Matilda II: The Forgotten Queen

By Joanna Arman

The wife of King Henry I and the mother of the Empress Maud is a woman and a Queen forgotten to history. She is frequently conflated with her daughter or her mother-in-law. She was born the daughter of the King of Scotland and an Anglo-Saxon princess. Her name was Edith, but her name was changed to Matilda at the time of her marriage.

The Queen who united the line of William the Conqueror with the House of Wessex lived during an age marked by transition and turbulence. She married Henry in the first year of the 12th century and for the eighteen years of her rule aided him in reforming the administrative and legal system due to her knowledge of languages and legal tradition. Together she and her husband founded a series of churches and arranged a marriage for their daughter to the Holy Roman Emperor. Matilda was a woman of letters to corresponded with Kings, Popes, and prelates, and was respected by them all.

Matilda’s greatest legacy was continuity: she united two dynasties and gave the Angevin Kings the legitimacy they needed so much. It was through her that the Empress Matilda and Henry II were able to claim the throne. She was the progenitor of the Plantagenet Kings, but the war and conflict which followed the death of her son William led to a negative stereotyping by Medieval Chroniclers. Although they saw her as pious, they said she was a runaway nun and her marriage to Henry was cursed.

This book provides a much-needed re-evaluation of Edith/Matilda’s role and place in the history of the Queens of England.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Aug 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781526794239

Joanna Arman

Joanna Arman gained her love of Medieval History from childhood trips to castles, cathedrals, and Joust Weeks at Arundel Castles, before reading the Venerable Bede and watching Shakespeare’s history play as a graduate of the University of Winchester where she obtained a BA Degree in Medieval History quickly followed by a Masters.She has a special interest in Medieval Women: not just Queens and noblewomen but also those lower down the social order, such as female landholders, businesswomen and female plaintiffs in marriage cases. Her first book was a biography of Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians which was published by Amberley in 2017.She lives in Sussex, the county where she grew up, a stone’s throw away from the South Downs.

Book preview

Prologue: The Forgotten Queen

At the turn of the eleventh century, the king of England got married. The day was the eleventh of November, in the year 1100. Perhaps the people in that year which marked the beginning of the twelfth century noticed the interesting pattern in the date. They were probably more interested in what and who was getting married though. There had been no royal weddings in England for over thirty years. Not since the last Saxon King Harald Godwinson had married a lady known as Edith of Mercia immediately after taking the throne had a reigning monarch been married. Harald, of course, met his end at the Battle of Hastings only months later, and William the Bastard of Normandy, known to history as William the Conqueror was already married when he took the throne.

The groom was William’s youngest son, Henry, who himself would become king after the sudden (and some might say suspicious) death of his older brother William II, the namesake of his father is usually known as William ‘Rufus’. This was an age in which surnames were very rare and were still uncommon even among royal dynasties. William II got his name because of his ruddy complexion or red hair; ‘Rufus’ literally means ‘red’.

It wasn’t the first time in English history that a youngest son had taken the throne, nor would it be the last. Matilda’s marriage to Henry was proceeded by her coronation as queen only a few days later at the hands of the archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm of Bec. Matilda herself was about 20 years old and was the second queen of England to bear the name of Matilda. The first had been the wife of the Conqueror himself, and Henry’s mother.

Matilda II sometimes known as Matilda of Scotland was queen for almost fifteen years, and yet she is a figure who has largely been ignored in the chronicles of history. She has even been dismissed as a ‘pious nonentity’ who did very little except bear two children and establish some churches.1 Her piety is her most notable attribute for most historians. She is, to all intents and purposes, a lost queen or the forgotten queen. Overshadowed by her far more famous daughter, the Empress Matilda (Maud), and her grandson, the first of the Plantagenet monarchs, Henry II. Even her husband has received more attention than Matilda herself. Why? It is because unlike her daughter, she was not the protagonist in a civil war which lasted more than a decade. Unlike the wife of her grandson, Eleanor of Aquitaine (r. 1154–1189), she did not travel across the known world, go on crusade, and even her prominent role in politics during her husband’s lone reign has been overlooked. Even Matilda’s son, William is better remembered because of the tragic circumstances of his death which ultimately resulted in the succession crisis and civil war.

Matilda’s life is not seen as one of great adventure nor high drama which attracts the attention of historians or novelists and filmmakers in our own day. Yet perhaps this is not an entirely accurate viewpoint. Her first notable contribution to British history was to unite the line of Wessex with the line of William the Conqueror, and because of a series of fortunate marriages her siblings became some of the greatest rulers of Scotland. Her marriage, though, was surrounded by drama and controversy.

Her building projects left a lasting physical impression on the landscape in London and other parts of the country, but Matilda was also a highly educated woman and a lover of books. Although her involvement in politics was not violent or radical, she was the second queen in history to serve as a regent for her husband.

Image of Matilda from an illuminated genealogy of the Kings of England, 13th century. (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

In this book, I hope to bring a young woman who was born as Edith but adopted the name of Matilda out of the mist of obscurity and recreate her fascinating life during one of the most vibrant and transitional centuries of the medieval period.

This is her story.

Chapter One

Daughter of the King of Scots

Matilda was born around 1080 in Scotland. We do not know the precise place of her birth, but it may have been Dunfermline. She was possibly the fifth or sixth child of Malcolm III, ‘Canmore’ King of Scots, and Margaret his wife. Her father’s epithet means something like ‘Great Chieftain’ in Gaelic. 1 Malcolm’s own father was king Duncan (r. 1034–1040), of Macbeth fame. Shakespeare was not the first person to do a hatchet job on the eleventh century Scottish ruler. He was merely following the example of Malcolm III who encouraged chroniclers and scribes to vilify the man who had allegedly murdered his father. Such has always been the case: history is written or rewritten by the victors to favour themselves and their dynasties. Margaret and Malcolm’s line would sit on the throne of Scotland until the death of Alexander III in the late thirteenth century. An event which resulted in the succession crisis in which Edward I (r. 1272–1307) of England, another descendant of theirs, would claim power. Yet that is another story.

Matilda was not the birth name of the Scottish ruling couple’s first daughter. She was, in fact, baptised as Edith, an old English name. Her godfather was none other than Robert, the eldest son of William the Conqueror. Known as Robert ‘Curthose’ because he was apparently rather short. By 1100, the surviving relatives of the old English royal dynasty had forged close links with the new Norman ruling dynasty. Lois Huneycutt suggests that it might have been Curthose who bestowed the name of Matilda on the young princess in honour of his own mother, Matilda of Flanders.2 Perhaps Matilda had two names for her entire life, or there was some disagreement over what she should be called. It has even been suggested that Matilda of Flanders herself stood as one of Matilda’s godmothers (girls usually had two). There was a medieval tradition recorded later by Gilbert Foliot Bishop of London that the infant seized her headdress in her little hands. People regarded this as an omen that the baby was destined for power.3 If Matilda of Flanders was, indeed, the godmother of Malcolm and Margaret’s daughter it does provide a reasonable explanation for her being given a Norman name, and why she adopted it later on in her life.

An excerpt from folio 19v of Oxford Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 488 (the Annals of Tigernach). The excerpt concerns Máel Coluim mac Donnchada, King of Alba (died 1093). Early Manuscripts at Oxford University website. (Bodleian Library MS. Rawl. B. 488)

It is known that her own mother Margaret of Scotland was keenly aware of her own status as a scion of the House of Wessex and a descendant of Alfred the Great. This was reflected in the names she gave to three of her eldest sons, Edward, Edgar, and Ethelred respectively. They were probably named in honour of her great uncle, Edward the Confessor, and her brother Edgar, and possibly her paternal great-grandfather King Ethelred II. Margaret’s own heritage, however, was rather more diverse than is often recognised.

Her father was an Anglo-Saxon prince who had lived most of his life in exile. Edward, appropriately known as ‘Edward the Exile’, was the nephew of Edward the Confessor. Just to make matters even more complicated, the young Edward and his line were descended from Edmund Ironside, the older half-brother of the Confessor. He had been effectively disinherited when his father married Emma of Normandy, Edward the Confessor’s mother. Margaret of Scotland’s mother, however, was of more interesting heritage. Although her parents may have married in Hungary she seems to have come from Kiev. Agatha of Kiev, the only name that we have for her, is a shadowy figure of whom little is known. Given her epithet, she may have been one of the Kievan Rus, a group who may have been in whole, or part of, Norse heritage and lived in parts of Eastern Europe and the Baltic. Although Agatha likely came from Kiev, the couple were married in Hungary, a country which had only recently embraced Christianity.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Hastings, Margaret and her siblings had fled England, possibly following an abortive attempt to make her younger brother Edgar king. Officially, they were planning to return to Hungary, but fate intervened, and they ended up in Scotland, their ship running aground off the Scottish coast. Hence, Margaret her mother, brother, and sister ended up in the northern kingdom and eventually at the court of King Malcolm whom she married not long afterwards. Later, rumours would circulate that Margaret may not have been united with Malcolm entirely willingly, that perhaps she was forced or coerced into a marriage, but there is no direct evidence for this. As a lady of royal blood, the king of Scots would have been a fitting match and considering the situation in the immediate aftermath of the Conquest, Malcolm could provide stability and refuge for the family.

Neil McGuigan departs here from the usual interpretation of the course of Edith/Matilda’s life and suggests that the Scottish king’s daughter was sent to England not at the age of 6 or 7, but soon after her birth (accounting for who her godparents were) and that this event might have been part of some exchange of hostages following a peace treaty in 1080. Her father, according to this author, saw the event not as a captivity, but as an opportunity for his child to get the best education available and to give her a chance to prosper within the Anglo-Norman political system which was developing south of the border. His marriage to Margaret gave him a vested interest in events in England and he was even given some estates by the Conqueror back in 1080 which may have allowed him to present the event as fosterage for his daughter.4 This is an interesting theory, but it is usually held that Matilda was sent to England to be educated when she was between 6 to 7 years of age, or 10 at the latest, rather than when she was an infant. It is proposed by McGuigan that she might have travelled south to England with her mother’s sister Christina when Christina decided to become a nun at Wilton abbey in the year 1087 or 1088.5 Matilda ended up either in Romsey Abbey, or more likely Wilton, but both are possible. The 12th century historian William of Malmesbury tells us that she (and probably her sister Mary) was ‘bought up from her earliest years’ among the nuns at Romsey and Wilton.6 The two institutions seem to have been closely associated so it’s possible the girls went first to Romsey and then were moved to the larger foundation at Wilton when they grew older. Wilton Church was once the parish church associated with the abbey and the ruins are prominent in the town centre. Matilda’s aunt Christina became a nun at Romsey in about 1086 or 1087 when she would have been 6 or 7 years of age, and she later became Abbess.

Why was Wilton chosen when there were many abbeys which Christina and her niece could have joined in Scotland, the country which they had both called home for so long? Wilton and Romsey both had close associations with the House of Wessex. Two of the daughters of Edward ‘the Elder’, the firstborn son of Alfred the Great, had been sent to Wilton back in the tenth century. Such a connection would have appealed to the family of Margaret of Scotland, who was also known as Margaret of Wessex.

Wilton had a stellar reputation for learning and education by the 1080s. An educational institution or school existed at Wilton by the late eleventh century. Schools as we would know them didn’t usually exist as separate institutions but were instead part of abbeys or associated with cathedrals. Children would have been taught by monks or nuns working on a part-time basis in between other duties and the many church services which formed part of monastic life. Girls might have been taught the rudiments of reading in Latin through the copying and study of simple texts such as the Paternoster and psalms. Psalms were a favourite teaching tool because they were usually written as short bodies of text (with an illuminated letter or dropped cap or two at the start), enabling students to point out and begin to recognise letters. It also helped that psalters, or books containing the psalms and other biblical passages as well as prayer or service books, would probably have been readily available in most abbeys since the recitation or singing of passages from them formed part of the regular liturgy.7 Novices were even encouraged to recognise the sounds associated with them. More advanced learners might move on to grammar, which involved instruction on the components of language and word forms, and rhetoric which involved the art of persuasion and was related to public speaking. Grammar and rhetoric were two of the three components of the trivium, the basis of classical education which also became popular in the Middle Ages. The third component was logic. Logic isn’t something modern people associate with the period, or with medieval religion, but, in truth, medieval people believed logic and reason were essential to debate and to understanding the world. Of course, their concept of logic was rooted in a firmly Christian context, quite different to