St Margaret
St Margaret of Scotland - The "Royal Saint"
St Margaret (c.1046-93) Some called her 'Margaret the Unsmiling' as few could recall her smiling, but she is more favourably known as the 'Mother of the Nation'. Margaret, a direct descendant of King Alfred, was born in 1046, the eldest of the three children of Edward the Exile and his German wife, Agatha, and the granddaughter of King Edmund Ironside. Hard facts about the early life of St Margaret are difficult to prove but it is believed that her family had been exiled to eastern Europe when King Canute and his Danish army had taken control of England and that she had been brought up at the Hungarian court of King Stephen until she was around 12 years old. The family were able to return to England in 1057 and lived with Margaret's younger brother, Edgar the Aetheling, near London. In 1066 her uncle, Edward the Confessor, died and the throne of England was vacant. Edgar put forward his claim but was rejected in favour of Harold Godwin and, following the defeat of Harold at Hastings and the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy, it was clear that it would be extremely unlikely that Margaret's family would ever gain the throne of England. Furthermore, as some of the last remaining Saxon Royals in England, they soon found themselves to be in a rather "uncomfortable" position with William as king.
St Margaret & Malcolm III of Scotland
Margaret's family decided that, for their safety, it would be best for them to return to the Continent and in 1068 they set off from Northumbria. However a violent storm forced their vessel to land in Fife, Scotland where they were received under the protection of King Malcolm Canmore (Malcolm III of Scotland). Margaret was a devout Catholic (she owned what was to become one of Scotland's most sacred relics, the Black or Holy Rood, which reputedly contained a portion of Christ's cross) and had decided to enter religion to lead a life of piety as a virgin. However Margaret's position as one of the last Anglo-Saxon royals made the prospect of marriage between her and Malcolm extremely attractive and, after some delay, they were married in Dunfermline.
With Malcolm's approval and active support, Margaret made Dunfermline a religious centre with the founding of a Benedictine priory in 1070; she encouraged Norman clerics to visit the court and conducted a rigorous new set of social and economic reforms with the counseling of her Norman adviser Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury. Margaret had six sons and two daughters, one of whom was Maud, wife of Henry of England; three of her sons (Edgar, Alexander and I David) succeeded to the throne of Scotland.
Margaret died on the 16th of November 1092 and was buried at Dunfermline Abbey. She was canonized, by Innocent IV, in 1251, her shrine was a site of pilgrimages.
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