Margaret of Scotland
Margaret, called the Maid of Norway, (1283–1290) was the daughter of Eirik Magnusson, King of Norway and Margaret, daughter of Alexander III, King of Scots. Margaret was born in 1283, most likely in early April. Her mother probably died in childbirth.[1] Margaret is sometimes counted Queen of Scots, but was never inaugurated and is not properly considered ruler of Scotland.[2]
Background
When the treaty arranging the marriage of Margaret and Eirik was signed at Roxburgh on 25 July 1281, Alexander III's younger son David had already died in June of 1281. With only one son of the King, also named Alexander, then living, the treaty included a provision for the children of Margaret and Eirik to succeed to the kingdom of the Scots:
If it happens that the king of Scotland dies without a lawful son, and any of his sons does not leave lawful issue [not sons] and Margaret has children [not sons] by the king of Norway, she and her children shall succeed to the king of Scotland ... or she, even if she is without children, according to Scottish law and custom.[3]
Alexander III made similar provisions when arranging the marriage of Alexander to Margaret, daughter of Guy de Dampierre, Count of Flanders, probably also in 1281. The treaty arranging the marriage, signed in December 1281, included a lengthy and complex document setting out the customs and usages which determined the succession. As well as general statement of principles, the annex includes specific examples of the rights of "A and M" and their children in particular cases. The document, while confusing in places, appears to favour primogeniture for male heirs, or their descendants, and proximity of blood for female heirs and their descendants.[4]
When Alexander the king's son died in 28 January 1284, leaving only granddaughter Margaret living of his descendants, Alexander III summoned all thirteen Earls of Scotland, twenty-four barons and the heads of the three main Gaelic kindreds of the West, Alexander MacDougall of Argyll, Angus Mór MacDonald of Islay and Alan MacRuari of Garmoran. Done at Scone on 5 February 1284, the signatories agreed to recognise Margaret as "domina and right heir" if neither Alexander had left no posthumous child and the king had left no children at the time of his death.[5] While unexceptional in the circumstances, this would appear to show that Alexander III had decided on remarriage. He did remarry, to Yolande de Dreux, but died on 19 March 1286.
Lady and Right Heir of Scotland
After King Alexander was buried at Dunfermline Abbey on 29 March 1286, the magnates and clerics of the realm assembled at Scone in parliament to select the Guardians of Scotland, who would keep the kingdom for the right heir. At this time it was thought that Queen Yolande was pregnant, so that Margaret was not yet the obvious successor. As it turned out, Yolande child was still-born at Clackmannan on Saint Catherine's day (25 November 1286) with the Guardians in attendance to witness the event.[6]
This, according to the oaths taken, made Margaret the heir, but within weeks Robert Bruce, 5th Lord of Annandale and his son Robert, Earl of Carrick — the grandfather and father of the future King Robert Bruce — had raised a rebellion in the south-west, seizing royal castles. This rebellion was soon suppressed, and a Norwegian ambassador came to Scotland in the winter of 1286-1287 to argue Margaret's cause. Nothing came of this, and until 1289 the Guardians maintained the peace in Scotland between the competing claims of Margaret, Robert Bruce and John Balliol.
Far from the Scots displaying any desire to bring Margaret to Scotland, it was again Margaret's father Eric who raised the question again. Eric sent official ambassadors to Edward I of England, then in Gascony, in May of 1289, with papers referring to Margaret as "Queen". Negotiations from this time onwards were between Edward, who returned to England later in the year, and Eric, and excluded the Scots until Edward met with Robert Bruce and some of the Guardians at Salisbury in October of 1289. The Scots were in a weak position since Edward and Eric could arrange Margaret's marriage to the future Edward II of England, or some other if they chose, without reference to the Guardians. Accordingly the Guardians signed the Treaty of Salisbury, which agreed that Margaret would be sent to Scotland before 1 November 1290, and that any agreement on her future marriage would be deferred until she was in Scotland.[7]
That marriage of Edward, Prince of Wales, was in King Edward's mind is clear from the fact that a papal dispensation was received from Pope Nicholas IV ten days after the treaty was signed. Sometimes thought to show bad faith on Edward's part, the Papal Bull did not contract a marriage, only permit one should the Scots later agree to it. Edward, like Eric, was now writing of Queen Margaret, anticipating her inauguration and the subsequent marriage to his son.[8]
Edward and the Guardians continued their negotiations, based on the collective assumption that Margaret would be Queen and Edward of Wales King, but all these plans, and those of King Alexander, were brought to nothing by the death of Margaret in the Orkney Islands in late September or early October of 1290 while voyaging to Scotland. Her remains were taken to Bergen and buried beside her mother in the stone wall, on the north side of the choir, in Christ's Kirk at Bergen.
Although derived from a text written more than a century later, it is thought by some historians that the earliest Middle English verse written in Scotland dates from this time:
Quhen Alexander our kynge was dede,
That Scotland lede in lauche and le,
Away was sons of alle and brede,
Of wyne and wax, of gamyn and gle.
Our gold was changit into lede.
Christ, born in virgynyte,
Succoure Scotland, and ramede,
That stade is in perplexite.[9]
The ballad Sir Patrick Spens has sometimes been supposed to be connected to Margaret's ill-fated voyage. Some years later a woman appeared claiming to be her, the False Margareth, who was executed by King Eric in 1301.
Notes
- ^ Duncan, p. 166. The most probable date for her mother's death is 9 April 1283 as given in the Gesta Annalia, but the Chronicle of Lanercost gives 27-28 February.
- ^ Duncan, pp.182–182; Oram, Canmore Kings, p. 107.
- ^ Duncan, p. 166, citing Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, volume I, 422b.
- ^ Duncan, pp.166–169.
- ^ Macdougall, pp. 12–13; Duncan, pp 169–171.
- ^ Duncan, p. 178.
- ^ Oram, Canmore Kings, p. 109; Duncan, pp 179–183.
- ^ Duncan, pp. 182–183.
- ^ Duncan, p. 175; Crawford & Imlah, p. 42.
References
- Crawford, Robert & Mick Imlach, The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. Penguin, London, 2001. ISBN 0-14-058711-X
- Duncan, A.A.M., The Kingship of the Scots 842–1292: Succession and Independence. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2002. ISBN 0-7486-1626-8
- Macdougall, Norman, "L'Écosse à la fin du XIIIe sieclè: un royaume menacé" in James Laidlaw (ed.) The Auld Alliance: France and Scotland over 700 Years. Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, 1999. ISBN 0-9-534945-00
- Oram, Richard (with Michael Penman), The Canmore Kings: Kings and Queens of the Scots, 1040–1290. Tempus, Stroud, 2002. ISBN 0-7524-2325-8
Margaret in Popular Culture
- Hendry, Frances Mary, Quest for a Maid. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1988. ISBN 0-374-46155-4
