Margaret of Scotland

“ Fierce and rebellious as were so many of the elements which went to make up the Scottish people at that time, Margaret had a far easier task than her grand-daughter, Mary Stuart, for at least fanatical religious differences did not enter into the difficulties she had to encounter. But such a queen of Scotland as would have claimed the respect and won the lasting love of her subjects was by no means the Margaret Tudor of history, as she stands revealed in her correspondence. ”

“ This rather confounded the bishop, who rode off without answering a word.
ST. MARGARET OF SCOTLAND LEARNED IN THE SCRIPTURES (A.D. 1080) .
St. Margaret, a great-niece of Edward the Confessor and granddaughter of Edmund Ironsides, married Malcolm, King of Scotland, in 1069. She was of a saintly mind, and showed a genius for self-mortification and fasting, and also for charity to the poor. The King was accustomed to offer coins of gold in the church at High Mass, but the Queen devoutly pillaged them and bestowed them on the beggars who besought her help. ”

“ Margaret had done in her lifetime great things for Scotland. She had introduced comforts and luxuries of every kind, and the decorative arts, and a great deal of actual wealth, into a very poor and distracted country. The earliest charter which is found in the Scottish archives is one of Malcolm and Margaret, showing how the time of settlement and established order began in their reign. She had helped to give the distracted and divided kingdom, made up of warring sects, that consolidation and steadiness which enabled it to take its place among recognised nations. ”

“ What availeth now the wiles, the subtlety, the courage of Scotland's proudest earl? I never was master or director of such pains as these. Death! how successfully dost thou earn thy reputation of being the grim king! Water, beloved Margaret, for this miniature hell!"
"It is here, good heart," cried Countess Margaret. "God bless its efficacy!—drink."
"It is as nothing," cried Comyn, after swallowing the contents of the cup. "It is as nothing—these tormina laugh at the puny quencher of fires fiercer than those of Gehenna. I must submit. ”

“ Margaret I cherish as the betrothed bride of my ever dear cousin, the king of Scotland; and, when I endeavour to foster the many virtues nature has implanted in the noble mind of Prince Arthur, I am fulfilling, methinks, a task grateful in the eyes of Richard, thus doing my part to bestow on the England he loved a sovereign who will repair the usurper's crimes, and bestow happiness on the realm. ”

“ Her own children, through her training and example, were one and all distinguished for piety and virtue. Her three sons, Edgar, Alexander and David, were remarkable for their unparalleled purity of life: David's two grandsons, Malcolm IV. and William, and William's son and grandson, Alexander II. and III., were noble Catholic kings. Thus did the influence of this saintly queen extend {168} over the space of two hundred years and form monarchs of extraordinary excellence to rule Scotland wisely and well.
St. Margaret died on the 16th of November at the age of forty-seven. ”

“ In character, Margaret, who had been a remarkably [Pg 95] good-looking woman in her day, and who was even yet a comely dame to look upon, was what we, in Scotland here, call "furthy." She was a lively, rattling, kind-hearted, out-spoken person; warm in her feelings, active in all her habits, and possessing a natural courage and presence of mind, that singularly fitted her for performing the duties of friendship in cases of difficulty, danger, or distress. ”

“ Margaret sought to form a party of her own round the young king with the support of England. Anti-English feeling ran high in Scotland after Surrey's devastation of the lowlands, and the queen professed herself ready, if need be, to enter England 'in her smock' to labour for the security of her son (ib. pp. 327-9 ; Letters and Papers, iii. 3138) . When Albany did not return at the date promised (August 1523) , Margaret, who had provided for her retreat into England, urged the English government to action, but they preferred to let events decide. The Scottish parliament of 31 Aug. ”

“ Queen Margaret's chapel, the oldest and smallest religious house in Scotland, a tiny place indeed, where Margaret was praying when word was brought of the death of Malcolm in battle, and she, loyal and royal soul, died the very night while the enemies from the Highlands, like an army of Macbeth's, surrounded the castle. The place is quite authentic, Saxon in character with Norman touches. I know no place where a thousand years can be so swept away, and Saxon Margaret herself seems to kneel in the perpetual dim twilight before the chancel. ”

“ But what doth an old rhyme matter to us, Maggie?"
"They say moreover—"
"Who are they?"
"The people," said Margaret, giving way to tears, "that this prophecy will be accomplished by your wedding the daughter of Henry VII."
"Those who say so are fools! Has not this cunning old Tudor a son, who will be Henry VIII.? No English king can reign over Scotland, and I would not sit on the English throne were I its heir to-morrow; for who, then, would be king of broad Scotland, Margaret? and who would be a barrier between her people and the tyrannical nobility? ”

“ It dazzles the eyes to read. Florentine looms were busy, and the Italian merchants in England were doing a thriving trade. All these were to be made up in the Flemish fashion, and the Lady Margaret was asked to give her advice about the cutting of them and the style of the garments. [199]
Marriages were in the air, and gossip early said three would take place at Calais—Mary to the Prince, Margaret of Scotland to Maximilian, and Margaret of Austria to Lisle, whom, on February 1, Henry created Duke of Suffolk. ”

“ Margaret herself for the most part inclined to the English faction; and when Albany returned to Scotland from France on the invitation of the Scottish parliament in the spring of 1514, the conflict grew almost to civil war. Various projects for Margaret’s remarriage had already been started, Louis XII. of France and the emperor Maximilian being proposed as suitable husbands for the young widow, when the queen privately married Archibald Douglas, earl of Angus, on the 6th of August 1514. ”

“ Malcolm, in 1066, married Margaret. Wonderful things are related of her piety, liberality, and humility. Through her influence the ferocious spirit of her husband received an happy tincture of humanity, and so high was his opinion of her wisdom, that he made her partaker of his power. She was thus enabled to reform the kingdom of Scotland, in a great degree ”

“ A dispute with her brother Henry VIII. over a legacy claimed by Margaret was a contributory cause of the war which ended at Flodden, where James IV. was killed on the 9th of September 1513, having by his will appointed Margaret sole guardian of her infant son, now King James V. Scotland was divided mainly into two parties, one in favour of alliance with England, and the other with France. The leader of the latter was John Stewart, duke of Albany, next heir to the crown of Scotland after Margaret’s sons; Margaret herself for the most part inclined to the English faction ”

“ Those foundations continued through the whole of the period during which the lineal descendants of Margaret held the throne. Her lineage, it is true, has never died out: but the strain changed with the death of the last Alexander, and another change came over Scotland not so profound as that which attended the coming of the Saxon princess, yet great and remarkable—the end of an age of construction, of establishment, of knitting together; the beginning of a time disturbed with other questions, with complications of advancing civilisation, nobles and burghers, trade and war. ”

“ The line of Margaret went on till her sons held their {36}Courts and dated their charters from Holyrood House, and Parliaments were held and laws made in the Castle of Edinburgh, and the scattered huts upon the Castle Hill had grown into a metropolis. They were a pious and in many respects an enlightened race, and they came to great honour and renown on both sides of the house. Maud, Margaret's daughter, became Queen of England, and her grand-daughter Empress, while Scotland developed and flourished in the hands of the saintly Queen's sons and their descendants. ”

“ A match was proposed between the infant Margaret, called the Maid of Norway, and the eldest son of Edward I of England. A deputation, not so splendid as the train which accompanied the little maid's mother to Norway, was sent, in 1290, to bring the Princess Margaret over, but she died on the way before reaching Scotland. The Scalacronica speaks of only a single envoy, Master Weland, a Scottish clerk. If "the chronicle will not lie," the Maid of Norway and the Scottish clerk perished, we must suppose in a storm, on the coasts of Boghan [28] (Buchan?) ”

“ The influence of Margaret at her husband’s court, as well as motives of policy, had induced Malcolm to show especial favour to the countrymen of his queen, thus implanting the seeds of a bitter feeling of hostility in the breasts of many of the Scottish nobles at a line of conduct exhibiting, as they thought, an undue partiality for the Saxons and their innovations. ”

“ Her mother died soon after Margaret’s birth, and in 1284 the estates of Scotland decided that if Alexander died childless the crown should pass to his granddaughter. In March 1286 Alexander was killed and Margaret became queen. The English king Edward I. was closely watching affairs in Scotland, and in 1289 a marriage was arranged between the infant queen and Edward’s son, afterwards Edward II. Margaret sailed from Norway and reached the Orkneys, where she died about the end of September 1290. ”

“ Feeling of the Scots. But the policy of such a course, among such a people as the Scots of that age, may well be doubted. A fierce race, hard to control at any time, may well have had no great love for an outward show of kingship, which would be taken, and rightly, as the sign of a growth of the kingly power such as agreed neither with their customs nor with their wishes.
English influence in Scotland. Margaret moreover was a stranger in Scotland. ”

“ They escaped to Berwick and thence to Edinburgh, where Henry found a suitable abode with the Grey Friars. Margaret passed the following winter in Scotland, but in the spring, seeing no present hope from her English adherents, who appeared to be crushed, she resolved to seek help from abroad. Taking the little prince with her, she sailed from Kirkcudbright in April 1462, and landed in Brittany, whence she proceeded to the court of her cousin Louis XI., who was then at Chinon. It was resolved that some assistance should be given to the undaunted heroine in men and money. ”

“ The colony of English refugees represented a higher civilization and a more advanced state of commerce than the Scottish Celts, and the English language, from this cause also, made rapid progress. For about twenty-five years Margaret exercised the most potent influence in her husband's kingdom, and, when she died, her reputation as a saint and her subsequent canonization maintained and supported the traditions she had created. ”

“ Two years later there was a fresh outburst of hostilities between her father and the king of Scots; but the treaty of Newcastle, on 13 Aug. 1244, restored peace between England and Scotland (Fœdera, i. 257) . As a result it was arranged that the marriage already spoken of should take place when the children were old enough. Margaret was meanwhile brought up carefully and piously and somewhat frugally at home, with the result that she afterwards fully shared the strong family affection that united all the members of Henry III's family. ”

“ The history of Scotland also gives us a picture of pure and unmixed feudalism. The feudal system which was introduced under the sons of Malcolm and Margaret took much firmer root in Scotland than it ever did in England; and, as it was here untouched by the Common Law and the growth of the constitution which acted as checks upon it in England, it grew to such an excess of power that it quite overshadowed the power of the Crown. The practice of making hereditary jurisdictions, and of granting powers of regality, still further increased the influence of the feudal nobles. ”

“ Barville, the squire, carried the prince in the same way. And so they were once more safe on land.
(p. 271)
They land in Scotland.
They found the coast wild and barren, and the country desolate; but this was attended with one advantage at least, and that was that the queen was in little danger of being recognized; for, as one of Margaret's historians expresses it, the peasants were so ignorant that they could not conceive of any one's being a queen unless she had a crown upon her head and a sceptre in her hand. ”

“ In May, 1516, Angus himself, leaving his imperious wife in England, made terms with the regent. The infant Duke of Ross had died in the end of 1515, and only the boy king stood between Albany and the throne. In 1517 Albany returned to France to cement more closely the old alliance, and remained in France till 1521. Margaret immediately returned to Scotland, and, had she behaved with any degree of wisdom, might have greatly strengthened her brother's tortuous Scottish policy. But a Tudor and a Douglas could not be other than an ill-matched pair, and Margaret was already tired of her husband. ”

“ Margaret was now forced to retreat back into Yorkshire, closely followed by the new king. She was with her husband at York during the decisive day of Towton, after which she retreated with Henry to Scotland, surrendering Berwick to avoid its falling into Yorkist hands. This 'act of treason and the misconduct of her troops figure among the reasons of her attainder by the first parliament of Edward IV, which describes her as 'Margaret, late called queen of England' (Rot. Parl. v. 476, 479) . ”