Note 184 — Chapter VI · The Line of Atholl Restored.

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.