George Heriot

[4] To mark the marriage, and the end of his apprenticeship, Heriot was given 1500 merks[5] by his father to establish his own business, which he did in a small booth near St. Giles' Cathedral,[1] on the site of the entrance of the Signet Library.

The role of a goldsmith in the early modern period extended beyond simply the making and trading of jewellery and precious metals; in effect, he had now become her banker.

[1] Anne's love of jewellery was "legendary", and by the late 1590s both she and the king were taking out significant loans to support their spending.

[9] In June 1599 James instructed his exchequer officers to repay from his tax receipts a loan advanced on the security of some of the queen's jewels.

[10] In August 1599 Heriot was paid £400 Sterling from the English annuity, a sum of money which Queen Elizabeth sent to Scotland, for jewels delivered to Anna of Denmark.

[12] The salary was a small amount in comparison to Heriot's sales and loans, and by 1609 Queen Anne's debt to him was £18,000, from which he drew a sizeable interest.

[13] She often wore a miniature portrait of Isabella Clara Eugenia and Heriot mended its locket case twice.

[15] Surviving pieces made for Anne of Denmark which can be attributed to Heriot include a gold miniature case set with her initials in diamonds, now held by the Fitzwilliam Museum, which the queen may have gifted to her lady-in-waiting Anne Livingstone,[16] and a pair of earrings fashioned with the enamelled face of an African man, in a private collection.

[19] Heriot, with the other royal jewellers Abraham Harderet, William Herrick and John Spilman, joined the funeral procession of Anna of Denmark in 1619.

[21] Heriot had a town house in the Strand and a country estate at Roehampton, and considerable property in Edinburgh.

[23] Heriot is believed to have had at least four children by his first wife, including two sons who may have been drowned at sea, although the exact details of their death are unknown.

George Heriot features as one of the two ghosts in Robert Fergusson's poem The Ghaists: A Kirk-Yard Ecologue (1773).