Margaret of Scotland (1046–93), queen. Grand‐daughter of Edmund Ironside and daughter of Edward the Atheling (d. 1057), Margaret was well educated, mainly in Hungary, where her family was exiled during the rule of Danish kings in England. As one of the last members of the Anglo‐Saxon royal family, she was in danger after the Norman Conquest and took refuge at the court of Malcolm III, king of Scotland. Intelligent, beautiful, and devout, with a keen taste for fine clothes, Margaret married him in 1069. This union was exceptionally happy and fruitful for the Scottish court and nation; and through Margaret and her daughter Matilda the English royal family of today can trace their descent from the pre‐Conquest kings of England.

Her biographer Turgot, prior of Durham and bishop of St. Andrews, stressed both her public and private achievements. Through her the Scottish court achieved a higher standard of civilization; consequently its reputation was improved. She was also a principal agent in the reform of the Church in Scotland, then at a low ebb. Councils propagated the practice of Easter communion and abstinence from servile work on Sundays, while she took a prominent part in the foundation of monasteries, churches, and hostels for pilgrims. She revived the abbey of Iona, made famous by Columba and Aidan, and built Dunfermline to be like a Scottish Westminster Abbey as a burial‐place for its royal family. In the fields of both politics and religion her reign brought strong English influence; her achievements are therefore both praised and criticized.

Her private life was devoted to prayer and reading, lavish almsgiving (including the liberation of Anglo‐Saxon captives), and to ecclesiastical needlework. Her influence over the king was considerable. Initially rough in character, he came through love for her to value what she valued. He ‘saw’, as her biographer wrote, ‘that Christ truly dwelt in her heart…what she rejected, he rejected…what she loved, he for love of her loved too’. Although he could not read, he liked to see the books she used at prayer and would have them embellished with gold or silver binding. One such book, certainly hers, a pocket Gospel book with fine Evangelist portraits and gold initials, survives in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. A psalter at Edinburgh University Library may well have been hers: so too a famous illustrated Life of Cuthbert (Oxford, University College, 165).

Of Margaret's eight children two (Alexander and David) became kings of Scotland; her daughter Matilda married Henry I of England. She herself lived just long enough to learn of the tragic death of her husband and one of her sons on a military expedition against William Rufus, who had confiscated Edgar Atheling's estates. Worn out with her austerities and childbearing, Margaret died at the age of forty‐seven.

She was buried beside her husband at Dunfermline: her body was translated on 19 June 1250 following a papal inquiry into her Life and miracles. The document of her canonization, however, does not survive. But an indulgence of forty days for visiting Dunfermline on her feast dates from 1249. At the Reformation the bodies of Margaret and Malcolm were translated to a chapel in the Escorial, Madrid, specially built for the purpose, while her head was obtained by the Jesuits at Douai. She was named patron of Scotland in 1673, and is almost the only saint of Scotland with a universal cult in the Roman calendar. Feast: 16 November; translation, 19 June.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• AA.SS. Iun. II (1698), 320–40
• Proplyaeum, p. 231; Life by Turgot also in Symeon of Durham's Opera (S.S.), i. 234–54 and in J. Pinkerton, Lives of the Scottish Saints, ii (1889), 159–82, tr. W. M. Metcalfe, Ancient Lives of Scottish Saints (1895), pp. 298–321. Modern studies by T. R. Barnett (1926), L. Menzies (2nd edn. 1960), and D. McRoberts (1960). See also G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Scottish Rulers and the Religious Orders’, T.R.H.S., 5th ser. iii (1953), 77–100
• id. ‘From Queen Margaret to David I: Benedictines and Tironians’, Innes Review, xi (1960), 22–38
• D. Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (1978), pp. 119–42 Bibl. SS., viii. 781–6

d. 1093, queen consort of Malcolm III and sister of Edgar Atheling. She was married to Malcolm c.1070. A deeply religious woman, she worked to replace the Celtic practices of the Scottish church with those of Rome. She did this partly by bringing many English priests into Scotland and founding new monasteries. She was generous to the poor and led a life of extraordinary piety. She was canonized in 1250. Feast: June 10 or, in Scotland, Nov. 16.

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