Mary Middlemore (died 1618) was a Courtier and Maid of Honour to Anne of Denmark, subject of poems, and treasure hunter.[1]

Family background

Mary Middlemore was the eldest daughter of Henry Middlemore of Enfield, a groom of the privy chamber 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.[3] A monument to Robert and his wife Dorothy Fulstow or Fulstone (d. 1610) can be seen at St Andrews, Church, Enfield.[4]

Career

After her father died, her mother Elizabeth married Sir Vincent Skinner (d. 1616) an ambitious MP.[5]

Middlemore was appointed a Maid of Honour to the queen in December 1603.[6] Her companions were Anne Carey, Mary Gargrave, Elizabeth Roper, Elizabeth Harcourt, and Mary Woodhouse.[7][8] These positions were established by a household ordinance of 20 July 1603, with places for six maids of honour, a mother of the maids, and four chamberers.[9]

Rowland Whyte mentioned the maids of honour and others dancing at Hampton Court in the presence chamber of Anne of Denmark, with a French visitor, the Count of Vaudémont.[10]

In 1608 her younger sister Elizabeth married Edward Zouche of Bramshill, or perhaps Edward Zouch of Woking, Knight Marshall.[11] She died shortly afterwards and was buried in Westminster Abbey in March 1610.[12] Her brother Robert Middlemore of Thornton married Dorothy Fulstowe who also died in 1610.[13] She was a daughter of Richard Fulstowe a servant of Lord Willoughby.[14]

In 1609, an Italian poet, Antimo Galli published a book of verse, including a description The Masque of Queens performed in 1608. He included a stanza praising Mary Middlemore, with a near anagram of her surname name, "La Bella Dea D'Amore".[15]

Around Christmas time 1609/10, 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.[16] Herbert would have followed up by fighting a duel in Hyde Park, but the Privy Council prevented it.[17] John Chamberlain recorded that the Scottish man was an usher to the queen named "Boghvan".[18]

There was a musician recorded as "Jacques Bochan".[19] There was a violin player at court in 1609 called "James Bochan".[20] "Mr Bochan" taught the ladies of Anne of Denmark's household dance steps for masques. Bochan, however, was described as a French violer, attached to the household of Prince Henry from 1608 to 1610.[21] A man called "Baughan" is mentioned in the Lincoln's Inn accounts of the masque The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn in 1613 as a Marshal not a musician, and perhaps he was Anne's Scottish usher.[22] Subsequently, Edward Herbert became involved with another lady-in-waiting, Dorothy Bulstrode, and was beaten up by husband, John Eyre.[23]

The queen's secretary William Fowler dedicated poems to her, including 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.[24]

Middlemore was given mourning clothes on the death of Prince Henry in 1612.[25] On 20 August 1613 Anne of Denmark was received at Wells, Somerset, during her progress to Bath. The mayor William Bull hosted a dinner for members of her household including the four maids of honour.[26]

Anna of Denmark had a portrait of Mary Middlemore at Oatlands.[27][28] In July 1615 she was bought a bay ambling gelding horse to replace her lame grey horse.[29] After Vincent Skinner's death, her mother Elizabeth Foukes seems also to have joined the queen's household.

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.[30] She died later in the year, and perhaps did not profit from prospecting in the ruins.[31] 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.[32] Around this time, her mother joined the queen's household.[33]

Mary Middlemore died of consumption on 3 January 1618 at Whitehall Palace and was buried the next day at Westminster Abbey.[34]

References

  1. ↑ Marianna Brockmann, 'Mary Middlemore', in Carole Levin, Anna Riehl Bertolet, Jo Eldridge Carney, A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen (Routledge, 2016).
  2. ↑ William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 244-5.
  3. ↑ Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Routledge, London, 1993), p. 69.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ '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.
  6. ↑ Maurice Lee, Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603-1624 (Rutgers UP, 1972), p. 59.
  7. ↑ 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: Eva Griffith, A Jacobean Company and its Playhouse: The Queen's Servants at the Red Bull Theatre (Cambridge, 2013), p. 121.
  8. ↑ Nadine Akkerman, 'The Goddess of the Household: The Masquing Politics of Lucy Harington-Russell, Countess of Bedford', The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 2014), p. 307: See Helen Margaret Payne, 'Aristocratic Women and the Jacobean Court,1603-1625 ', Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, PhD (2001), p. 280 for lists of the queen's women.
  9. ↑ HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 672.
  10. ↑ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), pp. 99-100: Michael Brennan, Noel Kinnamon, Margaret Hannay, Letters of Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney (Philadelphia, 2013), pp. 566-7.
  11. ↑ Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 250-1.
  12. ↑ William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 246.
  13. ↑ William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 247.
  14. ↑ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. (Dublin, 1906), pp. 232, 242.
  15. ↑ Rime di Antimo Galli all' illvstrissima Signora Elizabetta Talbot-Grey (Melchisedech Bradwood, 1609), p. 46.
  16. ↑ Christine Jackson, Courtier, Scholar, and Man of the Sword: Lord Herbert of Cherbury and His World (Oxford, 2021), p. 90.
  17. ↑ Edward Herbert, The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London, 1826), pp. 108-9.
  18. ↑ Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 296.
  19. ↑ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 24 (London, 1976), p. 67.
  20. ↑ Andrew Ashbee, Records of English Court Music, 1603-1625, vol. 4 (1991), pp. 23-4.
  21. ↑ Andrew Ashbee, Records of English Court Music, 1603-1625, vol. 4 (1991), pp. 23-4, 213-4.
  22. ↑ Martin Wiggins & Catherine Richardson, British Drama, 1533-1642: 1609-1616, vol. 6 (Oxford, 2015), p. 284: REED: Lincoln's Inn Black Book 6 1612-14, f.526v
  23. ↑ Patricia Fumerton, 'Secret Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures and Sonnets', in Stephen Greenblatt, Representing the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1988), p. 124.
  24. ↑ Sara M. Dunnigan, Eros and Poetry at the Courts of Mary Queen of Scots and James VI (Palgrave: 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.
  25. ↑ Folger Shakespeare Library, catalogue X.d.572
  26. ↑ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), p. 675.
  27. ↑ Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts (Manchester, 2020), p. 97.
  28. ↑ Wendy Hitchmough, 'Setting the Stuart court: placing portraits in the performance of Anglo-Spanish negotiations', Journal of the History of Collections, 32:2 (July 2020), pp. 245-264.
  29. ↑ Frederick Madden, Issues of the Exchequer (London, 1836), p. 319.
  30. ↑ Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 7 part 3 (Hague, 1741), pp. 9-11.
  31. ↑ Francis Young, Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King (London, 2018): Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 18 (London).
  32. ↑ 'Thornton Abbey, history' English Heritage; Mark Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture (Yale, 2009), pp. 412-3.
  33. ↑ See H. M. Payne, 'Aristocratic Women and the Jacobean Court', Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, PhD 2001, p. 280 noted as "Elizabeth [?Fouke]".
  34. ↑ Collectanea topographica et genealogica, vol. 7 (London, 1841), p. 357: Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 129: Thomas Birch & Folkestone Williams, Court and Times of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1848), pp. 418, 456: Joseph Lemuel Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers: Harleian Society, vol. 10 (London, 1869), p. 114: William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 246.
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