THE king therefore married her [1070], though against her will, and was pleased with her manners, and thanked God who had given him such a wife.* And being a prudent man he turned himself to God and forsook all impurity of conduct, as St Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, says: “Salvabitur vir” &c., which means in our language “Full oft the unbelieving husband is sanctified and healed through the believing wife, and so belike the wife through the believing husband.”*
The queen above-named afterwards did many things in this land to promote the glory of God, and conducted herself well in her noble rank, as always was her custom.* She was sprung from a noble line of ancestors, and her father was Edward Etheling, son of king Edmund.* This Edmund was the son of Ethelred, who was the son of Edgar, the son of Edred; and so on in that royal line.*
abridged
* Malcolm joined in Margaret’s acts of generosity, and regularly entertained three hundred poor, serving them dinner with his own hands. And everything of his wife’s was precious to him. Malcolm could not read, Turgot tells us, but “he would turn over and examine books which the Queen used either for her devotions or her study; and whenever he heard her express especial liking for a particular book, he also would look at it with special interest, kissing it, and often taking it into his hands.”
* See 1 Corinthians 7:14.
* Turgot tells us that Margaret spent hours in prayer, fasted austerely, visited monasteries and hermits (often English refugees from the Normans) and gave liberally to the poor, who followed after her in crowds. With her own hand she gave breakfast to nine little orphans daily, while singing Psalms, and she permanently supported twenty-four destitute adults. She sent out spies to uncover instances of slavery, and redeemed the slaves. As Turgot hints, they were again mostly Englishmen, who had sold themselves or been sold by their families in order to escape the grinding hardship created by William I’s brutal ‘Harrying of the North’, a punishment for supporting Edgar.
* Etheling or Atheling (Old English æðeling) means ‘prince.’ He is more usually known as Edward the Exile today. Edmund Ironside was king only briefly, in 1016. He lost his life and the crown to Cnut the Great of Denmark and England (r. 1016-1035).
* Ethelred the Unready (r. 978-1016), half-brother of Edward the Martyr (r. 975-978) and son of Edgar (r. 959-975); Edgar’s father was Edred (r. 946-955). ‘That royal line’ was the House of Wessex, going back to King Alfred’s father Ethelwulf, King of Wessex (r. 839-858). Through Margaret’s daughter Edith, who married Henry I of England and adopted the regnal name of Queen Matilda II, the English crown was restored to the Wessex line.