When therefore this was settled, King David set about espousing Margaret Logie, daughter of Sir Malcolm Drummond, a noble and most beautiful lady, at Inchmurthow; and he raised her to the throne with great magnificence as queen. He did not, however, stay very long with her before again getting a divorce, because she pretended to be with child and was not. This was about the Feast of Fasten's Even, in the year 1369. But the queen did not consent to getting this divorce, but secretly embarked in a little vessel and went to the Roman Curia. As, however, the papal court was at that time at Avignon, she appeared there to state her case and complain, and troubled the whole kingdom of Scotland with her suit. For the queen's case commended itself so much to the supreme pontiff and the cardinals that, had she lived, the whole kingdom would have been put under an interdict, and a marriage would have been celebrated between her and the king of England, who had then no wife. On her account King David had had the three sons of his nephew Robert Stewart arrested, together with their father,and placed singly in close imprisonment. But, when he heard of her death at the court of the supreme pontiff, they were set at liberty and restored to the king's favour.
Liber Pluscardensis, eds. F. J. H. Skene
Ok well the Book of Pluscarden’s brief account of the five or six years Margaret Drummond spent as Queen of Scots is... interesting to say the least. We have very few sources on Margaret, who was the first Scottish queen consort in about three hundred years and also as far as we know the first to be divorced by a Scottish king. She was previously the wife of John Logie (son of one of the conspirators in the Soulis plot), having had by him at least one son, and it seems likely she became the mistress of David II during her husband’s lifetime, marrying the king in 1364. We do know that the favour David II lavished on her family, and the influence of the queen, caused tension between the queen and Robert Stewart, the High Steward, David’s nephew and heir apparent (this was still a fact despite David’s attempts to oust him from the succession: the two did not get on, and worse Robert was frustratingly fertile- he had over 22 kids in his life- while David lacked an heir despite his earlier marriage to Joan of the Tower, liaison with the murdered Katherine Mortimer, and possible other mistresses, hence the marriage to Margaret Drummond). We are also aware of the hostility of chroniclers towards her, though admittedly they were mostly writing from a Stewart perspective, and at least one stated that the king married her more for her beauty than her queenliness while the English knight Thomas Gray wrote that the match was ‘made solely on account of love, which conquers all things’, though if nothing else we can see Margaret did not lack for backbone, determination, or intelligence.
The imprisonment of Robert Stewart and his son(s) in Lochleven is often blamed on her, and it does seem likely that hostility between queen and steward played its part, though as mentioned above the king was not the fondest of his nephew, and given that the one son we know was definitely imprisoned with his father was Alexander, the so-called ‘Wolf of Badenoch’, who was probably perfectly capable of landing himself in prison even at such a young age, I doubt that it was entirely Margaret’s fault (or that the Steward was entirely blameless). Whether she reconciled with the Steward later is debatable, but at least the whole affair seems to have blown over in time and Robert was released from ward (fun fact though- Margaret’s niece, Annabella Drummond, also became queen as the wife of Robert III, and the marriage took place during Margaret’s time as queen so it might be possible to see her hand in this). We also know David divorced Margaret in 1369- or attempted to, since at the point of his death it seemed probable that Margaret’s case would win out at the papacy and the divorce sentence would be overturned. Margaret personally travelled to Avignon to effect this, gaining the pope’s favour, while her husband prepared to marry his new mistress Agnes Dunbar, though David’s death put paid to both women’s hopes for queenship.
However, now comes the part where the Book of Pluscarden- written as a mid-fifteenth century abridged version of Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon- stops making sense. Firstly, and most easily to explain, we know that Margaret did not pre-decease David and likely did not die at the Curia, in fact she outlived him by several years and it was in fact HIS death in 1371 which ended the whole divorce squabble. Secondly, whilst Edward III (the brother of David’s first wife, Joan) was widowed in 1369, it seems very curious that the Book of Pluscarden claims that Margaret was to be married to the English king- she was a surprising choice for a King of Scots, and I can’t really envisage a scenario where the suggestion that she should marry the king of England was ever made, let alone seriously, though perhaps this is a way of implying the danger Margaret could have posed to Scotland beyond spiritual interdict. The interdict thing is also interesting- defiance of the pope could of course provoke this, but the fact that the alleged threat of interdict is blamed solely on Margaret for not retiring quietly and not also on her intractable husband seems very telling. But also I’m not sure to what extent the claim that Scotland would be laid under interdict has any real substance.
The bit that fascinates me most though is the Book of Pluscarden’s reason for the divorce- ‘because she pretended to be with child and was not’. This is a unique claim as far as mediaeval accounts of Margaret’s life are concerned; most chroniclers are evasive about the divorce (for example, Wyntoun- ‘they were together but short while’ or Fordun who doesn’t even mention it) whilst Bower’s account is somewhat problematic, but modern historians generally attribute David’s divorce to a plea that Margaret was infertile. If this was the case then Margaret could certainly easily prove to the pope that she was not infertile- not least because of her son John- and in any case, there is no evidence that David II ever managed to sire any children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, despite his two marriages and at least two prominent extramarital liaisons, so it seems likelier that the issue lay with him. But the claim that Margaret had pretended to be pregnant is a hugely interesting one- we cannot dismiss it entirely, though given Pluscarden’s other odd claims and its date it might be possible to not attach too much seriousness to it, but even if untrue it remains a rather fascinating claim. Who knows, perhaps this rumour originally came from David or some of his partisans, looking to rationalise the king’s failed marriage (‘She pretended to be pregnant and so I did the honourable thing and married her and then she wasn’t’) or it might have its roots in a garbled understanding of the real reason for the divorce (whether this was infertility or whatever) or there could be any other number of reasons why Pluscarden ran with that theme.
Anyway, I just personally think Margaret Drummond is one of the most interesting Scottish consorts, and really wish we had more (reliable) sources on her. But even though this one, from the Liber Pluscardensis, is inaccurate in several points and rather vexatious in others, I still think it could raise some interesting discussion, though we may never know the real circumstances.
