Mary Middlemore
Mary Middlemore (d. 1618), Courtier and Maid of Honour to Anne of Denmark, subject of poems, and treasure hunter.[1]
Mary Middlemore was the eldest daughter of Henry Middlemore of Enfield, a groom to Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Fowkes from Somerset. Henry Middlemore had been sent as a messenger in 1568 to Mary, Queen of Scots at Carlisle Castle and to her half-brother Regent Moray in Scotland.[2]
Mary's brother Robert Middlemore (d. 1629) was an equerry to King James. A monument to Robert and his wife Dorothy Fulstow or Fulstone (d. 1610) can be seen at St Andrews, Church, Enfield.[3]
After her father died, her mother Elizabeth married Sir Vincent Skinner (d. 1616) an ambitious MP.[4]
Mary was appointed a Maid of Honour to the queen in 1604, her companions were Anne Carey, Mary Gargrave, Elizabeth Roper, Elizabeth Harcourt, and Mary Woodhouse.[5]
In 1608 her younger sister Elizabeth married Edward Zouche of Bramshill, or perhaps Edward Zouch.[6] She died shortly afterwards and was buried in Westminster Abbey in March 1610.[7] Her brother Robert Middlemore of Thornton married Dorothy Fulstowe who also died in 1610.[8] She was a daughter of Richard Fulstowe a servant of Lord Willoughby.[9]
Around Christmastime 1609, Sir Edward Herbert fought with a Scottish gentleman who had snatched a ribbon from her hair in a back room of the queen's lodgings at Greenwich Palace. Herbert would have followed up by fighting a duel in Hyde Park, but the Privy Council prevented it.[10] John Chamberlain recorded that the Scottish man was an usher to the queen named "Boghvan", also recorded as "Jacques Bochan".[11]
The queen's secretary William Fowler dedicated poems to her, the Meditation upon Virgin Maryes Hatt, and Aetna which includes her name; "My harte as Aetna burnes, and suffers MORE / Paines in my MIDDLE than ever MARY proved", and devised an Italian anagram "Madre di mill'amori", the mother of a thousand loves.[12] Anna of Denmark had a portrait of Mary Middlemore at Oatlands.[13]
In July 1615 she was bought a bay ambling gelding horse to replace her lame grey horse.[14]
On 29 April 1617 Middlemore was granted a licence by the king to have workmen seek treasure in Glastonbury Abbey, St Albans Abbey, Bury St Edmunds Abbey, and Romsey Abbey.[15] She died later in the year, and perhaps did not profit from prospecting in the ruins.[16] The gift has sometimes been assumed to be intended for the queen, but it may be connected with the financial ruin and death of her step-father Sir Vincent Skinner, who had been building a country house at Thornton Abbey.[17] Around this time, her mother joined the queen's household.[18]
Mary Middlemore died of consumption on 3 January 1618 and was buried the next day at Westminster Abbey.[19]
References
- ^ Marianna Brockmann, 'Mary Middlemore', in Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, Jo Eldridge Carney, A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen (Routledge, 2016).
- ^ William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 244-5.
- ^ Collectanea topographica et genealogica, vol. 7 (London, 1841), p. 357: William Robinson, The History and Antiquities of Enfield, in the County of Middlesex, vol. 2 (London, 1823), pp. 46-7.
- ^ 'SKINNER, Sir Vincent (1543-1616)', Rosemary Sgroi, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010.
- ^ Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 69: Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1791), p. 228.
- ^ Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 250-1.
- ^ William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 246.
- ^ William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 247.
- ^ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. (Dublin, 1906), pp. 232, 242.
- ^ Edward Herbert, The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London, 1826), pp. 108-9.
- ^ Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 296: HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 24 (London, 1976), p. 67.
- ^ Sara M. Dunnigan, Eros and Poetry at the Courts of Mary Queen of Scots and James VI (Basingstoke, 2002), p. 208 fn. 6: Alastair Fowler, Literary names: Personal names (Oxford, 2012), p. 84: R. D. S. Jack, The Italian Influence on Scottish Literature (Edinburgh, 1972), p. 76.
- ^ Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts (Manchester, 2020), p. 97.
- ^ Frederick Madden, Issues of the Exchequer (London, 1836), p. 319.
- ^ Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 7 part 3 (Hague, 1741), pp. 9-11.
- ^ Francis Young, Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King (London, 2018): Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 18 (London).
- ^ 'Thornton Abbey, history' English Heritage; Mark Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture (Yale, 2009), pp. 412-3.
- ^ See H. M. Payne, 'Aristocratic Women and the Jacobean Court', Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, PhD 2001, p. 280 noted as "Elizabeth [?Fouke]".
- ^ Collectanea topographica et genealogica, vol. 7 (London, 1841), p. 357: Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 129: Joseph Lemuel Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers: Harleian Society, vol. 10 (London, 1869), p. 114: William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 246.