How influential was Queen Margaret?
Born and brought up in Hungary, she didn’t arrive in England until 1066 after the death of Edward the confessor. Margaret’s brother Edgar Atheling made a claim to the English throne, this was to be a failed one as the English nobles preferred Harold of Wessex, but later that year Duke William of Normandy made it all a rather moot point by invading England and crowning himself king.
After this many members of the English nobility sought refuge in the court of King Malcolm the 3rd Canmore of Scotland, who himself had been in exile in England during the reign of Macbeth. Among these refugees were Margaret and her brother Edgar, after a long courtship King Malcolm subsequently married Margaret in 1070 to make her Queen of Scotland.
She was only the wife of the king; yet she came to have the leading voice in changes which affected the social as well as the spiritual life of Scotland. It was Malcolm's adoration of his wife which gave her this power with him. Her selflessness influenced him the more that his own nature was undisciplined. To come in contact with a saint is always a disconcerting experience. Malcolm realised that Margaret drew her inspiration from sources unattainable to him, but news of the celestial country, "a temper rather than a place," reached him through her. "Whatever pleased her, he loved for love of her. Although he could not read he would turn over the books she used for her devotions, kissing them and taking them in his hands ...Sometimes he sent for a worker in precious metals whom he commanded to ornament that book with gold and gems and when the work was finished the king himself used to carry the volume to the Queen as a proof of his devotion." This adoration was to be the best tool she had to influence for example the church.
The ancient Celtic church had, as we have seen, long passed the zenith of its scholarship and spirituality: with most of its great monasteries in ruin and cut off from the main