Matilda of Scotland: the queen behind the veil

That’s because the woman – known to history as Matilda of Scotland – had royal blood coursing through her veins. Aged no more than 20, she was the daughter of a Scottish king and an English princess. And her would-be husband was King Henry I, perhaps 12 years her elder.

Henry had come to the English throne just weeks earlier after his older brother, William II (known as Rufus), had been killed by a stray arrow while hunting in the New Forest. Now Henry was set on marrying Matilda – and, from what we can tell, the feeling was mutual. Yet there was an obstacle standing between the royal lovers and their marriage: Matilda’s aunt, Christina.
Christina, herself a nun and probably effectively Matilda’s guardian at the abbey, swore that her niece had pledged herself to God in a vow of chastity, and therefore was not free to wed any man – even if he was king of England. So Matilda made that headlong ride in a desperate bid to persuade Anselm that she had never taken vows, and had worn a nun’s veil only for protection from assault.

“I tore [the veil] off and threw it on the ground and trampled on it,” declared Matilda in one retelling of her story. “And in that way, although foolishly, I used to vent my rage and the hatred of it that boiled up in me.”

We’ll never know for certain if Matilda had indeed taken vows. Contemporary accounts suggest that she was sent to Wilton at a young age, probably to be educated under the supervision of her aunt, but that she also spent time at the royal court where it’s likely she and Henry first met. What is certain, however, is that Matilda’s mission to Canterbury in the summer of 1100 paid dividends – because Archbishop Anselm rejected Christina’s allegations and approved the royal marriage. When Henry and Matilda were wed at Westminster Abbey in November 1100, it was Anselm who performed the ceremony. And when Matilda was declared queen of England that day, it was the archbishop who placed the crown upon her head.

Forgotten crises

Today this family dispute has largely been forgotten, lost amid the multiple crises that scarred England during the 12th century. But that doesn’t diminish its importance to the nation’s history – because if Anselm had blocked Henry and Matilda’s nuptials, England would have been denied one of its most remarkable medieval queens.

During her 17-year marriage, Matilda proved an intelligent, educated and smart political operator – a rock for her husband in the first half of his long reign. Yet she was just as important for who she was as for what she did. In a nation still riven by the bloodlet- ting and turmoil that followed the Norman invasion of 1066, “good queen Matilda”, as she was widely known, helped narrow the chasm between conquerors and conquered.

That Matilda was able to achieve this was, to a large extent, the product of her ancestry. She was christened with the Anglo-Saxon name Edith (though seems to have been known all of her life as Matilda) and was a descendant of Alfred the Great on her moth- er’s side. Her great-grandfather had been Edmund II ‘Ironside’, who had fought against the Danish empire-builder Cnut almost a century earlier. Through Matilda, then, the new dynasty of Henry’s father, William the Conqueror, could be united with the old English ruling dynasty.

Though Matilda spent part of her early life in England, she was born in Scotland to King Malcolm III and his wife, Margaret of Scotland, who was later canonised as a saint. She therefore had impeccable royal breeding, which made her the perfect candidate to hold the regency during Henry’s frequent absences in Normandy.

Her gold-standard education also proved indispensable to the smooth running of her husband’s administration. When Henry as- sumed the throne in 1100, many of those who had survived the battle of Hastings were now dying off. Into their places stepped Norman lawyers and clerics who didn’t understand English and so were unable to implement laws and customs that had already existed before the Conquest.

That problem was resolved when a series of treatises and short guides was provided
to sheriffs, lawmen and clerics, enabling them to get over the language barrier. These guides were produced with the help of Matilda, who could speak English, Latin and, in all probability, French. In doing so, the queen helped to bridge the gap between the pre-Conquest past and the present, and to pave the way for future legal reforms.

Matilda was almost certainly more educated than her husband. She was fond of music and poetry, and was a patron of learn- ing and scholarship. She may also have commissioned a version of the Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot by someone affiliated with the royal court – an interesting choice, because it was originally an Irish epic, not a Norman or continental text.
The historian William of Malmesbury wrote that the queen had commissioned him to write a family tree detailing her descent from the ancient king of Wessex and an old English saint, then “allured by the desire for a larger narration with easy sweetness she prevailed on us to do a full history of her an- cestors”. William later told Matilda’s daugh- ter that this project evolved into his greatest work, the Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Kings).

Although Henry and Matilda’s marriage united the House of Wessex with the line of William the Conqueror, it wasn’t without controversy. Some contemporaries disparaged Henry for marrying an Englishwoman: the couple were nicknamed Godric and Godiva, thought to be common English names.

Matilda carefully cultivated her image throughout her reign – probably as a result of these early criticisms. She commissioned a biography of her saintly mother, Margaret, whom she tried to emulate as a model of pious queenship. She also retained a lifelong interest in charitable foundations, and estab- lished at least two leper hospitals.

Ancient ancestors

These many and fine achievements beg a question: why is Matilda widely forgotten? How has a woman of such manifold qualities been so comprehensively overshadowed?

Part of the reason is that she died relatively early. She succumbed to an unknown illness in 1118, barely halfway through Henry’s reign, while still in her thirties.

Though Henry mourned the loss of his wife, the dynastic implications of Matilda’s untimely death were not yet apparent. Hen- ry and Matilda had had two children: their daughter, also Matilda, was born in 1102, and William Adelin was around 18 months younger. By the end of 1119 both were married, and so the succession appeared se- cure. All that changed in 1120, though, when the White Ship carrying William across the Channel sank, and he drowned – along with some 300 others. This was one of the worst calamities to strike the English elite for years, killing not only the heir to the throne but also more than one of Henry’s illegitimate children, as well as the offspring of several nobles.

Henry was devastated by the loss of his only legitimate son, but wasn’t overly concerned about the future of the Norman dynasty. Soon after William’s death, the king married Adeliza of Louvain – but they had no children together, so Henry nominated as his successor his only surviving child with his first wife: Matilda.

Clash for the crown

That daughter, better known to us today as Empress Matilda or Maud, provides another reason why her mother has been so complete- ly overshadowed. On her father’s death in 1135, Empress Matilda became embroiled in a vicious civil war with her cousin Stephen – a long struggle for the crown known as the Anarchy.

The tumultuous events that surrounded the daughter’s struggle for the throne are of more interest to historians than the mother’s more peaceful pursuits. Yet Empress Matilda’s claim was derived as much from her mother as from her father. True, she was Henry I’s appointed successor – but she also chose to underline her English royal blood.

There was another way in which Empress Matilda’s war with Stephen affected her mother’s long-term reputation – and that was in amplifying her aunt Christina’s accu- sation that Matilda of Scotland had indeed taken vows in Wilton Abbey. Stephen was determined to undermine the empress’s claim to the English throne, so sent ambassadors to Pope Innocent II to tell
him that, as the late King Henry I had forced an avowed nun to wed him, his daughter was illegitimate.

It seems that Stephen’s claims struck a chord. Matilda now came to be remembered chiefly as a runaway nun who had reluctantly agreed to leave the refuge of the abbey to wed her enemy, Henry, because she considered it her sacred duty to deliver her people from Norman oppression.
As time passed, this image became em- bedded in popular consciousness. Matilda’s true story, and her contributions to English history, were increasingly obscured. She was transformed into a passive, martyr-like figure – a virgin queen who was denied her true vocation to save the English and provide her husband with an heir.

All of this conceals the achievements of an intelligent, cultured woman who shaped her own destiny – and that of her nation. Isn’t it time, then, that Matilda of Scotland stepped out of the shadows?

Joanna Arman is a historian specialising in women’s history. Her books include Matilda II: The Forgotten Queen (Pen and Sword, 2023) and Margaret of Anjou: She-Wolf of France, Twice Queen of England (Amberley, 2023)