Page:The Queens of England.djvu/20

 MATILDA OF SCOTLAND, QUEEN OF HENRY THE FIRST. At the beginning - of the reign of William, England's first Norman ruler, a royal Saxon mother, with her three father- less children, took ship secretly and fled from the Conqueror's court. She was Agatha, daughter of the Emperor Henry the Second of Germany, and widow of Edward Atheling. The royal lineage of her children made them obnoxious to the stern Norman usurper, who bore no good-will to any descendants of the Saxon Alfred, to whose memory and pos- terity the conquered nation still fondly clung. Therefore, the royal Agatha thought it best not to trust to William's specious promises, but to take refuge with her own kindred in Hungary, carrying with her her son Edgar Atheling, and her two daughters, Margaret and Christina. But scarcely had the vessel entered on her course when a storm arose, and instead of crossing the narrow straits to the continent, she drifted northward for many weary days, until at last, being driven to the coast of Scotland, she cast anchor in the Firth of Forth. The King of Scotland was then young Malcolm Canmore — Shakespeare's Malcolm — son of that "gentle Duncan" so treacherously murdered by Mac- beth. He had just recovered his throne, and seen the fearful end of the regicide usurper and tyrant, who had made "Good men's lives To perish with the flowers in their caps, Dying or ere they sicken ;" and was striving, with the generous and kingly heart with which history shows him gifted, to restore peace to his ravaged land. The young king heard of the royal Saxon pilgrims who had been driven on his coasts, and touched, doubtless, by the memory of kindness shown to himself when he had fled an exile from his throne and country to England, visited