Saint Margaret of Scotland facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Saint Margaret of Scotland
Image of Saint Margaret in a window in Edinburgh
Queen consort of Scotland
Tenure	1070–1093
Born	c. 1045 Kingdom of Hungary
Died	16 November 1093(1093-11-16) Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Kingdom of Scotland
Burial	Dunfermline Abbey, Fife, Kingdom of Scotland
Spouse	Malcolm III, King of Scotland
Issue more...	Edmund, Bishop of Dunkeld Ethelred Edgar, King of Scotland Alexander I, King of Scotland David I, King of Scotland Matilda, Queen of England Mary, Countess of Boulogne
House	Wessex
Father	Edward the Exile
Mother	Agatha
Religion	Catholicism

Saint Margaret of Scotland (Scots: Saunt Magret, c. 1045 – 16 November 1093), also known as Margaret of Wessex, was an English princess and a Scottish queen. Margaret was sometimes called "The Pearl of Scotland". Born in exile in the Kingdom of Hungary, she was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the shortly reigned and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon King of England. Margaret and her family returned to the Kingdom of England in 1057, but fled to the Kingdom of Scotland following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. By the end of 1070, Margaret had married King Malcolm III of Scotland, becoming Queen of Scots.

She was a very pious Roman Catholic, and among many charitable works she established a ferry across the Firth of Forth in Scotland for pilgrims travelling to St Andrews in Fife, which gave the towns of South Queensferry and North Queensferry their names. Margaret was the mother of three kings of Scotland, or four, if Edmund of Scotland (who ruled with his uncle, Donald III) is counted, and of a queen consort of England. According to the Vita S. Margaritae (Scotorum) Reginae (Life of St. Margaret, Queen (of the Scots)), attributed to Turgot of Durham, she died at Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1093, merely days after receiving the news of her husband's death in battle.

In 1250, Pope Innocent IV canonized her, and her remains were reinterred in a shrine in Dunfermline Abbey in Fife, Scotland. Her relics were dispersed after the Scottish Reformation and subsequently lost. Mary, Queen of Scots, at one time owned her head, which was subsequently preserved by Jesuits in the Scottish College, Douai, France, from where it was subsequently lost during the French Revolution.

Several churches throughout the world are dedicated in honour of St Margaret. One of the oldest is St Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, which her son King David I founded. The Chapel was long thought to have been the oratory of Margaret herself, but is now thought to have been established in the 12th century. The oldest edifice in Edinburgh, it was restored in the 19th century and refurbished in the 1990s.

Images for kids

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  Margaret from a medieval family tree

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  Malcolm greeting Margaret at her arrival in Scotland; detail of a mural by Victorian artist William Hole

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  Site of the ruined Shrine of St. Margaret at Dunfermline Abbey, Fife, Scotland

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  St Margaret's Chapel in Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland]

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  St Margaret's Church in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

See also

In Spanish: Margarita de Escocia (santa) para niños