Alnwick, as the place of Malcolm’s death, and of the capture of another Scottish king in the next century, awakens a certain amount of real interest beyond the range of mere legend and misapplied sentiment. The late Mr. Hartshorne wrote with a strange feeling of devotion towards anything that did profess and call itself Percy; but he gives us the facts. All that need be known about Alnwick will be found in his papers in the Archæological Institute’s second Newcastle volume, p. 143. Robert of Veci appears in Domesday in several shires as far north as Lincoln, but of course we cannot track him in the unsurveyed parts of Northumberland. Of the original Percy we have heard something in various parts in N. C. vol. iv. pp. 215, 295, 789; vol. v. p. 773. The second set of Percies, those of Louvain, got to Alnwick by a grant from Bishop Antony Beck in 1309 (Hartshorne, ii. 150, 152). Very little can be made of the Alnwick Chronicle printed in Mr. Hartshorne’s Appendix. What can we say to a “William Tisonne” who dies on the English side at Senlac, and who is the brother of Richard Tisone who founds chapels in the year 1000, as his father “Gisbright” founded abbeys before him? In this story the first Norman lord of Alnwick is Ivo of Veci, who is described as “miles de secretariis,” whatever that may mean, to the Conqueror, and he gets Alnwick along with the daughter of the slain William Tisonne. Alnwick may quite possibly have passed to a Norman lord by marriage with an English heiress, but assuredly her father was not called William and did not bear an hereditary surname, and it is much to his credit if, in the teeth of his Earl, he found his way to the great battle from a point so far north as Alnwick.
NOTE DD. [Vol. ii. p. 28.]
The Burial of Margaret.
I do not wish to commit myself to any view as to the authorship of the writings attributed to Turgot. It is sometimes, as I have more than once remarked, hard to believe that the passages which are worked into the text of Fordun, and which are printed at the end of the Surtees Simeon as Turgot’s writing, can really come from a contemporary writer. Still, whether Turgot’s or not, they contain fragments of real information for which, in the great meagreness of our notices of Scottish matters, we may well be thankful. In this case, it is from one of these passages that we learn for certain, what we might for ourselves have been inclined to guess, that Margaret, so deeply reverenced in England then and in Scotland in later times, was not popular in Scotland in her own day. Of her death, as we have seen, we have several accounts, the fullest and most trustworthy being in her own Life by Turgot. Again, we have several notices, though somewhat meagre ones, of the national Scottish movement which placed Donald on the throne. But it is only from one of these other bits of Turgot (if it be Turgot) that we could find out that the two things had anything to do with one another, and that the first thing which the national party did was to attempt to disturb the burial of the holy Queen. There is nothing of this in the Life, a fact which may possibly mark the difference between Turgot writing hagiography, though I believe truthful hagiography, and the same Turgot writing ordinary history. In the former character, he does not invent or pervert; he simply leaves out an unpleasant fact which in the other and humbler character he records.
The account of Margaret’s burial in the Life (Surtees Simeon, p. 254) stands thus;
“Corpus ipsius honorabiliter, ut reginam decebat, involutum, ad Sanctæ Trinitatis, quam ipsa construxerat, ecclesiam deportavimus, ibique, sicut ipsa jusserat, contra altare et sanctæ crucis (quod ibidem erexerat) venerabile signum, sepulturæ tradidimus.”
These words cannot come directly from Turgot himself, who was not there, but from the priest (see [p. 27]) who told him the story. Again, Turgot’s readers would most likely understand that by the church of the Holy Trinity was meant the church of Dunfermline. Otherwise one might easily read the passage as implying that Margaret was buried in the same place in which she died, though no name is given for either. It is from the other account (Fordun, v. 21) that we learn that the death happened at Edinburgh and the burial at Dunfermline. Here we get a picture of Donald at the head of the insurgents or patriots, or whatever we are to call them, entering Edinburgh by one gate, while the body of Margaret is carried out by the other. The story runs thus;
“Cum adhuc corpus sanctæ reginæ esset in castro [puellarum] ubi illius felix anima ad Christum quem semper dilexerat migravit, Donaldus Rufus vel Bane, frater regis, ejus audita morte, regnum multorum manu vallatus invasit, et prædictum castrum, ubi regis justos et legales sciebat heredes, hostiliter obsedit. Sed quia locus ille natura sui in se valde munitus est, portas solummodo credidit custodiendas, eo quod introitus aut exitus aliunde non de facili pateat. Quod intelligentes qui intus erant, docti a Deo, meritis, ut credimus, sanctæ reginæ, per posticum ex occidentali plaga sanctum corpus deferebant. Ferunt autem quidam, in toto itinere illo nebulam subnubilam omnem familiam illam circumdedisse, et ab omnibus aspectibus hostium miraculose protexisse, ut nec itinerantibus terra vel mari nihil obfuit, sed ad optatum prospere locum, ecclesiam scilicet de Dunfermlyn, ubi nunc in Christo requiescit, sicut ipsa prius jusserat, pervenientes deportarunt.”
In the story of the mist we may clearly see a natural phænomenon set down as a miracle (see Robertson, i. 156). But there seems no reason for doubting the general outline of the story, namely, that Margaret was unpopular with the party headed by Donald, and that they would have gladly disturbed her burial. By comparing this story with the Life we see how easy it is to leave out an important part of a tale without bringing in anything that contradicts it.
NOTE EE. [Vol. ii. p. 31.]