Dunfermline Abbey Archives - The History JarThe History Jar

The sun shone! The sky was blue! The people we met at the abbey and palace were lovely and the almond croissants at the Abbot House (the very pink building) were delicious. I was also quietly amused by the addition of a spider to the window depicting Robert the Bruce. Last time we visited Dunfermline we had greater access to the ruins and in case you’re wondering my earlier photographs are all trapped on my misbehaving external hard drive.

The abbey became the burial place for Scottish royalty in the 1100s. St Margaret (the daughter of the Anglo-Saxon Edward the Exile) established the monastery in 1070, on the site where she married King Malcolm. It was enlarged by David I who was the youngest of Margaret’s six sons. David arranged for masons to come from England to complete the building work and appointed Geoffrey, who was Canterbury’s prior, as the first abbot. Even on the eve of the reformation, thanks to David’s devotion to the abbey, where his parents were buried, it was one of the wealthiest foundations in Scotland. It helped that across the centuries pilgrims had come to visit the shrine of Queen Margaret who was canonised in 1249.

Not that matters were always so trouble free. The Scottish Wars of Independence took their toll on the abbey and the town. Alexander III’s three children died before him as did his queen, Margaret, a daughter of King Henry III of England. In an attempt to secure his dynasty he remarried and was in such haste to spend the night with his beautiful young bride took a tumble off a cliff on his way to visit her in 1289 – he was buried at Dunfermline next to his first queen while his grand daughter the Maid of Norway was invited to wear Scotland’s crown. Her premature death in 1290 during her journey to Scotland was the trigger for the Scottish Wars of Independence.

Not far away from the abbey and palace, at Pittencrieff Park, visitors can find Wallace’s Well. William Wallace, he of Braveheart fame (and no he did not father Edward III…even if the Mel Gibson film of 1995 suggests that he did) is supposed to have taken refuge here in 1303 after the Battle of Falkirk. How true the story might be is another matter entirely (it’s the uninspiring mini stone shed with the littler on top of it in the gallery of images). Wallace’s mother is also said to be buried in the churchyard on the northern side of the building and after Wallace’s execution a bit of him made it back to Dunfermline where it was interred with his mother’s remains. Inevitably. Edward I and his court spent some time here as well. Having spent the winter of 1303 at the abbey when he left Dunfermline in May 1304 he gave ordered for the monastery to be burned. Perhaps he heard rumours that the abbot had helped Wallace or perhaps he was just as unpleasant as he can, on occasion, sound.

Robert I financed the rebuilding of Dunfermline’s abbey. The huge new building made an impressive statement as did the rest of Scotland’s programme of monastic construction. After his death, in 1329, Robert was buried there in front of the high altar. His heart is, of course, went on crusade and is interred at Melrose. The Stewarts/Stuarts stayed in the abbey guest house which doubled as a royal residence when they visited. It underwent several remodellings including that of James V at the beginning of the sixteenth century. James VI/I eventually gifted the abbey and its accommodation to his queen, Anne, in 1598 and she turned it into a palace. The queen’s daughter Elizabeth and her son Charles were born here. Her young son Robert was the last of the Stuarts to be buried here in 1602.

After the Stuart kings travelled south Dunfermline’s importance diminished and it gradually turned into a ruin. A new parish church was designed to take the place of the old one at the turn of the nineteenth century. It was in 1818 that Robert the Bruce’s remains were found during building work along with 19 fragments from his tomb.

This year, to celebrate his 750th birthday Historic Scotland commissioned a reconstruction of the famous king’s head based on a scan of the scull found in 1818- although it cannot determine whether the king had leprosy at the time of his death or not. The reconstruction shows him without the illness dressed as he would have been at Bannockburn, while a second digital model makes the same reconstruction but with the effects of leprosy evident. There are no accurate descriptions of the king and, in case you’re wondering, the leprosy accusation came from English sources – and let’s face it, the accusation is a pretty good way of insulting Robert as well as suggesting that God wasn’t happy with him.

Margaret, the sister of Edgar the Atheling, was the child of Edward the Exile and Agatha, a German princess. She was born in Hungary in 1046. When Edward the Confessor took the throne he invited the last of the Royal House of Wessex to return from their exile. Edward, Agatha and their children – Edgar, Margaret and Christina cam back to England but Edward died in suspicious circumstances shortly after their arrival.

Edgar submitted to William the Conqueror but became involved in a rebellion in 1068. His family fled England. They initially, possibly, intended to return to Hungary but bad weather drove their vessel to Scotland where Margaret married the King, Malcolm Canmore at Dunfermline Abbey in 1069. Incidentally Canmore translates according to Alison Weir as ‘big head.’

The widowed king who was aged about forty loved his young Saxon bride and trusted her advice. Queen Margaret became known not only for her piety but also for her learning. Malcolm could not read but such was his love for his wife that he would send her books to be ornamented with covers of gold. She wielded so much power that she changed the way that the Scottish court behaved and dressed. She bought the sophisticated continental behaviour of her childhood to Canmore’s court which included closer links with the Roman Catholic church. During this time Mass was said in Latin in Scotland rather than Gaelic. She was also the patron of Benedictine monks who arrived on Scottish shores for the first time. Malcolm allow this wife to support the church and to guide the policies as to its practice. She supported monks, hermits and spent much of her time and money providing charity to the poor and to orphaned children.

Inevitably relations with William of England were difficult. Malcolm took advantage of the difficulties that William faced in his early years to extend the border of Scotland south so that it included most of Cumberland. Malcolm was killed at the Battle of Alnwick along with Margaret’s eldest son Edward in 1093. She died three days after receiving the news of her bereavement in Edinburgh Castle which was being besieged by Malcolm’s brother Donald Bane on 16th November. Margaret’s remaining sons escaped from the castle in a thick mist along with the body of their mother which they carried to Dunfermline Abbey where it was buried as she had wished. It was she who’d commissioned the ferry that crossed the Firth of Forth taking pilgrims to the abbey.

Margaret bore Malcolm Canmore eight children including Edward. Her daughter Edith married one of William the Conqueror’s sons (King Henry I) and took on the Norman name Matilda. Her other daughter Mary married the Count of Boulogne and her daughter (Margaret’s granddaughter married King Stephen becoming yet another Queen Matilda.) One son, Ethelred, became the Abbot of Dunkeld while four more sons became kings of Scotland in their turn – Edmund, Edgar, Alexander I and David I.

For further information including St Margaret’s Chapel in Edinburgh Castle the Freelance History Writer http://thefreelancehistorywriter.com has a great entry about the life and times of a Saxon Princess who became a queen and a saint.