the Scottish king and the English throne was Prince Henry. The Tudor dynasty wasn’t looking quite so secure as it had once done. But the marriage was a success for Henry VII – as well as lessening the chance of invasion from the north it reflected that the Tudor family was recognised by its neighbour as a royal one – especially as the Stewarts were long established royalty. One of the conditions of the marriage agreement was that Margaret should not travel north until she was 13 years old. In 1498 while negotiations were still under way, Henry had indicated that his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and wife, Elizabeth of York, did not think it right that so young a girl should be risked to the dangers of child birth at a tender age. In addition to which the pair had probably heard that James IV was some something of womaniser.

Margaret stayed in England, referred to as the Scottish queen while preparations for her journey north got underway. She would travel to Scotland, taking a whole month to arrive, when she was 13 years-old. The only fly in the ointment were the finances. Henry wanted to know what Margaret’s ladies-in-waiting would be paid. There was the new queen’s dower to be settled and also the dowry to be paid – Henry agreed to 30,000 nobles to be paid across three years – which to be fair, he paid promptly. It was unfortunate that James paid more than half of that for the pageantry surrounding his bride’s arrival in Edinburgh. The fact that she did not have a child until 1507 suggests that James respected his mother-in-law and Lady Margaret Beaufort’s concerns for his wife’s physical well being. Chivalry and pageantry was the glue that held the treaty together in the meantime and James intended to assert Scottish dominance on proceedings.

And just in case you’re thinking – how lovely – a happy ending…think again, In 1508, Henry VII began to renovate the fortifications at Berwick and in 1513, Margaret’s brother, by then Henry VIII, won the Battle of Flodden which also saw the death of James IV – so much for perpetual peace.

Incidentally, a past exam question states: Henry VII’s foreign policy with Scotland was most successful. How far do you agree?