 1043 - 1093 (50 years) Submit Photo / Document
Has more than 100 ancestors and more than 100 descendants in this family tree.
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| Name |
Margaret Ætheling |
| Suffix |
Queen of Scotland |
| Nickname |
The Saint |
| Birth |
1043 |
England  |
| Gender |
Female |
| Death |
16 Nov 1093 |
Edinburgh Castle, Edinburghshire, Scotland |
| Initiatory (LDS) |
20 Feb 1895 |
LOGAN |
| FamilySearch ID |
L8M6-YW7 |
| Burial |
Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland |
| Headstones |
 Submit Headstone Photo |
| Person ID |
I13190 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Father |
Edward "the Exile" Wessex, Prince of England, b. 1016, England d. Aug 1057, London, Middlesex, England (Age 41 years) |
| Mother |
Agatha von Brunswick, b. Abt 1018, Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Niedersachsen, Deutschland d. 19 Apr 1100, Wessex (Age 82 years) |
| Marriage |
Abt 1035 |
London, Middlesex, England |
| Family ID |
F6897 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family |
Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, Malcolm III, King of Scots, b. 26 Mar 1031, Atholl, Perthshire, Scotland d. 13 Nov 1093, Alnwick, Northumberland, England (Age 62 years) |
| Marriage |
1068 |
Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland |
| Children |
| | 1. Edward mac Máel Coluim, Prince of Scotland, b. Abt 1068, Scotland d. 16 Nov 1093, Edwards Isle, Scotland (Age 25 years) |
| | 2. Edmund mac Máel Coluim, Bishop of Dunkeld, b. 1070, Scotland d. 1097, Montacute, Somersetshire, England (Age 27 years) |
| | 3. Ethelred "Ethelred the UnReady" mac Máel Coluim, Prince of Scotland, b. Abt 1072, Scotland d. 1097, Scotland (Age 25 years) |
| | 4. Étgar "Probus" mac Máel Coluim, King of Alba, b. Abt 1074, Scotland d. 8 Jan 1107, Edinburgh Castle, Edinburghshire, Scotland (Age 33 years) |
| + | 5. Alaxandair "The Fierce" mac Máel Coluim, I King of the Scots, b. Abt 1078, Scotland d. 23 Apr 1124, Stirling, Stirlingshire, Scotland (Age 46 years) |
| + | 6. Matilda "Atheling" Dunkeld, Queen consort of England, b. 1080, Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland d. 1 May 1118, Westminster, Middlesex, England (Age 38 years) |
| + | 7. Dabid "The Saint" mac Máel Coluim, David I King of the Scots, b. 1084, Edinburgh, Edinburghshire, Scotland d. 24 May 1153, Carlisle, Cumbria, England (Age 69 years) |
| + | 8. Mary Dunkeld, Contess of Boulogne, b. 1082, Scotland d. 31 May 1116, England (Age 34 years) |
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| Family ID |
F6880 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Last Modified |
5 May 2024 |
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| Notes |
- She was one of the fairest and most accomplished maidens in all Englan d . With her mother, her brother and her younger sister, she had taken re fu ge in Scotland during the Norman Conquest.
Saint Margaret of Scotland (c. 1045-16 November 1093), also known as Mar g aret of Wessex, was an English princess of the House of Wessex. Margar e t was sometimes called "The Pearl of Scotland". Born in exile in the Ki ng dom of Hungary, she was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the shortly reig ne d and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon King of England. Margaret and her family r etu rned to the Kingdom of England in 1057, but fled to the Kingdom of Sc otla nd following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. In 1070 Margare t mar ried King Malcolm III of Scotland, becoming Queen of Scots.
She was a very pious Roman Catholic, and among many charitable works s h e established a ferry across the Firth of Forth in Scotland for pilgri m s travelling to St Andrews in Fife, which gave the towns of South Queen sf erry and North Queensferry their names. Margaret was the mother of thr e e kings of Scotland, or four, if Edmund of Scotland, who ruled with hi s u ncle, Donald III, is counted, and of a queen consort of England. Acco rdin g to the Vita S. Margaritae (Scotorum) Reginae (Life of St. Margaret , Que en (of the Scots)), attributed to Turgot of Durham, she died at Edi nburg h Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1093, merely days after receivin g th e news of her husband's death in battle. In 1250 Pope Innocent IV ca noniz ed her, and her remains were reinterred in a shrine in Dunfermlin e Abbe y in Fife, Scotland. Her relics were dispersed after the Scottis h Reforma tion and subsequently lost. Mary, Queen of Scots at one time ow ned her he ad, which was subsequently preserved by Jesuits in the Scottis h College , Douai, France, from where it was subsequently lost during th e French Re volution.
Early life
Margaret was the daughter of the English prince Edward the Exile, and gr a nddaughter of Edmund Ironside, king of England. After the Danish conque s t of England in 1016, King Canute the Great had the infant Edward exil e d to the continent. He was taken first to the court of the Swedish kin g , Olof Skötkonung, and then to Kiev. As an adult, he travelled to Hunga ry , where in 1046 he supported the successful bid of King Andrew I for t h e Hungarian crown. King Andrew I was then also known as "Andrew the Cat ho lic" for his extreme aversion to pagans and great loyalty to the Roma n Ca tholic Church. The provenance of Margaret's mother, Agatha, is dispu ted , but Margaret was born in Hungary c. 1045. Her brother Edgar the Æth elin g and sister Cristina were also born in Hungary around this time. Ma rgare t grew up in a very religious environment in the Hungarian court.
Return to England
Still a child, she came to England with the rest of her family when he r f ather, Edward the Exile, was recalled in 1057 as a possible successo r t o her great-uncle, the childless St. King Edward the Confessor. Wheth er f rom natural or sinister causes, her father died immediately after la nding , and Margaret continued to reside at the English court where her b rother , Edgar Ætheling, was considered a possible successor to the Engli sh thro ne. When Edward the Confessor died in January 1066, Harold Godwin son wa s selected as king, possibly because Edgar was considered too youn g. Afte r Harold's defeat at the Battle of Hastings later that year, Edga r was pr oclaimed King of England, but when the Normans advanced on Londo n, the Wi tenagemot presented Edgar to William the Conqueror, who took hi m to Norma ndy before returning him to England in 1068, when Edgar, Marga ret, Cristi na, and their mother Agatha fled north to Northumbria, Englan d.
Journey to Scotland
According to tradition, the widowed Agatha decided to leave Northumbri a , England with her children and return to the continent. However, a sto r m drove their ship north to the Kingdom of Scotland in 1068, where the y s ought the protection of King Malcolm III. The locus where it is belie ve d that they landed is known today as St Margaret's Hope, near the vill ag e of North Queensferry, Fife, Scotland. Margaret's arrival in Scotland , a fter the failed revolt of the Northumbrian earls, has been heavily ro mant icized, though Symeon of Durham implied that her first meeting of Ma lcol m III may not have been until 1070, after William the Conqueror's Ha rryin g of the North.
King Malcolm III was a widower with two sons, Donald and Duncan. He wou l d have been attracted to marrying one of the few remaining members of t h e Anglo-Saxon royal family. The marriage of Malcolm and Margaret occurr e d in 1070.
Subsequently, Malcolm executed several invasions of Northumberland to su p port the claim of his new brother-in-law Edgar and to increase his ow n po wer. These, however, had little effect save the devastation of the C ounty .
Progeny
Margaret and Malcolm had eight children, six sons and two daughters:
1.) Edward (c. 1071-13 November 1093), killed along with his father Malc o lm III in the Battle of Alnwick
2.) Edmund of Scotland (c.1071-post 1097)
3.) Ethelred of Scotland, Abbot of Dunkeld, Perth and Kinross, Scotland
4.) Edgar of Scotland (c.1074-11 January 1107), King of Scotland, regn a t 1097-1107
5.) Alexander I of Scotland (c.1078-23 April 1124), King of Scotland, re g nat 1107-24
6.) Edith of Scotland (c. 1080-1 May 1118), also named "Matilda", marri e d King Henry I of England, Queen Consort of England
7.) Mary of Scotland (1082-1116), married Eustace III of Boulogne
8.) David I of Scotland (c.1083-24 May 1153), King of Scotland, regnat 1 1 24-53
Piety
Margaret's biographer Turgot of Durham, Bishop of St. Andrew's, credit s h er with having a civilizing influence on her husband Malcolm by readi ng h im narratives from the Bible. She instigated religious reform, striv ing t o conform the worship and practices of the Church in Scotland to th ose o f Rome. This she did on the inspiration and with the guidance of La nfranc , a future Archbishop of Canterbury. She also worked to conform th e pract ices of the Scottish Church to those of the continental Church, w hich sh e experienced in her childhood. Due to these achievements, she wa s consid ered an exemplar of the "just ruler", and moreover influenced he r husban d and children, especially her youngest son, the future King Dav id I of S cotland, to be just and holy rulers.
"The chroniclers all agree in depicting Queen Margaret as a strong, pur e , noble character, who had very great influence over her husband, and t hr ough him over Scottish history, especially in its ecclesiastical aspec ts . Her religion, which was genuine and intense, was of the newest Roma n st yle; and to her are attributed a number of reforms by which the Chur ch i n Scotland was considerably modified from the insular and primitiv e typ e which down to her time it had exhibited. Among those expressly me ntione d are a change in the manner of observing Lent, which thenceforwar d bega n as elsewhere on Ash Wednesday and not as previously on the follo wing Mo nday, and the abolition of the old practice of observing Saturda y (Sabbat h), not Sunday, as the day of rest from labour." The later edit ions of th e Encyclopædia Britannica, however, as an example, the Elevent h Edition , remove Skene's opinion that Scottish Catholics formerly reste d from wor k on Saturday, something for which there is no historical evid ence. Skene 's Celtic Scotland, vol. ii, chap. 8, pp. 348-350, quotes fro m a contempo rary document regarding Margaret's life, but his source say s nothing at a ll of Saturday Sabbath observance, but rather says St. Mar garet exhorte d the Scots to cease their tendency "to neglect the due obs ervance of th e Lord's day."
She attended to charitable works, serving orphans and the poor every d a y before she ate and washing the feet of the poor in imitation of Chris t . She rose at midnight every night to attend the liturgy. She successfu ll y invited the Benedictine Order to establish a monastery in Dunfermlin e , Fife in 1072, and established ferries at Queensferry and North Berwi c k to assist pilgrims journeying from south of the Firth of Forth to St . A ndrew's in Fife. She used a cave on the banks of the Tower Burn in Du nfer mline as a place of devotion and prayer. St. Margaret's Cave, now co vere d beneath a municipal car park, is open to the public. Among other d eeds , Margaret also instigated the restoration of Iona Abbey in Scotland . Sh e is also known to have interceded for the release of fellow Englis h exil es who had been forced into serfdom by the Norman conquest of Engl and.
Margaret was as pious privately as she was publicly. She spent much of h e r time in prayer, devotional reading, and ecclesiastical embroidery. Th i s apparently had considerable effect on the more uncouth Malcolm, who w a s illiterate: he so admired her piety that he had her books decorate d i n gold and silver. One of these, a pocket gospel book with portrait s of t he Evangelists, is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.
Malcolm was apparently largely ignorant of the long-term effects of Marg a ret's endeavours, not being especially religious himself. He was conte n t for her to pursue her reforms as she desired, which was a testamen t t o the strength of and affection in their marriage.
Death
Her husband Malcolm III, and their eldest son Edward, were killed in t h e Battle of Alnwick against the English on 13 November 1093. Her son Ed ga r was left with the task of informing his mother of their deaths. Marg are t was not yet 50 years old, but a life of constant austerity and fast in g had taken their toll. Already ill, Margaret died on 16 November 1093 , t hree days after the deaths of her husband and eldest son. She was bur ie d before the high altar in Dunfermline Abbey in Fife, Scotland. In 125 0 , the year of her canonization, her body and that of her husband were e xh umed and placed in a new shrine in the Abbey. In 1560 Mary Queen of Sc ot s had Margaret's head removed to Edinburgh Castle as a relic to assis t he r in childbirth. In 1597 Margaret's head ended up with the Jesuits a t th e Scottish College, Douai, France, but was lost during the French Re volut ion. King Philip of Spain had the other remains of Margaret and Mal colm I II transferred to the Escorial palace in Madrid, Spain, but thei r presen t location has not been discovered.
Veneration
Canonization and feast day
Pope Innocent IV canonized St. Margaret in 1250 in recognition of her pe r sonal holiness, fidelity to the Roman Catholic Church, work for ecclesi as tical reform, and charity. On 19 June 1250, after her canonisation, he r r emains were transferred to a chapel in the eastern apse of Dunfermlin e Ab bey in Fife, Scotland. In 1693 Pope Innocent XII moved her feast da y to 1 0 June in recognition of the birthdate of the son of James VII o f Scotlan d and II of England. In the revision of the General Roman Calen dar in 196 9, 16 November became free and the Church transferred her feas t day to 1 6 November, the date of her death, on which it always had bee n observed i n Scotland. However, some traditionalist Catholics continu e to celebrat e her feast day on 10 June.
She is also venerated as a saint in the Anglican Church.
Institutions bearing her name
Several churches throughout the world are dedicated in honour of St Marg a ret. One of the oldest is St Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle in E di nburgh, Scotland, which her son King David I founded. The Chapel was l on g thought to have been the oratory of Margaret herself, but is now tho ugh t to have been established in the 12th century. The oldest edifice i n Edi nburgh, it was restored in the 19th century and refurbished in th e 1990s . Numerous other institutions are named for her as well.
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