ABSTRACT
On 26 September in the year 1290 Margaret, the seven-year-old queen of Scotland who was called the ‘Maid of Norway’, died in the Orkneys. She was the granddaughter and heiress of Alexander III, King of Scots, who had died in 1286; and for the last four years her kingdom had been governed by six ‘guardians’. In 1290 she was at last on her way home from Scandinavia, where she had been born, and an agreement had that summer been reached for her marriage to the eldest surviving son of Edward I of England, the six-year-old Edward of Caernarvon. The Treaty of Birgham, which settled the terms of the match, had stipulated that Scotland should remain a kingdom separate from England, with her own laws and courts and parliament: but the young Edward and Margaret, and their heirs after them, would naturally inherit both crowns. Edward I of England was already lord of Ireland, and he had earlier in his reign brought the principality of Wales under his direct dominion. The treaty therefore promised in due course (if the children survived) to round off an imperium for the English royal house over the whole of the British Isles. It also offered a simple and peaceful solution to the problem of Anglo-Scottish relations, for the Scottish kings in the past had always contested the ill-specified superiority which the English kings claimed over their land. The death of the Maid of Norway was therefore a blow to Edward I, upsetting carefully prepared plans.
