In Byways of Scottish History

The queen of this Twelfth-Tide pageant was also celebrated by the court poet Buchanan. Amongst his epigrams there is one bearing the title: "Ad Mariam Flaminiam sorte Reginam":

Could worth or high descent a crown bestow,Thou hadst been Queen, fair Fleming, long ago;Were grace and beauty titles to the throne,No grace or beauty had outshone thine own;Did vows of mortal men avail with Fate,Our vows had raised thee to the royal state.The fickle Deity that rules mankind,Though blind and deaf and foolish in her mind,Seemed neither foolish, deaf, nor blind to beWhen regal honours she accorded thee;Or, if she were, then 'twas by Virtue ledShe placed the diadem upon thy head.60

The "Faire Flemyng" found an admirer amongst the English gentlemen whom political business had brought to the Scotch Court. This was Sir Henry Sidney, of whom Naunton reports that he was a statesman "of great parts". As Sir Henry was born in 1519, and consequently over twenty years older than the youthful maid of honour, his choice cannot be considered to have been a very judicious one, nor can the ill-success of his suit appear greatly astonishing. And yet, as the sequel was to show, Mary Fleming had no insuperable objection to an advantageous match on the score of disparity of age. In the year following that in which she figured as Queen of the Bean at Holyrood, the gossiping correspondence of the time expatiates irreverently enough on Secretary Maitland's wooing of the maid of honour. He was about forty at the time, and it was not very long since his first wife, Janet Monteith, had died. Mary Fleming was about two-and-twenty. There was, consequently, some show of reason for the remark made by Kirkcaldy of Grange, in communicating to Randolph the new matrimonial project in which Maitland was embarked: "The Secretary's wife is dead, and he is a suitor to Mary Fleming, who is as meet for him as I am to be a page".61 Cecil appears to have been taken into the Laird of Lethington's confidence, and doubtless found amusement in the enamoured statesman's extravagance. "The common affairs do never so much trouble me but that at least I have one merry hour of the four-and-twenty… Those that be in love are ever set upon a merry pin; yet I take this to be a most singular remedy for all diseases in all persons."62 Two of the keenest politicians of their age laying aside their diplomatic gravity and forgetting the jealousies and the rivalry of their respective courts to discuss the charms of the Queen's youthful maid of honour: it is a charming historical vignette not without interest and humour even at this length of time. We may judge to what extent the Secretary was "set on a merry pin", from Randolph's description of the courtship. In a letter dated 31 March, 1565, and addressed to Sir Henry Sidney, Mary Fleming's old admirer, he writes: "She neither remembereth you, nor scarcely acknowledgeth that you are her man. Your lordship, therefore, need not to pride you of any such mistress in this court; she hath found another whom she doth love better. Lethington now serveth her alone, and is like, for her sake, to run beside himself. Both night and day he attendeth, he watcheth, he wooeth – his folly never more apparent than in loving her, where he may be assured that, how much soever he make of her, she will always love another better. This much I have written for the worthy praise of your noble mistress, who, now being neither much worth in beauty, nor greatly to be praised in virtue, is content, in place of lords and earls, to accept to her service a poor pen clerk."63 We have not to reconcile the ill-natured and slanderous remarks of Randolph's letter with the glowing panegyric penned by him some two years previously. That he intended to comfort the rejected suitor, and to tone down the disappointment and the jealousy which he might feel at the success of a rival not greatly younger than himself, would be too charitable a supposition. It is not improbable that he may have had more personal reasons for his spite, and that when, in the same letter, he describes "Fleming that once was so fair", wishing "with many a sigh that Randolph had served her", he is giving a distorted and unscrupulous version of an episode not unlike that between Mary Fleming and Sir Henry himself. To give even the not very high-minded Randolph his due, however, it is but fair to add that his later letters, whilst fully bearing out what he had previously stated with regard to Maitland's lovemaking, throw no doubt on Mary's sincerity: "Lethington hath now leave and time to court his mistress, Mary Fleming";64 and, again, "My old friend, Lethington, hath leisure to make love; and, in the end, I believe, as wise as he is, will show himself a very fool, or stark, staring mad".65 This "leisure to make love" is attributed to Rizzio, then in high favour with the Queen. This was about the end of 1565. Early in 1566, however, the unfortunate Italian was murdered under circumstances too familiar to need repetition, and for his share in the unwarrantable transaction, Secretary Maitland was banished from the royal presence. The lovers were, in consequence, parted for some six months, from March to September. It was about this time that Queen Mary, dreading the hour of her approaching travail, and haunted by a presentiment that it would prove fatal to her, caused inventories of her private effects to be drawn up, and made legacies to her personal friends and attendants. The four Marys were not forgotten. They were each to receive a diamond; "Aux quatre Maries, quatre autres petis diamants de diverse façon",66 besides a portion of the Queen's needlework and linen: "tous mes ouurasges, manches et collets aux quatre Maries".67 In addition to this, there was set down for "Flamy", two pieces of gold lace with ornaments of white and red enamel, a dress, a necklace, and a chain to be used as a girdle. We may infer that red and white were the maid of honour's favourite colours, for "blancq et rouge" appear in some form or another in all the items of the intended legacy.68

As we have said, the Secretary's disgrace was not of long duration. About September he was reinstated in the Queen's favour, and in December received from her a dress of cloth of gold trimmed with silver lace: "Une vasquyne de toille d'or plaine auecq le corps de mesme fait a bourletz borde dung passement dargent".69

On the 6th of January, 1567, William Maitland of Lethington and Mary Fleming were married at Stirling, where the Queen was keeping her court, and where she spent the last Twelfth-Tide she was to see outside the walls of a prison. The Secretary's wife, as Mary was frequently styled after her marriage, did not cease to be in attendance upon her royal cousin, and we get occasional glimpses of her in the troubled times which were to follow. Thus, on the eventful morning on which Bothwell's trial began, Mary Fleming stood with the Queen at the window from which the latter, after having imprudently refused an audience to the Provost-Marshal of Berwick, Elizabeth's messenger, still more imprudently watched the bold Earl's departure and, it was reported, smiled and nodded encouragement. Again, in the enquiry which followed the Queen's escape from Lochleven, it appeared that her cousin had been privy to the plot for her release, and had found the means of conveying to the royal captive the assurance that her friends were working for her deliverance: "The Queen", so ran the evidence of one of the attendants examined after the flight, "said scho gat ane ring and three wordis in Italianis in it. I iudget it cam fra the Secretar, because of the language. Scho said, 'Na, … it was ane woman. All the place saw hir weyr it. Cursall show me the Secretaris wiff send it, and the vreting of it was ane fable of Isop betuix the Mouss and the Lioune, hou the Mouss for ane plesour done to hir be the Lioune, efter that, the Lioune being bound with ane corde, the Mouss schuyr the corde and let the Lioune louss.'"70

During her long captivity in England, the unfortunate Queen was not unmindful of the love and devotion of her faithful attendant. Long years after she had been separated from her, whilst in prison at Sheffield, she gives expression to her longing for the presence of Mary Fleming, and in a letter written "du manoir de Sheffield", on the 1st of May, 1581, to Monsieur de Mauvissiére, the French ambassador, she begs him to renew her request to Elizabeth that the Lady of Lethington should be allowed to tend her in "the valetudinary state into which she has fallen, of late years, owing to the bad treatment to which she has been subjected".71

But the Secretary's wife had had her own trials and her own sorrows. On the 9th of June, 1573, her husband died at Leith, "not without suspicion of poison", according to Killigrew. Whether he died by his own hand, or by the act of his enemies, is a question which we are not called upon to discuss. The evidence of contemporaries is conflicting, "some supponyng he tak a drink and died as the auld Romans wer wont to do", as Sir James Melville reports;72 others, and amongst these Queen Mary herself, that he had been foully dealt with. Writing to Elizabeth, she openly gives expression to this belief: "the principal (of the rebel lords) were besieged by your forces in the Castle of Edinburgh, and one of the first among them poisoned".

Maitland was to have been tried "for art and part of the treason, conspiracy, consultation, and treating of the King's murder". According to the law of Scotland, a traitor's guilt was not cancelled by death. The corpse might be arraigned and submitted to all the indignities which the barbarous code of the age recognized as the punishment of treason. It was intended to inflict the fullest penalty upon Maitland's corpse, and it remained unburied "till the vermin came from his corpse, creeping out under the door of the room in which he was lying".73 In her distress the widow applied to Burleigh, in a touching letter which is still preserved. It bears the date of the 21st of June, 1573.

My very good Lord, – After my humble commendations, it may please your Lordship that the causes of the sorrowful widow, and orphants, by Almighty God recommended to the superior powers, together with the firm confidence my late husband, the Laird of Ledington, put in your Lordship's only help is the occasion, that I his desolat wife (though unknown to your Lordship), takes the boldness by these few lines, to humblie request your Lordship, that as my said husband being alive expected no small benefit at your hands, so now I may find such comfort, that the Queen's Majestie, your Sovereign, may by your travell and means be moved to write to my Lord Regent of Scotland, that the body of my husband, which when alive has not been spared in her hieness' service, may now, after his death, receive no shame, or ignominy, and that his heritage taken from him during his lifetime, now belonging to me and his children, that have not offended, by a disposition made a long time ago, may be restored, which is aggreeable both to equity and the laws of this realme; and also your Lordship will not forget my husband's brother, the Lord of Coldingham, ane innocent gentleman, who was never engaged in these quarrels, but for his love to his brother, accompanied him, and is now a prisoner with the rest, that by your good means, and procurement, he may be restored to his own, by doing whereof, beside the blessing of God, your lordship will also win the goodwill of many noblemen and gentlemen.74

Burleigh lost no time in laying the widow's petition before Elizabeth, and on the 19th of July a letter written at Croydon was dispatched to the Regent Morton: "For the bodie of Liddington, who died before he was convict in judgment, and before any answer by him made to the crymes objected to him, it is not our maner in this contrey to show crueltey upon the dead bodies so unconvicted, but to suffer them streight to be buried, and put in the earth. And so suerly we think it mete to be done in this case, for (as we take it) it was God's pleasure he should be taken away from the execucion of judgment, so we think consequently that it was His divine pleasure that the bodie now dead should not be lacerated, nor pullid in pieces, but be buried like to one who died in his bed, and by sicknes, as he did."75

Such a petitioner as the Queen of England was not to be denied, and Maitland's body was allowed the rites of burial. The other penalties which he had incurred by his treason – real or supposed – were not remitted. An Act of Parliament was passed "for rendering the children, both lawful and natural, of Sir William Maitland of Lethington, the younger, and of several others, who had been convicted of the murder of the King's father, incapable of enjoying, or claiming, any heritages, lands, or possessions in Scotland".

The widow herself was also subjected to petty annoyances at the instigation of Morton. She was called upon to restore the jewels which her royal mistress had given her as a free gift, and in particular, "one chayn of rubeis with twelf markes of dyamontis and rubeis, and ane mark with twa rubeis".76 Even her own relatives seemed to have turned against her in her distress. In a letter written in French to her sister-in-law, Isabel, wife of James Heriot of Trabroun, she refers to some accusation brought against her by her husband's brother, Coldingham – the same for whom she had interceded in her letter to Burleigh – and begs to be informed as to the nature of the charge made to the Regent, "car ace que jantans il me charge de quelque chose, je ne say que cest".77 The letter bears no date, but seems to have been penned when the writer's misery was at its sorest, for it concludes with an earnest prayer that patience may be given her to bear the weight of her misfortunes.

Better days, however, were yet in store for the much-tried Mary Fleming, for in February, 1584, the "relict of umquhill William Maitland, younger of Lethington, Secretare to our Soverane Lord", succeeded in obtaining a reversion of her husband's forfeiture. In May of the same year,78 the Parliament allowed "Marie Flemyng and hir bairns to have bruik and inioy the same and like fauour, grace and priuilege and conditioun as is contenit in the pacificatioun maid and accordit at Perthe, the xxiii day of Februar, the yeir of God Im Vc lxxxij yeiris".

With this document one of the four Marys disappears from the scene. Of her later life we have no record. That it was thoroughly happy we can scarcely assume, for we know that her only son James died in poverty and exile.

MARY LIVINGSTON

Mary Livingston, or, as she signed herself, Marie Leuiston, was the daughter of Alexander, fifth Lord Livingston. She was a cousin of Mary Fleming's, and, like her, related, though more distantly, to the sovereign. When she sailed from Scotland in 1548, as one of the playmates of the infant Mary Stuart, she was accompanied by both her father and her mother. Within a few years, however, she was left to the sole care of the latter, Lord Livingston having died in France in 1553. Of her life at the French Court we have no record. Her first appearance in the pages of contemporary chroniclers is on the 22nd of April, 1562, the year after her return to Scotland. On that date, the young Queen, who delighted in the sport of archery, shot off a match in her private gardens at St. Andrews. Her own partner was the Master of Lindsay.79 Their opponents were the Earl of Moray, then only Earl of Mar, and Mary Livingston, whose skill is reported to have been – when courtesy allowed it – quite equal to that of her royal mistress.

The next item of information is to be found in the matter-of-fact columns of an account book, in which we find it entered that the Queen gave Mary Livingston some grey damask for a gown, in September, 1563,80 and some black velvet for the same purpose in the following February.81 Shortly after this, however, there occurred an event of greater importance, which supplied the letter-writers of the day with material for their correspondence. On the 5th of March, 1564, Mary Livingston was married to James Sempill, of Beltreis. It was the first marriage amongst the Marys, and consequently attracted considerable attention for months before the celebration. As early as January, Paul de Foix, the French Ambassador, makes allusion to the approaching event: "Elle a commencé à marier ses quatre Maries", he writes to Catharine de' Medici, "et dict qu'elle veult estre de la bande".82 In a letter, dated the 9th of the same month, Randolph, faithful to his habit of communicating all the gossip of the Court in his reports to England, informs Bedford of the intended marriage: "I learned yesterday that there is a conspiracy here framed against you. The matter is this: the Lord Sempill's son, being an Englishman born, shall be married between this and Shrovetide to the Lord Livingston's sister. The Queen, willing him well, both maketh the marriage and indoweth the parties with land. To do them honour she will have them marry in the Court. The thing intended against your lordship is this, that Sempill himself shall come to Berwicke within these fourteen days, and desire you to be at the bridal."83 Writing to Leicester, he repeats his information: "It will not be above 6 or 7 days before the Queen (returning from her progress into Fifeshire) will be in this town. Immediately after that ensueth the great marriage of this happy Englishman that shall marry lovely Livingston."84 Finally, on the 4th of March, he again writes: "Divers of the noblemen have come to this great marriage, which to-morrow shall be celebrated".85 Randolph's epistolary garrulity has, in this instance, served one good purpose, of which he probably little dreamt when he filled his correspondence with the small talk of the Court circle. It enables us to refute a calumnious assertion made by John Knox with reference to the marriage of the Queen's maid of honour. "It was weill knawin that schame haistit mariage betwix John Sempill, callit the Danser, and Marie Levingstoune, surnameit the Lustie."86 Randolph's first letter, showing, as it does, that preparations for the wedding were in progress as early as the beginning of January, summarily dismisses the charge of "haste" in its celebration, whilst, for those who are familiar with the style of the English envoy's correspondence, his very silence will appear the strongest proof that Mary's fair fame was tarnished by no breath of scandal. The birth of her first child in 1566, a fact to which the family records of the house of Sempill bear witness, establishes more irrefutably than any argument the utter falsity of Knox's unscrupulous assertion.

John Sempill, whose grace in dancing had acquired for him the surname which seems to have lain so heavily on Knox's conscience, and whose good fortune in finding favour with lovely Mary Livingston called forth Randolph's congratulations, was the eldest son of the third lord, by his second wife Elizabeth Carlyle of Torthorwold. At Court, as may have been gathered from Randolph's letters, he was known as the "Englishman", owing to the fact of his having been born in Newcastle. Although of good family himself, and in high favour at Court, being but a younger son he does not seem to have been considered on all hands as a fitting match for Mary Livingston. This the Queen, of whose making the marriage was, herself confesses in a letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow, reminding him that, "in a country where these formalities were looked to", exception had been taken to the marriage both of Mary and Magdalene Livingston on the score that they had taken as husbands "the younger sons of their peers —les puînés de leurs semblables".87 Mary Stuart seems to have been above such prejudices, and showed how heartily she approved of the alliance between the two families by her liberality to the bride. Shortly before the marriage she gave her a band covered with pearls, a basquina of grey satin, a mantle of black taffety made in the Spanish fashion with silver buttons, and also a gown of black taffety. It was she, too, who furnished the bridal dress, which cost £30, as entered in the accounts under date of the 10th of March: —

Item: Ane pund xiii unce of silver to ane gown of Marie Levingstoune's to her mariage, the unce xxv s. Summa xxx li.

The "Inuentair of the Quenis movables quhilkis ar in the handes of Seruais de Condy vallett of chalmer to hir Grace", records, further, that there was "deliueret in Merche 1564, to Johnne Semples wiff, ane bed of scarlett veluot bordit with broderie of black veluot, furnisit with ruif heidpece, thre pandis, twa vnderpandis, thre curtenis of taffetie of the same cullour without freingis. The bed is furnisit with freingis of the same cullour." To make her gift complete, the Queen, as another household document, her wardrobe book, testifies, added the following items: —

Item: Be the said precept to Marie Levingstoun xxxi elnis ii quarters of quhite fustiane to be ane marterass, the eln viii s. Summa xii li xii s.

Item: xvi elnis of cammes to be palzeass, the eln vi s. Summa iiij li xvj s.

Item: For nappes and fedders; v li.

Item: Ane elne of lane; xxx s.

Item: ij unce of silk; xx s.

The wedding for which such elaborate preparation had been made, and for which the Queen herself named the day, took place, in the presence of the whole Court and all the foreign ambassadors, on Shrove Tuesday, which, as has already been mentioned, was on the 5th of March. In the evening the wedding guests were entertained at a masque, which was supplied by the Queen, but of which we know nothing further than may be gathered from the following entry: —

Item: To the painter for the mask on Fastionis evin to Marie Levingstoun's marriage; xij li.88

The marriage contract, which was signed at Edinburgh on the Sunday preceding the wedding, bears the names of the Queen, of John Lord Erskine, Patrick Lord Ruthven, and of Secretary Maitland of Lethington. The bride's dowry consisted of £500 a year in land, the gift of the Queen, to which Lord Livingston added 100 merks a year in land, or 1000 merks in money. As a jointure she received the Barony of Beltreis near Castle Semple, in Renfrewshire, the lands of Auchimanes and Calderhaugh, with the rights of fisheries in the Calder, taxed to the Crown at £18, 16s. 8d. a year.89

A few days after the marriage, on the 9th of March, a grant from the Queen to Mary Livingston and John Sempill passed the great seal. In this official document she styles the bride "her familiar servatrice", and the bridegroom "her daily and familiar serviter, during all the youthheid and minority of the said serviters". In recognition of their services both to herself and the Queen Regent, she infeofs them in her town and lands of Auchtermuchty, part of her royal demesne in Fifeshire, the lands and lordships of Stewarton in Ayr, and the isle of Little Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde.

After her marriage "Madamoiselle de Semple" was appointed lady of the bedchamber, an office for which she received £200 a year. Her husband also seems to have retained some office which required his personal attendance on the Queen, for we know that both husband and wife were in waiting at Holyrood on the memorable evening of David Rizzio's murder. The shock which this tragic event produced on Mary was very great, and filled her with the darkest forebodings. She more than once expressed her fear that she would not survive her approaching confinement. About the end of May or the beginning of June, shortly before the solemn ceremony of "taking her chamber", she caused an inventory of her personal effects to be drawn up by Mary Livingston and Margaret Carwod, the bedchamber woman in charge of her cabinet, and with her own hand wrote, on the margin opposite to each of the several articles, the name of the person for whom it was intended, in the event of her death and of that of her infant. Mary Livingston's name appears by the side of the following objects in the original document, which was discovered among some unassorted law papers in the Register House, in August, 1854: —

Quatre vingtz deux esguillettes xliiij petittes de mesme facon esmaillez de blancq.

Une brodure du toure contenante xxv pieces esmaille de blanc et noir facon de godrons.

Vne brodeure doreillette de pareille facon contenante xxvij pieces esmaillees de blanc et noir.

Vne cottouere de semblable facon contenante lx pieces de pareille facon esmaillee de blanc et noir.

Vng carcan esmaille de blanc et noir contenant dixsept pieces et a chacune piece y a vng petit pandant.