Saintly Queen Margaret

In 1070 a storm stricken ship took refuge in the Firth of Forth. There came ashore flaxen-haired Margaret, a daughter of the royal House of Wessex, who was soon to become the bride of Malcolm III, King of Scotland, at the Court of Dunfermline.

Statue of St. Margaret

Queen Margaret was born in Hungary of a Hungarian mother. Her brother, Edgar Atheling, sought sanctuary in Scotland after the Normans overran England in 1066. It was Queen Margaret's innate goodness which earned her immortality. Intelligent, refined and pious, she had a definite influence on the Scots court and worked with great fervour to mitigate in a practical Christian way the plight of poor and needy children, especially orphans.

The Rev. Thomas N. Adamson's dedication of the church at Barnhill to St. Margaret was deliberate as the Scottish Queen had been the great beautifier of worship in her time and also dedicated to the extension of the Roman form of worship. This fitted in with Mr Adamson's own liturgical ideas.

When the Scots, among them St. Columba, came over from Ireland in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, they brought with them Christianity plus the Gaelic tongue, one of the oldest living languages in Europe. Queen Margaret, the former Saxon Princess, soon turned with reforming zeal to the Celtic Church and introduced Southern and Saxon clerics with their own religious rites and influence in secular matters. From then onwards the Gaelic language withered over the centuries.

And what of her husband, the warring Malcolm Canmore, who could, surprisingly, speak Gaelic, English and Latin, yet could not read? He had the ambition to annex Northumbria, to his Scottish kingdom, and was ever ready for a showdown with the Normans in England. However, he marched south once too often, for in 1093 he was surprised and slain near Alnwick, Northumberland.

It was within the walls of the chapel of St. Margaret on the crest of Edinburgh Castle Rock that the news of the death of her husband and the eldest of her six sons was conveyed to Queen Margaret as she lay very ill. Upon being told the worst, she sank back on her pillow and died. Queen Margaret was buried in Dunfermline within the church, the Holy Trinity, which she loved so well. On 16 September 1249, a century-and-a-half after she had passed into history, Queen Margaret was canonised by Rome.

St. Margaret's Chapel at Edinburgh Castle is one of the smallest churches in the British Isles, being only seventeen feet by eleven feet. It has survived the storms and stresses of nearly 900 years. This tiny sanctuary was possibly built by the deeply religious Queen Margaret once she had settled down in Scotland, after fleeing from William the Conqueror and his Normans in England.