♀Margaret of Wessex

Margaret of Wessex^W was Queen of Scots as the wife of Malcolm III, and was later called Saint Margaret. She was the twenty-sixth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by three separate lines of descent: one through her son David of Scotland, and two, as her twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth great-grandmother, through her daughter Maud of Scotland.

Crown and marriage

Margaret was a sister of Edgar Ætheling^W, the last of the Saxon princes in line for the English crown. She is said to have come to Scotland with Edgar and their other sister, and to have been the elder of the two sisters. There she married Malcolm of Scotland^W, who is said to have taken the throne after Macbeth^W was killed in 1057.

The couple’s sons are said to have been Edgar^W, Alexander^W and David^W, each of whom reigned in turn as King of Scots, and their daughter Maud is said to have become Queen of England by her marriage to Henry I^W.

Malcolm is said to have been killed besieging Alnwick Castle on 13 November 1093, and his eldest son Edgar succeeded him.

The family

Maud of Scotland, called Matilda in the peerage books, married Henry I of England on 11 November 1100.

Lines of descent

Malcolm and Margaret are Nancy Jane Blanchard’s ancestors by three separate lines. The first runs through their son David of Scotland and his son Henry of Scotland, and on through the Bohun family. It probably reaches John Washburn (died 1547), and from him comes down through Mary Washburn (died 1740) and the Knapps and Blanchards to Nancy’s father, Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

The other two run through their daughter Maud of Scotland, her daughter the Empress Maud, who married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and their son Henry II of England. One reaches Joan of England (1272–1307) through her father Edward of England (1239–1307), the other through her mother Eleanor of Castile. The lines meet again in Polly Knapp (1798–1863), whose parents Joseph Knapp (1763–1839) and Eunice Carver (1763–1845) both descend from Malcolm and Margaret.

Notes

Sources

Margaret’s marriage to Malcolm, her being a sister of Edgar Ætheling, the sons Edgar, Alexander and David, the daughter Maud and her marriage to Henry I, and Malcolm’s death at Alnwick on 13 November are given in Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (31st ed., 1869), p. xxviii, “The Royal Line of Scotland”, and in the entry on Henry I (p. xviii), which gives the marriage date of 11 November 1100 and calls Maud a niece of Edgar Ætheling. Burke’s entry on the Drummond family says Maurice Drummond accompanied Edgar Ætheling and his two sisters to Scotland and that Margaret, the elder of the two ladies, married Malcolm Canmore; the same volume calls her Saint Margaret. These are compiled statements from a printed peerage, not records made in her own lifetime. Burke names no parents for her.

The year of Malcolm’s death

Burke prints the year of Malcolm’s death as 1098. The year 1093 in the text is the one given for his death on the page of his son David of Scotland, which cites the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, 1926, under Huntingdon).

Maud’s daughter and grandson

That the Empress Maud was the daughter of Henry I and Maud of Scotland and married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and that Henry II was their son, is given in Burke’s entry on Henry I and in Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., vol. 1), England 1, p. 1.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the line through David is given here as probable.