Chapter 7
There is only one clause in Magna Carta that mentions particular women. Although they are not identified by name, they are easily identifiable due to their positions. These two women were the sisters of Alexander II, King of Scots, who had been hostages in England since the treaty of Norham in 1209. Clause 59 of Magna Carta agrees to negotiate for their release, alongside a number of other Scottish hostages:
We will treat Alexander, king of Scots, concerning the return of his sisters and hostages and his liberties and rights in the same manner in which we will act towards our other barons of England, unless it ought to be otherwise because of the charters which we have from William his father, formerly king of Scots; and this shall be determined by the judgement of his peers in our court.1
The king of Scots’ two sisters referred to in the clause were Margaret and Isabella, the oldest daughters of William I (the Lion), King of Scots, and his wife, Ermengarde de Beaumont. The two girls had been caught up in the power struggle between their father and the Plantagenet kings. William I was the second of three sons of Henry, Earl of Northumberland, and his wife, Ada de Warenne. He was, therefore, a grandson of David I and great-grandson of Malcolm III Canmor and St Margaret, the Anglo-Saxon princess. William had succeeded his father as earl of Northumberland in June 1153, when he was about 11 years old. He lost the earldom, however, when his brother, Malcolm IV (known as Malcolm the Maiden) surrendered the northern counties of England to Henry II; he was given lands in Tynedale, worth £10 per annum, in compensation. This loss of Northumberland was never forgotten and was to colour William’s future dealings with the English crown throughout his reign.
William was probably knighted in 1159, when he accompanied his brother Malcolm on an expedition to Toulouse and in 1163 he was in attendance in a meeting with King Henry II at Woodstock where the Scots king did homage to the English king. William and Malcolm’s younger brother, David, was to remain in England as a hostage. William ascended the Scottish throne on Malcolm’s death on 9 December 1165, aged about 23; his coronation took place at Scone on Christmas Eve, 24 December. In 1166 William travelled to Normandy to meet with King Henry II and, although we do not know what they spoke of, it was reported that they parted on bad terms.2
Nevertheless, in 1170 William and his brother David were at the English court, attending Henry II’s council at Windsor on 5 April 1170 and were in London on 14 June, when Henry’s eldest son, also Henry, was crowned king of England in his father’s lifetime. He would be known as the Young King, rather than Henry III, and died in 1183, six years before his father. Both William and his brother David did homage to the Young King after the coronation.3 In 1173 when the Young King and his brothers, Richard and Geoffrey, rebelled against their father, Henry II, the younger Henry promised that he would give the northern counties of England to the Scots king, and the earldom of Huntingdon with Cambridgeshire to the king’s brother, David, in return for their support in the rebellion. William considered the offer, consulting his barons in the summer of 1173. It was decided to ask Henry II to return Northumberland, and to renounce homage if he refused. Henry II refused and William joined the Young King’s rebellion.
William formed an alliance with Louis VII of France and Count Philippe of Flanders, who both promised mercenaries would be sent to England in support. This was the start of the long Scottish tradition of alliances with France, against England, which would become known as the Auld Alliance. On 20 August 1173 the Scottish forces moved south, to Alnwick, Warkworth and Newcastle. Although they devastated the countryside, the Scots were unable to take the castles. They moved on to Carlisle, in the west, but having again failed to take the castle, they pulled back to Roxburgh after receiving news that a new English force was advancing. This force, under Ranulf de Glanville, the justiciar, burned Berwick. A truce was agreed until 13 January 1174, before the English returned south to deal with an invasion from Flanders. The truce was later extended to 24 March 1174, after a payment of 300 marks by the bishop of Durham to King William.4
At the end of the truce, the Scots, accompanied by Flemish mercenaries, again advanced into England. They ravaged the Northumberland coast and besieged both Wark-on-Tweed (on the Northumberland-Scotland border) and Carlisle castles, but failed to take either. The castles at Appleby and Brough surrendered to them, but they were resisted at Prudhoe Castle, near Newcastle, from where they moved north to Alnwick after hearing of an approaching English army. On 13 July, while much of the Scottish army was spread out in raiding parties, the Scots were the victims of a surprise attack. King William’s horse was killed, the king trapped underneath.
William surrendered to Ranulf de Glanville and was taken first to Newcastle and then to Northampton, where he appeared before Henry II on 24 July.5 He was sentenced to imprisonment at Falaise in Normandy and the price of his freedom was to submit himself, his kingdom and the castles of Berwick, Roxburgh and Edinburgh to King Henry II.6 The Convention of Falaise on 1 December 1174 also granted that ‘the church of Scotland shall henceforward owe such subjection to the church of England as it should do.’7 It was a humiliating treaty for the Scots, which also required twenty Scottish noble hostages be handed to the English in return for their king’s freedom. King William arrived back in Scotland in February 1175, having spent two months in England until the handover of the Scottish castles had been completed.
He returned to a revolt in Galloway, which he managed to quash, but in 1179 the king of Scots was forced to go north, to answer the threat of Donald Ban Macwilliam, grandson of Duncan II, who was gaining support for a challenge to the throne and a return to the royal line of Duncan II. William built two new castles at Redcastle and Dunskeath and confirmed to his brother David the earldom of Lennox and lordship of Garrioch, thus controlling the roads to Moray and Ross. Things quietened down for a time, but in April 1181, when the king and David were in Normandy Donald Ban Macwilliam led an uprising in Moray and Ross, apparently gaining full control of the two earldoms. One royal retainer, Gillecolm the Marischal, surrendered the castle of Auldearn and then joined the rebels.8
The king was also faced with unrest in Galloway, where Gilbert of Galloway had failed to pay the money he had owed to Henry II since his earlier uprising. Gilbert died on 1 January 1185 and shortly after King William invaded Galloway, alongside Gilbert’s nephew Roland, son of Uhtred of Galloway, who had been murdered by Gilbert, his own brother, in 1174. On 4 July 1185 William and his allies defeated the main force of Gilbert’s followers and in July 1186, King William presented Roland to King Henry at Carlisle. By 1190 Roland had been granted the lordship of Galloway by King William while Gilbert’s son, Duncan, was made lord of Carrick.9 As a result, Galloway remained at peace well into the thirteenth century, until the death of Roland’s son, Alan, in 1234. With Galloway subdued, in 1187 King William was finally able to quash the rebellion in the north, leading his considerable army as far as Inverness. On 31 July, at the now-lost site of ‘Mam Garvia’, Roland of Galloway faced the rebels in battle where over 500 of them were killed, including Donald Macwilliam, whose head was sent to King William.
The overlordship of Henry II caused additional problems for King William in the Scottish church; the archbishops of York and Canterbury both claimed the homage of the Scottish clergy. William also had a long-running dispute with the papacy, with five successive popes, in fact, over the appointment of a bishop of St Andrews, with none approving the other’s candidate. The English king sided with the popes on the matter and in 1181 King William was excommunicated by the archbishop of Canterbury; the Scottish people, as a whole, were subsequently excommunicated by the bishop of Durham. Within two years, however, the papacy and the Scots king were on such good terms that the pope sent William the Golden Rose as a tribute to ‘a king of exceptional religious zeal’.10 On 13 March 1192 Pope Celestine III issued the papal bull, Cum universi, recognising the Scottish church as a ‘special daughter’ of the apostolic see and subject to Rome without an intermediary. Thereby denying the claims to superiority of both York and Canterbury.11
Unusually for a king in this period, by 1180 William had been on the throne for fifteen years and was still unmarried. He had several illegitimate children, including a daughter, Isabella, who was married to Robert de Brus, heir to the lordship of Annandale, in 1183. Another daughter, Ada, was married to Patrick, Earl of Dunbar and a son, Robert of London was endowed with royal lands. However, until he married, William’s heir was his younger brother, David. With this in mind, in 1184, William was at King Henry’s court to discuss a possible marriage with Henry’s granddaughter, Matilda of Saxony. The match was forbidden by the pope on the grounds of consanguinity. In May 1186, during a council at Woodstock, King Henry suggested Ermengarde de Beaumont as a bride for King William.
Ermengarde was the daughter of Richard, Vicomte de Beaumont-sur-Sarthe, who was himself the son of Constance, one of the many illegitimate daughters of King Henry I of England. With such diluted royal blood, she was hardly a prestigious match for the king of Scots, but he reluctantly accepted the marriage after consulting his advisers. The wedding took place at Woodstock on 5 September 1186, with King Henry hosting four days of festivities and Edinburgh Castle was returned to the Scots as part of Ermengarde’s dowry.11
Although we do not know Ermengarde’s birth date, at the time of the marriage, she was referred to as ‘a girl’, suggesting that she may have only just reached the age of 12.12 King William agreed to provide Ermengarde with £100 of rents and forty knights’ fees in Scotland, for the financial maintenance of her household; she also had dwellings and lands at Crail and Haddington, lands which had previously been held by William’s mother, Ada de Warenne.13 After the wedding, King William accompanied King Henry to Marlborough whilst the new Scottish queen was escorted to her new home by Jocelin, Bishop of Glasgow, and other Scottish nobles. Between 1187 and 1195 Queen Ermengarde gave birth to two daughters, Margaret and Isabella. A son, the future Alexander II, was finally born at Haddington on 24 August 1198, the first legitimate son born to a reigning Scottish king in seventy years; a contemporary remarked that ‘many rejoiced at his birth.’14 A third daughter, Marjorie, was born sometime later.
On the death of King Henry II in 1189, King William again went south, and met with the new king, Richard I, at Canterbury, where he did homage for his English lands. Desperate for money for his crusade, on 5 December 1189, Richard abandoned his lordship of Scotland in the quitclaim of Canterbury; King William was released from the homage and submission given to Henry II, the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick were returned and the relationship between the kingdoms reverted to that in the time of Malcolm IV. The cost to the Scots was to be 10,000 marks, but Scotland was independent once again.15
Richard, however, refused to sell Northumberland back to William; instead he sold a life-interest in the earldom to the bishop of Durham. The Scots king remained on good relations with King Richard, paying 2,000 marks towards his ransom in 1193 and meeting him at Nottingham in April 1194, where William asked for two favours. The first, to be granted an honourable escort and daily subsistence allowances during his visits to the English court, was granted but not put into effect until the reign of King John. For the second favour, William asked to be granted the earldom of Northumberland, the lordships of Cumberland and Westmorland and the earldom of Lancaster, last held by the Scots in the 1140s. This second favour was, unsurprisingly, refused by Richard.17 The Scots king carried one of the three swords of state at Richard’s solemn crown-wearing at Winchester on 17 April 1194. Two days later, the bishop of Durham surrendered the earldom of Northumberland; William offered 15,000 marks for it and Richard made a counteroffer saying that William could have the earldom but not its castles, which William refused, and the matter remained unresolved.
In the spring of 1195 King William fell gravely ill at Clackmannan, causing a succession crisis, the sum of his legitimate children being one, possibly two, daughters at this time. The Scottish barons appear to have been divided, between recognising William’s oldest legitimate daughter, Margaret, as his heir, or marrying Margaret to Otto, Duke of Saxony, grandson of Henry II, and allowing Otto to succeed to the throne. The earl of Dunbar led a faction who claimed that either solution was contrary to the custom of the land, so long as the king had a brother who could succeed him.18 In the event, the king recovered from his illness and three years later the queen gave birth to Alexander, the much-desired son and heir. For the last years of the century, William was again occupied with unrest in the north. Before going on campaign in October 1201, he had the Scottish barons swear fealty to his son, Alexander, now 3 years old, a sensible precaution, given that he was approaching his sixtieth birthday.
Relations with England had changed in 1199, with the accession of King John. During the reign of King Richard, William had agreed with the justiciar, William Longchamp, and backed Arthur of Brittany as the king’s heir. John may well have remembered this. Soon after John’s accession, King William asked for the return of Northumberland. The two kings met at Lincoln in 1200, with William doing homage for his English lands and John asking for the discussion over Northumberland to be deferred until Whitsun 1201. The matter was deferred again when John sailed for Normandy in 1201, and again in 1204 after John’s return. The two kings finally met for formal talks at York from 9 to 12 February 1206 and again from 26 to 28 May 1207, although we have little record of what was discussed. William was confirmed in his lands in Tynedale and John granted Arbroath Abbey trading privileges in England.19 However, John appears to have been prevaricating, suggesting another meeting in October 1207, which the Scots rejected. In the meantime, the death of the bishop of Durham meant John took over the vacant see and set about building a castle at Tweedmouth. The Scots, seeing this as a direct threat to Berwick, destroyed the building works and matters came to a crisis in 1209.
After many threats, and with both sides building up their armies, the two kings met at Norham, Northumberland, in the last week of July and first week of August 1209. The Scots were in a desperate position, with an ailing and ageing king, and a 10-year-old boy as heir, whilst the English, with their Welsh allies and foreign mercenaries, had an army big enough to force a Scottish submission. The subsequent treaty, agreed at Norham on 7 August, was humiliating for the Scots. They agreed to pay 15,000 marks for peace and to surrender hostages, including the king’s two oldest legitimate daughters, Margaret and Isabella. As a sweetener, John promised to marry the princesses to his sons; although Henry was only 2 years old at the time and Richard was just 8 months, whilst the girls were probably in their early-to-mid teens. John would have the castle at Tweedmouth dismantled, but the Scots would pay an extra £4,000 compensation for the damage they had caused to it. The king’s daughters and the other Scottish hostages were handed into the custody of England’s justiciar, at Carlisle on 16 August.20 How the girls, or their parents, thought about this turn of events, we know not. Given John’s proven record of prevarication and perfidy, King William may have hoped that the promised marriages would occur in good time, but may also have expected that John would find a way out of the promises made.
There is no mention of Queen Ermengarde being present for the treaty at Norham, although she did act as mediator in 1212, when her husband was absent, in negotiations with John at Durham. A contemporary observer described the Scottish queen as ‘an extraordinary woman, gifted with a charming and witty eloquence’.21 It seems likely that King John was not immune to the queen’s charms, as he did not ask for more hostages and agreed that the Scottish heir, Alexander, would be knighted and one day marry an English princess. Alexander was knighted at Clerkenwell on 4 March 1212.22 King William I, later known as William the Lion, died on 4 December 1214, aged about 72, having reigned for a total of forty-nine years, almost to the day. He was succeeded by Alexander, his only legitimate son, who was proclaimed king at Scone on 6 December 1214, aged just 16.
King Alexander II sided with the English barons in their struggle against the tyranny of King John, making an alliance with the northern barons, who agreed to press for a decision on the future of Alexander’s sisters, and a resolution of the lordship of the northern counties.23 He raided the northern English earldoms, exploiting the unrest in England to renew Scottish claims to these counties, besieging Norham in October 1215 and receiving the homage of the leading men of Northumberland on 22 October 1215.24 In the summer of 1216 Alexander took the castle and town of Carlisle and in September the Scots king marched his army the length of England, from Scotland to Dover to pay homage to the dauphin, Louis, for his English lands.
Following John’s death in October 1216 and the defeat of the French-rebel army at Lincoln in May 1217, Alexander’s position in England became precarious. England’s status as a papal fief saw Alexander and Scotland put under interdict. The Scots king surrendered Carlisle Castle at Berwick on 1 December 1217 and submitted to Henry III at Northampton later in the same month.25 With King Alexander’s submission, there followed an unprecedented almost eighty years of unbroken peace between England and Scotland. In June 1221, Alexander married Henry III’s sister, Joan, in York Minster.
Margaret of Scotland
It took a little longer to resolve the futures of the king’s two sisters who had been held hostage in England since 1209. Margaret, the eldest daughter of William I and Ermengarde de Beaumont, had been born sometime between her parents’ marriage in 1186 and 1195, unfortunately we cannot be more specific. We do know that she was born by 1195, as she was mooted as a possible heir to King William I in the succession crisis of that year, when the king fell gravely ill. Several options were proposed at the time, including marrying young Margaret to Otto of Saxony, nephew of King Richard I. However, it was also proposed that Margaret should not even be considered as heir, that the kingdom should pass to her father’s younger brother, David. In the event, King William recovered and none of the options were pursued, but at least it means that we know Margaret was born before 1195. And when her brother, Alexander, was born in 1198, Margaret’s position as a possible heir was diminished further.
When she was taken as hostage, therefore she may have been as old as 22 or as young as 14. Given the apparent youth of Ermengarde on her wedding day, Margaret’s date of birth is more likely to have been 1190 or later. John’s demand of Margaret and Isabella as hostages, with the sweetener that they would be brides for his own sons, may well have been to prevent Margaret marrying elsewhere. King Philip Augustus had proposed a marriage between himself and Margaret, a union John would be keen to thwart.26 Thus, John’s control of the marriages of Margaret and Isabella would mean that they could not marry against the king of England’s own interests. It also meant that King William had lost two useful diplomatic bargaining chips; marriage alliances could be used to cement political ones, and these had been passed to John, weakening William’s position on the international stage. According to the chronicler Bower, the agreement specified that Margaret would marry John’s son, Henry, while Isabella would be married to an English nobleman of rank.27
While hostages in England, Margaret and Isabella were kept together, and lived comfortably, although John’s promise of arranging marriages for the girls remained unfulfilled. One can imagine the frustration of the Scots, to see their princesses languishing in the custody of the English, however comfortably, with their futures far from decided. There must have been considerable pressure from the Scots for a resolution to the situation, to the extent that the princesses are the only women to be identified in Magna Carta; clause 59 of the charter specifically mentions the king of Scots’ sisters and promises to seek a resolution to their situation. Unfortunately, King John tore up Magna Carta almost before the wax seals had dried, writing to the pope to have the charter declared void, leaving Alexander to join the baronial rebellion.
When Alexander came to terms with the government of Henry III in December 1217, he pressed for a resolution to the marriages of himself and his sisters, Margaret and Isabella, still languishing in English custody. King John had promised that Alexander would marry one of his daughters and Henry III finally fulfilled this promise in June 1221, when his sister, Joan, was married to the Scots king at York. It was probably at this event, when the Scottish and English royal families came together in celebration, that Margaret’s own future was finally resolved. It was decided that she would marry Hubert de Burgh, the king’s justiciar and one of the leading figures of Henry III’s minority government. They were married in London on 3 October 1221, with King Henry himself giving the bride away.28 It was a major coup for Hubert de Burgh, who came from a gentry family rather than the higher echelons of the nobility. He had been married twice previously; his first wife was Beatrice de Warenne, daughter of William de Warenne, Baron of Wormegay, a minor branch of the Warenne earls of Surrey. His second wife was Isabella of Gloucester, Countess of Gloucester in her own right, King John’s discarded first wife and widow of Geoffrey de Mandeville.
Each of his previous marriages had given de Burgh social and political advancement, and valuable familial connections. Marrying Margaret of Scotland was no less a valuable match, but would later be used against him by his enemies, who accused de Burgh of marrying Margaret while the king was still too young to decide if he might want to marry the Scottish princess himself, as his father had proposed. Clause 6 of Magna Carta, guarding against marriage without disparagement, meaning that a woman could not be forced to marry below her station, was conveniently sidestepped as Magna Carta did not apply in Scotland. The Scottish preferred to view Hubert de Burgh as the royal justiciar he had become, rather than the member of the minor noble family into which he had been born. Margaret was at least 26 years of age when she married Hubert de Burgh and may even have been over 30. De Burgh was in his early fifties. Due to Margaret’s high status as a Scottish princess, many of the grants of lands and privileges were made to the couple jointly, rather than solely to Hubert de Burgh. De Burgh was made earl of Kent in 1227, with the title specifically entailed on his children by Margaret, rather than on his children by his first marriage to Beatrice de Warenne.29
The couple had one child, a girl named Margaret but known as Megotta, who was probably born in the early 1220s. There were rumours that de Burgh was planning to divorce Margaret in 1232, but he fell from royal favour before such a move could be pursued.30 From relatively humble beginnings, Hubert de Burgh had risen through the ranks of King John’s administration to the highest echelons of power in the minority government of Henry III. However, with the king attaining his majority and taking up the reins of government, Hubert de Burgh’s hold weakened. With the king’s administration divided by powerful factions, de Burgh fell from favour; he was stripped of his offices and imprisoned. Margaret and her daughter, deprived of all their belongings, sought sanctuary at Bury St Edmunds, from where they were forbidden to leave by the king’s own order. Margaret humbled herself before the king when he visited Bury St Edmunds, perhaps softening Henry III somewhat as the king then allowed her to visit her husband so they could discuss their situation. Relations between the king and de Burgh thawed slightly in 1234. In February Margaret was given possession of Hubert de Burgh’s hereditary lands and in May of the same year de Burgh was finally pardoned and the king ‘undertook to do what grace he will.’31
Whilst in sanctuary Margaret secretly arranged the marriage of Megotta to Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, the son of Isabel Marshal and Gilbert de Clare, who was of similar age to Megotta. The young couple may have known each other as Richard was a ward of Hubert de Burgh until his disgrace in 1232. Hubert de Burgh may not have known of his wife’s activities and the discovery of the arrangement in 1236 reignited tensions between the king and his former justiciar, who was attempting to regain the king’s trust. The discovery of the marriage was a devastating blow to de Burgh; he had lost the king’s confidence completely and retired from public life. The death of Megotta in 1237 was a further blow but did not ease the tensions with the king. Hubert de Burgh and Margaret were finally pardoned for the marriage in October 1239, de Burgh surrendering his three castles in Upper Gwent and Hadleigh Castle in Essex as part of the agreement.32 De Burgh did not return to office, despite the pardon, and remained in retirement until his death. He died at his Surrey manor of Banstead in May 1243 and was buried at the Blackfriars in London, a monastery of which he was a benefactor.33
Margaret succeeded to those lands which they had held jointly and remained in possession of them until her own death in the autumn of 1259, at a considerable age, possibly even over 70. She was buried at Blackfriars in London, just like her husband, many miles from Scotland, the land that she had left fifty years before. It is a strange twist of fate that three Scottish princesses, the daughters of William the Lion, King of Scots, found their resting place together at Blackfriars in London, rather than their native land. Margaret’s younger sister, Marjorie, had also been buried there after her death in 1244. Her sister and fellow hostage, Isabella, would also be laid to rest at Blackfriars on her own death in 1270
Isabella of Scotland
Isabella had come south as a hostage with her older sister, Margaret, in 1209. In the treaty of Norham, King John had agreed to arrange the marriage of Isabella to an English nobleman of rank, possibly even his second son, Richard, who was only a baby at the time. Isabella’s date and year of birth is unknown; she was older than her brother, Alexander, who was born in 1198, but may have been born any time in the ten years before. She is not mentioned in the succession crisis of 1195, but that does not mean that she was born after, just that, being the younger daughter, she was not a subject of discussions. Jessica Nelson, in her article for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, suggests that Isabella was born in 1195 or 1196.34 When the sisters were brought south, they were housed comfortably, as evidence demonstrates. Payments for their upkeep were recorded by sheriffs and the king’s own wardrobe, which suggests the two princesses spent some time at court.35 In 1213 Isabella was residing at Corfe Castle in the household of John’s queen, Isabelle d’Angoulême; John’s niece, Eleanor of Brittany, held captive since the failed rebellion of her brother, Arthur of Brittany in 1202, was also there.
Despite the fact that John had agreed to arrange the marriages of both Margaret and Isabella, no move had been made to find suitable husbands for the princesses before the king’s death in October 1216. As the younger sister, Isabella could not expect to be wed before Margaret, but the fact that Margaret’s wedding was still not on the horizon meant that Isabella’s was even further in the future. In June 1220, at a meeting of King Henry III’s minority council, it was agreed that Margaret and Isabella would be married by October 1221 or allowed to return to Scotland. In the event, Margaret was married to Hubert de Burgh on 3 October 1221; a controversial marriage given the disparity in rank between the Scottish princess and her self-made husband. Isabella, however, remained unmarried and returned to Scotland in November 1222. Isabella’s own marriage prospects may have been damaged by the relatively lowly marriage of her older sister. Nevertheless, Alexander II was keen to look after his sister’s interests and continued to search for a suitable husband. A letter from Henry III alludes to a possible match between Isabella and William (II) Marshal, Earl of Pembroke but the earl was, instead, married to the king’s own younger sister, Eleanor.36
Isabella’s future was finally settled in June 1225, when she married Roger Bigod, fourth Earl of Norfolk, at Alnwick in Northumberland. On 20 May, the archbishop of York was given respite from his debts in order to attend the wedding of the King of Scots’ sister:
Order to the barons of the Exchequer to place in respite, until 15 days from Michaelmas in the ninth year, the demand for debts they make by summons of the Exchequer from W. archbishop of York, because the archbishop has set out for Alnwick where he is to be present to celebrate the marriage between Roger, son and heir of Earl H. Bigod, and Isabella, sister of the King of Scots.37
Roger was the young son of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who had died earlier in the year, and Matilda Marshal, eldest daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. Roger was still a minor, aged about 13, and possibly as much as seventeen years his wife’s junior. In 1224 King Alexander II had levied an aid of 10,000 marks towards the costs of his sisters’ marriages, as well as contributing £1,000 towards Henry III’s 1225 expedition to Gascony, suggesting the Scots king was eager to see both his sisters comfortably settled.38 At the time of the marriage, Roger’s wardship was in the hands of Henry III’s uncle, William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury, but it was transferred to King Alexander II in 1226, after Longespée’s death. Now in the custody of the king of Scots, Roger and Isabella moved to Scotland, living at the Scottish court until Roger attained his majority in 1233 and entered into his inheritance.
Roger Bigod was knighted by Henry III in the same year and took his place at Henry’s court. He was friendly with his uncle, Gilbert Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who became Roger’s brother-in-law when he married Isabella and Margaret’s much youngest sister, Marjorie, in 1235 at Berwick; ‘with the [English] king’s good will and licence … and the marriage is well pleasing to the king.’39 Her given name was Margaret, but she was called Marjorie to distinguish her from her older sister with the same name; she was born around 1200. In 1227 Richard of Cornwall, Henry III’s younger brother, had considered Marjorie as a possible bride and had even travelled to Scotland to speak with Queen Ermengarde about the match. However, neither the Scottish court nor King Henry were keen on the union and negotiations were abandoned. Unfortunately, Marjorie and Gilbert Marshal remained childless and the earl died in 1241. The friendship of their husbands suggests that Isabella and Marjorie were also able to spend time in each other’s company.
Isabella appears to have remained in the shadows for much of her life. Her marriage to Roger was not the happiest of unions; the lack of children and the seventeen-year age difference probably causing tensions. In need of an heir, the couple separated, and Roger made numerous, ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to have the marriage annulled on the grounds of consanguinity, as they were closely related by blood. Roger even visited Rome to plead his case, but the final decision went against him and in 1253 he was ordered to return to his wife. The chronicler Matthew Paris noted that Roger accepted the judgement with good grace, blaming his attempts to repudiate Isabella on ‘evil counsel’.40 Roger and Isabella were reconciled and lived together until Isabella’s death in 1270. A writ of February 1270 shows that she was still living then, but she had died before Roger’s death on 3 or 4 July 1270. Isabella was buried at Blackfriars in London, with her sisters, while Roger was interred at his family’s mausoleum at Thetford in Norfolk. Their hearts were buried together in the parish church at Framlingham, the Bigod family seat.41
It is interesting to note that while only two of the three sisters were hostages of the English crown following the treaty of Norham, all three of them were married to notable magnates of England. The fact that Margaret, Isabella and Marjorie all chose to be laid to rest in the same religious house, Blackfriars in London, suggests that the sisters, despite their different paths, remained close throughout their lives. The status of Margaret and Isabella, not only as hostages of King John and, later Henry III, but also as a clause in Magna Carta, has meant that their stories have been passed down through history, and serve as an example that, often, princesses had no more power in determining their own lives and freedoms than women of other ranks.