Scotland: Her Story: The Nation’s History by the Women Who Lived It

Introduction

To read most histories of Scotland – indeed of most countries – you’d be forgiven for thinking that women are a recent invention. From the earliest records to the Victorian age – and in some cases well into our own times – the archives show a country largely run for and by men. For far too long, in everyday life women were kept in the wings, just as in illuminated manuscripts we were consigned to the margins, alongside decorative flowers and tim’rous, cowering beasties. For those of us who grow peppery at the woeful absence in historical accounts of one half of the population, it is not good for our blood pressure to trawl through Church and court records, treasurers’ receipts, royal charters, property deeds or the works of chroniclers, themselves always male. It is like going for a walk in the countryside where laid out before you are hills and trees and rivers, to find there is no birdsong, no barking dogs or frolicking lambs. The scene is partial, incomplete, and for that reason eerily empty.

Scotland: Her Story is an attempt to put women back into the picture, and to add depth and colour to the often monochrome portrait of the past. To this end, I have worked like a metal detectorist, reading my way across acres of recorded history, hoping for the dancing needle or high-pitched tone that would alert me to something worth digging out. From the early centuries, sadly, there was woefully little. To have any chance of being documented in the Middle Ages or before, a woman had to be a member of the aristocracy, or else the victim or perpetrator of an outrageous crime. The nuns of Coldingham monastery in 870 who, under their abbess’s instruction, sliced off their own noses and top lips rather than be raped by rampaging Vikings, would doubtless have preferred to live in peace than make it so gruesomely into the archives. Their bloody appearance is a rare moment when women are glimpsed in such mortally dangerous situations, and acting with the same high courage as men whose names are remembered. Of course, if you are by nature optimistic, then neglect of women’s affairs might suggest that whatever happened to them was for the most part less extreme and noteworthily nasty. It seems to me more probable, unfortunately, that unless they were servants of the Church, or had royal connections, women’s fates, be they miserable or glorious, were simply not deemed worthy of comment. Not, that is, until the witchhunts began. In that shameful period, females of all classes suddenly found themselves in the spotlight, most of them innocent victims of hysteria and prejudice. Their persecution was, tragically, the reverse side of the coin. As in centuries before and after, women were seen by the authorities as potentially dangerous and subversive, especially those who did not conform by marrying, or who were too temptingly attractive, or dabbled in the supernatural, or were healers, eccentric, or simply old, poor and haggard. All of them were fair game at a time when popular feeling was roused against the wiles of woman-kind and their potentially ruinous allure.

Witches are a special case, a brief parting of the curtain on an ugly scene. It is not until the nineteenth century that we first catch sight of those such as the young girls and women who worked down the mines in Ormiston in East Lothian. When they were interviewed by a commission on child labour, officials could scarcely believe what they heard. The mournful voices of these underground toilers are among the most powerfully affecting you’ll ever find. They emerge fleetingly from the gloom, like waifs in Les Misérables, but in their piteous descriptions of what they endured you can catch the echo of thousands more like them who were all but enslaved, whether working in the mines, or in factories, or on the land. And this, it’s worth remembering, in one of the best-educated and most God-fearing countries in Europe.

For much of the past two millennia, it has been kings, nobles, bishops, Kirk ministers and latterly politicians who have dictated the terms by which the country was controlled, whether in laws passed or unwritten rules of behaviour designed at least in part to keep wives and daughters in their place. What insight we get into women before the early modern period is almost always from writings and documents composed by men, the self-appointed arbiters of what was to be recorded, and what to be forever forgotten or overlooked. Thus the lives of the vast majority of womenfolk, before the seventeenth century, go largely unseen and unheard. It is a telling silence. Those who have no voice are, by implication, powerless. The same omertà holds for the poor and the uneducated of either gender, conditions that pertained to the bulk of the country well into the sixteenth century, when literacy slowly began to spread. Children, both girls and boys, have also passed under a cloak of invisibility, their thoughts and names evaporated as if they never existed. By this measure, you could say that far more than half of Scotland’s history has been forever lost.

The question all this raises, of course, is of how we define history. Is it the rigid backbone of the body politic, formed by the major political and religious events that have shaped our nation – the succession of kings, queens and regents, the treaties and charters by which alliances and enemies were made? Is it the battles and murders, the ideologies and crusades, the enterprises, expeditions and inventions on which our present fortunes were founded? That certainly is how it was taught in my schooldays. We learned of the Roman invasions, and the Pictish fight-back. We marvelled at the tenacity of Robert the Bruce, though there was no mention of the appalling reprisals his female supporters suffered. We were thrilled by stories of Mary, Queen of Scots, who alone brought a sense of glamour and immediacy to the concept of sitting on the throne. But the tragic outcome for this mercurial and perennially fascinating woman was insidiously used to underline the point that women were not to be trusted to hold the reins of power. We could be fickle, mendacious and weak. Above all, when it came to men, we too often were, in Muriel Spark’s phrase, ‘bad pickers’, for which the country was made to suffer.

I have included several episodes from Mary Stuart’s extraordinary story, though in a life so dramatic there were many others which equally deserved a space. To view Scotland’s history through the eyes of women without placing her centre stage would be to underplay the impact she made. In her own time, her good fortune in having a son, while Elizabeth I remained childless, ultimately led to the Union of Crowns under James VI in 1603 and thereby, some have argued, to the Union of Parliaments in 1707. Yet her significance has lived on beyond these dynastically and politically momentous events. Mary’s chequered career, in which she made too many dubious alliances and miscalculations, has indelibly shaped ideas of women and leadership, initially for the worse, but recently more generously and hopefully. Unlike her ardent rival Elizabeth I, the Scottish queen could never be accused of quashing sentiment in pursuit of her aims. In remaining true to herself, nurturing her profound piety and rich imagination, and rarely curbing her emotional volatility, Mary Stuart never lost sight of her birthright, and her entitlement to govern. Even at the very end, with her head on the block, she retained her dignity in a way that has awed and inspired women ever since. Despite the dreadful errors of judgement she made, she is a peerless example of persistent hope, and the embodiment of a nobility that refused to surrender to self-pity. While certainly no role model, she used all her powers, for good and ill. Scotland would have been a more interesting and cultured place had there been more royal women like her.

Compared with the high drama of this queen’s sorrowful tale, it is no wonder more ordinary women have barely registered. Until recent decades men have been the architects of Scotland, whether at Bannockburn, Flodden or the Somme, or during the violent upheavals of the Reformation and the Killing Years of the Covenanting period and the ongoing legacy of sectarianism, or while making a living by crofting, fishing and farming, or in factories, banks and offices. Women played a role – and some of them are thankfully caught in the act – but their part was almost always viewed as secondary. It was not, however, negligible. The outraged housewives of Glasgow and Edinburgh in 1637, for instance, who rounded on priests who dared preach from Laud’s Book of Common Prayer, hint at a truth that contemporary historians have long known: the fact that their deeds are rarely found in print does not mean that women held a minor position. Quite the reverse. As a result, by the time our actions are routinely found in print, and we are giving our own accounts of what we have seen and done, our influence has likewise grown.

As if to keep step with women’s increasing participation in the running of the country, our understanding of history has expanded exponentially, and it is within this context that Scotland: Her Story must be viewed. Those hoping for a crammer of the key points in our past will be disappointed. Too often women had nothing to do – so far as the record goes – with affairs of state. This is the problem with looking at history as witnessed by women. Just as men-only narratives offer a limited truth, so does the all-female version. Even so, it is hoped that this overview will fill some of the gaps and point to a richer shared heritage. It might also suggest a way of augmenting the male component of history too, since the low status of women has been echoed in the frequent neglect of the ordinary man’s contribution.

In the past half century, thanks to the work of social and economic historians, the subject that Professor Tom Devine calls ‘the Queen of Disciplines’ is no longer predominantly a litany of dates, laws and charters, of competing rulers, leaders and soldiers, of shifting borders and switching loyalties. It has a more generous and subtle purview. The experience of being alive is now recognised as fundamental to fathoming the past. Consequently, Scotland: Her Story tries to tease out the contribution of women to the country’s evolution, and to chart, where possible, developments or innovations as observed or initiated by women. Some of the most momentous events are seen only from the sidelines, but what a view this nevertheless gives. One such is the testimony of a widow whose house was near Culloden battlefield. Wild-eyed Jacobite soldiers who had hacked and burned their victims to death in the grounds of her house insisted on showing her what they had done, knowing full well her sympathies were with the other side. Thirty years earlier, the wife of a captured Jacobite aristocrat showed bravery to match any advancing soldier as she attempted to liberate him from the Tower of London the night before his execution. Just as dauntless were the nurses working on the front lines in the Great War.

Yet while always aware of trying to reflect pivotal moments of history, my focus has equally been on capturing the ways in which women and their mothers and daughters actually lived. Entries have been selected for the light they throw on their times as well as on their own distinctive situation, one person’s experience mirroring the many. Thus the manner in which well-off families educated their girls, as seen in a bill for a term’s schooling at an eighteenth-century Edinburgh dame school, or the first frank discussions of how best to maintain a sexual rapport in marriage, as intimated by Marie Stopes, are as crucial for deciphering our past as the deployment of armies, attachés and spies. History lies as much in what Jessie Kesson called the ‘sma’ perfect’ as in the stand-off between global leaders. It is found in the tumbledown ruins of cottages in Caithness and Sutherland, where crofters were evicted in favour of sheep, as well as in the tumultuous tides of international affairs. Despite the bellowing nature of much political discourse, history is also made on the seemingly humdrum home front: young Grizel Baillie smuggling out food from the dinner table to feed her father, who was in hiding in an underground church vault in fear of his life; a liberal Edinburgh lawyer’s wife setting up the first benefit society for women; Glasgow wives vehemently protesting rent rises while their men were away at war; a Communist couple adopting a black baby, and then another; a schoolgirl facing down one of the country’s most eminent lawyers as she made a stand against sectarian bigotry.

This is not to suggest that women’s history is on the small scale while men’s is monumental, but it is to accept that since for centuries only a fraction of us have been in a position to wield authority in the public sphere, it is therefore inevitable that our ideas and actions have been conducted more within the domestic realm. Even those who defied their own times (and their private inhibitions) to follow their calling, such as the mathematician Mary Somerville, had to do so while overseeing their home and making sure the children were being cared for. Just as Jane Austen hid her writing whenever visitors came into the room, Somerville had to break off midway through algebraic calculations to provide refreshments for unexpected guests with every appearance of pleasure. That in winter she had to work in the drawing room because there was no fireplace in her ‘little room’, says as much about her self-esteem as about the cost of coal.

The net of history in which women are caught, even fleetingly, is no less important than that of men, but it has been given far less emphasis. For those concerned, falling in love, getting married, having a baby – or a miscarriage or abortion – are, for a time at least, as important as international events. These are crucial components of women’s history, and I have tried to represent them as fully as possible. For that reason, the book gives a protracted, roaring account of modern childbirth, which is how history began and will continue.

At various points, regardless of whether they were wives or mothers, women have sparked medical and educational revolutions, social and economic advances, and led the vanguard in the arts or sciences. Sometimes they have been heroic in just keeping the household running. As the cookery-school founder Mrs Margaret MacKirdy Black wrote in the preface to her manual of how to keep house,

people cannot prosecute business with great energy, or study with much enjoyment or profit, if there are worries at home, or muddle and discomfort there. This is quite apparent to all, and though it seems a matter of minor importance compared with the great interests and objects that have to be carried on out of doors, yet if the household machinery is out of order, or not moving smoothly, the derangement may be carried forward till very important interests are disturbed.

Jane Welsh Carlyle’s compendious letters are a running commentary on the state of her Victorian household and her marriage to the brilliant but moody historian Thomas Carlyle. By turns sardonic and witty, thoughtful and soul-searching, they show the ways in which highly intelligent women were held, if not precisely captive, then confined, allowed to flicker like candles rather than blaze like a fire. But some were able to shine far from the confines of the scullery and parlour – Mary Slessor, for instance, whose courage as a missionary in Nigeria makes for electrifying reading. There are countless examples of women defying the odds and emerging triumphant, yet this should come as no surprise. In fact, while it is frustrating for us today to know nothing of the existence and achievements of generations of womenfolk before our time, for their contemporaries I suspect they always knew they were capable of great things. Women might not have found their deeds immortalised in ink or on monuments, but to their families and friends, those with exceptional skill, determination and stamina did not go unnoticed. Ian Niall’s description of the Herculean work done by nineteenth-century farmers’ wives in the course of a day makes you tired just to read it. The chutzpah of a pioneer such as Susan Allison, who in the 1860s started married life in a cabin as the only white woman in the wilds of British Columbia, is staggering. She was no more remarkable, though, than Dundee’s mill-workers, whose day began in the factory, and continued when they returned home for a second shift of shopping, cleaning, feeding and caring. Their champion Mary Brooksbank was just as intrepid, standing up to the authorities to demand better conditions, and prepared to be sent to the cells for it. Or there was Elsie Inglis, who refused to sit at home sewing when soldiers at the Western and Russian fronts needed field hospitals. And Winnie Ewing, SNP MP, who endured such persistent and aggressive sexism on the back benches at Westminster it almost made her ill. And Judy Murray, who put everything she had to give into helping her sons become world-class tennis players and in so doing brought a touch of stardust to Scotland.

You do not, however, need to have the soul of Joan of Arc to be part of the vast panorama of our past. History is made in quieter moments too. Whether it’s the ale women, whose popular trade was governed by strict laws, or soldiers’ wives and prostitutes who, as camp followers, were never far from the sides of their men, or those paupers and criminals who ended up in the poorhouse, their presence is felt. Perhaps the most notable of these, whose name was never recorded, is the Tumbling Lassie, an acrobat whose employer claimed he had bought her. The sensational prosecution he raised to retain ownership, in 1687, was the first in which human rights were invoked, thereby setting the girl free. The Tumbling Lassie disappeared into her own future, but her case marked a new awareness of individuals’ worth, regardless of their status.

That there is such scant trace of those who were witnesses to previous centuries makes one all the more grateful for whatever scraps can be found. Here, then, I have drawn for the early centuries on what little official documentation there is. Much of it is too dry or convoluted to print. The revolutionary Education Act of 1560, for example, which made provision for girls as well as boys to be given a rudimentary education, is as thrilling to read as the small print on a parking ticket. Even so it is possible in occasional vivid passages to find footprints of a few of the women who helped shape the Middle Ages and the centuries to 1700. Thereafter the sources improve, from Church and court registers to private correspondence and memoirs. Official documents in the form of government surveys and reports continue to be useful into the twentieth century, from descriptions of conditions in asylums and hospitals, to prisons and schools. By the eighteenth century the pickings grow much richer, and we do not have to rely so heavily on men’s judgement of what deserves a mention. From this period, a handful of well-educated women are writing their own accounts, among them the brilliant society figure Lady Anne Barnard. She might not rival Jane Carlyle as a literary stylist, but unlike Jane she travelled extensively, and made an impression wherever she went. As diaries and journals and letters like hers slowly appear, women emerge from behind the arras. There is, for example, the disturbing testimony given by the Countess of Strathmore to the cruelty inflicted on her by her sadistic husband; even worse was the treatment meted out to Lady Rachel Grange, who was abducted and kept prisoner for years on her husband’s instructions. This was a heinous crime that would have gone unnoticed but for two anguished letters she smuggled out. The following century there are amorous missives from the genteel Madeleine Smith, acquitted of murdering her lover, although the not-proven verdict speaks for itself. Around the same time the so-called Factory Girl, Ellen Johnston, left an understandably overwrought memoir. It must stand as one of the very earliest accounts – inevitably oblique – of sexual abuse. Her ordeal over several years was so appalling it made her contemplate suicide. Hardly more cheerful, though written with astonishing spirit, is the diary kept by Mary Milne, from Selkirk, when she was the cook for Elsie Inglis’s hospital unit in Russia. Thereafter memoirs and autobiographies came into their own, whether by politicians like Katharine Murray, Duchess of Atholl, the country’s first female MP, or Jess Smith’s recollections of her traveller family’s experiences. Yet there remain tantalising gaps. Where, for instance, are those intrepid women who worked behind enemy lines? Where is a refugee’s journal, or a GP’s trove of letters? If any exist I would be delighted to include them in future editions of this book.

Newspapers can sometimes fill the breach, offering plain testimony to women’s affairs, from suffragettes to musicians. Far more vivid, though, are the oral testimonies collected in particular by the tireless historian Ian MacDougall. Thanks to him, and others of his ilk, we hear first-hand what it was like to work at the pithead, or on a dairy farm, or in a snooty Edinburgh department store.

Inevitably there are gaps – some conscious, others simple oversight. This is not, for instance, intended as a surrogate biographical dictionary. Nor have I included every occasion where women have broken the glass ceiling, such as the first female Kirk minister, who was ordained in 1969, or the first to take advantage of Muirfield Golf Course reversing its ban on female members (at the time of writing, a woman has yet to enter Muirfield clubhouse in her own right). With the Kirk, I have included instead the ordeal of a minister drummed out after she was raped. This is not to deny that the Church of Scotland has fully embraced women leaders, as has the Scottish Episcopal Church, but to show that the prejudice against women, fomented at the Reformation, has not yet been eradicated, whether in this institution, or in many other corners of the country.

Interest and readability have been the guiding principles behind everything included, so to ease the flow, I have not included ellipses to indicate words or sentences jumped over in many pieces, especially the older sections. Those wishing to read the original passages in full will find details in the list of sources. There have also been many discarded items. Where a notable experience or event has been tediously or colourlessly or inaccurately described, it has fallen regrettably by the wayside. In one instance, I could not find the piece I was looking for, so I asked for it to be written for this book especially. Hence the reflections of playwright Jo Clifford on the long, painful process of changing her identity from that of a man to a woman. I hope this powerful insight into the changing nature of womanhood and gender, along with all the other pieces, compensates for any absences.

Gathering the material for Scotland: Her Story has been eye-opening. On one hand, it has been intensely galling to see the persistent sidelining and belittling of women down the ages. But such is the interest in the exploits of those included, and the range of fields in which they have distinguished themselves, by the time I had gathered all these pieces my feeling was not of resentment or disappointment, but of the highest respect and, on occasion, awe. Inevitably there are criminals, cheats, abusers and bullies, but they are heavily outweighed by women of principle and character. What stands out is the stamina and fortitude of those who either excelled in the area of life into which they were born, or were determined to make their way on a bigger stage. That the world was so hostile to women of talent – and women in general – was the biggest hurdle they had to surmount. It could be dispiriting to reflect how many had to remake the wheel every time, but it is better to be inspired by admiring those who refused to be downcast. Thanks to sheer bloodymindedness, the only Scottish footballer to have played in a World Cup-winning side – for Italy – is Rose Reilly, who as a child would not be bawled off the pitch, and would not accept that the beautiful game was for boys alone. While speaking of sport, the definition of Scottish for the purposes of inclusion, an issue familiar to managers picking national teams, is broad. It includes those who are Scottish by marriage, by residence and ‘by formation’.

With Reilly, as with many within these pages, a lifetime of hard work seems to be the common denominator. Added to this is resilience, and an awareness that they could not depend on anyone but themselves either to get on, or simply to survive. Women in Scotland these past 1,300 years have proved stoical, determined and fiercely resistant to being patronised, put down or silenced. From the early Middle Ages to today, when we occupy the highest positions of state, Scotland: Her Story reflects the gradual but sustained advance towards a situation where equality of opportunity and status is a given. We are not quite there yet and, sadly, gender is not the only bar to progress, or to achieving what we would wish. A child aspiring to be a pianist or a veterinary surgeon cannot snap her or his fingers to make their wish come true. Much – too much – depends still on upbringing and wealth, or the lack of them. Yet if Scotland: Her Story can be said to demonstrate one thing – a message that can be passed, like the Olympic torch, from one century to the next, and from one woman to another – it is the overriding importance of talent and personality in making history happen.

Rosemary Goring

August 2018         

SCOTLAND: HER STORY

THE FINAL LETTER WRITTEN BY MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS

8 February 1587

This final letter, written by Mary, Queen of Scots to Henri III, King of France hours before her beheading, is among the most powerful ever sent. In many ways it is a model of a historical document, conveying the author’s personality – dignified, angry, sorrowful but neither remorseful nor afraid. Those traits were the mark of a ruler who continues to fascinate, because for all its seeming openness, what this missive does not reveal is whether or not the charges for which she was imprisoned were true. Unless new evidence comes to light, those facts went with her to the grave. Mary Stuart was gifted and complicated, an erratic monarch, devout Catholic, talented writer and linguist, and an uncowed captive, who never once conceded that she was anything but a woman wronged. As with many of the eye-witness accounts that follow in this collection, her perspective is vividly immediate and compelling. That it is biased is inevitable, as are almost all contemporary records, no matter how objective they may at first appear. It is for readers to glean what they can, and let their imaginations fill in the gaps.

Sire, my brother-in-law, having by God’s will, for my sins I think, thrown myself into the power of the Queen my cousin, at whose hands I have suffered much for almost twenty years, I have finally been condemned to death by her and her Estates. I have asked for my papers, which they have taken away, in order that I might make my will, but I have been unable to recover anything of use to me, or even get leave either to make my will freely or to have my body conveyed after my death, as I would wish, to your kingdom where I had the honour to be queen, your sister and old ally.

Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence: I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning. I have not had time to give you a full account of everything that has happened, but if you will listen to my doctor and my other unfortunate servants, you will learn the truth, and how, thanks be to God, I scorn death and vow that I meet it innocent of any crime, even if I were their subject. The Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned, and yet I am not allowed to say that it is for the Catholic religion that I die, but for fear of interference with theirs. The proof of this is that they have taken away my chaplain, and although he is in the building, I have not been able to get permission for him to come and hear my confession and give me the Last Sacrament, while they have been most insistent that I receive the consolation and instruction of their minister, brought here for that purpose. The bearer of this letter and his companions, most of them your subjects, will testify to my conduct at my last hour. It remains for me to beg Your Most Christian Majesty, my brother-in-law and old ally, who have always protested your love for me, to give proof now of your goodness on all these points: firstly by charity, in paying my unfortunate servants the wages due them – this is a burden on my conscience that only you can relieve: further, by having prayers offered to God for a queen who has borne the title Most Christian, and who dies a Catholic, stripped of all her possessions. As for my son, I commend him to you in so far as he deserves, for I cannot answer for him. I have taken the liberty of sending you two precious stones, talismans against illness, trusting that you will enjoy good health and a long and happy life. Accept them from your loving sister-in-law, who, as she dies, bears witness of her warm feeling for you. Again I commend my servants to you. Give instructions, if it please you, that for my soul’s sake part of what you owe me should be paid, and that for the sake of Jesus Christ, to whom I shall pray for you tomorrow as I die, I be left enough to found a memorial mass and give the customary alms.

This Wednesday, two hours after midnight.

Your very loving and most true sister, Mary R

To the most Christian king, my brother-in-law and old ally

AWAKE FOR SIN

The Venerable Bede, before 683

Entering the cloisters was a popular choice in the early Middle Ages, but not all who took holy orders did so because of religious conviction. It was often simply the best option for daughters who could not or did not want to find a husband and had no hopes of any inheritance to keep them in old age. Ebba, or Aebbe, who founded monasteries at Ebchester and St Abb’s as well as at Coldingham, was a princess, the daughter of Aethelfrith, King of Bernicia. She was deeply pious, but unable to control those in her charge. The chilly outpost of Coldingham monastery, by the North Sea, housed monks and nuns together, and suffered the perhaps inevitable problem this raised. Even the saintly St Cuthbert, when visiting, was said to have struggled with temptation. Here Bede records the ascetic Adamnan’s warning to the abbess.

In these times the monastery of virgins which they name Coldingham . . . was consumed by fire through fault of carelessness. And yet all who know have been very easily able to perceive that it happened from the wickedness of them who dwelt in it, and especially of those who seemed to be the greater.

But there lacked not a reminder to the guilty of God’s mercy, that corrected by it they might like the Ninevites turn from them the anger of the just Judge by fasting, tears and prayers. For there was in that monastery a man of the race of the [Irish] Scots, Adamnan by name, who led a life in continence, and greatly devoted to prayers to God; so that except on Sunday and on the fifth day of the week he never partook of any food or drink, and often passed whole nights awake fully in prayer.

It chanced that on a certain day he had gone out a considerable way from that monastery, one of the brethren accompanying him, and was returning after finishing his journey. And when he approached the monastery and beheld its building rising aloft, the man of God burst into tears, and betrayed in the expression of his face the sorrow of his heart. And his companion perceiving it asked him why he did thus. But he replied, ‘All these buildings which thou seest, public and private, very soon is it that fire shall consume them and turn them to ashes.’

And hearing this [his companion,] so soon as they entered the monastery, took heed to relate it to the mother of the congregation, Ebba by name. But she was naturally disturbed by such a prediction, and called the man to her, and very diligently inquired the matter of him, and how he knew of this.

And he said:– ‘Recently, while occupied by night with vigils and psalms, I saw suddenly standing before me one of the unknown countenance. And since I was terrified by his presence, he told me not to fear; and addressing me as in a friendly voice he said, ‘Thou dost well, who hast chosen in this time of the quiet of night not to indulge in sleep, but to continue in vigils and prayers.’ And I said, ‘I know that it is very needful for me to continue in salutary vigils, and to pray to God industriously for pardon for my sins.’ And he rejoined, ‘Thou sayest truth, because both for thee and for many others there is need to atone with good works for their sins. For indeed I have visited in order all this monastery, and have looked into the houses and beds of each, and have found no one of all save thee busied with the welfare of his soul; but all of them, both men and women, are either sunk in dull sleep or awake for sin. For even the small houses which were made for prayer or for reading are turned into lairs of banquettings, potations, gossiping and other allurements.

‘Also the virgins dedicated to God, spurning respect for their profession, so often as they have leisure employ themselves in the making of fine raiment with which either to deck themselves like brides, to the danger of their condition, or to attract to themselves the friendship of strange men. And hence deservedly a heavy punishment has been prepared in raging flames for this place and its inhabitants.’

And the abbess said:– ‘and wherefore wert thou not willing sooner to reveal to me this discovery?’ And he answered, ‘I was afraid, through respect for thee, lest perchance thou shouldst be too greatly distressed. And yet thou hast this consolation, that this disaster will not arrive in thy days.’

And when this vision was made known, for a few days the inhabitants of the place began somewhat to be afraid, and to chastise themselves, pausing in their crimes. But after the death of the abbess they returned to their former defilement so, nay they did more wickedly. And when they said ‘Peace and security,’ suddenly they were visited by the penalty of the aforesaid retribution.

VIKING INVADERS ARE REPELLED

Matthew Paris, 870

Viking invaders were terrifyingly brutal, but when her priory was threatened, Abbess Ebba of Coldingham matched them for ferocity and courage. After the destruction of Coldingham monastery by fire two centuries earlier, it had been rebuilt, and by the later ninth century was most probably a nunnery. Ebba the Younger, as she was known, must have been a charismatic figure, because what she asked of her nuns, in order to save them from rape, was extreme. Chronicler Matthew Paris describes the horrific scene.

In the year of the Lord 870 an innumerable host of Danes landed in Scotland; and their leaders were Inguar and Hubba, men of terrible wickedness and unheard-of bravery. And they, striving to depopulate the territories of all England, slaughtered all the boys and old men whom they found, and commanded that the matrons, nuns and maidens should be given up to wantonness.

And when such plundering brutality had pervaded all territories of the kingdoms, Ebba, holy abbess of the cloister of Coldingham, feared that she too, to whom had been instructed the care of government and pastoral care, might be given up to the lust of pagans and lose her maiden chastity, along with the virgins under her rule; and she called together all the sisters into the chapter-house, and burst into speech in this wise, saying, ‘Recently have come into our parts the wickedest pagans, ignorant of any kind of humanity; and roaming through every part of this district they spare neither the sex of woman nor the age of child, and they destroy churches and churchmen, prostitute nuns, and break up and burn everything they come upon. Therefore if you decide to acquiesce in my advice, I conceive a sure hope that by divine mercy we may be able to escape the fury of the barbarians and to preserve the chastity of perpetual virginity.’

And when the whole congregation of virgins had undertaken with sure promises that they would in all things obey the commands of their mother, that abbess of admirable heroism showed before all the sisters an example of chastity not only advantageous for those nuns but also eternally to be followed by all succeeding virgins: she took a sharp knife and cut off her own nose and upper lip to the teeth, offering a dreadful spectacle of herself to all beholders. And since the whole congregation saw and admired this memorable deed, each one performed a similar act upon herself, and followed the example of her mother.

And after this had so taken place, when next morning dawned, the most wicked brigands came upon them, to give up to wantonness the holy women, and devoted to God; as also to plunder the monastery itself and burn it down in flames. But when they saw the abbess and each of the sisters so horribly mutilated, and saturated with their blood from the soles of their feet to their crowns, they retired from the place with haste, for it seemed to them too long to stay even for a short space there. But as they retired thence the aforesaid leaders commanded their evil satellites to set fire to and burn down the monastery with all its offices and with the nuns themselves.

And so the execution was fulfilled by the servants of iniquity, and the holy abbess and all the virgins with her attained most holily to the glory of martyrdom.

QUEEN MARGARET’S SAINTLY WAYS

Turgot of Durham, c. 1070s

Born in exile in Hungary, around 1045 the English Princess Margaret arrived in England as a girl, but was obliged to flee to Scotland following the Norman Conquest. Known as Margaret of Wessex, she married Malcolm III of Scotland, a most rambunctuous and brutal soldier, whose behaviour was rather at odds with her extreme piety. Appearances may have been deceptive, however, because Margaret’s Christian habits appear to have tamed his wildest excesses (except when he was on the battlefield). She also introduced religious reforms that were considered far-sighted, especially in helping to align the Scottish Church with European practices. Turgot, the Bishop of St Andrews, was a close associate of the royal family, and later wrote Margaret’s biography. As this passage suggests, she could be steely and stubborn. She died in 1093, days after her husband’s death in battle, and was canonised in 1250. After the Reformation her relics were scattered. There is a grisly irony in the fact that for a time, Mary, Queen of Scots was in possession of her head, to help her safely through childbirth. After it fell into the hands of the Jesuits it was later lost, like many other relics, during the French Revolution.

For repressing all evil in herself, there was great gravity in her joy and something noble in her anger. Her mirth was never expressed in immoderate laughter; when angry she never gave way to fury. Always angry with her own faults, she sometimes reproved those of others with that commendable anger tempered with justice which the Psalmist enjoined, when he says, ‘Be angry and sin not.’

‘O my children,’ she would say, ‘fear the Lord; for they that fear Him shall not want anything that is good; and if you love Him, He will give you, my darlings, prosperity in this life and eternal felicity with all the saints.’

On Maundy Thursday and at High Mass [her husband Malcolm] used to make an offering of gold coins, and some of these she would often piously steal and give away to the beggar who was importuning her for alms. Often indeed the King, who was quite aware of what she was doing, though he pretended not to know anything about it, was greatly amused at this kind of theft, and sometimes, when he caught her in the act with the coins in her hand, would jocularly threaten to have her arrested, tried and condemned.

[During her all-night devotions] nine orphan little children, who were utterly destitute, she caused to be brought in to her at the first hour of the day in order that she might feed them. For she ordered soft food, such as little children delight in, to be prepared for them daily; and when the little ones were brought to her, she did not think it beneath her to take them on her knee and make little sups for them, and to place them in their mouths with the spoons she herself used.

While this was going on, it was the custom to bring three hundred poor people into the hall, and when they had been seated round it in order, the King and Queen came in, and the doors were shut by the servants, for with the exception of the chaplains, certain religious, and a few attendants, no one was permitted to witness their alms-givings. The King on the one side, and the Queen on the other, waited upon Christ in the person of His poor, and with great devotion served them with food and drink.

MATILDA RELUCTANTLY WEARS THE VEIL

Edmer, 1100

Princess Matilda, originally christened Edith by her parents Queen Margaret and Malcolm III, caused controversy when she agreed to marry Henry I, King of England. She had been raised by nuns in English monasteries, and took to wearing a veil because she did not want to accept any of the men her father suggested as husbands. The ploy was almost her undoing. This extract comes from the disingenuous testimony she gave to Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to prove that she had never taken her vows. Only when that fact was established could she legitimately wed.

‘But yet,’ said she, ‘I do not deny that I have worn the veil. For, when I was a girl, and trembled under the rod of my aunt Christina, whom thou knowest well, she, in order to save my body from the raging lust of the Normans, – who lurked at that time in wait for every one’s shame, – used to put a black hood over my head; and if I threw it off, used often to torture as well as dishonour me with cruel lashings and with too revolting taunts.

‘And although I endured this hood in her presence, moaning and trembling, yet so soon as I could withdraw from her sight I was wont to seize it, fling it to the ground, and trample on it with my feet, and thus, though foolishly, to rage in the hatred with which I burned against it.

‘In this way and no other, my conscience to witness, was I veiled. Yet if any say that I was consecrated, the truth about that too may be gathered from this, that (as many still surviving knew) my father’s anger was kindled when he chanced to see me veiled, although in such manner as I have said: he lifted his hand and caught the veil, rent it in pieces, and called down God’s hatred upon the one who put it upon me, asserting that he would rather have destined me to be earl Alan’s wife [possibly Alan Rufus or Alan the Black] than to consort with nuns.’

A HOUSE FULL OF LEPERS

Aelred of Rievaulx, 1100

For all her loathing of the veil, it seems her mother’s selfless behaviour remained a powerful influence on Matilda.

One deed of hers I shall relate, which I have heard from the mouth of the oft-to-be-mentioned and never-to-be forgotten king David.

‘While I served,’ said he, ‘as a youth in the king’s court, doing on a certain night I know not what in my dwelling with my friends, I was called by her and came to the queen’s chamber. And behold the house was full of lepers, and the queen stood in the midst; and after laying aside her cloak, and putting on a linen covering, she poured water into a basin, and began to wash and to dry their feet; and after drying them to press them with both hands, and to kiss them.

‘And when I said to her, What dost thou, O my lady? Truly if the King knew this, he would never deign to kiss with his lips thy mouth, polluted with the corruption of lepers’ feet.

‘Then she said smiling, "Who knows not that the feet of the eternal King are to be preferred to a mortal king’s lips? – I indeed have