Saints Commemorated in November
16 November St Margaret
Born in 1046 and a member of an ancient English royal family. She was a
direct descendant of King Alfred and the granddaughter of King Edmund of
England through his son Edward.
Along with her family she was exiled to the
eastern continent when King Canute and his
Danish army had overrun England. The well-
travelled Margaret received her formal
education in Hungary but returned to England
towards the end of the reign of her great-uncle,
Edward the Confessor.
Margaret and her family’s position was,
however, precarious and fearing for their lives
they fled northwards, in the opposite direction to
the advancing Normans. They were heading
back to the continent from Northumbria when
their ship was blown off course and landed in
Fife.
King Malcolm III as Malcolm Canmore (or Great Head) offered his protection
to the family, particularly to Margaret who initially refused his proposals of
marriage, but the couple finally married in Dunfermline in 1069.
Their union was exceptionally happy and fruitful for both themselves and the
Scottish nation. Margaret brought with her some of the finer points of current
European manners, ceremony and culture to the Scottish Court, which
highly improved its civilised reputation.
Queen Margaret was renowned for her good influence on her husband and
also for her devout piety and religious observance. She was a prime mover
in the reform of the Church in Scotland.
Margaret and Malcolm had eight children, all with English names. Alexander
and David followed their father to the throne, whilst their daughter, Edith
(who changed her name to Matilda upon her marriage), brought the ancient
Anglo-Saxon and Scottish Royal bloodline into the veins of the Norman
Invaders of England when she married and bore children to King Henry I.
Margaret was very pious and cared especially for the poor and orphans. It
was this piety that caused considerable damage to her health with the
repeated fasting and abstinence. In 1093, as she lay on her deathbed after a
long illness, she was told that her husband and eldest son had been
ambushed and treacherously killed at the Battle of Alnwick in Northumbria.
She died shortly after aged just forty-seven.
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