Time for another installment of Pocket Blogs by Kate Pitt! Fun fact: when Kate and I were discussing this series of pocket blogs, I failed to realize that “severed heads” would be a recurring theme. (Neither did Kate! Severed heads are just so fun!)
Last week we completed a deep dive into a historical character from Shakespeare who had terrible things done to his head. This week, we have the wife of a historical character from Shakespeare whose head was treated very nicely and was present at the birth of one of Shakespeare’s patrons, King James I.
Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is so deeply Scottish that it is known as “the Scottish play” to superstitious folk who believe that saying the play’s proper name will bring untold calamities on their heads. It was written during the reign of James I who united the crowns of England and Scotland and contains numerous references to things that would make him happy including witches (he wrote a whole book about them), his escape from the Gunpowder plot, and a flattering depiction of his ancestor Banquo.
Despite the witches’ prophecy that Banquo’s children shall be kings, the king at the end of the play is Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan. One of Shakespeare’s sources for Macbeth was Holinshed’s Chronicles which tells the story of the historical Malcolm, Malcolm III of Scotland. Malcolm’s second wife Margaret was later canonized as Saint Margaret, and it is her head that we will be discussing.
While much of Macbeth takes place during civil war, there is hope at the end of the play that everyone will take their shiny new earldoms home and stop fighting. Not so much historically. Malcolm III and Saint Margaret had multiple sons, including two named Edgar and Edmund (!), who fought each other, Duncan’s son Donald Bane, and the English for control. Malcolm III was killed fighting an English force at the Battle of Alnwick in 1093 and his wife Margaret died a few days later. They were both buried in Dunfermline Abbey in Fife, a Benedictine priory that Margaret founded. She was canonized in 1250.
Some of the miracles and interventions attributed to Saint Margaret are book-based. The Bodleian Library holds a copy of the gospels owned by Saint Margaret that is said to have miraculously remained intact despite being dropped in the river. However, she was best known for protecting women during childbirth. Queens of Scotland in particular looked to Saint Margaret for protection, given that she was a queen herself and safely gave birth to eight children including three future Kings of Scotland.
Giving birth in the sixteenth century was dangerous and women needed all the help they could get. Prayers, birthing girdles, and saint’s relics were all used as protective measures. Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII and wife to James IV of Scotland, paid eight shillings to "feche Sanct Margaretis Sark” for protection when she was in labor with the future James V of Scotland. “Sark” is an archaic Scottish word for a shirt or a chemise and referred to a relic of St. Margaret’s that was kept with her remains at Dunfermline Abbey.
Multiple Scottish Queens used Saint Margaret’s shirt as a talisman during childbirth but only one used the Saint herself. When Mary Queen of Scots was in labor in June of 1566 she asked for the Saint’s entire head to be brought to the birthing chamber in Edinburgh Castle.
Laboring under the desiccated eye of her 450-year-old predecessor was apparently a comfort rather than a terror, and Mary was safely delivered of the future James I. I’m quite sure that modern medical professionals would look askance at a severed head in the delivery room, but in Mary’s case it worked. In her later life, Mary Queen of Scots was significantly more concerned with keeping her own head rather than sending for those of other Scottish queens. St. Margaret’s head was kept in a silver reliquary with a crown of pearls and precious stones, while Mary’s was not treated so kindly.
James I has a family connection to Macbeth not only through his ancestor Banquo, but also because the mummified head of Malcolm’s wife may have been one of the first things he saw when he was born. James had a long and glorious future ahead of him while Saint Margaret was not so fortunate. While some of her relics survive, Margaret’s head disappeared during the chaos of the French Revolution. While a number of heads disappeared during that time, most of them were not 700 years old.
Next week will involve exactly no severed heads. It will involve Shakespeare and head wounds but of the fun, survivable kind!
by Kate Pitt
Interested in early modern childbirth strategies that don’t include dead saints? Check out friend-of-Good-Tickle-Brain Anjna Chouhan’s podcast Shakespeare’s Pants. The most recent episode on Pregnancy and Childbirth shows how women – living women – relied on each other.