The marriage caused consternation from Mary, Queen of Scots, as the couple had married without having obtained royal consent.
On 26 March 1564, she married her first husband, John Knox, leader of the Scottish Reformation, and a close friend of her father.
His first wife, Marjorie Bowes, had died in December 1560, leaving him with two small sons, Nathaniel and Eleazer.
The couple made their home on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, and together they had three daughters:[4] Margaret served as Knox's secretary, and later, when he became ill, his nurse.
[8] On 8 April 1574, a Charter of Alienation confirmed Ker's provision for Margaret, in her widowhood, of the liferent of a third of ancestral lands in Haddingtonshire.