Saint Margaret of Scotland
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Saint Margaret (c. 1045 – 16 November 1093), also known as Margaret of Wessex and Queen Margaret of Scotland, was an English princess of the House of Wessex. Born in exile in Hungary, she was the sister of Edgar Ætheling, the short-ruling and uncrowned Anglo-Saxon King of England. Margaret and her family returned to England in 1057, but fled to Scotland following the Norman conquest of England of 1066. Around 1070 Margaret married Malcolm III, King of Scots, becoming his Queen consort. She was a pious woman, and among many charitable works she established a ferry across the Firth of Forth for pilgrims travelling to Dunfermline Abbey, which gave the towns of Queensferry and North Queensferry their names. Margaret was the mother of three Kings of Scotland and a Queen consort of England. According to the Life of Saint Margaret, attributed to Turgot, she died at Edinburgh Castle in 1093, just days after receiving the news of her husband's death in battle. In 1250 she was canonised by Pope Innocent IV, and her remains were reinterred in a shrine at Dunfermline Abbey. Her relics were dispersed after the Scottish Reformation and subsequently lost.
