Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/138

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Marfield
132
Margaret

in 1866, and was elected bailiff in 1880, when he received the honour of knighthood. He was distinguished on the bench, where his judgments in the case of Bradley v. Le Brun and in the Mercantile Joint-Stock scandals attracted considerable attention beyond the island, and he suggested some important modifications in the laws affecting real property, which were adopted by the States in 1879. He edited in 1847 the manuscripts of Philip Le Geyt [q. v.], the insular jurist, and was also the author of several poems written in the Jersey patois. These were published in 'Rimes et Poesies Jersiaises,' edited by Abraham Mourant (1865), and in the 'Patois Poems of the Channel Islands,' edited by J. Linwood Pitts (1883). François Victor Hugo reproduced one of Marett's poems, 'La fille Malade,' in his 'Normandie Inconnue.' Sir Robert married in 1865 Julia Anne, daughter of Philip Marett of La Haule Manor, St. Brelade's, by whom he left four children. He died 10 Nov. 1884.

[Payne's Armorial of Jersey, pp. 273-7; Le Quesne's Constit. Hist. of Jersey, passim; Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser. Addenda, 1580-1625, freq.; revision by E. T. Nicolle, esq., of Jersey; materials kindly furnished by Mr. Ranulph Marett, fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and only son of Sir E. P. Marett.]

MARFELD, JOHN (fl. 1393), physician. [See Mirfeld.]

MARGARET, St. (d. 1093), queen of Scotland, was daughter of Edward the Exile, son of Edmund Ironside [q. v.], by Agatha, usually described as a kinswoman of Gisela, the sister of Henry II the Emperor, and wife of St. Stephen of Hungary. Her father and his brother Edmund, when yet infants, are said to have been sent by Canute to Sweden or to Russia, and afterwards to have passed to Hungary before 1038, when Stephen died. No trace of the exiles has, however, been found in the histories of Hungary examined by Mr. Freeman or by the present writer, who made inquiries on the subject at Buda-Pesth. Still, the constant tradition in England and Scotland is too strong to be set aside, and possibly deserves confirmation from the Hungarian descent claimed by certain Scottish families, as the Drummonds. The legend of Adrian, the missionary monk, who is said to have come from Hungary to Scotland long before Hungary was Christian, possibly may have been due to a desire to flatter the mother-country of Margaret. The birth of Margaret must be assigned to a date between 1038 and 1057, probably about 1045, but whether she accompanied her father to England in 1057 we do not know, though Lappenberg assum it as probable that she did. Her brother Edgar Atheling [q. v.], was chosen king : 1066, after the death of Harold, and made terms with William the Conqueror. But the summer of 1067, according to the 'Angle Saxon Chronicle,' 'Edgar child went out with his mother Agatha and his two sisters Margaret and Christina and Merleswegen and many good men with them and came to Scotland under the protection of King Malcolm III [q. v.], and he received them all. Then Malcolm began to yearn after Margaret to wife, but he and all his men long refused, and she herself also declined,' preferring, according to the verses inserted in the 'Chronicle,' a virgin's life. The king 'urged her brother until he answered "Yea," and indeed he durst not otherwise because they were come into his power.' The contemporary biography of Margaret supplies no dates. John of Fordun, on the alleged authority of Turgot, prior of Durham and archbishop of St. Andrews, who is doubtfully credited with the contemporary biography of Margaret, dates her marriage with Malcolm in 1070, but adds, 'Some, however, have written that it was in the year 1067.' The later date probably owes its existence to the interpolations in Simeon of Durham, which Mr. Hinde rejects. The best manuscripts of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ' accept 1067. Most writers since Hailes, including Mr. Freeman, have assumed 1070. Mr. Skene prefers the earlier date, which has the greater probability in its favour. The marriage was celebrated at Dunfermline by Fothad, Celtic bishop of St. Andrews, not in the abbey of which parts still exist, for that was founded by Malcolm and Margaret in commemoration of it, but in some smaller church attached to the tower, of whose foundations a few traces may still be seen in the adjoining grounds of Pittencreiff.

According to a letter preserved in the 'Scalacronica' from Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, the archbishop, in reply to Margaret's petition, sent her Friar Goldwin and two monks to instruct her in the proper conduct of the service of God. Probably soon after her marriage, at the instance of these English friars, a council was held for the reform of the Scottish church, in which Malcolm acted as interpreter between the English and Gaelic clergy. It sat for three days, and regulated the period of the Lenten fast according to the Roman use, by which it began four days before the first Sunday in Lent ; the reception of the sacrament at Easter, which had been neglected ; the ritual of the mass according to the Roman mode, the ob-