St. Margaret of Scotland

Who they were

Margaret was an English princess raised in Hungarian exile and shipwrecked into Scotland by the aftermath of the Norman Conquest, where she married, by every account happily, King Malcolm III, a rough warrior who could not read.

The marriage is the treasure. Malcolm, the chronicle says, would kiss the books she loved, and had her favourite gospel book adorned with gold because it was hers. That very book, recovered after a river accident, survives in the Bodleian, which makes it a love story you can go and visit. Margaret bore eight children, three of whom became kings, reformed the court and the practice of the Scottish church, fed orphans with her own spoon each morning, washed the feet of the poor in Advent and Lent, and founded the free ferry for pilgrims whose name Queensferry still carries. She died in 1093, days after word reached her that Malcolm and their eldest son had been killed.

Why people turn to St. Margaret of Scotland

Mothers of large families, whose formal patron she is, prayed by every outnumbered parent. Parents raising readers, literacy volunteers, and the spouse who honours what they do not share, since Malcolm kissed books he could not read. Scots by right.

How to ask their intercession

Over the reading: hers, yours, or a child's bedtime chapter offered as the prayer. And in a marriage where only one of you practises, ask for Malcolm's grace rather than Margaret's.