‘perpetual peace’, treaty of

views updated

‘perpetual peace’, treaty of, 1502. James IV of Scotland gave considerable assistance to Perkin Warbeck, the Yorkist pretender against Henry VII in the 1490s. But in a change of policy after Warbeck's death he negotiated in 1502 a treaty of perpetual peace with England, guaranteed by the papacy and sealed in 1503 by James's marriage to Henry's eldest daughter MargaretDunbar's ‘Marriage of the Thistle and the Rose’. The treaty itself lasted no longer than most perpetual treaties. By 1513 the two countries were at war and James was slain at Flodden. But the longer consequences were remarkable. A series of unforeseeable contingencies brought the great-grandson of the marriage to the throne of England in 1603 as James VI and I.

J. A. Cannon