[5] She was sent to a boarding-school in Edinburgh for six months to improve her handwriting and grammar when she was fifteen, by which time all her siblings but one, Margaret, were dead.

[4] A young Glasgow lawyer, James Maclehose (c.1754–1812), courted her, however for some reason he was forbidden to enter the Craig family home by Agnes's father.

James found ways of meeting with her, one of which was by making himself the only other occupant of a Glasgow to Edinburgh coach in which she was booked to travel for a ten-hour journey, by the simple expedient of purchasing all the other seats.

21 April 1781) in December 1780,[9] she formally left her husband because of his mental cruelty and depression, returning to her father in Glasgow's Saltmarket, whilst James ended up at first in a debtors' prison before emigrating to Jamaica in 1782, his wife having refused to accompany him after receiving a letter in which he wrote "For my part, I am willing to forget what is past, neither do I require an apology from you.

One of her sons, Andrew, her only child to reach adulthood, became a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh and helped support her in her old age.

James was not on the quayside to meet her, and she found that her place had been taken by Ann Chalon Rivvere, his negro mistress, who had borne him a daughter, Arm Lavinia Maclehose.

[6] She was described as "short in stature, her form graceful, her hands and feet small and complexion fair, her cheeks ruddy, and a well-formed mouth displayed teeth beautifully white.

[18] Agnes was attracted to him and upon her return home she wrote Burns a note inviting him to drink tea with her the following Thursday at her house on General's Entry on the west side of Potterrow.

However, the actions of a coachman, probably drunk, caused the poet to fall from a coach and injure his knee, and his doctor insisted that he refrain from walking.

"[17] On or around 8 December he wrote to her to explain his misfortune and pay her compliments, saying: "I can say with truth, Madam, that I never met with a person in my life whom I more anxiously wished to meet again than yourself...

I am strangely taken with some people; nor am I often mistaken, You are a stranger to me; but I am an odd being: some yet unnamed feelings; things, not principles, but better than whims, carry me farther than boasted reason ever did a Philosopher."

To this epistle Agnes quickly replied: "I perfectly comprehend... Perhaps instinct comes nearer their description than either "Principles" or "Whims".

I have again gone wrong in my usual unguarded way, but you may erase the word and put esteem, respect, or any other tame Dutch expression you please in its place."

The Reverend John Kemp, of the sternly Calvinistic congregation of the Tolbooth Kirk, was her spiritual adviser and would certainly not have approved, nor would Lord Craig, whose generosity was essential to her.

[4] On 30 December 1787, Burns wrote to a close confidant, Captain Richard Brown[20] at Irvine: "Almighty Love still 'reigns and revels' in my bosom; and I am at this moment ready to hang myself for a young Edinr.

Widow, who has wit and beauty more murderously fatal than the assassinating stiletto of the Sicilian banditti, or the poisoned arrow of the savage African.

[4] On Saturday, 23 February, Robert Burns arrived at Willie's Mill in Tarbolton, to see Jean Armour who had left her parents house due to her pregnancy to stay with the Muir family.

I, while my heart smote me for the prophanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda; 'twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun.

Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender Passion.

"[4] In her old age Agnes Maclehose took great delight in talking of the poems and songs Burns had written in her honour and also of her own verses he had received and approved.

[4] Whilst he was in Dumfries in November 1791, Robert Burns received a letter from Agnes Mclehose, informing him that Jenny Clow "to all appearances is at this moment dying.

Obliged, from all the symptoms of a rapid decay, to quit her service, she is gone to a room almost without common necessaries, untended and unmourned.

In circumstances so distressing, to whom can she so naturally look for aid as to the father of her child, the man for whose sake she has suffered many a sad and anxious night, shut from the world, with no other companions than guilt and solitude?

[31] Lord Craig, her cousin, took care of Agnes from age 23 and even after his death via his will, providing for her over a total of 60 years.

[1] Lord Craig left a considerable sum of money and his library, on his decease to Agnes's son, Andrew Maclehose.

[11] A Scottish musical play entitled Tea with Clarinda, written by Mike Gibb and Kevin Walsh about Agnes or Nancy McLehose, mainly focusing on her unconsummated love affair with Robert Burns, while also highlighting the poet's relationship with Jenny Clow.

[33] Scottish performer and writer Anna Hillis wrote a play about the meeting between Jean (Armour) Burns and Agnes Maclehose.

[34] A plaque to Clarinda was erected by the City Architect, Ebenezer James MacRae in the 1930s, on the west gable of the Council block on Marshall Street, facing onto Potterow, commemorating the existence of her then demolished house to the south-west.