Scotland's Medieval Queens

From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Yarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Prime Video biedt het best in entertainment. This should be fun. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista gaan helemaal los in de hilarische nieuwe actiefilm The Wrecking Crew, inbegrepen bij Prime. Yeah, I'm pumped. Ontdek de nieuwe Game of Thrones serie A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Gebaseerd op de bestseller van George R.R. Martin. Kijk door lid te worden van HBO Max. So be brave, be just. Dus wat je ook zoekt, Prime Video. Hier kijk je alles. Abonnementen verhuisd, inhoud conferenties bevatten, 18+. Algemene voorwaarden zijn van toepassing. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. The history of Scotland has been dramatic, violent and bloody and its queens have had to deal with war murder imprisonment political rivalries and open betrayal Sharon Bennett Connolly's new book Scotland's Medieval Queens from St Margaret to Margaret of Denmark tells the dramatic stories of some extraordinary women who loved and lost raised kings and queens and ruled and died for Scotland and so I'm delighted to welcome back to Gone Medieval, Sharon Bennett Connolly. Welcome back to Gone Medieval, Sharon. It's good of you to join us again. Thank you. I'll get you some frequent flyer miles, I think, soon. Yeah, I was trying to work out how many times it is now and I think I've lost count. Nowhere near enough. Always very welcome back here. And it's always a pleasure to talk with you, Matt. We're going to talk today about your newest book, all about the medieval queens of Scotland. So I thought rather than try to talk about all of them because there's quite a few that you cover in the book i thought we could pick out a few of the the highlight i did they're all highlights aren't they but a few ones that i wanted to ask a few more questions about and i think listeners might be interested in learning a little bit more about um and maybe think about you know what their position as queens of scotland meant to them and meant to scotland i guess and the first one i wanted to pick out was saint margaret of scotland a saint a saint and a queen what could be more interesting um but interestingly for someone who at points is considered the patron saint of scotland i think she's actually english how much do we know about margaret's early years and her background well technically she's hungarian if you want to go back to you know the citizenship thing you are where you're born she's hungarian but yeah she um oh god she's incredible she is one of the two patron saints of scotland she and saint andrew who everybody knows about but yeah saint margaret is also a patron saint of scotland she was born in hungary to a chap named edward the exile explains why he's in hungary it's quite yeah it's quite a descriptive name he was the son of edmund ii ironside who was murdered or died from his wounds, possibly by King Canute. After a very harsh summer of campaigning, he died. And there is one rather graphic story of him being killed whilst sat on the toilet by a spear or a sword into his bowels. So not a very pleasant ending. And he and Canute had made this agreement where whichever one survived longest would get the crown. They divided England between them. Canute got the north, Edmund got the south. And then whichever one survived longest, the other one would get the whole lot. Now, I'm guessing Canute thought, actually, I can make sure I survived longest and ordered Edmund's demise. But Edmund had two sons who were, they were both under three. they were possibly twins, but they were definitely toddlers at the time. And Canute, for some reason, didn't kill them in England. He sent them to Sweden to be killed, with orders to the Swedish king to kill these two boys. The Swedish king, of course, went, I'm not killing children, and sent them on to Kiev, where his daughter was living, to be raised there, well away from King Canute. And they did grow up there and fought for Kiev, fought for Hungary and made reputations for themselves. The younger one died at some point, but the older one, Edward the Exile, survived, married a lady called Agatha, whose origins are rather obscure. Nobody seems to know exactly who her dad was, but they did back then. and they had three children, Margaret, Christina and Edgar. Edgar's known as Edgar the Athling and was one of the claimants for the crown in 1066. When Edward the Confessor realised he wasn't going to have children of his own, he sent emissaries to Hungary to persuade Edward to come back to England. It took a while. Edward wasn't keen at first, but he did eventually come back in 1057 and within a week of setting foot on English soil was dead. So I'm pretty sure there's a good reason he wasn't keen to come back at first. Sounds like too much to be a coincidence. Yeah, natural causes or just tired from travel. Basically, his children were raised by Edward the Confessor's wife, mainly Edith of Wessex. The daughters were put into a convent to continue their education and Edith technically adopted Edgar. So that's where Margaret comes from. In 1068, after a couple of failed bids for the crown, Edgar made it to Scotland with his sister, Margaret. And perhaps in exchange for Malcolm's support for Edward's claims for the English crown, Malcolm wanted to marry Margaret. Margaret wanted a life in a convent. She was not eager to become Queen of Scots. But she did agree her family owed Malcolm an awful lot in his support for Edgar. So she agreed to marry him. And she is probably the most influential Queen of Scotland ever. You look through, whenever you're reading the sources, you look through the chronicles and there's a couple of Margaret's later on. So when you go through the chronicles, you look for, you know, you search for Margaret and you think, oh great, this is Margaret the Maid of Norway or this is Margaret of England. No, this is 300 years after Saint Margaret, but it's still Saint Margaret that they're talking about. Every time she crops up in the Chronicles, every time you see a Margaret in the Chronicles, it's more than likely her. She was so influential to the Scottish people as far as, you know, her memory, as far as they're concerned, is part of the founding of later medieval Scotland. And all the queens who came after Margaret use her as an example. And I think, to be honest, they had it shoved down their throats that she was the example, the person they had to live up to. She was incredibly strong. Which I guess is even more striking for someone who never wanted to be a queen, who wanted to be a nun, who didn't want to live that kind of life at the centre and the core of politics. How much do we know then about her marriage to Malcolm? Did they get on with each other? I would think so. They had something like five boys and five or six boys and two girls. So they were definitely close. They definitely could stand to be in the same room as each other. Some couples can't. They obviously could because they had such a large family. And they leaned on each other. You know, Malcolm trusted Margaret to give him sound advice and she trusted Malcolm to see her through the things that she, to get her familiar with Scottish society because she wasn't, you know, she'd been in Eastern Europe and then in England and Scotland is a rather different society. and yeah Malcolm helped her adapt and she used her position wisely very wisely especially in her piety and in helping reform the Scottish church in raising her children she oversaw their education and made sure there's a quote from her biographer Turgo he's her biographer he knew her but he's very complimentary of her, but he does reference the fact that she instructed that her children should not be spoiled. You know, they shouldn't be revered. They should be kept down to earth and made to do their studies and made to be aware, not just of the privilege, but of the responsibility of being royals. And that core role in reforming the Scottish Church, I guess, plays into her original interest in a life within the church. She's able to hold on to that a little bit. And is it fair to say that she's fairly central to bringing more Roman Catholicism to Scotland to replace the old sort of Celtic Christianity that had been there? Yes, she helped formulate the new rules of the Scottish church and bringing them into Rome rather than the Celtic church. She wasn't wholly successful when her sons actually became a lay abbot in the celtic church he was disowned as an heir to the throne but he was still a part of the family after that but yeah she formulated the rules for lent she helped organize because apparently the scottish church did it differently to the english church where we have 40 days and 40 nights that's lent in scotland they excluded sundays so lent was actually longer when you're giving up giving up certain foods that must have felt like a bit of a nightmare and um yeah so as she actually had all she had had such an incredible education that had started even before she came to England that she could converse with the leading religious minds of Europe and she brought that to Scotland and helps formulate, you know, the Scottish rules, even down to the hair. You know how priests have a tonsure in the scalp, in the top of their head? I'm currently sporting a natural tonsure. In the Scottish church, it was in their forehead. But she changed things like that. And he's like, I've just got this image of monks walking around with the shaved bit of their forehead. And you just think, God, you must have looked daft. I mean, I'm not a million miles away from that either. so you know i could fit in the celtic or the roman church really and how well were some of those reforms received because it can be difficult for a queen for you know for margaret she is whether she's hungarian or english she's a foreign queen in scotland and them trying to make significant religious societal reforms isn't always well received is it how did margaret get on It isn't always well received. And like I said, her son actually joined the Celtic church, but she did have backup. Malcolm supported all her reforms, which, you know, somebody says, well, you're the queen, we're not going to listen to you. The king comes along and says, well, how about listening to me? And they're like, oh, actually, yeah, okay. And she also practiced what she preached. You know, she didn't just tell people about how they should live. She lived it. She loved the outward display of royalty, so she would wear the clothes expected of her. But in her own life, she was very austere. She would fast rather more severely than she should do. She also, there's a great story that I think it was David, her son told, of how she would wash the feet of lepers. And her daughter did the same, Matilda of Scotland, who married Henry I. You know, David says how she continued her mother's habits in looking after the poor, washing the feet of the lepers. And she lived by example. So you can't exactly say, oh, well, how we get with politicians these days, how you tell us what to do, but you don't actually do it. She did it. Yeah. To what extent do you think then that Margaret's reputation becomes the stuff of legend? And how much is it still rooted in historical fact? you mentioned that, you know, hundreds of years later, people are still referring to Saint Margaret and she's still clearly revered and she is held up as the example that other queens somehow have to try and live up to. Does she become wrapped up in a bit of myth-making and legend or are we fairly sure that what we know about her is really the truth? I think what we know about her is based in truth. I think there are exaggerations. Her biographer was Turgo who was her actual confessor And he was asked by Matilda of Scotland to write Margaret biography But he not going to write to make her look bad So he sort of exaggerates what she did do and what she achieved And her religious reforms, if it wasn't for Malcolm, she probably wouldn't have achieved them quite so well. And it was her son, David, who started the process to get her canonized. And although it didn't happened until a while after her death but he started it and all her sons revered her and continued her story and I think that's the thing you get from some queens don't get that acknowledgement because they don't have sons and descendants who continue their stories. And I guess also sons for whom their mother was so involved in their education if Margaret kept herself engaged with her children's education then when her son becomes king he has something to thank his mother for yeah exactly and also i mean thinking about it i don't think any of the sons it's like matilda flanders and william the conqueror actually none of her sons married until after she died you know so she was a bit of um a central figure to their lives and they were all aware, like you say, about how much she had prepared them to rule. She had made sure they had a first-class education and knew what their position in the world was and how privileged it was to have that position. Unfortunately, Scotland was still going through transition at the time, so she died just a few days after Malcolm III died. And after that, there were dynastic troubles because before her and Malcolm, the Scottish crown descended through Tannist tradition, which is the oldest living male relative of the royal family becomes king. So it's not primogeniture. It's not automatically the eldest son of the king becomes king. It's the eldest male adult, which means that Malcolm's brother claimed the throne. And he actually shared it with one of Malcolm's sons for a while. and then suddenly the other sons come along and say oh this is not fair and there's Malcolm's son by his first wife it was a bit of a dynastic nightmare after they died so I think Margaret probably should have looked to the succession as well she made sure there was plenty of sons to choose from for the succession which sometimes creates a problem of its own yeah but I think somebody should have regulated the succession at some point before her and Malcolm died maybe they had done but their eldest son Edward died just a couple of days after Malcolm and a couple of days before Saint Margaret so you know in between the two so maybe if Edward had survived he was a soldier and a statesman and could have held it together but because he died as well there were problems afterwards. Could you just talk us through a little bit about what happened when those few days are in which we get the death of Malcolm and then Edward and then Margaret kind of in in close proximity to each other. What happens to bring that about in such quick succession? Yeah, Malcolm had invaded England and invested the castle of Annick in Northumbria, which nowadays is a Percy stronghold. And there had been this great battle at Annick. Malcolm had been killed. Edward had been wounded. Margaret was ill already. She'd been suffering from some kind of illness for about six months. And she was in Edinburgh Castle waiting for news. Edward had been wounded. He made it back to Scotland and died at Jedburgh, which is a gorgeous town on the Scottish borders with a beautiful abbey. And the news was taken to Margaret and she basically heard the news and died herself. Edinburgh Castle at the time was also under some sort of siege. So her body, when it was taken out of the castle, had to be taken out of a Pustern gate and down the hill and there's all these stories of having to try and get Margaret's body out of there under secretly so that she could be buried with Malcolm so yeah it was just a matter of days Scotland's future changed drastically really because suddenly you'd had this magnificent King who'd done so much. He'd been on the throne for 30 years and changed Scottish society. He brought it, modernised it so much. And then the heir to the throne, who by all accounts was this rather splendid young man who would be able to lead Scotland after his father died. He dies at the same time. So Scotland's thrown into a bit of turmoil, especially when you've got Malcolm's sons by his first marriage, his brother and his sons by second marriage all wanting the crown. And just you're missing that guiding hand of an experienced queen to be mother of the new king, but someone with a bit of experience who can be that calming influence because she's also been taken away at the same time. I mean, it sounds like we've started off with Margaret, who sounds like she has the most incredible legacy that the other queens we're going to talk about are going to really struggle to live up to. yes yeah they it is it's just you know like i say she is the shining example other queens are told remember the example of saint margaret i think we can move on next to another margaret let's make it easy and call them all margaret so we'll stick with margaret this is a margaret of england yes who lives from 1240 to 1275 so could you tell us a little bit about who she was and how she becomes Queen of Scotland? She's the daughter of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. So she's a granddaughter of King John. Peace with Scotland had started with King John's daughter, Joan, who had married Alexander II when she was about 10. Joan had died without having children with Alexander II, but he married again to Marie de Cousy and they had one son, Alexander III, who was still very much child when he came to the throne. Now, this was actually the first instance of Scotland needing a regency. The advantage of the tannist form of succession was that it was always an adult who took the throne. So, Scotland had never needed a regent. Now, Malcolm IV was about 13 when he came to the throne, but he was considered old enough to rule. So Alexander was about seven or eight, and he wasn't old enough to rule. He was still in the schoolroom. So they had to organise a regency. And the best example, because they hadn't had one themselves, the best example of a regency for Scotland was the recent regency of Henry III. and the way to stabilise Scotland was to get Henry III on side. So they arranged for young Alexander III to marry Henry's daughter, Margaret, who was about five at the time, and they married on Boxing Day in York when they were just children. And poor little Margaret was sent to live in Scotland with officers from Henry's court to look after her and to oversee her education and her relationship with Alexander. And apparently they were a little too overzealous in keeping Alexander and Margaret apart to make sure that they didn't have marital relations too soon. So that Margaret was complaining that she was very lonely. She didn't even get to see her husband and she didn't know anybody in Scotland. But it was the start of a marriage that would be very successful. They had three children together. It was Scotland and England's longest period of peace in medieval times, something like 76, 78 years of peace because of the marriage first of Joan and Alexander II and then Margaret and Alexander III. And also because Henry III, as you know yourself, Matt, was not keen on war. If he could find an alternative, he would. Whereas, you know, his son just used invading Scotland as a hobby. Henry III preferred to actually talk with Scotland than beat them up. So I think it was just a result of the personalities involved and the strength of the relationship between Margaret and Alexander and everybody wanting to find alternatives that meant that it was peaceful. it was a century of peace at least until edward the first got his fingers in the pie yeah i was going to ask you if the the benefit for scotland is clear in getting some help with the regency and while they're weak having an alliance with england their their nearest neighbors but for england it's it's sometimes hard to see the motivation isn't it because we're we're stuck in this peace sandwich on either side of it there is constant warfare with scotland you know it's Henry III's son, as you said, Edward I, who would invade Scotland. So is the benefit for England, do you think, really just about the fact that it happens to be Henry III there and he happens not to particularly like war? Well, I think there's also the fact that Henry III had to deal with France. If he's got peace on his northern border, he can more concentrate on his problems with France who were encroaching on Aquitaine and Gascony. And there's also, I mean, poor Henry III wasn't short of enemies in England itself, was he? I mean, at least if he's got peace with Scotland, then he can concentrate on fighting Simon de Montfort like he has to do. So although he didn't like war, it still came to his door. And I think not having to spend money on fighting in Scotland and maintaining garrisons, huge garrisons on the Scottish border and in the castles they occupy in Scotland is always beneficial to a country and trade improved and it's one less thing to worry about for a Henry. Yeah, it seems like a bit of a no-brainer really, but then plenty of other English kings took the opposite path, I guess. Yeah, everybody else liked to meddle. Yeah. You mentioned that Margaret didn't seem particularly happy when she first arrived in Scotland. She's complaining about being kept away from her husband. She must have gone through something similar to our previous Margaret's issue of, you know, Scotland is a very different place from where she's been brought up. She's sent there quite young. She's kept under really kind of close guard. Do we get the sense then that she's unhappy, at least at first? And is anything done about that you know do her parents try to intervene to help her she's lonely and unhappy and she writes to her mum and dad and tells them about this and yes they come up to various points throughout her early life they come up to scotland and meet you know there's instances where they're staying on south of the border and alexander and margaret staying north of the border and they meet in the middle and have days out and entertain each other. And the one thing about Margaret is most of the time, English princesses, you read about them being sent away and never seeing their family again. You know, the one advantage of being sent to Scotland is you do get to see your family still. And Henry and Eleanor visited regularly. Edward, Lord Edward, the future Edward I, would go up and stay with his sister. So would Edmund, her younger brother. So she always had family visiting and I think that definitely would have helped her. But also Eleanor of Provence, on hearing how unhappy she was, she sent one of her own priests up to Scotland to visit with Margaret and rearrange her household and tell people how they should be treating her and asking them to allow her to spend more time with her husband so she can get to know him. So although she's away from her family, she's so close to them emotionally that they do look after her. They don't wash their hands and say, well, that's Scotland's problem now. They're like, no. And I think that's the other thing with Henry III. Although he's at peace with Scotland, because Alexander's so young, he's still the one in charge of the relationship. so he sends to scotland and says you need to do this you need to do that and they tend to because alexander's still too young to actually yeah i'll give the point in a world where swords were sharp and hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is two fearless historians me, Matt Lewis and me, Dr Eleanor Janaga dive headfirst into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages so for plagues, crusades and Viking raids and plenty of other things that don't rhyme subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts side note henry the third always strikes me as quite a good dad like quite a nice dad you know he genuinely cared about his kids and was bothered so the fact that he you know margaret was writing and saying i'm not happy i think he would have been motivated to do something about that kind of outside of the power politics anyway yeah and i think it telling that when she pregnant for the first time Alexander is visiting England anyway and Margaret wants to join him So she doesn actually tell anyone she is pregnant until she gets to England. And then she announces it because she didn't want anyone in Scotland to say, no, you're not leaving Scotland. If you're pregnant, you're having the baby here. Because she had this idea in the back of her head at the time, I'm sure, that she wanted her mum to be with her when she had the baby. So she didn't tell anyone she was pregnant until she got to England and then she stayed in England until after having the baby. And they had all this, the Scots lords made arrangements for what would happen if Alexander died when the baby was still in England and they made Henry III promise that if Margaret died during childbirth, he would send the baby back to Scotland within a month of her mother's death. And Margaret had to go back to Scotland as soon as she'd been churched. So that, you know, the Scots weren't allowing, were trying to make sure that England didn't keep the baby over them, you know, the heir to the Scots throne in English custody. They made all these arrangements to make sure that didn't happen. Anyone would think the Scots had reason to mistrust the English. I mean, I don't know where that would have come from. How much do we know about this Margaret as a mother? You know, she's done her queenly duty. She's provided the king with a couple of sons and a daughter, I think. What else do we know about her as a mother? She is a very attentive mother. She had Margaret, like I said, she made sure that she had her first baby in England so that her mum was there. That was Margaret and then she had a son a few years later Alexander and another son David who she'd had a hard time with him in childbirth she nearly died the baby nearly died and he was only nine or ten when he did die he was always in poor health but she yeah she seems to have been an attentive mother their marriages the children's marriages weren't arranged until after she died unfortunately but her health seems to have been damaged when David was born and she never fully recovered so she died a couple of years after David's birth but she and Alexander seem to have had this wonderful relationship and a really a loving relationship Alexander didn't you know he'd lost his wife he had two sons and a daughter so after she died he had no reason to remarry you know he had the sons so he stayed single for a long time it was only after the death of all three of his children that he really decided he'd better find another wife and he married Yolanda de Drure but their marriage seems to have been one of genuine mutual affection you read of some people who when they've grown up together and then been told they're married it turns into a disaster. With them two, it seems to have been a very good relationship all round and a very nice family relationship with the children as well. Yeah, yeah. I think Margaret's 34 when she dies. Do we know much about her cause of death? Do we know how connected to the birth a couple of years earlier it was? We don't know. I think it was that basically the Chronicles suggest her health was damaged by the birth of David she'd suffered badly and there is one rather horrid technically comical or horrid story of after David's birth she was still recovering and her brother Edward had given her a squire to have in her household and she was um picnicking by the river with her household still recovering from the birth you know just um taking it easy and um they were larking about playing games and the squire was next to the river and she just pushed him in thinking how funny it would be and there was a young page there as well who realized that the squire couldn't swim so he jumped in to save the squire and they both drowned and it's a horrible incident and it really affected Margaret you know she she did feel very badly about it as you could understand it wasn't deliberate and it wasn't it was just a lark that went badly wrong but it's one of those stories you read about and it's like oh my giddy and who who thinks how could you don't expect it to end in that kind of tragedy so yeah and she she died a couple of years later and it's like Like you say, she was only 34. But in those days, medicine, especially women's medicine, was practically non-existent. If you fell ill of something that wasn't a known illness, if it was a woman's problem, then you've got no chance. Yeah, yeah. Does this Margaret manage to leave as much of a legacy as the previous Margaret who kind of looms over all subsequent Scottish queens? well sort of but it's not a great legacy because her children all died within a short period of time after her her son alexander died just a month or so after his wedding day david died when he was about nine margaret did get married she married the king of norway and she went over to norway and she had a beautiful baby daughter named Margaret. So you can tell how revered Margaret was because everybody gets named Margaret. But unfortunately, she dies in childbirth and leaving the baby daughter, who is now Alexander III's sole heir. And the tragedy is, this is Margaret the maid of Norway. You know, Alexander III remarries and Yolanda de Dredd doesn't have children by the time Alexander rides through a stormy night and falls off his horse and breaks his neck trying to reach his wife on her birthday. God, you couldn't make the tragedy up, could you? So there is this one little baby girl who's two years old, who is the heir to the Scottish throne. And this is where Scotland's problems all start, because Edward I gets involved and arranges for little Margaret to marry his son, Edward, the future Edward II, and guarantees Scotland's independence and arranges, you know, comes to all these agreements with the Scottish, with these treaties saying, no, you will remain independent, but she is going to marry my son, Edward. And no, we will keep the kingdom separate. And of course we will. But I will tell you how, yeah, but I will look out for you is probably the generous way of saying it rather than I am in charge which is what Edward I really thought yeah and then the poor maid of Norway suffers from terrible seasickness on her way to Scotland to become queen and dies I mean I think it's very telling of how the modern outlook of the Scots at the end of the 13th century that they will accept female ruler. Well, they weren't happy to have Margaret, the maid of Norway, as their queen, but they were quite accepting of her. There were some people who thought that they should be king rather than her. But primogeniture was so established then, it was like, no, she is the next one in line to the throne, so she is queen. And with Edward backing her, everybody else had to shut up. But the problem was when she got on that boat to Scotland, she never actually made Scotland. She died en route probably from dehydration from seasickness. As always, there were rumours of poison, but it seems most likely that it was dehydration from suffering dreadful seasickness. And that threw Scotland into mega turmoil because, of course, there is no outright obvious claimant to the throne. So Edward I steps in rather nobly to say he will adjudicate between the competitors. Yeah. And what does it mean if he's adjudicating on who's the next King of Scotland? Well, it kind of suggests he's superior to the King of Scotland, doesn't it? What a happy coincidence. Yeah. Well, it's funny, the King of Scotland he decides on is the one who says, yes, I will bow down to you and acknowledge you as overlord. The one who says, no, I won't acknowledge you as overlord doesn't get the job. Yeah. You can see Edward going, hmm, now let me think. Which one will it be? yeah i thought we we could move on to one more queen and and switch up the name it's not a margaret i thought we could maybe talk about elizabeth de burr so this is a queen of scotland to robert the bruce so one of the most famous figures in medieval scottish history so we're kind of at the moving out of the 13th into the 14th century it's a marriage that kind of takes place amidst the backdrop of the Scottish Wars of Independence. Could you set the scene for us a little bit? Who is Elizabeth de Burr and how does she become Queen of Scotland? Well, she's the daughter of the Earl of Ulster, Richard de Burr, who happens to be a very good friend of Edward I. Now, this is in the time when Edward had decided that John Balliol would be king ahead of Robert the Bruce, who was the future Robert the Bruce, the king, grandfather. The grandfather and John Baleel were the leading candidates. Edward picked John because he said, yes, I will acknowledge that you're probably a bit more superior to me as king of England. So he got the job. The thing with the Scots nobility was they had a foot in both camps. Even John Baleel, he was Lord of Barnard Castle, so York is stronghold in the future but he was Lord of Barnard Castle before he became King of Scots and Robert the Bruce most of Robert the Bruce's ancestors are buried at Gisborough Priory in North Yorkshire and Teesside because they also had lands in England as well as Scotland. Bruce is actually a Norman name not a Scottish name so he was often on the side of Edward I. Robert the Bruce gets a lot of stick for changing sides. But to be honest, he's just looking after his family's interests. One of the times he's on the side of Edward I, he agrees to a marriage with Elizabeth de Bourgh. He'd already been married once, Isabella of Mar, and they had a daughter, Marjorie. And Isabella died in childbirth. So Robert's got this little daughter, Marjorie, and he marries Elizabeth de Bourgh, who just happens to be the daughter of Edward I's best friend. So Edward I is tying Robert to the English side, he thinks. And Robert's quite happy to go on along with this because his rivals are the Ballioles and the Comins. So if they're the ones who are ruling Scotland, he wants to be on the English side. And then John Balliol gets dethroned. I think that's the best way of putting it. Edward I goes up to Scotland, takes him off the throne and tells him you're no longer king anymore and sends him to imprisonment in the Tower of London. So it's basically no king. And Edward does basically try and rule Scotland for himself then. But of course, there's all these rival claimants. There's William Wallace and the Comins are trying to put John Bailey all back on the throne. Robert the Bruce is fighting for England at one stage and then sees an opportunity and starts fighting for Scotland, thinking that maybe he can claim the throne. and of course there's this big meeting at Greyfriars in Dumfries where Robert the Bruce meets with John Comyn. Comyn is a cousin of John Berlioz and he wants to put Berlioz back on the throne, Robert wants the throne for himself. They are literally fatal rivals and you do wonder why on earth they ever thought that they'd be able to come to any agreement because of course they don't and someone draws a knife or a sword, and John Comyn ends up being the dead one. And Robert the Bruce races to Schoon Abbey to get himself crowned king before, because he knows what's coming, the Pope is going to excommunicate it because he drew blood, killed somebody in a church. That's a no-no. So yeah, he races to Schoon and gets himself crowned king. So Elizabeth de Bourgh, who'd married a Scottish lord, is now Queen of Scotland. and she was only a teenager when she married Robert and now she's Queen of Scotland but now she's also technically an outlaw because Edward I comes north and chases Robert the Bruce all around Scotland and Robert the Bruce's women. This is my problem with The Outlaw King, have you seen it? Yes. It's a great film but it doesn't half downplay the role of the women because they're end the story everywhere you look but they get ignored in the film which really wound me up but yes so elizabeth de berg is queen and she actually there's um a reference in one of the chronicles where she refers to herself and robert as the king and queen of the may um you know like the may queen because she doesn't think it will last and she knows they've laid down a challenge to Edward I, that he's not going to just ignore and go, oh, good luck to you both and throw the rice over them. You know, he's going to come and he's going to claim back Scotland if he can. So she knows that in a predicament and possibly an impossible situation and doesn't actually see how they can win. So it's like either that she's saying it's not going to last or that they're playing at being king and queen because they know it's not going to last. in a world where swords were sharp and hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is two fearless historians, me, Matt Lewis, and me, Dr. Eleanor Janaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Do we get a sense of how close their relationship was, Robert and Elizabeth? because Robert, do we see him potentially having trouble trusting Elizabeth because she's effectively the daughter of his rival at this point's best friend? Does she become isolated as queen or by this point does Robert know her well enough to trust her? I don't think she does become isolated as queen. He takes her with him. He knows that he needs her because without a queen you can't get an heir and without an heir the throne is insecure. anyway. But when he goes on the run, he takes his entire family with him, his wife, his daughter, two sisters, and Isabel Buchan, who was the woman who'd crowned him at Scone. So whether that's because he doesn't trust her to stay where he'd put her, I don't know, but I don't think it is. He takes care, even when they have to separate, he makes sure she's got a big substantial guard included led by two of his brothers to look after her they have to separate because edward the first is so on their tail and he thinks that if we can get the women away then at least they're safe it draws edward the first troops to him rather than to her doesn't work because she gets betrayed and handed over to edward the first and then she's held in prison for eight years. All the time that she's imprisoned by Edward I, Robert the Bruce, his throne is insecure because he can't have an heir. Whether or not they were close, as in like Margaret and Alexander, I don't think so. I mean, Robert had a number of affairs and numerous illegitimate children. But I hate to just diminish it, but that is just the way of royal marriages in those days. you know and poor Elizabeth is in prison thinking I am wasting my life away I am not being able to do what I'm supposed to do and just waiting for everybody else to sort themselves out and for Robert to win so that she could be freed and go back to the life of Queen of Scots I mean she was never referred to by Edward the first or Edward the second as Queen of Scots you know she was always the Earl of Ulster's daughter. As it got towards 1314 in the Battle of Bannockburn, and it was obvious that, you know, once Robert had won that, he was going to have to release Elizabeth. Edward II did start treating her more favourably. But in the early years, there's this letter from Elizabeth to Edward I, when she first is held prisoner, saying, I haven't got enough, I haven't got any spare clothes, you know, I've got the clothes on my back and that's it. I need money for clothes for me, for my maid, you know, send me some money, basically, I'm a beggar. And they don't initially, it's like Edward I's like, no, you betrayed me, so you can, you know, he doesn't treat her as badly as he treats some of the other women. Two of them are imprisoned in cages in castles on the Scottish border, which it's just like okay imprisoning they weren't suspended from the castle walls as some people suggest they were imprisoned in cages within the castles but they were on the scottish border just there to taunt robert the bruce like you know we've got your women they're here but you can't get them yeah really mean i guess it's easy to see the the political motivation for edward to keep elizabeth prisoner as you said it prevents robert the bruce having a son and an heir if nothing else yes and it doesn't seem like her father's relationship with edward did too much to make her imprisonment much more gentle she was treated maybe slightly better than some but is still complaining that she doesn't have anything that she needs so it doesn't seem like her english connection is is paying off at all by this point well it's paid off a little bit she's not in a cage but edward the first is still i'm the boss bar from edward though isn't it it's a very low bar from Edward. He even threatened to put Marjorie, who was about eight years old at the time, in a cage in the Tower of London. And it was only his barons turning around and saying, you can't do that. She's a child that prevented him from doing it. So yeah, and another sister was sent to a convent in Lincolnshire. Lewis's, Edward's favourite prison guards were the Gilbertines. He'd already sent Welsh princesses over to Lincolnshire. So now he sent some Scottish ones as well. Yeah. And so once Elizabeth is released, she does go on to have some children with Robert the Bruce. How much do we know about their subsequent relationship and how involved Elizabeth was with her children? Yeah, she had a number of daughters and then two sons. It may be we don't have the records of the dates of the births of the boys. David was the first one and he was the one who would succeed his father eventually and then there was a second son that may have been the cause of Elizabeth's death. It may have been in childbirth with the second son who lived for a little while and is acknowledged in the chronicles but when young David is two, Robert the Bruce names him as his heir and then his grandson by Marjorie, Robert. So by that point, the second son has died. But it can't not have had an effect on her being imprisoned for that long. And then knowing that once she's back with Robert, knowing that she's got to produce a son and then daughters come along in a row and it's like no no I need a son so it must have been really infuriating for her because at the same time you've got Marjorie who was 16 when she was finally released from English captivity Robert's daughter and she's married more or less straight away to Walter the steward and gets pregnant and has the baby Robert who's the future king Robert the second, but dies in childbirth. So Elizabeth's got this image all the time she's producing these children of what happens if something goes wrong. And like I say, the relationship with Robert, there's not much evidence of them being ever so close. He was with her at times at Dunfermline Abbey when she was preparing to give birth to a number of the children. So he was an attentive husband but not they tended to come together and then go apart but then robert's trying to reconquer his kingdom at the same time isn't he so it's very difficult to actually see what the relationship would be between them yeah and despite such a an eventful life with this long period of imprisonment followed by childbearing elizabeth is kind of she's only 38 and she dies as well what do we know about what happens around her death her cause of death and what happens in the aftermath well like i said i think she probably died in childbirth there's um no clear decision there's no clear evidence either way but it does seem that the second son was a year or so younger than david and that's when she died so it seems likely that she died in childbirth robert does make sure that he's buried beside her so it's although there's questions as to how close they were they obviously did feel they'd had this long fight together and it must have actually given them some things in common yeah yeah it must have kind of galvanized their relationship yeah uh so she died on the 26th of october at cullen and she was buried at dunfermline abbey and her viscera were buried at Cullen because as you know as soon as somebody dies that's it take out their stomach contents and bury them close and then travel her to Dunfermline Abbey and Robert was buried beside her. This is the problem with Scottish queens there's no affectionate love letters lying around anywhere telling us exactly how they felt about their husbands and a lot of it has to be read between the lines. Robert chose to be buried beside her so there is something there and they did manage to have a rather large number of children in a short succession you know every time a daughter came along that's it we better keep going until we get a son but you can't help but think how hard it must have been for the pair of them to have that bit of time together then be torn apart for eight years and Robert fighting for his throne and as soon as he wins Bannockbert he's negotiating to get his family back to get his wife and daughter back so it's not one of those where he's going to leave her in captivity for another few years and you know while he's doing other things or spending time with a mistress he's desperate to get his wife back so I think although we don't have the love letters there was definitely affection there did he play away while his wife was imprisoned yes but god so many men did you know so many men did while their wives were next to them so it's not exactly an indication of a lack of affection yeah yeah well it's been fascinating to get to know these three women a little bit better there's obviously plenty more women packed in the book for for readers to go and get to know a bit better too i wondered if we could just end on you know do you have an idea of what was the most striking thing for you the the most Scottish thing about Scottish queens? What really stands out that makes them different for maybe queens of England? Well, unfortunately for Scottish queens, their husbands tended to die young, especially the later Stuart kings. Dying in their bed wasn't an option for any of them. You know, James I was murdered, James II stood too close to a cannon that exploded and broke his thigh bone in half. And for a time after their husbands died, they did have an opportunity to be regent. But there was this one clause, as far as the Scottish were concerned, which is that the Queen could only be regent so long as she didn't remarry. And most of them tended to decide that they wanted a new husband. So they didn't have the authority that you see in some English queens where they managed to control the situation after their husband's death and there were a lot of husbands died early in Scotland but they had a tenacity about them and they kept fighting for their families for their sons James the first wife Joan she was regent for a short time and then she remarried and lost custody of her son, but she carried on fighting for him when she was actually killed or died during a siege. So they were in the centre of things, you know, they didn't sit back and go, oh, let everybody else do everything. You know, they did stay trying to help their children and influence events for the sakes of their sons. Because the other thing about Scottish history is that Scottish lords tended to try and gain custody of whichever child king was around at the time in order to gain control of Scotland's administration itself and take advantage of it. Scottish politics is just a minefield but fascinating. You look at where George R.R. Martin gets all these ideas from all you have to do is look at Scottish history they're all there. But it's been fascinating to get to know these three women a little bit better. And there are plenty more Scottish queens in the book for listeners to go and meet if they'd like to grab a copy. Thank you very much for joining us, Sharon. It's been great to talk to you again. Thank you, Matt. As always, it's been a pleasure. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can grab a copy of Sharon's book, Scotland's Medieval Queens, from St Margaret to Margaret of Denmark, to uncover even more. You can also catch one of Sharon's previous visits to Gone Medieval when we talked about Nicola de la Haye, the first female sheriff in England. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. grab a subscription now at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits. Thank you.