7 - “Translating” a Queen: Material Culture and the Creation of Margaret Tudor as Queen of Scots

Summary

In October 1504, the tailor of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots, was paid 20s. Scots to “translate” a gown of cloth of gold of tissue for the queen. Translating a gown, in this case, meant altering the outside cut of the gown and giving it a new lining of taffeta. The translated cloth-of-gold gown was likely one of a handful of rich gowns that her father Henry VII gave her before she left England in 1503 to marry James IV, King of Scots. Cloth of gold of tissue was the most expensive form of cloth of gold, incorporating gold and silver thread woven on a ground of fine fabric. The cloth itself was imported—probably from Italy—at great expense and was thus well worth saving and “translating” into a new gown for the queen. This type of cloth of gold was reserved only for royalty and the highest aristocracy in England, and its extravagance meant that it was used in major royal ceremonies such as coronations and weddings. The gown was thus a symbol of Margaret’s royal dignity, and it conveyed political and cultural meanings about the queen and her status, including her dual identity as an English Queen of Scots. Margaret’s gown and the rest of her wardrobe imported the English court to Scotland, creating a space in the queen’s household and chambers that proclaimed her status as a member of the Tudor dynasty while also establishing and maintaining her dignity as Queen of Scots.

Catherine Richardson has argued that clothing is particularly important in the creation of identity because of its interaction with the body. By both covering and articulating the human body, clothing can “make ‘body’ into ‘person.’” For Margaret, clothing publicly proclaimed her identity at both her father’s court in England and her husband’s court in Scotland. Clothing had greater political significance for the queen than for any other woman in the kingdom. The clothing of queens was a political statement because the queen’s body, like the king’s, was part of the late medieval political discourse of dynastic alliances, succession, inheritance, and childbirth. The body of the queen, and hence the clothing of the queen, carried multiple meanings in the early sixteenth century.