Historical Britain Blog

In many ways, St. Margaret is a bit of an enigma to us.  Sister of Eadgar Aetheling (see my last post), her family was driven onto the shores of Scotland while fleeing from Norman-occupied England.  She is said to have immediately captivated the King of the Scots, who was determined to make her his wife despite her oft-repeated assertions that she was destined for the church.

Apparently, circumstances pressured Margaret to change her mind about becoming a nun—not the least of which was the obvious need of her brother for foreign support of his claim to the English throne.  But I suspect the main reason she decided to marry Malcolm was the condition of the Scottish Columban church.  They observed the Sabbath on Saturday and worked on Sunday; they refused to receive the Sacrament and didn’t recognize the authority of the Pope. Once Queen of Scotland, Margaret took it upon herself to personally oversee the reformation of the Church, and she did so with ruthless persistence.

A grateful Catholic church remembered her as a perfect, flawless example of Christian piety and duly canonized her in 1250.  What I find interesting is that I believe a canonized female saint must be either a virgin or a widow (please correct me if I am wrong!).  Margaret met that particular condition by a mere three days.  While she lay on her deathbed, husband Malcolm was off on another raid in Northumbria, where he met his end at the siege of Alnwick.

By all indications, their royal marriage was a happy one. Margaret bore six sons and two daughters; the eldest, Edward, was killed alongside his father in 1093. Three of their sons became kings: Edgar, Alexander I, and David I, who reigned until 1153. Their daughter Mary married Eustace III of Boulogne, and Edith (renamed Matilda) married Henry I of England, thus uniting the Normans with the old Anglo-Saxon dynasty.

On receiving news of Malcolm’s death, she is said to have thanked God for “giving her this anguish” at her last hour, then expired, leaving the survivors a difficult task of spiriting away her body while Edinburgh castle was under siege by Malcolm’s half-brother Donald Bane.  (More of that in my novel HEIR TO A PROPHECY.)

Eventually, Malclom and Margaret were buried in Dunfermline Abbey, but she was disturbed again in 1560, when Scottish Calvinist iconoclasts were said to have desecrated the grave and stolen her head.  It is thought that Mary Queen of Scots possessed this reliquary for a while, then the head was toted around Europe and lost during the French Revolution.

Eadgar Aetheling was a Saxon prince and grandson of Edmund Ironside, who was briefly king of England in 1016.  He was born in Hungary where his father lived in exile, and in 1057 the family moved back to England at the invitation of the childless Edward the Confessor.  His father, Edward the Exile died a few months later—without ever seeing the king—and the children were raised at court.

When Edward the Confessor died in 1066, Eadgar Aetheling was the only surviving male heir of the royal house, but his youth made him an unacceptable choice for a crown that had so many powerful claimants.  After Harold Godwineson was elected King by the Witan, Eadgar apparently tarried at the court, because after the Battle of Hastings, the surviving Saxon elite rallied around him as the true heir.  They even went so far as to elect him King, but as soon as William of Normandy crossed the Thames, Eadgar’s supporters abandoned their Saxon king and submitted to the Norman conqueror.

Needless to say, William kept Eadgar Aetheling as hostage, but at the first opportunity Eadgar bolted and participated in the first unsuccessful revolt of Northumbria. He was a handy figurehead but knew nothing about leading anyone, much less a force of rebels. After another aborted rebellion, he fled England with his family and embarked for Hungary.  However, a great storm drove their ship into the Firth of Forth, where they landed on the north shore near Queensferry and took refuge with Malcolm III, King of Scotland.

This was a lucky accident for Eadgar, because Malcolm fell in love with his sister Margaret and eventually married her, thus obliging the Scottish King to provide shelter and aid for Eadgar’s future incursions into England.  In 1069, Eadgar was the titular head of a rebellion in Northumbria that achieved early success, and even wrested the city of York from the Normans.  However, William came north with a vengeance and broke up the rebellion, bought off Eadgar’s Danish allies, and drove the Aetheling back to Scotland for protection. This was the beginning of the Harrying of the North, and England’s erstwhile king was nowhere in sight.

Although Eadgar stayed in Scotland until 1072, William eventually forced the issue by invading Scotland and demanding the submission of Malcolm.  Malcolm reluctantly complied, but one of the terms may well have been the expulsion of Eadgar, since the Aetheling crossed over to Flanders.  He was back and forth for a couple of years, bringing trouble in his wake, until Malcolm finally persuaded the Aetheling to make his peace with William and give up any claim to the throne.

Although his tenure in England was anti-clamactic, Eadgar did gain a measure of respect on diplomatic missions between Malcolm and William’s heir, William Rufus.  Many believe that he rescued the children of Malcolm III from the clutches of Donald Bane, who usurped the throne after Malcolm was killed. He later led an army that helped young Eadgar wrest the crown back from Donald in 1097. He befriended Robert Curthose, the Conqueror’s other son, went on Crusade, and lived into the reign of Henry I.  It is thought that he lived until 1125, which would have put him at the ripe old age of 75.