Saint Margaret of Scotland

Margaret of Wessex was almost 50 years old in 1093 when her husband, King Malcolm III of Scotland, and her eldest son went to war against the English at the Battle of Alnwick, where they were killed on 13 November. Tradition says that her son Ethelred, the lay abbot of Dunkeld, was with her when her son Edgar brought the news.

Margaret died three days later; no one assumes the cause was anything other than grief.

Her close friend, advisor, and biographer, Turgot of Durham, left us with a record of extreme piety. She worked on church reform, trying to bring the practices of the Scottish church closer to those of the continent (where she spent her childhood) and Rome. She performed charitable works, even washing the feet of the poor. She rose each midnight to attend Mass. She brought the Benedictines to establish a monastery at Dunfermline, and paid to establish ferries across the Firth of Forth to allow pilgrims to reach Saint Andrew's in Fife.

Her husband, whom the records call illiterate (but those may have been motivated by political enemies) admired her learning and had her books decorated in gold and silver. A pocket Gospel of hers is in the Bodleian.

Margaret was buried before the high altar at Dunfermline Abbey. Her husband's body had been interred in Tynemouth Priory, but was brought to Dunfermline for reburial near his wife during the reign of their son Alexander (1107 - 1124). That was not, however, the end of their love story.

Pope Innocent IV canonized Margaret in 1250 in recognition of her good works and personal piety. As a result, her body was disinterred at Dunfermline and the remains immediately placed into a reliquary appropriate for a saint of the Catholic Church. When they tried to carry the reliquary to its new location (a new shrine at Dunfermline), however, the path went past the location of Malcolm's remains. Those transporting the reliquary claimed it suddenly became too heavy to move. Interpreting this as a desire for Margaret to remain near her husband, Malcolm's body was likewise disinterred and placed near hers.

That was not the end of her body's travels. Mary Queen of Scots had Margaret's head exhumed and brought to Edinburgh as a "good luck charm" to assist in childbirth (N.B.: her son James was not born until 1566). In 1597 the head went to the Jesuits at the Scots College in France, but it was lost during the French revolution. The rest of her (and Malcolm) was transferred to Madrid by Philip II of Spain, but the location of their remains has been lost.

Malcolm and Margaret had several sons, any one of which could have assumed the throne in 1093 after Malcolm and his eldest, Edward, died. That was not to be the case, however. Malcolm's successor was Donald III, who swept in and laid siege to Edinburgh and Malcolm's family. Where did he come from? Let's look into that next time.

Margaret and Malcolm's Family

Margaret of Wessex and Malcolm III of Scotland had a large family that went on to influence Western Europe for another generation. Married in 1070, they started having children right away.

Their firstborn was Edward in 1071, in a departure from Scottish naming conventions (probably named for Margaret's father, Edward the Exile). He would have been the likely successor to Malcolm's throne, but he was killed along with Malcolm on 13 November 1093 at the Battle of Alnwick (this was the second battle named because it was near Alnwick; I mentioned the first here).

Edmund was also born about 1071 and likely named for Margaret's grandfather, King Edmund Ironside. When Malcolm died, Malcolm's brother Donald seized the throne as Donald I. Malcolm's remaining sons objected, and Edmund sided with Donald, making him the enemy of his siblings.

Another son, Ethelred, almost certainly named after Margaret's great-grandfather Æthelred the Unready, became the abbot of Dunkeld. He was possible a lay abbot, and not actually a churchman. The appointment gave him also extensive lands on both sides of the Firth of Forth. Legend says that he was with Margaret when she died.

Edgar (c.1074) became King of Scotland from 1097 to 1107.

Alexander (c.1078) became king after Edgar, reigning as Alexander I until 1124.

Edith, the first daughter, was born about 1080. She was sent to Romsey Abbey for education and became a nun—or did she? There was a question about that when the subject of marriage came up. The intended groom was a king, and that became a story in itself.

Mary, born in 1082, went with Edith to Romsey Abbey. Once Edith was married to a king, she wanted Mary to also have an advantageous marriage, and had her husband arrange it with Eustace III, Count of Boulogne. Mary died in 1116.

Their last child was David, who became king of Scotland from 1124 to 1153.

Margaret died in 1093, the same year that her husband and eldest son were killed in battle. Coincidence? Broken heart? Tomorrow we will look at her death and path to sainthood.

Margaret of Wessex

Margaret of Wessex (c.1045 - 16 November 1093) was born in Hungary while her family was exiled there. Her father was Edward the Exile, heir to the throne of England but sent away as a babe after Cnut conquered the country. Her father had been sent to the court of the Swedish king, Olof Skötkonung, and eventually made his way to Kiev. When grown, he traveled to Hungary and helped their King Andrew I achieve the throne. This gave the family a home in Hungary, where Margaret grew up in a very religious environment.

Her father was recalled to England as a potential successor to Edward the Confessor, and he brought the family with him. Edward died right after arrival in the land of his birth, and then the death of Edward the Confessor started a series of events that left the Exile's heir, Edgar Ætheling, unlikely to achieve the throne, though not for lack of trying. When Duke William II of Normandy succeeded at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and inevitably became King of England, Margaret and her family found a home in Northumbria.

The traditional story is that Margaret's mother, Agatha, decided to take her children back to the continent in 1068. A storm, however, drove them back to land, but farther north, where they were shipwrecked and given refuge by King Malcolm III of Scotland. Malcolm would have been in his late 30s, and Margaret in her early to mid-20s. He took a liking to her, and they were married in 1070. (The illustration is Malcolm greeting Margaret by a Victorian artist.)

Orderic Vitalis wrote that Malcolm had, in fact, traveled to England many years before to speak to Edward the Confessor and ask for his kinswoman's hand in marriage. If this meeting took place, the marriage was delayed for several years. It is possible that the marriage was arranged and then put off against Malcolm's intentions, which might explain Malcolm's plundering of Lindisfarne. Whatever the case may have been, Malcolm was at the time a widower with two sons and would have benefitted from linking himself to the English royal line.

The two had eight children, among which were three kings of Scotland and a queen of England. Tomorrow I'll tell you about their children's fortunes, and then we'll get to her sainthood.

Malcolm and English Royals

King Malcolm III of Scotland (c.1031 - 1093) was alternately supporting and attacking English royalty. The tradition that his father had sent him to the court of Edward the Confessor in his youth suggested there would be strong ties to Scotland's neighbor to the south. The later Scottish historian John Fordun assumed that Malcolm spent Macbeth's seventeen-year-reign with Edward.

Orderic Vitalis wrote that Malcolm was betrothed to Margaret of Wessex, the daughter of Edward the Exile. (That's Margaret in the illustration, reading the Bible to Malcolm. She was later declared a saint.) When they married in 1070, this made Malcolm the brother-in-law of Edgar Ætheling, one of the potential heirs to the throne of England in 1066 after Edward the Confessor's death. This was the context for Malcolm supporting Edgar with troops in Edgar's attempts to capture the throne from the more successful claimant, William II of Normandy.

You can see here and here how Edgar relied on Malcolm for support and simply as a place of refuge when things got bad. Malcolm's good relationships were with English royals, not the Normans who invaded in 1066. His aid to Edgar helped prompt William to engage in the Harrying of the North, a series of military campaigns by the new king of England to devastate much of the north of England to punish for past and deter future attempts to coalesce around Edgar Ætheling and use him to replace William.

Malcolm and William finally met in 1072 and negotiated a treaty. Malcolm pledged his loyalty to William, which meant little: Malcolm continued raiding in Northumbria until Williams sent his son Robert Curthose in 1080 at the head of an army. This time Malcolm kept the peace to which he had agreed.

In 1091, when Robert Curthose started rebelling against his brother William Rufus (who had inherited after William's death), Malcolm did not take sides. He did, however, take advantage of their fighting to go south and besiege Newcastle and the castle built by Curthose. This was a step to pushing Scotland's boundary further south. An approaching English army led by Rufus motivated Malcolm to retreat north.

His final dealing with royalty came when he marched south with his son to discuss the return of lands given to Malcolm by William II. Rufus refused, saying that the matter would be settled by the English barons. Malcolm rejected this idea and returned to Scotland, gathering an army and ravaging Northumbria more harshly than ever before. On 13 November 1093, he was ambushed by the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, and killed.

His interment includes a story that needs to start with his wife, Margaret. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the queen who became a saint.

Edgar Ætheling, Part 2

For Edgar Ætheling, landing in Scotland in 1068—whether by accident or design—was fortuitous. King Malcolm III took a liking to Edgar's sister Margaret, who was probably in her early 20s. They married in 1070 (see illustration), and had several children, including kings of Scotland David I and Alexander I.

Edgar's new brother-in-law supported Edgar's claim to the throne of England. Edgar's and Malcolm's plans caused the north of England—what is now Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Lancashire—to start a series of local rebellions against Norman rule. This led to the Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror's campaign to subdue the northern territories and stop Edgar's plans. The Harrying was vicious, using scorched earth tactics to starve out the rebels and replacing all English aristocracy with Normans.

Edgar had returned to England to become the focal point for the rebellions, but retreated to Scotland when things got bad. Later that year, King Sweyn of Denmark arrived in the north, triggering a fresh set of uprisings. Edgar, the Northumbrians, and the Danes combined to take York from Norman control. William arrived later, bought off the Danes (they were still susceptible to Danegeld), and caused Edgar and his other followers to, once again, retreat to Scotland.

In 1072, William invaded Scotland, forcing Malcolm to recognize William's overlordship. Part of the agreement was the expulsion of Edgar, who went to Flanders where Robert the Frisian was hostile to Normandy. Edgar returned to Scotland in 1074, but then received an offer from Philip I, King of France. Philip offered him a castle near the Norman border from which he could hassle Normandy. Embarking for France, a storm wrecked his fleet along the English coast, whereupon Normans hunted him down. He fled back to Scotland on foot, after which Malcolm convinced him to give up his dreams of a throne and submit to William.

Edgar tried that route, but felt he deserved better treatment because of his status. The Domesday Book in 1086 lists two estates in Hertfordshire belonging to Edgar, although by that time he was no longer living in England. Dissatisfied, he had gone to Italy to settle in Apulia, which was occupied by Normans. A few years later, however, he returned to England.

After William's death in 1087, Edgar's fortunes seemed to rise a little with William's sons, who clearly had no concerns that this older man was going to try to take their throne. Instead, they involved him in their reigns.

For the happy remainder of Edgar's complicated life, tune in tomorrow.