The fullest account of the event is given by Eadmer († 1124), who was nearly connected with the primate Anselm, and he naturally puts the most favourable construction on Matilda’s conduct. According to him she wished to leave the convent and went before Anselm to plead her cause.

‘I do not deny having worn the veil,’ the princess said. ‘When I was a child my aunt Christina, whom you know to be a determined woman, in order to protect me against the violence of the Normans, put a piece of black cloth on my head, and when I removed it gave me blows and bad language. So I trembling and indignant wore the veil in her presence. But as soon as I could get out of her sight I snatched it off and trampled it underfoot[578].’ In a lively way she goes on to describe how her father seeing the veil on her head became angry and tore it off, saying he had no intention other than that she should be married. Anselm, before complying with the wish of the princess, convened a chapter at Lambeth, but after hearing their decision, he declared Matilda free and united her in marriage to the king.

Anselm’s behaviour is doubtless faithfully represented by Eadmer. Curiously enough later historians, Robert of Gloucester, Matthew Paris and Rudbone († c. 1234), represent Matilda as unwilling to leave the cloister to be married; and in one of these accounts she is described as growing angry, and pronouncing a curse on the possible offspring of the union. Walter Map goes so far as to say that the king took to wife a veiled and professed nun, Rome neither assenting nor dissenting, but remaining passive.

Perhaps the validity of the union was afterwards for political reasons called in question. At any rate Mary, Matilda’s sister, also left the convent to be married to Eustace, Count of Boulogne, without objection being raised.

That Matilda did not object to leaving the cloister, we have conclusive proof in her great and continued affection for Anselm as shown in her letters to him. These letters and the charitable deeds of the queen, throw light on the Latinity of the Romsey pupil and on the tastes she had imbibed there.

We shall have occasion to return to Matilda again in connection with the philanthropic movement of the age, and we shall find her founding the hospital of St Giles in the soke of Aldgate, and bringing the first Austin Canons from France into England[579].

All her life she retained a taste for scholarly pursuits, and patronised scholars and men of letters. Her correspondence with the primate Anselm[580] yields proof of her own studies and the freedom with which she wrote Latin.

In one of these letters, written shortly after her marriage (bk 3. 55), Matilda urges the primate in strong terms to abstain from the severe fasting he practises, quoting from Cicero ‘on Old Age,’ and arguing that as the mind needs food and drink, so does the body; she at the same time admits the Scriptures enjoin the duty of fasting, and Pythagoras, Socrates and others urge the need of frugality. Anselm in his answer incidentally mentions having joined her to the king in lawful wedlock.

Matilda’s next letters are less fraught with learning, and in unaffected terms express grief at Anselm’s voluntary exile, which was the outcome of his quarrel with the king. She is saddened by his absence and longs for his return (3. 93); she would act as intercessor between him and her husband (3. 96), and she writes to the Pope on Anselm’s behalf (3. 99). The queen both read and admired Anselm’s writings, and compares his style to that of Cicero, Quintilian, Jerome, Gregory and others (3. 119) with whom her reading at Romsey may have made her acquainted.

Anselm is not slow in answering that the king’s continued bitterness is to him a source of grief, and in expressing the desire that the queen may turn his heart. It is good of her to wish for his return, which, however, does not depend on himself; besides ‘surely she wishes him to act in accordance with his conscience.’ In one of these letters he accuses the queen of disposing otherwise than she ought of the churches which are in her keeping (3. 57, 81, 97, 107, 120, 128).