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 Abt 1045 - 1093 (~ 48 years)
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| Name |
Margaret |
| Prefix |
Saint |
| Born |
Abt 1045 |
Hungary  |
| Gender |
Female |
| Died |
16 Nov 1093 |
Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Person ID |
I2003 |
Young Kent Ancestors |
| Last Modified |
7 Jan 2021 |
| Family |
Malcolm III 'Canmore', King of Scotland, d. 13 Nov 1093, Alnwick, Northumberland, England |
| Married |
Abt 1069 |
Dumferline, Scotland |
| Children |
| | 1. Matilda, d. 1118 |
| | 2. Edward, d. 13 Nov 1093, Alnwick, Northumberland, England |
|
| Last Modified |
20 Mar 2022 |
| Family ID |
F824 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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| Notes |
- St Margaret - Tragedy in the Scots Royal Family
On 13 November 1093 the Scots royal family experienced a cataclysm. Malcolm Canmore, King of Scots, and his eldest son, Edward, were killed at the battle of Alnwick in Northumberland. Queen Margaret, his wife, was stricken with grief. Born in Hungary and descended from the English Saxon royal family, Margaret married Malcolm of Scotland in 1069. She developed an interesting reputation. Margaret could be best described as a royal saint-in-the-making, famous for her devotions and good deeds to the poor. The Queen was also a very determined woman with strong views about religion. She encouraged changes to bring the Scottish church more into the mainstream of European practice. Contemporary chroniclers noted the disaster which befel her husband and eldest son. Her confessor, Turgot, recorded her death which followed soon after.
Mael-Coluim, son of Donnchadh, archking of Scotland and Edward, his son, were killed by the Franks (namely, in Inber-Alda, in Saxonland). His queen, moreover, Margaret, died of grief therefore before the end of a novena [nine-day period of prayer]. Annals of Ulster, ii, ed. B. MacCarthy, Dublin, 1893.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 1093
And then the Scots chose Malcolm's brother Dufenal [Donald Ban] as king and drove out all the English who had been with King Malcolm. When Duncan, King Malcolm's son, heard all this had happened in this way (he was at King William's court as his father had given him as a hostage to our king's father and so he had remained here), he came to the king, and did such homage as the king wished to have from him, and so with his consent went to Scotland with such support as he could get from Englishmen and Frenchmen, and deprived his kinsman Dufenal [Donald Ban] of the kingdom and was accepted as king. But some of the Scots assembled again and killed nearly all his force, and he himself escaped with a few men. Afterwards they came to an agreement, to the effect that he would never again bring Englishmen nor Frenchmen into the country. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A revised translation, eds D. Whitelock, D. C. Douglas, S. I. Tucker, London, 1961.
Symeon of Durham
And since none of his men remained to cover it with earth two of the natives placed the king's body in a cart, and buried it in Tynemouth. Scottish Annals from English Chroniclers, AD 500 to 1286, ed. A. O. Anderson, London, 1908.
The Life of St Margaret
On the fourth day preceding her death, while the king was absent on an expedition, and at so great a distance that it was impossible for any messenger, however swift, to bring her tidings of what was happening to him, she became sadder than usual. Then she said to me, for I was seated near her, 'Perhaps on this very day such a heavy calamity may befall the realm of Scotland as has not been for many ages past.' When I heard these words I paid no great attention to them, but a few days afterwards a messenger arrived who told us that the king was slain on the very day on which the queen had spoken the words narrated. As if foreseeing the future, she has been most urgent with him not to go with the army, but it came to pass - how I know not - that he failed to follow her advice . . .
Her face was already covered with a deadly pallor, when she directed that I, and the other ministers of the sacred Altar along with me, should stand near her and commend her soul to Christ by our psalms. Moreover, she asked that a cross, called the Black Cross, which she always held in the greatest veneration, should be brought to her. There was some delay in opening the chest in which it was kept, during which the queen, sighing deeply, exclaimed, 'O unhappy that we are! O guilty that we are! Shall we not be permitted once more to look upon the Holy Cross!' When at last it was got out of the chest and brought to her, she received it with reverence, and did her best to embrace it and kiss it, and several times she signed herself with it. Although every part of her body was now growing cold, still as long as the warmth of life throbbed at her heart she continued steadfast in prayer. She repeated the whole of the Fiftieth Psalm, and placing the cross before her eyes, she held it there with both her hands . . .
It was at this point that her son [Edgar], who now, after his father, holds in this realm the reins of government, having returned from the army, entered the queen's bedroom . . .
The queen, who seemed to the bystanders to be rapt in an agony, suddenly rallied and spoke to her son. She asked him about his father and brother. He was unwilling to tell the truth, and fearing that if she heard of their death she herself would immediately die, he replied that they were well. But, with a deep sigh she exclaimed, 'I know it, my boy, I know it. By this holy cross, by the bond of our blood, I adjure you to tell me the truth.' Thus pressed, he told her exactly all that had happened . . .
Feeling now that death was close at hand, she at once began the prayer which is usually uttered by the priest before he receives the Body and Blood of our Lord, saying, 'Lord Jesus Christ, who according to the will of the Father, through the co-operation of the Holy Ghost, hast by Thy death given life to the world, deliver me.' As she was saying the words, 'Deliver me,' her soul was freed from the chains of the body, and departed to Christ, the author of true liberty; to Christ whom she had always loved, and by whom she was made a partaker of the happiness of the saints, as she had followed the example of their virtues. Her departure was so calm, so tranquil, that we may conclude her soul passed at once to the land of eternal rest and peace. It was remarkable that her face, which, when she was dying had exhibited the usual pallor of death, became afterwards suffused with fair and warm hues, so that it deemed as if she were not dead but sleeping. Her corpse was shrouded as became a queen, and was borne by us to the Church of the Holy Trinity [in Dunfermline], which she had built. There, as she herself had directed, we committed it to the grave, opposite the altar and the venerable sign of the Holy Cross which she had erected. And thus her body at length rests in that place in which, when alive, she used to humble herself with vigils, prayers, and tears. Turgot, Life of St Margaret, ed. W. F. Leith, Edinburgh, 1896.
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St Margaret's Chapel, Edinburgh Castle.
An interior picture of the tiny chapel at the highest point in Edinburgh Castle, this is the oldest part of the castle and dates from the 11th century.
Margaret was an Anglo-Hungarian princess who fled the Norman conquest of England to the court of Malcolm III of Scotland, she was a very pious Roman Catholic and was known as the 'Pearl of Scotland' for her good work at Dunfermline Abbey with the lepers and the poor and needy.
The towns of North and South Queensferry were named after her as these were the places where Margaret crossed the Firth of Forth, the road leading from Edinburgh Castle to South Queensferry, The Queensferry Road has been there for almost 1,000 years.
Malcolm and Margaret were married in 1070 and she bore six children to her husband, three of who became Kings in their own right of Scotland.
In 1250 Margaret was canonized by Pope Innocent IV and became St Margaret of Scotland.
In 1093 while returning to Scotland from the court of William II (William Rufus) of England Malcolm was ambushed by Robert de Mowbray the Earl of Northumbria over a land rights issue and was slain along with his eldest son Edward in what became known as the Battle of Alnwick, the date was 13th November 1093, by the 16th Margaret passed away, its thought her cause of death was grief for her lost husband and son.
Fact.
It was Malcolm III who slew MacBeth at the Battle of Lumphanan in 1057, thus ending the old ways of Tanistry in Scotland where a King, the Ard Righ an Alba was elected to power rather than it being his hereditary right, Malcolm Canmore then became the first feudal King of Scotland.
It was not the end of the old ways just the beginnings of a new way that would have ramifications for centuries to come including being a catalyst for the infamous Clan battles.
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