Alexander the Third was a child of eight when he inherited the Scottish crown, and was only two years older when he married the Princess Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry the Third of England.  Even in his early boyhood the young King displayed a wisdom, an energy, and a forcefulness in his management of affairs that marked him for a great ruler, and made his royal father-in-law’s fond vision of gradually gaining such an ascendancy over Scotland, that he might in time be able to claim that kingdom as an appanage of England, fade altogether away.  Alexander had only recently come of age when he had to defend his country against her old enemies, the Norsemen, and his complete victory was a triumph for him and for his people.  Nineteen years later, his only daughter, Margaret, married Eric, King of Norway, and the Scots saw peace for them and for their children smiling on them from every side.  But if prosperity as a monarch was his, misfortune overshadowed King Alexander’s private life.  His wife died; his children died.  His eldest son, born at Jedburgh, and married, as a lad, to a daughter of the Count of Flanders, died childless.  His daughter, the young Queen of Norway, died the year after her marriage, leaving behind her the baby who has come down to us, even through chilly history, as a pitiful little figure, known as “The Maid of Norway.”

In 1285 King Alexander was wifeless and childless, and the heir to the Scottish crown was his two-year-old grandchild in “Norroway ower the faem.”

In the eyes of all his people the King’s duty was plain.  He was only forty-four, a brilliant parti for the daughter of any royal or noble house, and the Scots wished a man, not a maid, to rule over them.  He must, obviously, marry again.  Joleta, also called Yolande, daughter of the Count de Dreux, and a descendant of the Kings of France, was his chosen bride.  She was of surpassing fairness, and even most of those who had harboured scruples with regard to the match, because the maid had been destined for a nunnery, forgot such scruples when they looked upon her beauty.

On All Saints’ Day, 1285, the wedding—­a more brilliant function than anything that had ever before been held in Scotland—­was celebrated in Jedburgh Abbey.  The little grey town on the Jed was packed with Scottish and French nobles and their retinues.  Few were the noble houses that were not there represented, and the monks of Beauvais—­the black-cloaked Augustinian friars from St. Quentin’s Abbey—­who held rule at the Abbey of Jedburgh in those days, must have had their ears gladdened by the constant sound of the French tongue coming from seigneur, squire, and page-boy who passed them on the causeway.