together with her own grace and dignity, had its effect on the unruly
Scottish chieftains, and not one of them ventured to use a profane word,
or make an unseemly jest before her. They had a rude, ungodly practice
of starting away from table without waiting for grace, and this the
gentle queen reformed by sending, as an especial gift from herself, a
cup of wine to all who remained. In after times the last cup was called,
after her, St. Margaret’s cup, or the grace-cup.
To improve the manners of the ladies, she gathered round her a number of
young girls, whom she brought up under her own eye, and she used to sit
in the midst of them, embroidering rich vestments for the service of
the Church, and permitting cheerful talk with the nobles whom she
admitted--all men of whose character she had a good opinion. She
endeavored to reform the Scottish Church which had become very sluggish,
and did little to contend with Highland savagery. There were only three
Bishops and those not with fixed sees. Margaret and her husband convened
a synod, when Margaret herself explained her views, and Malcolm
interpreted. It was not a usual order of things, but to themselves quite
satisfactory, and thenceforth the Scottish Church became assimilated
to the rest of the Western communion. It was a Saxon immigration: the
Lowlands became more English than England then was, and Scotch is still
more like Saxon than the tongue we speak. But the Celts bitterly hated
the change; and thenceforth the land was divided.
She was gay and playful; but her fasts and mortifications in secret were
very great. She cut off unnecessary food and sleep, and spent half the
night in prayer. She daily washed the feet of six poor people, and
washed, clothed, and fed nine orphan babes, besides relieving all who
came to ask her bounty, attending to the sick, and sending to ransom
captives, especially her own countrymen the English, lodging her rescued
prisoners in a hospital which she had founded, till they could be sent
to their own homes.
Leading this happy and holy life, Edgar left his sister about two years
after her marriage, upon an invitation from Philippe I. of France; but
he was shipwrecked on the coast of Normandy, and coming to Rouen, was
kindly received by William, and remained with him. A close friendship
sprung up between the disinherited Etheling and Robert the heir
of Normandy, who was only a year or two older. Both were brave,
open-hearted, and generous, and their love for each other endured, on
Edgar’s side, through many a trial and trouble. Happy would it have been
for Robert had all his friends been like Edgar Adeling, as the Normans
called him. A few years more made Edgar a fine young man, expert in the
exercises of chivalry, and full of the spirit of enterprise: but he did
not join his friend in rebellion against his father; and after Robert
had quitted Rouen, never to return thither in his father’s lifetime, he
obtained permission from William to go on pilgrimage, gave his pension
for a fine horse, and set off for Italy with two hundred knights, fought
there, or in Sicily, against the Saracens, for some time, and then
continued his pilgrimage.
He returned through Constantinople, where many of the English fugitives
were serving in the Varangian guard. The Emperor Alexius Comnenus was
much pleased with him, and offered him high preferment if he would
remain with him; but Edgar loved his own country too well, and proceeded
homeward.
He found a changed state of affairs on his arrival in Normandy. William
the Conqueror was dead, and Robert, with the aid of Henry Beauclerc,
just preparing to assert his right to the English crown against Red
William. Edgar Etheling offered his sword to assist his friend; but he
was shamefully treated. William came to Normandy, sought a conference
with Robert, cajoled or outwitted him into a treaty in which one of the
conditions was that he should withdraw his protection from both Edgar
and Henry, and deprive the former of all the lands in Normandy which
their father had given him.
Edgar retired to Scotland to his sister Margaret, whom he found the
mother of nine children, continuing the same peaceful, active life in
which he had left her, and her holy influence telling more and more upon
her court. Many Saxons had come to live in the lowlands of Scotland,
and the habits and manners of the court of Dumfermline were being fast
modelled on those of Westminster in the time of Edward and Edith.
Malcolm and William Rufus were at war, and Edgar accompanied his
brother-in-law to the banks of the Tyne, where they were met by William
and Robert. No battle took place; but Edgar and Robert, meeting on
behalf of the two kings, arranged a treaty of peace. In return for this
service, William permitted Edgar to return to England, being perhaps
persuaded by Robert and Malcolm that the English prince was a man of his
word, though to his own hindrance.
The peace, thus effected did not last long, most unhappily for Scotland.
Malcolm, with his two eldest sons, Edward and Edmund, invaded England,
and laid siege to Alnwick Castle, leaving the Queen at Edinburgh,
seriously ill. At Alnwick the Scottish army was routed, and Malcolm and
Edward were slain. The tradition is, that one of the garrison pretended
to surrender the castle, by giving the keys, through a window, on the
point of a lance; [Footnote: Curiously in accordance with this story we
find, in the Bayeux tapestry, the surrender of Dinan represented by the
delivery of the keys in this manner to William the Conqueror.] but that
he treacherously thrust the weapon into the eye of Malcolm, and thus
killed him. The story adds that thus the soldier acquired the name of
Pierce-eye, or Percy; which is evidently incorrect, since the Percys of
Alnwick trace their origin to William de Albini, who married Henry
Beauclerc’s second queen, Alice of Louvain.
An instant disturbance prevailed on the King’s death. His army fled in
dismay; his corpse was left on the ground, till a peasant carried it to
Tynemouth; his men were dispersed, slain, or drowned in their flight;
his young son Edmund, a stripling of eighteen or nineteen, just
contrived to escape to Edinburgh Castle. The first tidings that met him
there were, that his mother was dying; that she lay on her bed in great
anxiety for her husband and sons, and finding no solace except in holding
a fragment of the true Cross pressed to her lips, and repeating the
fifty-first Psalm.
The poor youth, escaped from a lost battle, and bearing such dreadful
tidings, was led to her presence at once.
“How fares it with your father and brother?” said she.
He feared to tell her all, and tried to answer, “Well;” but she
perceived how it was too plainly, and holding out the Holy Cross,
commanded him to speak the truth. “They are slain, mother--both slain!”
Margaret’s thoughts must have rushed back to the twenty-three years of
uninterrupted affection she had enjoyed with her lord, to her gallant
son, slain in his first battle, and onward to the unprotected state of
the seven orphans she left in the wild kingdom. Agony indeed it was; but
she blessed Him who sent it. “All praise be to Thee, everlasting God,
who hast made me to suffer such anguish in my death.”
She lingered on a few hours longer, while storms raged around. The wild
Celts hated Malcolm’s improvements and Saxon arts of peace, and his
brother Donald was placing himself at their head to deprive his lawful
brothers of their heritage. A troop of Highlanders were on their way to
besiege Edinburgh Castle, even when the holy Queen drew her last breath;
and her friends had barely time to admire the sweet peacefulness that
had spread over her wasted features, before they were forced to carry
her remains away in haste and secrecy, attended by her weeping,
trembling children, to Dumfermline Abbey, where she was buried.
Her children, seven in number (for Ethelred, the eldest, had died in
infancy), were left unprotected. Edmund was only eighteen, and timid
and gentle. Donald seized the crown; and the orphans remained in great
danger, till their brave uncle, Edgar Etheling, learnt the fatal
tidings, and, coming from England, fetched them all home with him,
giving the two girls, Edith and Mary, into the care of their aunt
Christina, who was now Abbess of Wilton. It was at some danger to
himself that he took the desolate children under his protection. A man
named Orgar accused him to William Rufus of intending to raise his
nephews to the English crown. A knight, named Goodwin, no doubt of Saxon
blood, no sooner heard the aspersion, than he answered by avowing the
honor and faithfulness of his Etheling, threw down his glove, and defied
Orgar to single combat--“God show the right.” It was shown; Orgar fell,
and Saxons and Normans both rejoiced, for the Etheling had made himself
much beloved.
The Crusade was preached, and Robert invited Edgar to join in it; but he
could not forsake the charge of his sister’s children, and was forced to
remain at home. Revolutions, however, continued in Scotland. Donald was
overthrown by Duncan, a son of Malcolm, born long before his marriage;
and the Lowland Scots were impatient of the return to barbarism. Duncan
was killed, and Donald restored. Edgar hoped that his nephews might
be restored. Edmund had chosen to renounce the throne and embrace a
religious life; but the next in age, Edgar and Alexander, were spirited
princes, and eager to assert their right.
The Etheling had never shed blood to regain his own lost kingdom; but he
was a true knight-errant and redresser of wrongs. He asked leave from
William to raise a Saxon army to restore his nephew to the Scottish
throne; and such was the reliance that even the scoffer William had
learnt to place on his word, that it was granted. The English flocked
with joy round their “darling,” wishing, without doubt, that it was for
the restoration of the Saxon, instead of the Scottish Edgar, that they
took up arms.
At Durham the monks of St. Cuthbert intrusted to the Etheling their
sacred standard--a curious two-winged ensign, with a cross, that was
carried on a car. It was believed always to bring victory, and at the
first sight of it Donald’s men abandoned him, and went over to Edgar.
Donald was made prisoner, and soon after died. Young Edgar assumed the
crown, sent for the rest of his family, and had a happy and prosperous
reign.
Had Edgar Etheling been selfish and ambitious, he might now, at the
head of his victorious Saxons, have had a fair chance of dethroning the
tyrant William; but instead of this, his thoughts were fixed on the Holy
Land; and embarking with his willing army, he came up with the Crusaders
just in time for the siege of Jerusalem, where the English, under “Edgar
Adeling,” fought gallantly in the assault in the portion of the army
assigned to Robert of Normandy.
Edgar and Robert returned together, and visited the Normans of Apulia,
where Edgar had been some years before. Robert here fell in love with
Sybilla, the beautiful daughter of the Count of Conversana, and soon
after married her. It was in the midst of the wedding festivities that
Ralph Flambard, lately the wicked minister of William Rufus, arrived
from England, having escaped from prison, bringing the news that his
master, the Red King, was slain, and Henry Beauclerc wore the crown. The
hasty wrath of Duke Robert was quickly fanned by Ralph Flambard, and he
set off at once to attack his brother, and gain the kingdom which Henry
had sworn should be his.
However, on his arrival, he at first only amused himself with conducting
his bride through his dukedom, and being feasted at every castle. When
two knights of Maine came to tell him that Helie de la Flèche was
besieging their castles, he carelessly thanked them for their fidelity,
but told them he had rather gain a kingdom, than a county, and so that
they should make the best terms they could.
Sybilla’s dowry enabled Robert to raise a considerable army, and he had
likewise the support of most of the barons whose estates lay both in
Normandy and England, and who therefore preferred that the two states
should be united; whereas those who had only domains in England held
with Henry, wishing to be free from the elder and more powerful nobility
of Normandy. The Anglo-Saxons were for Henry, who had relieved them from
some of their sufferings, and had won their favor by his marriage, which
connected him with the Etheling. Edith, the eldest daughter of the good
Queen Margaret, had remained with her aunt Christina in the Abbey of
Wilton, after her brother had been made King of Scotland. She was like
her mother in many respects; and her aunt wished to devote her to the
cloister, and secure her from the cruel sorrows her mother had endured,
under the black veil that she already wore, like the professed nuns, to
shield her from the insults of the Norman knights, or their attempts to
secure a princess as a bride. But Edith remembered that her father
had once said that he destined her to be a queen, and not a nun. She
recollected how her mother had moulded her court, and been loved and
honored there, and her temper rebelled against the secluded life in the
convent, so much that, in a girlish fit of impatience, she would, when
her aunt was out of sight, tear off her veil and trample upon it.
At length the tidings came that Henry, the new King of England, wooed
the Princess of Scotland for his bride.
A marriage of policy it evidently was; for, unlike the generous love
that had caused Malcolm to espouse the friendless exile Margaret, Henry
was a perjured usurper, and dark stories were told of his conduct in
Normandy. Christina strongly and vehemently opposed the marriage, as the
greatest calamity that could befall her niece: she predicted that, if
Edith persisted in it, only misery could arise from it; and when she
found her determined, tried to prove her to be already bound by the
promises of a nun.
Here Christina went too far: a court was held by Archbishop Anselm,
and it was fully proved that the Lady Edith was under no vows. She was
declared free to marry, and in a short time became the wife of Henry,
changing her own Saxon name to the Norman Matilda, or Maude. In the
first year of her marriage, when Henry was anxious to win the favor
of the English, he conformed so much to their ways that the scornful
Normans used to call him and his young wife by the Saxon names of Godric
and Godiva. The Saxons thus were willing to stand by King Henry, all
excepting the sailors, who were won by Robert’s spirit of enterprise,
and deserting, with their whole fleet, went to Normandy, and brought
Robert and his army safe to Portsmouth.
This happened just as Edith Maude had given birth to her first child,
at Winchester. Robert was urged to assault the city; but he refrained,
declaring such would be an unknightly action toward his sister-in-law
and her babe. Henry soon came up with his forces, the brothers held a
conference, and, as usual, Robert was persuaded to give up his rights,
and to make peace.
For the next four years Robert continued in Normandy, leading a gay and
careless life at first with his beautiful Sybilla; but she soon died,
leaving an infant son, and thenceforward his affairs grew worse and
worse, as he followed only the impulse of the moment. From riot and
drunkenness he fell into fits of devotion, fasting, weeping, and
praying; his poverty so great that he was at one time obliged to lie in
bed for want of garments to wear; and his dukedom entirely uncared for,
fields left uncultivated, and castles which were dens of robbers.
The Normans begged that some measures might be taken for their relief,
and King Henry came, and, with Robert’s consent, set things on a better
footing; but meanwhile he was secretly making arrangements with the
barons for the overthrow of his brother. In two years’ time he had
tempted over almost every baron to desert the cause of their master, and
in 1106 prepared to wrest the dukedom from him. The unfortunate Robert
came to him at Northampton, almost alone, forced himself into his
presence, and told him he would submit everything to him, if he would
only leave him the state and honor due to his birth. Henry turned his
back on him, muttering some answer which Robert could not hear, and
which he would not repeat. In a passion, Robert reproached him with his
ill faith and cruel, grasping temper, left him hastily, and returned to
Rouen, to make a last sad struggle for his inheritance.
He placed his child in the Castle of Falaise, obtaining a promise from
the garrison that they would give up their trust to no summons but his
own, or that of a trusty knight called William de Ferrières. Hardly a
vassal would rally round him in his dire distress; his only supporters
were two outlawed barons, whom Henry had driven out of England for their
violence, and besides these there were two faithful friends of his
youth, whose swords had always been ready in his cause, except in the
unhappy war against his father. One was Helie de St. Saen, the other
was Edgar Etheling, who quitted his peaceful home, and all the favor he
enjoyed in England as uncle to the Queen, to bear arms for his despoiled
and injured friend.
Henry invaded Normandy, and all the nobles came over to his side. Robert
met him before the Castle of Tenchebray, and the two armies prepared for
battle the next day. In the evening a hermit came to the English camp;
his head strewn with ashes, and a cord about his waist. He conjured
Henry to cease from his unnatural war with a brother who had been a
soldier of the Cross, “his brow still shining with traces of the crown
of Jerusalem,” and prevailed so far as to gain permission to go and
propose terms of peace to the Duke of Normandy. On coming into his
presence, the hermit begged to kiss the feet which had trodden the
pavement of the Holy Sepulchre, and then exhorted Robert to be contented
with the kingdom reserved for him in heaven. He declared Henry’s terms
very hard ones; but the Duke would have accepted them, but that he was
required to own himself vanquished; and against this his haughty spirit
revolted. He cast aside all offers of accommodation, and prepared for
battle.
The fight of Tenchebray took place on St. Michael’s Eve, 1106, the day
forty years since the Battle of Hastings; and when the Saxons in Henry’s
army turned Robert’s Normans to flight, they rejoiced as if they were
wiping out the memory of the defeat of Harold. Yet in the vanquished
army was their own Etheling, the darling of England, who was made
prisoner together with the unfortunate Robert, and led before Henry. It
was the last battle in which the two friends fought side by side; the
disinherited prince had fought for the son of the despoiler for the last
time, and soon they were to part, to spend the many remaining years of
their lives in a far different manner.
Robert was made to summon the surrender of Rouen, and Ferrières was sent
to receive Falaise, and the little William, heir of Normandy; but the
faithful garrison would not yield till Henry had conducted thither the
Duke himself, who called on them to surrender, lest the castle should be
taken by the wicked outlaw De Belesme. Little William was brought to the
King, and his tears and caresses for a moment touched Henry’s heart
so far that he gave the child into the charge of Helie de St. Saen,
Robert’s faithful friend, and husband of his illegitimate daughter.
It was the last time Robert of Normandy saw the face of his only child.
The boy went to Arques with the faithful Helie, while Robert was sent
to England, and imprisoned in Cardiff Castle. At first he was honorably
treated, and allowed to indulge in hunting and other amusements; but he
made an attempt to escape, and was only recaptured in consequence of his
horse having plunged into a bog, whence he could not extricate himself.
After this he was more closely guarded, and it is said that his eyes
were put out; but there is reason to hope that this may not be true. He
was under the charge of Robert, an illegitimate son of Henry, who had
married Amabel Fitzaymon, heiress of Gloucester, and who was a noble,
high-minded, chivalrous person, likely to do all in his power to cheer
his uncle’s captivity.
Here Robert from time to time heard of his son: first, how Henry had
sent messengers to seize him when St. Saen was absent from Arques; but
happily they came on a Sunday morning, when the child was at church,
and the servants, warned in time, carried him off to meet their brave
master. Then Helie chose to forfeit lands and castle rather than give up
his trust, and conducted his little brother-in-law from court to court,
wherever he could hope for security, till young William was grown up,
and raised an army, with the aid of Louis of France and Foulques of
Anjou, to recover his inheritance and rescue his father. But Foulques
was detached from the alliance by the betrothal of his daughter to
Henry’s son William, and the battle of Brenville ruined the hopes of
William of Normandy. Next, Robert learnt that the male line of the
Counts of Flanders had failed, and his son, as the representative of
Matilda, the Conqueror’s wife, had been owned as the heir of that rich
country. Shortly after, the captive Duke was one morning found weeping.
He had had a dream, he said, in which he had seen his son dying of a
wound in the hand. The tidings came in due time that William had been
accidentally pierced by the point of a lance in the hand, the wound had
mortified, and he expired at the end of a week. The prisoner still lived
on, till, in the twenty-eighth year of his captivity, death at length
released him. There is a story of his having starved himself to death in
a fit of anger, because Henry had sent him a robe after wearing it once;
but this is very improbable. Robert had reached a great age, and his
was a character which was likely to be much improved when absent from
temptation and with time for thought. He lies buried in Gloucester
Cathedral, under an effigy carved in bog oak, with the legs crossed, in
memory of his crusade, but unfortunately painted in such a manner as to
entirely to spoil its effect.
Edgar Etheling was soon allowed to ransom himself, and retiring to his
own estates, lived there in peace. His niece, the good Queen Maude,
lived on in the English Court, trying to imitate her mother in her
charities, and being, like her, much beloved by the poor, to whose wants
she ministered with her own hands; while her youngest brother David,
then a gay-tempered youth, used to laugh at her for such mean toils, as
he called them. No help, such as her father had given St. Margaret, did
Maude receive from her husband; she had only the pain of watching his
harshness, cruelty, and hypocrisy, during the eighteen years of her
marriage. She died in 1118, leaving three children--Maude, already
married to the Emperor of Germany, and William and Richard. William
Etheling is reported to have been as proud as his sister Maude, and to
have talked of using the churl Saxons as beasts of burden. But there
are stories more in his favor. He seemed generously disposed toward his
cousin, the son of Robert; and he met his death in an attempt to save
life, so that it may be hoped that he was not entirely unworthy of the
good old name of Etheling, which he bore as heir to the throne.
Our Etheling Edgar lived on in peace through all the troublous times of
Stephen, without again appearing in history, till his death is noted in
1159, ninety-three years after the Norman Conquest.