Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox
Grandfather of James VI and I, Regent of Scotland
Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox (21 September 1516 – 4 September 1571) was a leader of the Catholic nobility in Scotland. He was the paternal grandfather of King James VI and I of Scotland and England. He owned Temple Newsam in Yorkshire, England.
Origins
He was the son of John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Lennox (d.1526), by his wife Lady Elizabeth Stewart, a daughter of John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl.
Conflict with Regent Arran (1543–1547)
Matthew Stewart succeeded as Earl of Lennox on the death of his father in 1526. His mother sent him and his younger brother John Stewart to France into the care of their great uncle Robert Stewart, 5th Lord of Aubigny, who enrolled them in the Garde Écossaise. His sisters, Helen and Elizabeth Stewart, were members of the household of Mary of Guise at Linlithgow Palace in March 1539 and were bought French-style clothing.
When King James V of Scotland died in 1542, Cardinal Beaton urged Lennox to return to Scotland to rival James Hamilton, 2nd Earl of Arran. Lennox arrived in March with two ships at his stronghold of Dumbarton Castle just days after Parliament had declared Arran as Regent and heir to the throne after the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. Both Arran and Lennox had claims to the throne as descendants of Mary Stewart, a daughter of King James II of Scotland, but Arran had the better claim as a grandson through a male line, while Lennox was a great-grandson through a female line.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q727905. VIAF identifies the subject as 41779299. The Library of Congress control number is nr2002037000. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1516, 1571, 1526 and 1543.
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This entry incorporates text from “Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.