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
  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. 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.
  4. '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.
  5. 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.
  6. Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1838), pp. 250-1.
  7. William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 246.
  8. William Phillimore, Family of Middlemore (London, 1901), p. 247.
  9. HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. (Dublin, 1906), pp. 232, 242.
  10. Edward Herbert, The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury (London, 1826), pp. 108-9.
  11. Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 296: HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 24 (London, 1976), p. 67.
  12. 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.
  13. Jemma Field, Anna of Denmark: The Material and Visual Culture of the Stuart Courts (Manchester, 2020), p. 97.
  14. Frederick Madden, Issues of the Exchequer (London, 1836), p. 319.
  15. Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 7 part 3 (Hague, 1741), pp. 9-11.
  16. Francis Young, Edmund: In Search of England's Lost King (London, 2018): Thomas Rymer, Foedera, vol. 18 (London).
  17. 'Thornton Abbey, history' English Heritage; Mark Girouard, Elizabethan Architecture (Yale, 2009), pp. 412-3.
  18. See H. M. Payne, 'Aristocratic Women and the Jacobean Court', Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, PhD 2001, p. 280 noted as "Elizabeth [?Fouke]".
  19. 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.
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