by The Laird o’Thistle
January 22 2007

I was surprised this last weekend to see the announcement that English Heritage is looking for contemporary heirs of Edgar Atheling, the last claimant of the old Anglo-Saxon royal line displaced by William the Conqueror in 1066. I suppose it is some sort of effort to raise interest in history and genealogy and not a subversive plot. But for those whose affinities lie north of the English-Scottish border, the answer cannot be in doubt. The nearest known blood relations of Edgar Atheling were the Kings of Scots. End of story… sort of.

Edgar was the grandson of King Edmund II, known as Edmund Ironside, and the grand-nephew of St. Edward the Confessor. He lived from about 1051 to about 1126. Edgar’s father was Edward the Exile, a prince who had been sent abroad as an infant to protect him from the Danish King Canute, and who is believed to have ended up in Kiev and later (definitely) in Hungary. In the long years of his exile, Edward married a woman named Agatha. Agatha’s exact origins are unclear, but what seems to be the clearest and most definite early source (William of Malmesbury) indicates that she was a sister of the Queen of Hungary. That probably means that she was the sister of Anastasia, the wife of Hungary’s Andrew I who was a daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev. If so, Agatha was also a sister of Anne of Kiev, the wife of Henry I of France. Both historical clues and later naming patterns among Agatha’s descendants support the probability of this solution to the mystery of her origins. In any event, Edward and Agatha had three known children. Edgar was the one known son. There were also two known daughters. Margaret later became the wife of Malcolm III, the King of Scots, and was eventually canonized as St. Margaret. Cristina became a nun and served as Abbess of Romsey Abbey.

In about 1057 (dates often get confusing as to whether they’ve been translated from Old Style reckoning or not) Edward the Confessor brought his nephew, Edward, home from exile and named him as his heir. But Edward died shortly after the family came to England. Edgar then became the heir – the “Atheling” – to his great-uncle, the Confessor. But when St. Edward died in 1066 the Witan (the Saxon assembly) decided to pass over the teenaged heir in favor of the more mature Harold Godwinson, who became Harold II and was killed at Hastings later in the year. After several abortive attempts to claim the English throne, Edgar made his peace with the Conqueror. After the Conqueror’s death in 1087, he took the wrong side in the succession contest in England between Robert of Normandy and the younger William Rufus. Later in life, he was involved in gaining the Scots throne for his nephew Edgar. He participated in the First Crusade, and eventually retired to his estates in Hertfordshire during the reign of Henry I, the Conqueror’s youngest son who had married Edgar’s niece, Matilda of Scotland.

In none of the literature that I have found is there any mention of a marriage or offspring of Edgar Atheling. And all the literature that I have seen indicates that Edgar was the last known male-line heir of the old royal house of Wessex, dating back to Cerdic in the sixth century. But the era of Edgar was the one in which royal descent through, and to, women were becoming important. In another generation, Edgar’s grandniece, the Empress Matilda, would be the first de jure Queen of England. And so in the spirit of those transitional times, the obvious place to look for Edgar’s heirs is with the family of his married sister, St. Margaret.

The Scottish dynasty known as the House of Dunkeld, descending from St. Margaret’s marriage to Malcolm III (known and Cean-Mor, “bighead”, the slayer of Macbeth) constituted the closest lineal heirs to the old Anglo-Saxon monarchy of England. Between the time of the death of Malcolm Canmore in 1093 and the victory that placed the Scottish Edgar on the throne in 1097 there were four confusing years of struggle among an elderly uncle (Shakespeare’s “Donalbane”), a half-brother, and one of the Margaretsons (as they were called) whose ambitions had caused him to ally himself with old Uncle Donald; but in due course the remaining sons of St. Margaret successfully joined forces and established their dynasty as the Kings of Scots.

Of St. Margaret’s children, the eldest son Ethelred became the heir of the old Celtic abbacy of Dunkeld, the office held by the so-called chief of the “Kindred of St. Columba.” And following in the Celtic tradition of married lay abbots, Prince “Eth” left a line of descendants that is believed to have formed into Clan MacDuff. As the senior line of Dunkeld the MacDuffs, who became the Earls of Fife, later functioned as the “Crowner” of each successive King or Queen of Scots. To this day their descendants are called upon to bear the crown of Scotland on ceremonial occasions. After a variety of genealogical permutations, the Duke of Hamilton is their current representative, and has borne the crown in recent years at the inauguration of the new Scottish Parliament in 1999, and more recently at the opening of the controversial new parliament building at Holyrood.

Other probable descendants of Ethelred include the Lindsays of Crawford, the Frasers of Saltoun, and the Weymss of Weymss family. Of the lot, it is interesting to note that the marriage of Flora Fraser, Lady Saltoun, to Captain Alexander Ramsay of Mar back in the 1950s brought that particular line into a fairly close relationship to the current royal house. The late Captain Ramsay was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria, via her youngest son Prince Arthur.

St. Margaret’s other sons, Edgar, Alexander (I), and David (I), served successively as Kings of Scots from 1097 to 1153. The line then descended via David I (know as St. David, but never officially canonized) down through Alexander III and his infant granddaughter “the Maid of Norway.” The maid’s death in 1290 opened the infamous “competition” for the Scottish Crown overseen by Edward I… of which more follows shortly.

But first, besides the Margaretsons who reigned among the Scots, the old Saxon lineage also figures in the saga of the families of two of St. Margaret’s daughters. First and foremost was her eldest daughter Edith, renamed Matilda after her marriage to Henry I of England. Through this Matilda, the royal Saxon bloodline was reintegrated into the family of the Conqueror. (And, as noted earlier, old uncle Edgar Atheling seems to have settled into a peaceful retirement in England as a result.) Henry and Matilda’s daughter, Matilda, was eventually the first de jure Queen of England, and their grandson was arguably the greatest of the medieval monarchs, Henry II. All the ensuing monarchs of England have descended via this Saxon-related lineage

There was another daughter of St. Margaret, Mary who married Eustace III of Boulogne. (Eustace was the brother of Godfrey de Boullion, the leader of the First Crusade, and almost became King of Jerusalem himself.) Mary of Scotland and Eustace had only a daughter, another Matilda, who also became Queen of England via her marriage to King Stephen. Though Matilda and Stephen had several sons, those lines died out and the line of their descent passed through their daughter Mary to their granddaughter Matilda who married Henry I of Brabant. Without going into too much detail, two of the major dynasties eventually descending from the house of Brabant were those of Hapsburg, and of Hesse → Battenburg → Mountbatten. Ergo, Prince Philip brings his own unique connection to this particular branch of the Saxon dynasty back into the royal line. (Readers might want to look back to my December 2004 column for some more on this Brabant connection.)

Returning to the descent of the line of the Margaretsons, via St. David, the death of Alexander III and his granddaughter threw the Scots into a succession crisis. Three principal competitors stepped forward seeking the crown, all descended from the three daughters of St. David’s youngest grandson. Edward I chose the one with the best rights via primogeniture, a chap named John de Balliol… who also seemed to be pretty pliable and willing to let Proud Edward be the boss. The candidate with the second best genealogical claim was Robert Bruce (grandfather of the eventual king). The legendary struggles that ensued in Scotland under Braveheart and King Robert I ultimately placed line #2 on the throne. The Balliols and their cousins, the Comyns, got variously swept aside, murdered, killed in battle, or otherwise displaced. Comyn descendants of this senior line did survive via the female line in the Talbots (Earls of Shrewsbury, etc.). Other more obscure branches of Balliol and Comyn descent may also survive, but they are much harder to trace.

The prevailing line of Robert the Bruce continued both the ancient Celtic dynasty of Scotland and the Saxon lineage of England down through the Stewart / Stuart lineage to the union of the crowns in 1603. And at that point, it can be argued that their significantly-more-senior branch of the descendants of the House of Wessex re-ascended the English throne in the person of James VI / I.

The one last wobble in the succession came with the ascent of the Hanoverians in 1714. They clearly share the Anglo-Saxon descent of the Stuarts, via their grannie Elizabeth Stuart. But after the deaths, the last of the senior line heirs, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his brother the Cardinal of York (the latter dying in 1807), the displaced line of Charles I’s daughter Henriette Anne succeeded as the senior branch of the blood of the Bruce in lineal descent. That family is today represented by the Duke of Bavaria, and the heiress of the line in due course will be Sophie, the wife of Prince Alois of Liechtenstein. Alois is the heir apparent to his father, the reigning Prince Hans Adam.

So there you go, English Heritage, it happily appears to this writer that you have a plethora of Scots to sort through in your little quest! Edgar Atheling’s kin have done quite well for themselves, really. But none better than the 29th generation descendant (if I counted right) of Edgar Atheling’s sister, who currently occupies the British throne.

*****

In a final, unrelated note, I sincerely want to pay tribute to the memory of the late U.S. President Gerald Ford, who died on December 26. Followers of the monarchy may remember the striking picture of President Ford dancing with Queen Elizabeth II at the White House during her visit to commemorate the bicentennial of U.S. independence in 1976. From all accounts, President Ford was a very decent and good man, who did much to restore the U.S. Presidency after the debacle of Watergate and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. May he rest in peace.

Yours Aye,

– Ken Cuthbertson

(Note: As often is the case, the research for this column was assisted in no little part by the work of the late Sir Iain Moncreiffe of Moncrieffe, Albany Herald. His lively writings are always a delight.)