King who once fled for his life protects St. Margaret

FIRTH OF FORTH, Scotland, 1067–1069 AD — Saint Margaret of Scotland was a young woman of little more than twenty. She slipped out of England in secret with her brother, her mother and her younger sister. They were trying to get back across the sea to mainland Europe. But a storm drove their ship north into the Firth of Forth, in Scotland. The storm had badly damaged the ship. It dropped anchor in a small, sheltered bay, and everyone went ashore as soon as they could.

They were running from William of Normandy. He had made himself King of England. William had killed the English king, Harold Godwinson, near Hastings and taken the kingdom. St. Margaret’s brother, Edgar, was the last man of the old English royal family who could have been king. Now William held that family’s crown. He was already arranging to marry St. Margaret and her sister, Christina, to Norman nobles. He also meant to decide what happened to their mother’s property.

When the family ran, St. Margaret took “many relics of saints, more precious than any stone or gold.” One of the relics was a cross. Later it was called the Black Rood, and Scotland honoured it for hundreds of years.

St. Margaret was born in Hungary about 1045 AD. In 1057 AD her father’s uncle, Saint Edward the Confessor, King of England, brought the family to England. St. Margaret grew up at his court.

The stone on the hill

King Malcolm III of Scots was in his tower at Dunfermline, inland and uphill from the bay. First he heard that an English ship was struggling in the storm. Then he heard that a group of important strangers had landed and were asking to stay with him. The messengers praised St. Margaret above all, for “her incomparable beauty and the pleasantness of her jocund speech.” Jocund is an old word for cheerful.

Malcolm sent his advisers down to the Forth at once. They welcomed the family in the king’s name. They invited the family to Dunfermline and said the king was already on his way to meet them.

The land climbs in ridges from the water to Dunfermline. Tradition holds that St. Margaret and the others were tired from the climb. About halfway there, they sat down by a great stone and waited for the king to come. It has been called St Margaret’s Stone ever since.

A king who had run too

The king coming down the road had once been an exile himself. Malcolm, the son of King Duncan, was about forty. When he was a young man, Macbeth killed his father, and Malcolm had to flee for his life. He found a safe home at the court of St. Edward in England. St. Margaret grew up at that same court. With an army St. Edward lent him, Malcolm won back his kingdom in 1057 AD.

Alban Butler wrote about Malcolm in his Lives of the Saints. Butler said that “the sight of the young prince and princess made him feel all the weight of their affliction.” Their affliction was the great trouble they were in. Malcolm took the whole family under his protection.

Then William sent word to Malcolm, demanding that Edgar and his sister be handed over to him. The sister was St. Margaret, the young woman William had been arranging to marry to a Norman nobleman. Malcolm refused. Alban Butler wrote that Malcolm “rejected with horror so base a treachery.”

In 1070 AD St. Margaret married Malcolm at Dunfermline, not far from the bay where her ship had come in.