Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/565

Rh M A R MAR 537 thousand men under the command of Pierre de Br6ze&quot;, and with these she made a descent upon Northumberland and took Bamborough and some other castles, which, however, were soon after besieged by King Edward s forces, and after a while recovered. King Edward himself, on hearing of her landing, hastened into the north, on which Margaret took ship to sail for France, but meeting with a storm was driven to land at Berwick and lost all her treasure. On the total failure of this expedition the well-known story is told by a French writer of her wandering with her son in a forest where she was attacked by robbers, and appealing successfully to the loyalty of one of them to save the son of his king. Soon after, in April 1463, 1 she sailed to Flanders and sought the aid of Philip of Burgundy, but he declined to do more than relieve her poverty, and she retired to a castle in Lorraine, which her father gave her to occupy. Here Sir John Fortescue, who accompanied her into exile, superintended the education of her son, and composed for his benefit his celebrated treatise on the laws of England. Here also she apparently remained while her husband made further efforts and met with further defeats, while he lay concealed, for more than a year, in Lancashire, was taken prisoner, and committed to the Tower. But in 1470, when her old enemy the earl of Warwick, having rebelled against King Edward, sought a refuge in France, Louis XL induced her, though with great difficulty, to pardon him and concert measures along with him for her husband s restoration to the throne. The negotiation was cemented by an agreement for the marriage of her son, the prince of Wales, to the earl s daughter after the kingdom should be recovered, and so successful was the project that Edward was actually driven into exile, and for a period of six months Henry was again acknowledged as king. But the return of King Edward and the battle of Barnet once more changed the aspect of affairs before Margaret was able to rejoin her husband, and when she at length landed again in England she was defeated and taken prisoner at Tewkesbury. To add to her misery her only son Prince Edward was butchered after the battle. Four years later, in 1475, on peace being made between England and France, she was ransomed by Louis XL, and returned to her native country. She died at Dampierre near Sautnur in Anjou, on the 25th of August 1482. Principal Authorities. Bourdigne, CJironiqucs cT Anjou ct du Maine ; Villeueuve Bargemen t, Histoirc de Rene tf Anjou ; William Wyreestre, Annals, edited byHearne (with Liber Niger Scaccarii) ; Fragment relating to Edicard ll r ., ed. Ileanie (with Sjwott s Chronicle}; English Chronicle, ed. Davies (Cainden Society); Paston Letters ; Rolls of Parliament ; Anchiennes Chronicqucsd Englcterrc, par Jchan de IVavrin, edited by Mile. Dupont ; Lord Clermont s edition of the Works of Sir John Fortescue. Mrs Hookham s Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou (London, 8vo, 1872) is an elabo rate and useful work, but not always accurate and discriminating in the use of authorities. MARGARET OF AUSTRIA (1480-1530), duchess of Savoy, and regent of the Netherlands from 1507 to 1530, was the daughter of ths emperor Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy, and was born at Brussels on January 10, 1480. In 1482 she was betrothed to Charles, the son of Louis XI. (afterwards Charles VIII. of France) ; and in 1497 she was actually married to the infante John of Aragon, who left her a widow a few months afterwards. In 1501 she became the wife of Philibert II. of Savoy, who only survived until 1504; and in 1507 she was entrusted by Maximilian with the regency of the Netherlands and also ] This is clearly the date intended by William Wyrcestre (p. 490) ; and it agrees entirely with Monstrelet (iii. 96). Yet almost all modern historians (except Lingard) and even biographers of Margaret of Anjou date her departure to Flanders after the battle of Hexham, at which she certainly was not present, as they would have her. with the charge of his grandson Charles. She died at Mechlin in 1530. MARGARET OF AUSTRIA (1522-1586), duchess of Parma, and regent of the Netherlands from 1559 to 1567, was a natural daughter of Charles V. by Margaret van Gheenst, a Flemish lady, and was born at Brussels in 1522. In 1533 she was married to Alexander, duke of Florence ; and, having been left a widow in 1537, she became the wife of Ottavio Farnese, duke of Parma, in 1542. The union proved an unhappy one, and she for the first time found a sphere for her somewhat masculine abilities in the Netherlands, which were entrusted to her care by her brother Philip II. of Spain on his departure for the peninsula in 1559 (see HOLLAND, vol. xii. pp. 74, 75). It was with much reluctance that she resigned the reins of power into the hands of the duke of Alva in 1567 and retired to Italy. Before her death, which occurred at Ortona iu 1586, she had the satisfaction of seeing her son Alexander Farnese appointed to the government which she had occupied some twenty years before. MARGARET, ST, queen of Scotland, born in Hungary about 1040, was a daughter of Edward the Atheling, son of Edmund Ironside ; her mother was Agatha, most prob ably a niece of Queen Gisela of Hungary and of the emperor Henry II. She accompanied her father to Eng land in 1057, and after the Norman Conquest she was brought (IOCS) to Scotland, where she became the wife of Malcolm Canmore in the spring of 1069. She survived her husband, who died in November 1093, by only a few days (see SCOTLAND). The chroniclers all agree in depict ing Queen Margaret as a strong, pure, noble character, who had very great influence over her husband, and through him over Scottish history, especially in its ecclesiastical aspects. Her religion, which was genuine and intense, was of the newest Roman style ; and to her are attributed a number of reforms by which the Church of Scotland was considerably modified from the insular and primitive type which down to her time it had exhibited. Among those expressly mentioned are a change in the manner of observ ing Lent, which thenceforward began as elsewhere on Ash Wednesday and not as previously on the following Monday, and the abolition of the old practice of observing Saturday (Sabbath), not Sunday, as the day of rest from labour (see Skene s Celtic Scotland, book ii. chap. 8). Her sons Edgar, Alexander, and David successively occupied the throne of Scotland ; her elder daughter, Matilda, became the wife of Henry I. of England in 1101. Margaret was canonized by Innocent IV. in 1251, and by Clement X. she was made patroness of Scotland. Her festival (semi- duplex) is observed by the Roman Church on June 10. MARGARET (1283-1290), known in Scottish history as the &quot; Maid of Norway,&quot; was, through her mother Mar garet, who had been married to Eric of Norway, the only grandchild of Alexander III. of Scotland, and was born in Norway in 1283. At the death of her grandfather (1286), while she was still an infant, Edward I. of Eng land arranged for her betrothal to his son, but this policy was defeated by her early death, which took place, it was alleged, in Orkney, as she was on her way to Scotland, iu 1290. The circumstances of her death were so obscure that doubts were entertained in some quarters whether she had not rather been spirited away. About 1300 a woman presented herself in Leipsic as the long-lost queen of Scotland ; ultimately, however, she was burnt at Bergen as an impostor. MARGARET OF VALOIS. See MARGUERITE. MARGARITA, an island in the Caribbean Sea, about 8 miles off the coast of Venezuela, constituting along with the lesser islands Blanquilla and Herman os the new state of Nueva Esparta. It has an area of 400 square miles, XV. 68