MABGABIT
656
MABGABIT
ascertained with accuracy, but it must have been be-
tween the years 1038, when St. Stephen diecL and
1057, when her father returned to England. It ap-
pears that Marearet came with him on that occasion
and, on his deam and the conquest of England by the
Normans, her mother Agatha aecided to return to the
Continent. A storm however drove their ship to Scot-
land, where Malcolm III received the party imder his
protection, subsequently taking Margaret to wife.
This event had been delayed for a while by Margaret's
desire to enter religion, but it took place some time
between 1067 and 1070.
In her position as queen, all Margaret's great influ- ence was thrown into the cause of religion and piety. A s^od was held, and among the special reforms instituted the most important were the regulation of the Lenten fast, observance of the Easter communion, and the removal of certain abuses concerning marriage within the prohil^ited degrees. Her private life was given up to constant prayer and practices of piety. She founded several churches, including the Abbey of Dunfermline, built to enshrine her greatest treasure, a relic of the true Cross. Her book of the Gospels, richly adorned with jewels, which one day dropped into a river and was according to legend miraculously recovered, is now in the Bodleian Rbrary at Oxford. She foretold the day of her death, which took place at Edinburgh on 16 Nov., 1093, her body being buried before the high altar at Dunfermline.
In 1250 Margaret was canonized by Innocent IV, and her relics were translated on 19 June, 1259, to a new shrine, the base of which is still visible beyond the modern east wall of the restored church. At the Ref- ormation her head passed into the possession of Mary Queen of Scots, and later was secured by t^e Jesuits at Douai, where it is believed to have perished during the French Revolution. According to George Conn, De duplici statu religionis apud Scotos" (Rome, 1628), the rest of the relics, together with those of Malcolm, were acquired by Philip II of Spain, and placed in two urns in the Escorial. When, however, Bishop Gillies of Edinburgh applied through Pius IX for their resto- ration to Scotland, they could not be found.
The chief authority for Margaret's life is the con- temporary biography printed in *' Acta SS.", II, June, 320. Its authorship has been ascribed to Turgot, the saint's conTessor, a monk of Durham and later Arch- bishop of St. Andrews, and also to Theodoric, a some- what obscure monk; but in spite of much controversy the point remains quite unsettled. The feast of St. Margaret is now observed by the whole Church on 10 June.
Acta SS., II, June, 320; Capqrave, Nova Legenda Angliof (London. 1515), 225; Wiluam ok Malmesburt. Gcsta Regum in P. L., CLXXIX, alao in Rolls Series, ed. Stubbs (London, 1887-9); Challoner, Britannia Sancta, I (London, 1745), 358; Butler, Lives of the Saints, 10 June; Stanton, Menologj/ of England and Wales (London, 1887), 544: Forbes-Leith, Life of St. Margaret . . . (London, 1885); AIadan. The Evangdis- tarium of St. Margaret in Academy (1887); Bcllesheim, His- tory of the Catholic Church in Scotland, tr. Blair, III (Edin- buigh, 1890). 241-03.
G. Roger Hudleston.
Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament, Carmelite nun, b. in Paris, 6 March, 1590; d. there 24 May, 1660. She was the second daughter of the celebrated Madame Acarie, otherwise Imown as Blessed Marie de rincamation (q. v.), who introduced the Reformed CarmeUtes into France. Carefully reared by her mother and directed by M. de B6rulle, she took the religious habit at the first Carmelite convent, Rue St. Jacques, Paris, 15 September, 1605. On 21 Novem- ber, 1606, she made her vows privately, and on 18 March, 1607, she made them solemnly, under the care of Mother Anne de Saint-Barth^lemi. In 1615 she was made sub-prioress, and in 1618. prioress of the convent of Tours. In these offices she showed such ability that she was sent in 1620 to restore harmony in the convent ^t Bordeaux. Shortly after this she was ordered to the
convent of Saintes, where she remained eighteen
months, and in 1624 was recalled to Paris, to replace
as prioress Mother Madelcuie de Saint-Joseph in the
convent situated in the Rue Chapon. After having
been several times prioress of the convent of the Rue
Chapon, where she edified the conmiunity by a zeal
for bodily mortification that her superiors had some-
times to moderate, she was attacked by dropsy, to
which she succumbed. Her heart was taken to the
monastery of Pontoise, where her saintly mother had
been buried, and her body remained in the convent of
the Rue Chapon, where it was kept until 1792.
See bibliorraphy of article Marie de l*Incarnation and Boucher, Hist, de la Bienheureiuie Marie de rincamation, U, (Paris. 1854), 168-80.
LtoN Clugnet.
Margaret Pole, Blessed, Countess of Salisbury, martyr; b. at Castle Farley, near Bath, 14 August, 1473; mart>Ted at East Smithfield Green, 28 May, 1541. She was the daughter of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and Isabel, elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick (the king-maker), and the sister of Edmund of Warwick who, under Henry VII, paid with his life the penalty of being the last male repre- sentative of the Yorkist line (28 Nov., 1499). About 1491 Henry VII gave her in marriage to Sir Richard Pole, whose mother was the half-sister of the king's mother, Margaret Beaufort. At her husband's death in 1505 Margaret was left with five children, of whom the fourth, Reginald, was to become cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury, and also the indirect cause of his mother's martyrdom. Henry VIII, on his acces- sion, reversed her brother's attainder, created her Countess of Sallsljury, and an Act of Restitution was passed by which she came into possession of her ances- tral domains: the king considered her the saintliest woman in England, and, after the birth of the Princess Mary, Margaret of Salisbury became her sponsor in baptism and confirmation and was afterwards ap- pomted governess of the princess and her household. As the years passed there was talk of a marriage be- tween the pnncess and the countess's son Reginald, who was still a layman. But when the matter of the king's divorce l^egan to be talked of Reginald Pole boldly spoke out his mind in the affair and shortly afterwaixis withdrew from England. The princess was still in the countess's charge when Henry married Anne Boleyn, but when he was opposed in his efforts to have his daughter treated as illegitimate he removed the countess from her post, although she begged to be allowed to follow and serve Mary at her own charge. She returned to court after the fall of Anne, but in 1530 Reginald Pole sent to Henry his treatise " Pro ecclesiasticaj unitatis defcnsione*', in answer to ques- tions propounded to him in the king's behalf by Cromr well, Tunstall, Starkey, and others. Besides being a theological reply to the questions, the book was a denunciation of the king's courses (see Pole, Regi- nald). Henry was lx?si(le himself with rage, and it soon became evident that, failing the writer of the " Defen- sio", the royal anger was to be wreaked on the host- ages in England, and this despite the fact that the countess and her eldest son had written to Reginald in reproof of his attitude and action.
In November, 1538, two of her sons and others of their kin were arrested on a charge of treason, though Cromwell had previously written that they had *' htue offended save that he [the Cardinal] is of their kin ", they were committed to the Tower, and in January, with the exception of Geoffrey Pole, they were executed. Ten days after the apprehension of her sons the venerable countess was arrested and examined by Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, and Goodrich, Bishop of Ely, but these reported to Cromwell that although they had "travailed with her " for many hours she would ** nothuig utter ", and they were forced to con- clude that either her sous had not made her a sharer
