[44] These details come from Turgot, chap. xii, xiii. He was not himself present, having seen her for the last time some while before her death, but late enough to bear witness (chap. xii.) to her expectation of death. The story of her last moments was told to Turgot by a priest who was specially in the Queen’s favour, who was present at her death, and who afterwards became a monk at Durham as an offering for her soul. “Post mortem reginæ, pro ipsius anima perpetuo se Christi servitio tradidit; et ad sepulchrum incorrupti corporis sanctissimi patris Cuthberti suscipiens habitum monachi, seipsum pro ea hostiam obtulit.”
[45] Turgot, ib. “Ipsa quoque illam, quam Nigram Crucem nominare, quamque in maxima semper veneratione habere consuevit, sibi afferri præcepit.” Another manuscript has “Crucem Scotiæ nigram.”
[46] “Quinquagesimum psalmum ex ordine decantans;” that is the fifty-first in our reckoning.
[47] “Ille quod verum erat dicere noluit, ne audita morte illorum continuo et ipsa moreretur; nam respondebat, eos benevalere.”
[48] “Sed in omnibus his non peccavit labiis suis, neque stultum quid contra Deum locuta est.” We must always remember the common habit of reviling God and the saints which it was thought rather a special virtue to be free from. See N. C. vol. ii. p. 24, note.
[49] “In laudem et gratiarum actionem prorupit, dicens: ‘Laudes et gratias tibi, omnipotens Deus, refero, qui me tantas in meo exitu angustias tolerare, hasque tolerantem ab aliquibus peccati maculis, ut spero, voluisti mundare.’”
[50] The place is not mentioned by Turgot in the Life. According to Fordun (v. 21), who professes to copy Turgot, Margaret died “in castro puellarum;” see the Surtees Simeon, p. 262.
[51] “Quod mirum est, faciem ejus, quæ more morientium tota in morte palluerat, ita post mortem rubor cum candore permixtus perfuderat, ut non mortua sed dormiens credi potuisset,” Cf. the picture of her uncle Eadward. See N. C. vol. iii. p. 15.
[52] See [Appendix DD.]
[53] See [Appendix AA.]