Margaret had had a more affectionate and faithful husband, she would doubtless have been a true and affectionate wife. This does not justify her errors, but it accounts for them. She died in 1615, aged sixty-three.
MARGARET OF SCOTLAND,
The first wife of Louis the Eleventh of France, died in 1445, at the age of twenty-six, before her husband had ascended the throne. Margaret was devoted to literature, and, while she lived, patronized men of learning and genius. Her admiration for the poet Alain Chartier is said to have induced her to kiss his lips, as he sat asleep one day in a chair. Her attendants being astonished at this act of condescension, the princess replied that "she did not kiss the man, but the lips which had given utterance to so many exquisite thoughts." She excited in the gloomy and ferocious Louis the Eleventh, a taste for science and literature, which lasted long after her death. She left no children. Her death is said to have been caused by the calumnies circulated against her; of which, however, she was proved innocent.
MARGARET OF VALOIS,
Queen of Navarre, and sister to Francis the First of France, was born at Angoulême, in 1492; being the daughter of Charles of Orleans, Duke of Angoulême, and Louisa of Savoy. In 1509, she married Charles, the last Duke of Alençon, who died at Lyons, after the battle of Pavia, in 1525. The widow went to Madrid, to attend her brother, who had been taken prisoner in that battle by the Spaniards, and was then ill. She was of the greatest service to her brother, obliging Charles and his ministers, by her firmness, to treat him as his rank required. His love equalled her merits, and he warmly promoted her marriage with Henry d'Albret, king of Navarre The offspring of this union was Joan d'Albret, mother of Henry the Fourth.
Margaret filled the part of a queen with exemplary goodness, encouraging arts, learning, and agriculture, and everything that could contribute to the prosperity of the kingdom. She died in 1549, of a cold, caught while making observations on a comet. During her life, she inclined to the Protestant faith, but the Roman Catholics say that she was reconverted before she died.
She wrote well in prose and verse, and was called the Tenth Muse; and the Margaret, or pearl, surpassing all the pearls of the East. Some of her works are, "Heptameron, or Novels of the Queen of Navarre;" "Les Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses," a collection of her productions, formed by John de la Haye, her valet-de-chambre. A long poem of hers was entitled, "The Triumph of the Lamb;" and another, "The Complaints of a Prisoner."
MARGARET, ST.,
A virgin, who is said to have suffered a martyrdom at Antioch, in 275. She is not mentioned by the ancient martyrologists, and she did not become famous till the eleventh century. A festival is held in honour of her memory on the 20th. of July. The orientals reverence her under the name of St. Pelagia, or St. Marina, and the western church under that of St. Geruma, or St. Margaret.
