¹ BL, Add MS 24,965.

² Classifications of royal letters drawn from Evans, M., Royal Voices: Language and power in Tudor England (Cambridge, 2020), 2610.1017/9781316443095CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ In the mid sixteenth century, the national archives of Scotland were stored in a ‘register house’ in Edinburgh Castle. However, after Oliver Cromwell's army invaded Edinburgh in December 1650, the archives were moved to Stirling Castle, before eventually being transported to London. In 1660, the archives were returned to Scotland on two ships. However, one ship – the Elizabeth – sank off the coast of Northumberland, and its contents were lost. The remaining archives were stored in Laigh Parliament House in Edinburgh but were further damaged by vermin and damp, until a new building was constructed to house the archives in the late eighteenth century. See ‘Our History’, National Records of Scotland, https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/about-us/our-history (accessed 4 April 2023) for further discussion.

⁴ The National Records of Scotland, CS 5/43 fo. 168. For further discussion of Margaret’s advocate, Robert Galbraith, see Finlay, J., ‘Women and legal representation in early sixteenth century Scotland’, in Ewan, E. and Meikle, M. (eds), Women in Scotland c.1100–c.1750 (East Linton, 1999), 165–175Google Scholar.

⁵ Williams, G., ‘Written like a “gwd” Scotswoman: Margaret Tudor's use of Scots’, Scottish Language, 35 (2016), 89–112, 95Google Scholar.

⁶ For example, Margaret notes writing to her son, James V, in a letter sent to Henry VIII on 8 March 1537 (Letter 103) (BL, Add MS 32,646 fo. 109).

⁷ Though discussions of a proposed meeting between James V and Henry VIII were discussed for a number of years, the kings never met in person.

⁸ Otway-Ruthven, J., ‘The king’s secretary in the fifteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 19 (1936), 81–100, 8310.2307/3678687CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ R. Hannay, The Letters of James the Fourth 1505–1513 (Edinburgh, 1953) details multiple letters that were sent between James IV, Henry VII, and Henry VIII discussing Anglo-Scots peace specifically, as well as other political and diplomatic matters.

¹⁰ H. Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History Including Numerous Royal Letters, Series One, 3 vols (London, 1825); A. Clarke, Tudor Monarchs: Lives in letters (London, 2017).

¹¹ Green, M., Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, from the Commencement Connected with the Regal Succession of Great Britain, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1846)Google Scholar.

¹² See Newsome, H., ‘“[An] old battle constantly re-fought”: Why language matters when editing early modern women's letters: A case study of the holograph letters of Margaret Tudor, queen of Scots (1489-1541)’, Women's Writing, 30:4 (2023), 337–35210.1080/09699082.2023.2266040CrossRefGoogle Scholar for further discussion of the impact that previous editorial approaches have had on the nature of Margaret's epistolary voice.

¹³ Sadlack, E., The French Queen's Letters: Mary Tudor Brandon and the politics of marriage in sixteenth-century Europe (New York, 2011), 163–196CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ A. Lobanov-Rostovskii, Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Marie Stuart, reine d'Ecosse: Publiés sur les originaux et les manuscrits du State Paper Office de Londres et des principales archives et bibliothèques de l'Europe, 7 vols (London, 1844).

¹⁵ Evans, M., ‘“By the queen”: Collaborative authorship in scribal correspondence of Queen Elizabeth I’, in Daybell, J. and Gordon, A. (eds), Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450–1690 (Abingdon, 2016), 36–54, 37Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Daybell, J., ‘Female literacy and the social conventions of women’s letter-writing in England, 1540–1603’, in Daybell, J., (ed.) Early Modern Women's Letter Writing, 1450-1700 (Basingstoke, 2001), 59–76, 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Daybell, J., Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford, 2006), 8610.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259915.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ R. Allinson, A Monarchy of Letters: Royal correspondence and English diplomacy in the reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, 2012), 190–191.

¹⁸ The scribal copy of this holograph letter can be found at BL, Cotton MS Caligula B I fo. 297.

¹⁹ This section is derived in part from Newsome ‘“[An] old battle constantly re-fought”’ from Women's Writing © 2023. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. Reproduced with permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd.

²⁰ See A.J. Aitken, ‘The pioneers of Anglicised speech in Scotland: A second look’, in A.J. Aitken and C. Macafee (eds), ‘Collected Writings on the Scots Language’,

https://d3lmsxlb5aor5x.cloudfront.net/library/document/aitken/The_Pioneers_of_anglicised_speech_in_Scotland.pdf (accessed 15 September 2023), originally published in Scottish Language 16 (1997), 1–36.

²¹ Ibid., 29–30.

²² Williams, ‘Written like a “gwd” Scotswoman’, 91.

²³ Ibid., 94.

²⁴ See ibid., 94–97 for further discussion of the ideological status of the Scots language in the early sixteenth century.

²⁵ Ibid., 95.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ DSL 2023, stedabil, adj.; DSL 2023, tho, adv., sense 1; DSL 2023, war, adj., sense A1.

²⁸ See A. Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick's Letters: Language, materiality and early modern epistolary culture (Abingdon, 2016), ch. 1: ‘Composing and scripting letters’, 27–88.

²⁹ H. Newsome, ‘Performances of mediation in the letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489–1541)’, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield (2019), 187–226.

³⁰ J. Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript letters and the culture and practices of letter-writing, 1512–1635 (Basingstoke, 2012), 107.

³¹ J. Gibson, ‘Significant space in manuscript letters’, The Seventeenth Century, 12:1 (1997), 1–10.

³² For a more detailed discussion of ways in which a letter could be secured see http://letterlocking.org/ (accessed 15 September 2023) and Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick's Letters, 190–193.

³³ P. Buchanan, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 1985), 11.

³⁴ Margaret's language, handwriting, punctuation practices, and use of abbreviations change dramatically in a series of holograph letters sent between 1534 and 1537. See Newsome, ‘Performances of mediation’, 187–226 for further discussion.

³⁵ See W. de Gray Birch, History of Scottish Seals from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Century with Upwards of Two Hundred Illustrations from the Finest and Most Interesting Examples Extant, vol I: The Royal Seals of Scotland Museum (London, 1905), 88–90 for further discussion of a selection of four of Margaret Tudor's seals.

³⁶ Ibid., 90.

³⁷ It was not possible to get an image of this seal due to conservation work on the manuscript volume.

³⁸ Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick's Letters, 190.

³⁹ Ibid., 190–191.

⁴⁰ The most notable works to date have been that of Evans, Royal Voices, 35–61 and T. Sowerby, ‘Sovereign spaces: Mis-en-page and the politics of English royal correspondence in the sixteenth century’, Renaissance Studies, 35:3 (2021), 386–402.

⁴¹ For further discussion of this episode see Newsome, ‘Performances of mediation’, 187–226.

⁴² Margaret Tudor to Thomas Cromwell, 12 December 1534, TNA, SP 49/4 fo. 72; Margaret Tudor to Thomas Howard, 3rd duke of Norfolk, 12 December 1534, TNA, SP 49/4 fo. 74.

⁴³ Newsome, ‘Performances of mediation’, 187–226.

⁴⁴ For further discussion of the identity of early modern messengers and the roles the could play in the delivery of correspondence see N. Akkerman, Invisible Agents: Women and espionage in seventeenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2018); Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England; K.A. Mair, ‘Anne, Lady Bacon: A life in letters', PhD thesis, Queen Mary, University of London (2009); A. Stewart, Shakespeare's Letters (Oxford, 2008); Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick's Letters.

⁴⁵ Stewart, Shakespeare's Letters, 196.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ P. Beale, England's Mail: Two millennia of letter writing (Stroud, 2005), 141.

⁴⁸ For further discussion see H. Newsome-Chandler, ‘“for goddes sake kepe my writing secrete for it is my destruction”: Strategies of epistolary secrecy in the letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489–1541)’, Royal Studies Journal, 11:2 (2024), 103–132.

⁴⁹ Wiggins, Bess of Hardwick's Letters, 144.

⁵⁰ The identity of Ross Herald, Scottish Herald of Arms is not known from this period. Given the date, the Ross Herald in Letter 8 could be John Dickson, or perhaps another individual.

⁵¹ See A. Thomas, ‘Renaissance culture at the court of James V, 1528–1542’, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh (1997), 317; W. Hepburn, ‘The household of James IV, 1488–1513’, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow (2013), 124; Indenture made between Margaret Tudor and the lords of Scotland, BL, Cotton MS Caligula B VI fo. 447.

⁵² See Hepburn, ‘The household of James IV’, 217; and Thomas, ‘Renaissance culture at the court of James V’, 331.

⁵³ Patrick Sinclair is mentioned on multiple occasions in manuscripts contained in The National Archives and The British Library. For example, a letter from John Clerk to Thomas Wolsey on 1 March 1528 refers to Patrick Sinclair acting as a Scottish ambassador and coming to London to speak with Henry VIII (John Clerk to Thomas Wolsey, 1 March 1528, BL, Cotton MS Titus B I fo. 316).

⁵⁴ For further discussion of this episode see Newsome-Chandler, ‘“for goddes sake kepe my writing secrete for it is my destruction”’.

⁵⁵ Margaret Tudor to Patrick Sinclair, 12 October 1523, BL, Add MS 24,965 fo. 94b; Margaret Tudor to Patrick Sinclair, 13 October 1523, BL, Add MS 24,965 fo. 94b.

⁵⁶ See M. Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain: Catherine of Aragon and Margaret Tudor, 1503–1533 (Woodbridge, 2018), 85; Hepburn, ‘The household of James IV’, 111–112. For a detailed analysis of the career of Jammy Dog in the royal household of James IV, see ibid., chs 3 and 4.

⁵⁷ See Beer, Queenship at the Renaissance Courts of Britain, 85; Hepburn, ‘The household of James IV’, 111–112.

⁵⁸ Dog's name appears in Henry VIII's book of payments of January 1517, see Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. II: 1515–1518, ed. J.S. Brewer (London, 1864). Dog is also the subject of a series of poems by the Scots poet or ‘makar’ William Dunbar, including ‘Of James Doig, Kepar of the Quenis Wardrop’, ‘Of the same James, quhen he had plesett him’, and ‘Of a Dance in the Quenis Chalmer’.

⁵⁹ For further discussion of this episode see Newsome-Chandler, ‘“for goddes sake kepe my writing secrete for it is my destruction”’.

⁶⁰ Thomas Howard to Thomas Wolsey, 13 November 1523, TNA, SP 49/2 fo. 56; Thomas, ‘Renaissance culture at the court of James V’, 305–306.

⁶¹ Thomas Howard to Thomas Wolsey, 13 November 1523, TNA, SP 49/2 fo. 56.

⁶² Margaret Tudor to John Stewart, duke of Albany, 1 February 1525, TNA, SP 49/2 fo. 87; Instructions by Margaret Tudor for John Cantley to deliver to John Stewart, duke of Albany, 22 February 1525, BL, Cotton MS Caligula B VI fo. 478. Both these documents are written in French. A translation of the instructions can be found at TNA, SP 1/35 fo. 32.