Anne Lyon, Countess of Kinghorne

Anne Murray, Countess of Kinghorne (1579 – 27 February 1618), Scottish courtier said to be the mistress of James VI of Scotland.

Fair Mistress Anne Murray

Anne Murray was the daughter of John Murray, 1st Earl of Tullibardine, Master of the King's Household and Catherine Drummond. Her name was sometimes written "Agnes", in correspondence and in anonymous verses in her praise which include anagrams such as the acrostic sonnet "AMAGEMURNSAYAM", and a sonnet with the anagram "AGE MURNES AYE".[1]

Her sister Lilias Murray married John Grant of Freuchie in June 1591. James VI and John Wemyss of Logie attended the wedding at Tullibardine, and performed in a masque.[2] On the same day the Earl of Bothwell escaped from Edinburgh Castle.[3] One of her brothers was killed at battle of Glenlivet in 1594.[4]

Anne Murray was said to be the mistress of King James VI. This identification comes from poems written by the king, given titles "A Dreame on his Mistres My Ladie Glammis" and "A Complaint on his Mistressis Absence from Court". Her husband's aristocratic title was "Lord Glamis".[5]

The "Complaint" poem compares her absence from court to a garland missing its flower, and a button or a jewel, a "chatton" missing its gemstone (lines 50-51);

The court as garland lacks the cheefest floure
The court a chatton toome that lacks her stone
(modernised)
The court is a garland missing her chiefest flower
The court is an empty button that lacks her gemstone.[6]

The "Dream" poem includes the imagery of gifts of an empty gold locket, a "tablet" and an amethyst.[7] In the dream, the amethyst with its traditional healing powers will encourage the king's unswerving devotion. The locket is the "chasteness", the chastity of the king's mistress, and her wandering thoughts are like the trails of enamel on the case. On one leaf of the case there is a picture of a naked man sheltered from the sun in a green forest. This image represents the pleasure his mistress's singing voice brings the court. The other leaf shows the sun amidst the stars, as his mistress is the first among the ladies of the court. Inside the locket there is an image of cupid with his bow, but as yet, no picture of the king's mistress. By these two dream tokens the king imagines their love is knit together until cut by the fate "Atrope", Atropos.[8]

A letter from John Carey, son of Henry Carey, governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed to Cecil, 10 May 1595, discussing her marriage calls her "fayre Mistris Ann Murray the Kinges Mistris".[9] Carey's letter shows that Anne Murray was known as the king's mistress in London, and perhaps the poem "A Dreame on his Mistres" had circulated in manuscript at the English court.

Marriage

In May 1595, she married Patrick Lyon, 9th Lord Glamis who would later become the Earl of Kinghorne, at Stirling. In early modern Scotland married women did not usually adopt their husband's surnames.[10] Lyon was the son of John Lyon, 8th Lord Glamis and Elizabeth Abernethy.[11]

The king and queen planned to come to the wedding banquet on 1 June, to be celebrated with "great triumph" at Stirling Castle, but Anne of Denmark was ill again, rumoured to have suffered a miscarriage.[12] Roger Aston wrote that the banquet was to be held at the Countess of Mar's new house in Stirling, perhaps Mar's Wark, followed by celebrations at Gask, the house of the Laird of Tullibardine.[13]

John Carey thought the wedding was held at Linlithgow, and some sources following Carey's letter state the wedding took place in June at Linlithgow.[14] Neither James VI or Anne of Denmark attended the wedding because Anne was ill at Linlithgow. James VI invited the Earl of Mar to join merry making at Gask in July 1595 and this was probably the "in-fare" feast for the wedding.[15]

Before the wedding, Anne Murray was said to be trying to make the wedding a peaceful occasion to bring together factions at court. The marriage was of political significance in Scotland, controversially arranged by the Earl of Mar, whose mother Annabell was a Tullibardine Murray, without the knowledge of Patrick's uncle, Thomas Lyon, Master of Glamis.[16] The Master of Glamis wanted Patrick to marry a sister of the Laird of Cessford. Mar's actions were part of his feud with the Chancellor of Scotland, John Maitland of Thirlestane.[17]

At Blair Castle a spade from Sri Lanka is said to have been a gift from Patrick Lyon to Anne Murray in 1594.[18]

James VI and Euphemia Douglas

In 1593 James VI had been linked with another member of the Lyon family, Eufamia Douglas, daughter of Sir William Douglas of Lochleven, Earl of Morton and Agnes Leslie. She married the Master of Glamis in 1586. She and her sisters were sometimes called the "seven pearls of Lochleven", and she may also have been known as "Lady Glamis".

Dr Tobias Matthew, Bishop of Durham wrote of the "king's affection to the Lady Morton's daughter", and that she might be connected with the Earl of Bothwell's schemes, and draw a person of "greater estate" into Elizabeth's devotion. In a second letter Matthew mentioned a mystery concerning the "king's love" Lady Morton's daughter and the contents of a letter intercepted by Bothwell concerning the succession to the English throne intended for a person of "great estate".[19] Euphemia Douglas however, was not the king's mistress mentioned in Carey's letters, and it also possible that Matthew's story concerned another of the seven Douglas of Lochleven sisters.[20]

Family

Children of Anne and Patrick Lyon, 1st Earl of Kinghorne were:

She died on 27 February 1618.

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References
  1. Henry W. Meikle, Works of William Fowler, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1914), pp. 352, 353.
  2. Michael Pearce, 'Anna of Denmark: Fashioning a Danish Court in Scotland', The Court Historian, 24:2 (2019) p. 149.
  3. W. Boyd & H. Meikle, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 533-5.
  4. Annie I. Cameron, Calendar of State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 458.
  5. Allan Westcott, New poems by James I of England: from a hitherto unpublished manuscript (Columbia University Press, 1911), pp. 12, 78-80: Neill Rhodes, Jennifer Richards, Joseph Marshall, King James VI and I: Selected Writings (Ashgate Publishing, 2004), pp. 129, 131-8. ISBN 978-0-7546-0482-2: Helena Mennie Shire, Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 193-4.
  6. Allan Westcott, New poems by James I of England: from a hitherto unpublished manuscript (Columbia University Press, 1911), p. 12.
  7. Morna R. Fleming, 'The Amatoria of James VI, in Daniel Fischlin & Mark Fortier, Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I (Detroit, 2002), pp. 124-148 at pp. 134-140.
  8. Allan Westcott, New poems by James I of England: from a hitherto unpublished manuscript (Columbia University Press, 1911), pp. 12-19.
  9. John Stewart-Murray, Duke of Atholl, Chronicles of the Atholl and Tullibardine families, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1908), p. 19: J. Bain, Calendar of letters and papers relating to the affairs of the borders of England and Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1894), pp. 30-1, 44.
  10. Jenny Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community (London, 1981), p. 30.
  11. G. R. Hewitt, ‘Lyon, John, eighth Lord Glamis (c.1544–1578)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 22 March 2011
  12. Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), nos. 533, 550, 556.
  13. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 248.
  14. Scots Peerage (Edinburgh, 1911), p. 294.
  15. Annie I. Cameron, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 659-660, 663.
  16. Calendar of State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 583: Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), pp. 242-3.
  17. Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), nos. 527, 528, 530, 533, 534, 545.
  18. Blair Castle, guidebook, p. 6.
  19. Joseph Bain, Calendar of Border Papers, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1894), pp. 484, 491.
  20. Westcott, New Poems by James I of England, p. 79.


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