Abstract
After leaving Hungary with her family, Margaret spent the remaining years of her childhood in the kingdom of Edward the Confessor. Little is known about her time there. The chronicles and her own vitae are mute regarding her activities from 1057 to 1066, a silence that echoes in the treatment of these nine years by modern biographers. T. Ratcliffe Barnett states that any consideration of this period “is all conjecture, and we must imagine for ourselves the life, the education, and the religious exercises of Margaret Ætheling during these nine years at [Edward the Confessor’s] Court.”1 While detailing historical events and genealogies, Samuel Cowen disregards her English sojourn, asserting that, “the Princess Margaret’s life, as known to us, began with her marriage in 1070 to Malcolm III.”2 A. M. D. Henderson-Howat devotes an entire chapter to this portion of Margaret’s life, but considers her experiences almost exclusively in relation to her sainted uncle.3 Alan J. Wilson dedicates only three paragraphs to the topic, concluding simply that Margaret and her family found the “religious atmosphere” in England “compatible.”4 Still, these were formative years for Margaret. She arrived in England as the daughter of the heir to the throne and the great-niece of the reigning king. As a member of the royal family, she would have been presented with established models of behavior and expectations regarding her formal role.
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Notes
T. Radcliffe Barnett, Margaret of Scotland, Queen and Saint; Her Influence on the Early Church in Scotland (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1926), 21.
Samuel Cowan, Life of the Princess Margaret: Queen of Scotland, 1070–1093 (Newcastleon-Tyne: Mawson Swan & Morgan Limited, 1911), 98.
A. M. D. Henderson-Howat, Royal Pearl: The Life and Times of Margaret Queen of Scotland (London: SPCK, 1948), 19–26.
Alan J. Wilson, St Margaret Queen of Scotland (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1993/2001), 44–45.
For the following in general see: Edward Augustus Freeman, Norman Conquest, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results. 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1867–1879), passim;
Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 423–432, 545–580;
Frank Barlow, Edward the Confessor (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970), passim.
The wealth of the Godwins approximated the king’s: “King Edward’s demesne lands were worth about £6,000, including the land of Queen Eadgyth. The family of Godwin had lands worth £5,000, and the family of Earl Leofric about half as much. The next richest layman was Beorhtric, Ælfgar’s son, but his lands were worth only £560.” Peter A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 13, 162.
M. K. Lawson, “Ealdred (d. 1069),” rev. Vanessa King, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), Internet Resource.
ASC, D, s.a. 1054. The editor of the D version concludes that Ealdred was responsible for its creation, which explains this particular version’s interest in both the bishop and Margaret’s family. G. P. Cubbin, “Introduction,” in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A Collaborative Edition, Volume 6, MS D, ed. G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), lxxix.
John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. J. Bray and P. McGurk, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), s.a. 1054.
William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, vol. 1, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 2.228.
Gaimar’s account is, however, fraught with inaccuracies. Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis/History of the English, ed. and trans. Ian Short (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 252–254.
Count Baldwin’s half sister married the duke of Normandy, alarming both Henry III and King Edward. During the dispute of 1051–1052, Godwin and most of his family sought sanctuary in Flanders, where Tostig married the daughter of Count Baldwin V. For English relations with Flanders, see Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 103–104, 108. For imperial relations in general, see: Stefan Weinfurter, The Salian Century: Main Currents in an Age of Transition, trans. Barbara M. Bowlus (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); originally published as Herrschaft und Reich der Salier: Grundlinien einer Umbruchzeit (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1991);
I. S. Robinson, Henri IV of Germany 1056–1106 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Hermann von Reichnau, Chronik, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH Scriptores 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1844), 74–133; German trans. R. Buchner, in Quellen des 9.-11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 11, 5th ed. (Darmstadt: R. Buchner u. Franz-Josef Schmale, 1978), 628–707. s.a. 1046, 1047, 1051, 1052, 1053.
Also see Gábor Varga, Ungarn und das Reich vom 10. bis zum 13. Jahrhundert: Das Herrscherhaus der Árpáden zwischen Anlehnung und Emanzipation (München: Verlag Ungarisches Institut, 2003), 118–141.
For Harold’s proposed itinerary, see Peter Rex, Harold II, the Doomed Saxon King (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), 127–129.
Edward’s untimely death has given rise to conspiracy theories, but it is most likely that he simply sickened on the journey. See: Barlow, Edward the Confessor, 217; Gabriel Ronay, The Lost King of England: The East European Adventures of Edward the Exile (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), 138–140; Freeman, Norman Conquest, 2.410–412.
Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968–1980), 5.270–273.
For the meaning of the title, see Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Felix Liebermann, 3 vols. (Halle: Niemeyer, 1903–1916), 1.665.
Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma & Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 83.
Domesday Book, Hertfordshire, ed. John Morris, Margaret Newman, and Sara Wood (Chichester: Phillimore, 1976), 38.
Feasts for St. Margaret are listed on July 13, 18, and 20 and for St. Marina on July 7 and 17. Rebecca Rushforth, An Atlas of Saints in Anglo-Saxon Calendars (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2002).
The Gospel Book of Queen Margaret, MS Latin liturgical f5 (Bodleian Library, Oxford); Facsimile: The Gospel Book of St Margaret: Being a Facsimile Reproduction of St Margaret’s Copy of the Gospels Preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. ed. W. Forbes-Leith (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1896). Rushforth estimates the current cost of the parchment alone at £300.
Rebecca Rushforth, St Margaret’s Gospel-book: The Favourite Book of an Eleventh-century Queen of Scots (Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2007), 25–27.
See also: Richard Gameson, “The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland and the Literacy of an Eleventh-Century Queen,” in Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence, ed. Jane H. M. Taylor and Lesley Smith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 148–171. Many thanks to Dr. Bruce Barker-Benfield of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for allowing me to view this remarkable treasure.
For the function of books and reliquaries as memorial objects see Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; repr. 2008), 47–48.
Eadmer of Canterbury, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. Martin Rule, Rolls Series 81(London: Longman, 1866); PL 159: 416b.
Chronicon Abbatiæ de Evesham, ed. William Dunn Macray, Rolls Series 29 (London: Longman, 1863), 317–318.
For further examples of royal women who were avid collectors of relics see: Meta Philippine Harrsen, “The Countess Judith of Flanders and the Library of Weingarten Abbey,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 24 (1930): 1–13;
Elisabeth van Houts, “The Norman conquest through European Eyes,” English Historical Review 110, no. 438 (1995): 838–839;
and Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel, “Edith, Judith, Matilda: The Role of Royal Ladies in the Propogation of the Continental Cult,” in Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint, ed. Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge (Stamford: Paul Watkins Publishing, 1995), 216–222.
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, 2.126 and 2.135. See also Edina Bozóky, La politique des reliques de Constantin à Saint Louis: protection collective et légitimation du pouvoir (Paris: Beauchesne, 2006), 230.
D. W. Rollason, Saints and Relics in Anglo-Saxon England (London: Blackwells, 1989), 179;
Alan Thacker, “Aethelwold and Abingdon,” in Bishop Aethelwold: His Career and Influence, ed. Barbara Yorke (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1988), 59–62.
Westminster Abbey MS Domesday fos 399v–402v. For Edward the Confessor as the original donor, see John Flete, The History of Westminster Abbey by John Flete, ed. J. A. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), 69.
For other gifts of pieces of the Cross, see Bruce Harbert, “King Alfred’s æstel,” Anglo-Saxon England 3 (1974): 108–110.
Horst Fuhrmann, Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050–1200, trans. Timothy Reuter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 38.
Jo Ann McNamara, “Imitatio Helenae: Sainthood as an Attribute of Queenship,” in Saints: Studies in Hagiography, ed. Sandro Sticca, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 141 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1996), 51–80.
The Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster/attributed to a monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 24–25.
Stephanie Hollis, “St Edith and the Wilton Community,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, vol. 9, trans. and ed. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 245, n. 1.
Pauline Stafford, “Queens, Nunneries and Reforming Churchmen: Gender, Religious Status, and Reform in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England,” Past and Present 163 (May 1999): 25; Stafford, Queen Emma & Queen Edith, 257.
Stephanie Hollis, “Writing the Wilton Women,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, vol. 9, trans. and ed. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 254.
The debate regarding whether Christina was the abbess of Romsey continues, but the general agreement is that she spent time at both Romsey and Wilton, and later oversaw the education of her neice Edith/Matilda at Wilton. See The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, vol. I, 940–1216, ed. David Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, Vera C. M. London, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 295, 297;
and Barbara Yorke, Nunneries and Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), 104 n. 230 and 180 n. 95.
For further documentation of dynastic affiliation and royal patronage of Wilton, see Sarah Foot, Veiled Women II: Female Religious Communities in England, 871–1066 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 221–231
Stephanie Hollis, “Wilton as a Centre of Learning,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, vol. 9, trans. and ed. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 332.
Goscelin, “The Vita of St. Edith,” 17–67. On St. Edith’s cult, see Susan Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England. A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988/2008), 37–44, 140–175; Hollis, “St Edith and the Wilton Community,” 245–80;
Stephanie Hollis, “Edith as Contemplative and Bride of Christ,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, vol. 9, trans. and ed. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 281–306. On Goscelin see Frank Barlow, “Goscelin (b. c.1035, d. in or after 1107),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
For color reproductions of this type of work, see Kay Staniland, Embroiderers, Medieval Craftsmen (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1991).
Goscelin, “The Vita of St Edith,” 35–39; Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “Holy Women and the Needle Arts: Piety, Devotion, and Stitching the Sacred, ca. 500–1500,” in Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom, ed. Katherine Allen Smith and Scott Wells, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, vol. 142, general ed. Robert J. Bast (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 89–101.
Goscelin, Vita Kenelmi, Oxford, Bodley MS 285, fo 80v; edited text in Three Eleventhcentury Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, ed. and trans. R. C. Love (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 52.
Godfrey of Winchester, The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century, ed. Thomas Wright, 2 vols. (London: Longman, 1872), 2.149.
Glanville Price, The Languages of Britain (London, Caulfield East, Australia, and Baltimore: Edward Arnold, 1984), 170–185.
Elizabeth M. Tyler, “Crossing Conquests: Polyglot Royal Women and Literary Culture in Eleventh-Century England,” in Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c. 800–c. 1250, ed. Elizabeth M. Tyler (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 171–196.
See Ian Short, “Patrons and Polyglots: French Literature in Twelfth-Century England,” in Anglo-Norman Studies XIV, Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1991, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1992), 229–249.
W. B. Lockwood, Languages of the British Isles Past and Present (London: André Deutsch Limited, 1975), 155–159.
The Latinity of English women, particularly religious women, was not compromised until later, probably in the thirteenth century, rather than the twelfth as is often asserted. Alexandra Barratt, “Small Latin? The Post-Conquest Learning of English Women,” in Anglo-Latin and its Heritage: Essays in Honour of A.G. Rigg on His 64th Birthday, ed. Siân Echard and Gernot R. Wieland (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 51–65.
Marc Meyer, “Patronage of the West Saxon Royal Nunneries in Late Anglo-Saxon England,” Revue Benedictine 91 (1981): 333 and n. 3.
For her life, see Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford Medieval Texts, 1969; repr. 1992), 4.19–20;
Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, ed. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927; repr. 1985), 41, 45.
On her cult see: Robert Folz, Les saintes reines du Moyen Âge en Occident (VIe — XIIIe siècles), Subsidia Hagiographica no. 76 (Bruxelles: Société des Bollandistes, 1992), 24–31; Ridyard, Royal Saints, 51–55, 176–210;
Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. Éva Pálmai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 86–89;
and Virginia Blanton, Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval England, 695–1615 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).
Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. Walter W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, o.s., Vol. 1 (1881);
Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, Royal Historical Society, Camden Third Series 92 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1962);
Liber Eliensis, trans. and ed. Janet Fairweather (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005). See also Ridyard, Royal Saints, 176– 210; and Blanton, Signs of Devotion, 65–171.
Jane Chance, Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 53.
Only later did “anchorite” come to mean specifically one, usually a woman, who was enclosed, separated from the world. The practice of reclusion increased in England in the third quarter of the eleventh century. Tom Licence, “Evidence of Recluses in Eleventh-Century England,” Anglo-Saxon England 36 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 221–234.
See also Ann K. Warren, “The Nun as Anchoress: England, 1100–1500,” in Medieval Religious Women, vol. I, Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 197–212;
Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 8;
and Sharon K. Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 21.
Frank Barlow, The Godwins: The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty (Harlow, Essex, and New York: Longman, 2002), 120 n. 33; and Freeman, Norman Conquest, 4.105–06. Unlike Margaret, Gunhild was known to have possessed two manors in Somerset, as indicated in Domesday Book.
N. Rogers, “The Waltham Abbey Relic List,” in England in the Eleventh Century: Proceeding of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Carola Hicks (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1992), 166–167;
Ian W. Walker, Harold, the Last Anglo-Saxon King (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), 35, 193.
On Goscelin and Eve, see Elkins, Holy Women of Twelfth-Century England, 21–27; Rebecca Hayward, “Spiritual Friendship and Gender Difference in the Liber confortatorius,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, vol. 9, trans. and ed. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 341–353;
Rebecca Hayward, “Goscelin’s Liber Confortatorius: Complaints and Consolations,” in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, vol. 9, trans. and ed. Michael Wright and Kathleen Loncar (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 355–367.
The poem is preserved in a manuscript that dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century. Hilarii versus et ludi, edited from the Paris manuscript, ed. John Bernard Fuller (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929).
Janet Nelson, “Early Medieval Rites of Queen-Making and the Shaping of Medieval Queenship,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference Held at King’s College London, April 1995, ed. Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 301–315, including a transcription of the text of the ordo on 313–314.
Benedictional of Æthelwold, London, British Library, Additional MS 49598, fo. 102v. For a full discussion see Mary Clayton, Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Robert H. Davies, “The Lands and Rights of Harold, Son of Godwine, and their Distribution by William I: A Study in the Domesday Evidence” (unpublished MA Diss., University College, Cardiff, 1967), 51–52.
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Keene, C. (2013). An Anglo-Saxon Princess. In: Saint Margaret, Queen of the Scots. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137035646_4
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