MARGARET,
Daughter of Francis the First of France, married Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, and died highly respected, September 14th., 1574, aged fifty-one.
MARGARET,
Daughter of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence, married St. Louis, King of France, in 1254, and attended him during his wars in the Holy Land with the Saracens; when, on his captivity, she behaved with heroic intrepidity in the defence of Damietta. She died at Paris in 1285, aged seventy-six.
MARGARET,
Sister of Edgar Atheling, grandson of Edmund Ironsides, King of England, fled to Scotland on the invasion of William the Conqueror, and married Malcolm, King of that country. She was a very amiable and benevolent princess. Her sons, Edgar, Alexander, and David, successively filled the throne of Scotland; and her daughter Matilda married Henry the First. She died November 16th., 1093, aged forty-seven.
MARGARET,
The Semiramis of the North, third daughter of Waldemar, King of Denmark, was born in 1353. At the age of six she was contracted to Haguin, king of Norway; but the Swedes, of whom his father was king, insisted on his renouncing the alliance; and to oblige them, he consented to demand Elizabeth of Holstein in marriage, whom he espoused by proxy. But, on her voyage to Norway, a storm drove her off the coast of Denmark, where she was detained by Waldemar, until his daughter was married to Haguin in 1366.
Waldemar died in 1375, leaving only two daughters, of whom Margaret was the younger. Olans, the son of Margaret, was at that time king of Norway; and as the grandson of Magnus, who had however been deposed, he had some claims on the crown of Sweden. The eldest daughter, Ingeburga, wife of Henry, Duke of Mecklenburg, had also a son; but the right of succession was then confused and uncertain, and Margaret contrived that the election should be decided in favour of her son, then eleven years old, who was placed on the throne, under her guidance as regent. Haguin died soon after; and Olaus died in 1387, at the age of twenty-two; with him the male line was extinct, and custom had not yet authorized the election of a woman. Henry of Mecklenburg omitted nothing that could advance his pretensions; but Margaret's genius, and well-placed liberality, won over the bishops and clergy, which was in effect gaining the greater part of the people, and she was unanimously elected Queen of Denmark.
But her ambition grasped at the crown of Norway also; she sent deputies to solicit the states, gained over the chief people by money, and found means to render herself mistress of the army and garrisons; so that, had the nation been otherwise disposed, she would in the end have succeeded; but they readily yielded to her wishes. The Norwegians, perceiving that the succession was in danger of being extinct, entreated her to secure it by an advantageous marriage; but she received the proposal coldly. To satisfy, however, their
