It is scarcely the result of mere chance that, in the chronicles which
make mention of the four Marys, Mary Fleming's name usually takes
precedence of those of her three colleagues. She seems to have been
tacitly recognized as "prima inter pares". This was, doubtless, less in
consequence of her belonging to one of the first houses in Scotland, for
the Livingstons, the Betons, and the Setons might well claim equality
with the Flemings, than of her being closely related to Mary Stuart
herself, though the relationship, it is true, was only on the side of
the distaff, and though there was, moreover, a bar sinister on the royal
quarterings which it added to the escutcheon of the Flemings. Mary
Fleming--Marie Flemyng, as she signed herself, or Flamy, as she was
called in the Queen's broken English--was the fourth daughter of
Malcolm, third Lord Fleming. Her mother, Janet Stuart, was a natural
daughter of King James IV. Mary Fleming and her royal mistress were
consequently first cousins. This may sufficiently account for the
greater intimacy which existed between them. Thus, after Chastelard's
outrage, it was Mary Fleming whom the Queen, dreading the loneliness
which had rendered the wild attempt possible, called in to sleep with
her, for protection.
Amongst the various festivities and celebrations which were revived in
Holyrood by Mary and the suite which she had brought with her from the
gay court of France, that of Twelfth Night seems to have been in high
favour, as, indeed, it still is in some provinces of France at the
present day. In the "gâteau des Rois", or Twelfth Night Cake, it was
customary to hide a bean, and when the cake was cut up and distributed,
the person to whom chance--or not infrequently design--brought the piece
containing the bean, was recognized sole monarch of the revels until the
stroke of midnight. On the 6th of January, 1563, Mary Fleming was
elected queen by favour of the bean. Her mistress, entering into the
spirit of the festivities, with her characteristic considerateness for
even the amusement of those about her, abdicated her state in favour of
the mimic monarch of the night. A letter written by Randolph to Lord
Dudley, and bearing the date of the 15th of January, gives an
interesting and vivid picture of the fair maid of honour decked out in
her royal mistress's jewels: "You should have seen here upon Tuesday the
great solemnity and royall estate of the Queen of the Beene. Fortune was
so favourable to faire Flemyng, that, if shee could have seen to have
judged of her vertue and beauty, as blindly she went to work and chose
her at adventure, shee would sooner have made her Queen for ever, then
for one night only, to exalt her so high and the nixt to leave her in
the state she found her.... That day yt was to be seen, by her princely
pomp, how fite a match she would be, wer she to contend ether with Venus
in beauty, Minerva in witt, or Juno in worldly wealth, haveing the two
former by nature, and of the third so much as is contained in this
realme at her command and free disposition. The treasure of Solomon, I
trowe, was not to be compared unto that which hanged upon her back....
The Queen of the Beene was in a gowne of cloath of silver; her head, her
neck, her shoulders, the rest of her whole body, so besett with stones,
that more in our whole jewell house wer not to be found. The Queen
herself was apparelled in collours whyt and black, no other jewell or
gold about her bot the ring that I brought her from the Queen's Majestie
hanging at her breast, with a lace of whyt and black about her neck." In
another part of the same letter the writer becomes even more
enthusiastic: "Happy was it unto this realm," he says, "that her reign
endured no longer. Two such nights in one state, in so good accord, I
believe was never seen, as to behold two worthy queens possess, without
envy, one kingdom, both upon a day. I leave the rest to your lordship to
be judged of. My pen staggereth, my hand faileth, further to write....
The cheer was great. I never found myself so happy, nor so well treated,
until that it came to the point that the old queen herself, to show her
mighty power, contrary unto the assurance granted me by the younger
queen, drew me into the dance, which part of the play I could with good
will have spared to your lordship, as much fitter for the purpose."[59]
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 be
When regal honours she accorded thee;
Or, if she were, then 'twas by Virtue led
She 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 Mauvissière, 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 I^{m} V^{c} 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.