The Incomparable 'Flower of England' | England's Most Loved Queen | Matilda Of Scotland

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Matilda of Scotland or Edith as she was originally called has become a mostly forgotten figure wedged in time between the fiercely strong Matilda of Flanders her mother-in-law and the formidable Empress Matilda her daughter but matild of Scotland deserves to be remembered for her skills as a negotiator a mediator and as a much loved Queen her Story begins in dun Ferlin Scotland in the late summer or early autum of 1080 she was the daughter of Malcolm III king of Scots who up until Matilda's birth had been in a constant round of fighting and making peace with the new English ruler William the Conqueror in 1080 William's son Robert Certo was sent North to settle things with an army and peace was finally struck between the two kingdoms for at least the following decade to cement this Robert was made Godfather of Malcolm's New Daughter Matilda's mother was Margaret of wessix daughter of Edward the Exile who in turn was the son of the English King Edmund Ironside Edward had lived most of his life as his name suggested in Exile in Hungary and died just shortly after being invited to England's Shores to be a possible successor to Edward the confess this meant Matilda was descended from both Scottish royalty and the Anglo-Saxon Royal House of Wessex Queen Matilda William's wife was also invited to be godmother to the new Young princess and traveled to Scotland alongside her son it was said that during the christening baby Matilda reached up and pulled down the Queen's headdress and this was taken as a sign that one day little Matilda would also become a Queen however many of these stories were written years after Matilda Scotland became Queen of England so it's likely these accounts may have been written with hindsight little Matilda wasn't an only child she would be one of seven surviving children they would have had a luxurious upbringing compared with many children and their parents were apparently loving but extremely strict not that this was unusual for the time Margaret was a espcially known for instilling a deep piety into her children and she herself would become a saint after her death it was something Matilda would carry along her own life and at the age of six she and her sister Mary were sent to romsey Abbey in the south of England for their education romsy aby's abess was actually their maternal Aunt Christina who had become a nun there in the same year the Abbey was famous for its education of daughters of the nobility and royalty the primary education here would of course be religious instruction but the two girls would also learn English Latin and French along with learning to read and write a little although few Royal women kept up the practice as they had scribes to write for them along with learning to manage finances and the geometry known at the time it was an amazing education for any youngsters of the time and more so for girls however the two two girls lived through a period where medieval Royal and Noble girls were actually given more of an education academically speaking than boys but from their earliest days in the Abbey Aunt Christina tried to vly encourage them to become nuns or at least make them wear the veil Matilda would later state that although it made her aunt angry she would often snatch the veil off her own head and stamp on it in annoyance but when she hit puberty the Veil took on a meaning of safety as Christina encouraged her to wear it in order to preserve her from the lust of the Normans as Matilda would later recount this was a legitimate concern as many Saxon women were indeed often the target of unwanted advances by the Conquering Norman soldiers at some point during their early teens possibly because of their complaints about being forced towards a life in the cloysters Matilda and Mary's parents sent the instead to Wilton Abbey Wilton had long held a pedigree of Saxon royalty through its doors and contained relics from both St beid and St Edith who was an illegitimate daughter of King Edgar of Matilda's namesake however the idea of at least pretending to be a nun would also work in Matilda's favor when she was used as a marriage porn by her father to create alliances for his kingdom in her own words she would later say she used wearing the veil as a pretense to avoid unwanted marriages in 1093 she may have used the excuse to reject a proposal from William dearen second Earl of Sur it's also possible William Rufus the third son of William the Conqueror and King of England by this point considered marrying Matilda himself this marriage would have been a good match for the same reasons Matilda's eventual marriage to his brother Henry was because the English people would have liked having a queen with Anglo-Saxon ancestry and it would have made deeper connections between England and Scotland but in the same year Matilda turned down William dearen her father Malcolm realized William Rufus would never concede lands in Cumbria that the Scottish King also believed were his and he turned completely against the idea of her marriage to him instead he realized the best match for his daughter would be with someone who already controlled much of the north of England Alan the red or Alan Rufus Lord of Richmond in Yorkshire was a Breton nobleman who had come over with William the Conqueror he was about 53 years old 40 years Matilda senior but he happily offered up marriage anyway an alliance with Scotland would be useful to keep his Northern borders safe and marrying into a royal family would only Propel any children they had the biggest problem was that Allan was in a sense already taken earlier that spring he had ridden to Wilton Abbey and kidnapped gunhilda an illegitimate daughter of King Harold II however the kidnapping had been a willing one by gunhilda who although she had decided she wanted to be a nun not long before was in her late 30s she had probably written off marriage so when the opportunity came she went with Alan and lived with him without being married but but a political marriage wasn't about romance anyway however when the English king and his Barons caught wind of the possible marriage and Alliance they grew nervous sometime in August William Rufus rode with his men to Wilton Abbey all of them armed demanding to be allowed to pray in the church the ABS wasn't stupid and she told Matilda to hurriedly put a veil on and hide amongst the nuns when William was allowed entry he then decided he wanted to see the ABY garden and wander around for a bit the king apparently caught sight of Matilda and seeing her with a nun's habit on probably thought she had taken vows to be a nun and left as fast as he had rode in upon hearing this Malcolm refused to come and pay homage to William Rufus and in turn Rufus refused to even receive Malcolm the Scottish King did however travel down to Wilton Abbey to see if the rumors of his daughter wearing a nun's gun G were true and when he saw Matilda wearing a veil he reportedly went into a fury he snatched the offending item off her head throwing it to the floor and cursing whoever had made her do it stating that he intended to give her in marriage not to the church he snapped that he would rather see her married to count Allan than become a nun but this has led to confusion over whether Malcolm meant this seriously or sarcastically after finding out about gunhilda as it turned out Allan had died on the 4th of August anyway so he wasn't a potential Suitor in any case gunhilda was reproached by the Archbishop of Canterbury who warned her to return to her Convent for what she had done but instead she cozied up to Alan's brother amusingly also called Allan but the black rather than the red and married him instead when Matilda and Mary returned home their mother Margaret was severe really ill despite this Malcolm didn't wait around to see her get better but instead decided to act on the apparent snub of William Rufus refusing to see him the Scottish King and his eldest son Edward traveled down to the border with England with an army and both were killed in battle on the 13th of November 1093 Margaret waited at edra Castle for news and when she heard that both her husband and eldest son were dead died herself on the 16th of November Matilda and Mary along with their remaining siblings were now orphans as the Scot Throne did not necessarily follow a bloodline as William the Conqueror had established in England a new King was instead voted in Donald son of King Duncan I was given the crown and by the end of the year he had driven the children out of Scotland under the care of the prior of Durham they had little to take with them but the children found shelter in England with the help of King William and their Uncle Edgar eing Archbishop Anselm once again stuck his nose in ordering the bishop of Salsbury to return Matilda to Wilton Abbey which was within his dicese it's not known whether this actually happened or not though as Matilda briefly disappears from the records until around 1100 although it is likely she returned to the Abbey once more for safety in August 1100 England once again changed Kings William Rufus had been out hunting with his younger brother Henry in the New Forest there was an accident in which an arrow went the wrong way and instead buried itself in William's chest killing him the circumstances of how it happened are murky some accounts state it was a mere accident by one of his own men a nobleman named Walter trell who interestingly enough was well provided for years later by King Henry the therefore it's even possible that Henry arranged the accident to get his disliked brother out of the way however it happened the youngest son of William the Conqueror was now King of England and he took the throne as Henry the he wasted no time in choosing himself a queen although his mother Matilda of Flanders was descended from the French royal family and Al Alfred the Great his father William also known as the bastard had less than Regal connections Henry wanted to marry someone who would make this shady past fade further into the background for his future heirs a Matilda's Scottish and Anglo-Saxon ancestry delivered on this it also helped tie the royal family of England back into the Saxon Royal houses something that could only win points with the English people added to this was the fact that Matilda's brother Edgar had managed to regain the Scottish throne and so she was now also related to the current king of Scots William of malmsbury stated that Henry had long been greatly attached to Matilda although it's unclear where or when they first met William rufus's lack of a queen meant no ladies had been welcome at court so it's unlikely they met this way however the fact that much of Matilda's life had been spent in a nunnery might mean the connection was through a member of the clergy perhaps one who had choed the young Henry as a boy the new king may even have visited her previously at Wilton Abbey Henry proposed to Matilda and she accepted on one condition that a new Charter be granted stating that the English people would be governed by the laws of Edward the Confessor her ancestor the the king agreed to this and later poetry would praise Matilda for persuading the king this way and Henry would be shown as a wise and just leader who listened to the good advice of his Queen Henry was a political catch wealthy powerful and was smart enough to try to win over enemies with words before blades but he could also be cruel and unrelenting and he couldn't seem to control himself when it came to sex outside of his marriage Henry would father 25 illegitimate children many before he even asked Matilda for her hand but there was a problem so many people had seen Matilda with her nuns Veil on that they believed she might have actually taken holy orders as a result Matilda would have been unable to marry If This Were true Archbishop anel was approached by both Henry and Matilda to settle the matter and he called a council of Bishops to decide they declared that based on the evidence she herself gave her father malcol had never intended for her to become a nun the council unanimously agreed Matilda was not and had never been a nun and permitted the marriage to go ahead however this would not prevent rumors arising many years later after her death on the 11th of November 1100 at Westminster Abby Henry and Matilda were married by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the end of the ceremony Henry formerly gave Matilda her wedding Tower consisting of several lands in the North in London and for various religious houses across England which in turn made her one of the wealthiest people in the country on the 14th of November Matilda was crowned as Queen in a spectacular ceremony modeled on the one her godmother and mother-in-law Matilda land has had many years before it was also possibly at this time that she officially left the name Edith behind and became Matilda a name that could plate the Norman Barons her marriage would further tie England and Scotland together by helping her brothers find English Brides In 1107 her brother Alexander I now king of Scots would marry one of Henry's illegitimate daughters sibila and Matilda's Other Brother David who would himself go on in later years to become David the first king of Scots married Henry's cousin M daughter of the Earl of Huntington in North Umbria this allowed the royal families of both kingdoms to become entwined for a relative while allowing peace between them for many decades it wasn't long before the new Queen would carry out one of the most important duties for a royal consort that of producing hirs at some point in late 1101 a Chronicle had described her as being in her child bed and by February 1102 in Abington near Oxford Matilda gave birth to her first child and daughter who was also named Matilda a year later in late 1103 she then had a son named William probably named for his famous paternal grandfather he would later be known as William Adeline Adeline being a latinized Norman French variant of etheling both children were strong and healthy and William was now the heir to the English Throne securing Henry's place on it further there are some sources from much later that suggests Queen Matilda had a miscarriage before little Matilda's birth but they are unreliable leaving it uncertain as to whether this is true or not William of malmsbury who knew her personally states she only had two children it seems after Matilda had a daughter and a son she and Henry ceased to sleep together this was probably due in part to Henry's Affairs especially as he started one up with the Welsh princess nest in 1103 while his wife gave birth to his son and possibly partly because he was repelled by Matilda's closeness with the sick and poor through her charity it may even have been a biological issue stemming from her pregnancies we don't have a definitive answer so we can only guess but certainly Matilda had no more children after this point while in later years Matilda would be dismissed as nothing more than a Pious Queen who did little outside charity recent evidence by historian Lois Honeycut suggests otherwise Charter evidence shows that Matia not only issued 33 of her own but also that she witnessed further charters which her husband issued Henry also appears to have relied on his wife for advice and a contemporary described Matilda as not dissimilar to the king incompetence she also attended many meetings with the king's Council and her seal of a fulllength crowned queen holding an Orban scepter still survives today it's obvious that those around at the time not only regarded Matilda as a good Queen but as something a shining example in later years when a chronicler came to write about the ancestors of Henry II they found themselves in awe of where to start with Matilda she often influenced Henry and it appears it was Matilda who encouraged him to do away with the so-called curfew law that had existed since his father ruled it had originally been a way to prevent Saxons plotting together in the dark hours on how to be rid of the Normans under the pretext text possibly valid of there being no Fires at this time to protect against accidents in the middle of the night Henry also allowed the nuns at maling to hold a weekly Market to boost their income stating his reasoning as it being For the Love of and at the request of his Queen Matilda also threw herself as her mother had into ecclesiastical reform and Matilda would combine this with building projects as well using using her considerable personal Fortune she sent jeweled candlesticks to the Cathedral of lemon set up highly decorated crosses along roads throughout the land and she encouraged Henry to seek regular Absolution for the sins a king was naturally apt to make when she learned that the 7th Century Church of St Mary in Southampton was so crumbled and broken that the congregation were forced into a tiny Chapel on one side of it it was Tilda who rebuilt a grand Church on the site although many abies and religious institutions across England benefited from Matilda's patronage a few were particularly close to her one of her daer properties was malmsbury Abbey and the monks would later write of their queen that she ruled in all matters there and showed them both generosity and charity walam Abby in Essex was another of Matilda's properties and she used her funds to continue continue building the Norman church that had been started there in the previous Century but never finished she also held Court there gave the monks many gifts and allowed them to hold an annual fair to boost Revenue she also had a particular interest in helping those with Leprosy and the poor Matilda built two leper hospitals one of which would become the Parish Church of St Giles in the fields and the other which was of St James and St Mary Magdalene out inside Chichester and on at least one occasion she was recorded as bathing and kissing the feet of people suffering with Leprosy who were invited into her royal chamber she also built England's first public toilets a public bath house with piped water for the use of the poor at Queen heai in London it wasn't the only architectural first of Matilda's either as when some of her ladies fell in the river Lee on their way to barking Abbey while struggling to cross it something that was highly dangerous in the heavy clothes of the day she ordered that the first arched bridge in England be built at Stratford lebau in 1110 where it lasted until around 1741 when it was replaced for the first time she also established one of England's first augustinian priories Holy Trinity oldgate in London in 1108 she was also a patron of literature and would commission the monk Bend's version of the Vo of St Brendan finished sometime in the late 1110s she also provided funds for a biography of her mother by turgot prior of Durham the same man who had helped her and her siblings Escape Scotland a genealogical account of the Royal House of Wessex and she possibly also helped patronize William of malmsbury guesta rum angelorum or deeds of the Kings of England no doubt her early education learning reading and literature continued on into her adult life between 1103 and 1107 Matilda would become part of the English investure controversy this was a conflict between Henry and the church over who had the right to choose and invest Bishops other clergy and who gained from this Archbishop anel and Henry were at loggerheads on this issue and unel wrote to Matilda in 1103 urging her to use her influence with her husband to make him back down she did side with the Archbishop and made it obvious by signing a charter at Rochester as Queen Matilda daughter of Archbishop anel this understandably caused tension between Matilda and Henry and she continued to write to Anselm even when he briefly left England for Rome eventually her letters went more towards repairing the rift between the Archbishop and and the king and she repaired the damage with her husband as well with her help a solution was found in 1105 where it was agreed the church would choose their Bishops but Henry would receive homage from those Bishops for the lands held in his domains Matilda would have also wielded power in her own right in Henry's absence on the occasions when she was Regent he frequently traveled to Normandy and during these periods the chroniclers have nothing but good things to say about Matilda and it appears the country remained stable under her capable running of it just like her mother mother-in-law and daughter in later years Matilda was a skilled mediator and no doubt she presided over cases in which she was dispensing Justice fairly and without prejudice to either side during these periods she would also travel as Henry would around his English domains as well as traveling to Normandy at least once in 1106 Matilda's other main duty as Queen would come in late 1108 as a negotiator for her daughter's future marriage Heinrich V king of Germany later to also become the Holy Roman Emperor sent envoys to England to ask for the hand of little Matilda who at the time was only 6 years old to his 22 years age gaps were not unusual in a political marriage and that not withstanding it was a very attractive offer for Henry of England and queen Matilda Hinrich was one of the most prestigious monarchs in Europe from an older Royal House than the English kings and it would give England a valuable Ally for conflicts within Europe for the German King he needed money to fund his expedition to Rome to be crowned as Holy Roman Emperor and Henry I had plenty of money to spare Hinrich wrote separately to Queen Matilda and this is the first recorded instance of an English Queen taking an interest in the marriages of her children although of course it may have happened unrecorded earlier than this date the marriage wasn't hugely popular at the time as Henry the decided to raise a tax on his subjects to pay for little Matilda's dowy the younger girl was already a well-educated and cultured child who had been well schooled by her mother the queen would likely have taught her daughter and son reading and relig I stories early in their childhood and she seems to have also passed on a sense of religious Duty and calm leadership although young Matilda would also have a keen sense of her Regal Place probably due to her father at lent in 1110 the queen had to say goodbye to her young daughter as she set off for her journey into Germany to be married she would be married only when she reached the canonical age of 12 although it would not have been consummated at that that time there is nothing recorded of how mother and daughter felt that day but it's likely it was difficult to send her daughter off across the English Channel to Mainland Europe but both would also have been expected to be Resolute about the event political marriages were important to bind Nations together in an age when conflict could Arise at any moment and little Matilda's purpose was to be an important porn in this game as it turned out it would sad L be the last time the English Queen would ever see her daughter in 1113 Matilda also witnessed the betral of her son William to mahot daughter of folk V count of onju Normandy and onju had a long running conflict with one another that went back decades and this marriage Alliance allowed a peace between the two domains it was also one of the few times Henry returned from Normandy to see Matilda possibly because she had fallen unwell Matilda's Health grew poorer from this point on but in her better periods she appears to have spent her time visiting religious institutions and continuing with her Hefty patronage of them in 1114 her daughter Matilda officially married Heinrich of Germany at the age of 12 bringing the early medieval Roman Empire and England closer together young Matilda's Beauty lineage and dignity were praised all being attributed as gifts from her mother by Christmas 1117 Queen Matilda was once again severely ill she spent the last few months of her life at Westminster and at the age of 37 on the 1st of May 1118 Matilda died we don't know the exact cause of her death but it's likely to have been whatever sickness was ailing her which we also don't know Henry did not return to England from Normandy upon hearing of his wife's death but his grief was apparently immense shown through the many and lavish gifts he gave to churches in her honor and the 47,000 masses he apparently ordered in her name she had wanted to be buried at Holy Trinity in oldgate the prior she had helped establish but instead Henry ordered her body to be laid to rest in Westminster Abby possibly he was thinking of the legacy of members of his royal family all being buried there together as he did give the monks at Holy Trinity several gifts and grants in recompense having a royal person buried at an Abby was a tourist draw after all her children would also have taken the news hard but her daughter Matilda away in Europe would have to wait several weeks for a letter bearing the bad news Robert of tgy mentions a biography of Queen Matilda that is now lost and if this indeed existed it's likely her daughter commissioned it Matilda would be hugely missed and spoken of in the immediate centuries after her death for the next two centuries or so good Queen Matilda would be remembered as a kind Pious considerate consort and her example was such that at one point a sainthood was discussed for her however after the 13th century her story began to fade and her name came up only in discussion of her lineage or piety and her influence over her husband her quiet determination in her decisions over having more children or siding with the church her skill as mediator and Regent and her building projects were all but forgotten but Matilda was a perfect example of an early medieval queen not taking by force or conflict but by negotiating and talking by quietly winning over people with her deeds and care of those within her kingdom it's Little Wonder this woman a Powerhouse underneath her demure appearance was probably a great example to her daughter a woman who would go on to become Empress Matilda and mother to the plantagenet dynasty if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like And subscribe so you don't miss any new documentaries [Music]

Channel: History's Forgotten People

Views: 16,674

Keywords: queen matilda, empress matilda, matilda of scotland, norman history, 11th century history, 12th century history, henry I of england, matilda of flanders, early medieval history, history documentary, early medieval england, norman england, flexispot, flexispot uk, flexispot recliner

Id: icFzDxcuoS0

Length: 33min 5sec (1985 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2024