Six children arrived at years of maturity. Edward, who was slain with his father at Alnwick; Edgar, Alexander, and David, who each in turn succeeded to the crown. The daughters were named Mary, who married Eustace, Count of Boulogne; and Matilda, or Maud, afterwards queen of Henry I.
The death of Malcolm and his eldest son, which occurred in 1093, was soon followed by that of Margaret. The brother of Malcolm assumed the crown, to the exclusion of his three nephews; and to this cause we may doubtless attribute the sending of Matilda, together with her sister, to the care of their aunt Christina, who had taken the veil in 1086.
As Matilda grew towards womanhood, more than one Norman chieftain had endeavoured to obtain her hand in marriage; but on preferring their request to William Rufus, that politic monarch had refused his consent. He did not wish to see an English princess, a lineal descendant of Alfred the Great, allied to any man whose power or abilities might enable him to aspire to the throne. Matilda, therefore, remained in the seclusion of the cloister until King Henry sent to her his proposals of marriage. It is related that the young princess received the offer with dislike if not with disdain. She was not ignorant of the sufferings which the Norman invasion had brought upon her countrymen, and her sympathy with their sorrows induced a hatred of their oppressors. Her friends and attendants, however, combated these scruples, and argued that, by her consent, she might restore, in some degree, the safety and happiness of the people, while her refusal would certainly tend to increase the enmity between the Norman and English races. It is one of the penalties attached to royalty that those connections which, in a lower and happier sphere of life, are matters of choice and affection, become among princes mere questions of State policy. Matilda felt herself unable to resist the arguments brought forward in favour of the match, and she gave an unwilling consent. An opposition on the other side, meanwhile, arose among the Norman adherents of Henry, who were ill-disposed to have an English queen to reign over them, and were probably jealous of the effect such a marriage would produce among the people in the king's favour.