November 16th. St. Margaret of Scotland.

Daughter of one of the last Anglo-Saxon princes, Edward the Atheling (+1057), she was born in 1046 and educated in exile in Hungary during the Danish rule in England. She married Malcolm III of Scotland in 1069, and proved a vital force for good in both the Scottish court and church. She revived the abbey of Iona, and made Dunfermline Abbey the Scottish equivalent of Westminster, a burial-place for the Scottish royal family. Receiving of Holy Communion, then a rare practice, was encouraged; Sunday work was discouraged. She was cultured, here influencing her somewhat rough-natured husband, pious and generous to the poor. Her husband was killed in battle against William II of England; two of her own sons, Alexander and David, became kings of Scotland. She died in 1093, was buried at Dunfermline and canonised in 1249. At the Reformation, her body with that of her husband was taken to the Spanish monastery of the Escorial, north of Madrid, and enshrined there.`