[183] _Ead. Hist. Novell._, l. 3, p. 56. Malcolm seems to have been fortunate in his choice between the sisters. It may have been the influx of ladies like the Scottish princess amongst the nuns, that introduced the use of ornamented pins and gold rings amongst the sisterhood, with the wreathing and dressing the hair, forbidden in several subsequent councils. The words of Matilda convict Orderic of one of those blunders which render that chronicler such a broken reed to lean upon whenever historical accuracy is required. He says that Count Alan of Bretagne sought the hand of Matilda _from Rufus_, “sed morte præventus non obtinuit,” (l. 7, p. 702). As Alan died on the 19th October 1119 (_L’Art de verifier les Dates_, vol. ii., p. 897), it is difficult to conceive how his death could have prevented his marriage with Matilda, who had then been eighteen months in her grave (she died 1st January 1118), after having been the wife of Henry the First since November 1100! Alan’s first wife died in 1090, and he re-married in 1093, before Matilda could have sought refuge in England, for Malcolm was alive until the 13th November in that year. Alan, however, was once a suitor for the hand of Matilda, but to her father Malcolm (according to her own words) not to Rufus. This is the little grain of truth which, as usual, lurks in an infinity of error; for Orderic seems to have retailed all the gossip of the day, generally contriving to get hold of a wrong version of the story. [184] Matilda appears to have been very amiable, very devout, very fond of music and poetry, very vain, and rather pretty; not a perfect, but a feminine and loveable character, which earned her the title of “Good Queen Maud.” The feeling which prompted her aversion to the unbecoming black hood is easily to be traced in the character which Malmesbury has left of her (_Gesta Regum_, l. 5, sec. 418), though the good Queen would have forgiven serious offences sooner than the lukewarm praise accorded by that writer to her personal charms, “haud usquequaque despicabilis formæ.” Like most of her family she died in the prime of life. [185] _Wynton_, bk. 7, c. 3, l. 96, who says that Ethelred took advantage of a mist to convey the body of his mother out of the west gate before her death was generally known. The good prior was as ignorant of any divine agency on this occasion as Turgot was unconscious of any pretentions on the part of his royal mistress to supernatural gifts; but in the account of Fordun, l. 5, c. 26, the body of Margaret is conveyed through the host of Donald Bane under cover of a miraculous mist “That a mist on the Firth of Forth should be held miraculous,” remarks Lord Hailes, “must appear to the inhabitants of the Lothians a strange example of prepossession and credulity.”