Marie Stewart, Countess of Mar
She was the daughter of Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox and Catherine de Balsac d’Entragues (d. c.1631) and a favourite of James VI of Scotland.
[3] Marie and her older sister Henrietta came to Scotland in 1588, arriving at Leith while James VI was at the siege of Lochmaben Castle.
[8] On 13 June 1592 Anna of Denmark ordered matching orange gowns with green sleeves for herself, Marie Stewart, and the Danish maiden of honour Margaret Vinstarr, a demonstration of favour and loyalty.
[10] This match had been discussed in March 1589 by an English man at the Scottish court, Thomas Fowler, who noted that Marie Stewart and her sister were Catholics.
[13] A story descended in the family of the Earls of Haddington and was recorded by Sir Walter Scott that at first Marie scorned the older man, and James VI hearing of this, encouraged his old friend, swearing an oath, "ye shanna die, Jock for onny lass in a' the land", meaning in modernised terms "you shall not die, Jock, for any lass in all the land".
James Caldwell minister of Falkirk dedicated his The Countesse of Marres Arcadia, or Sanctuarie Containing morning, and evening meditations, for the whole weeke (John Wreittoun: Edinburgh, 1625), to her, including a dedicatory letter by P. Anderson mentioning that "The Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia is for the bodie; but the Countesse of Marre her Arcadia is for the Soule", and "amongst the many Noble Ladies of this Kingdome, your Honour to bee a true Paterne of modest Pietie, a perfect mirror of feminine gravitie, & a liberall supplier of the necessities of the poore, yea, in time of dearth, and scarsetie: And as his Majestie long since, in his Booke of Poesies, called your Noble Father the Phoenix of al the Nobility; so may the world esteeme your Honour to be another elect Lydia of that same Noble qualitie".
[32] Marie argued with her brother, the Duke of Lennox, in May 1602 about accusations her husband may have made and implicated Sir Thomas Erskine.
[35] In May 1603 Anne of Denmark came to Stirling hoping to collect her son Prince Henry, who was officially in the keeping of the Earl of Mar and his late mother Annabell Murray, who had recently died.
The Earl of Mar himself was temporarily absent accompanying James VI to London to assume the English throne following the death of Elizabeth I. Anne sent a message to Marie that she would have her son delivered to her to travel with her to England.
She fainted into the arms of Marie and Agnes Douglas, Countess of Argyll, and when Jean Drummond and Marion Boyd, Mistress of Paisley, carried her to bed she had a miscarriage.
[36] The lawyer Thomas Hamilton gave an eyewitness account of these events, and said the queen had told her physician Martin Schöner and Lady Paisley that she had taken "some balm water that hastened her abort".
[38] Anne of Denmark left Stirling Castle with Henry on 28 May, accompanied by English ladies, according to Robert Birrell, the author of a memoir.
[40] Marie Stewart remained a friend of another lady in waiting Elizabeth Schaw, and her husband John Murray, later Earl of Annandale, who were courtiers in London.
[49] Marie died at the house of Sir Thomas Hope in Cowgate, Edinburgh, on 11 May 1644, after suffering for two weeks from an illness described as a "deadlie brasch".
The book includes a dedicatory letter to Marie Stewart, compiled from dedications by Patrick Simson, minister of Stirling, to three earlier works, the Short Compend of the historie of the first ten persecutions, which was published in three parts in Edinburgh, in 1613, 1615 and 1616.
[58] A drawing by Inglis dated January 1622 illustrates the "wise woman who builds her house" from Proverbs 14:1, with a Latin dedication to the Earl and to the "remarkable piety" of Maria Stewart, Countess of Mar.
[61] Her descendant, the nineteenth-century antiquarian Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, examined some of her papers at Alva and believed that David Erskine, Earl of Buchan had taken some away.
[62] Buchan wrote a biographical note of Marie, with some quotations from her letters, and an account of her reluctance to marry the older earl before the king's intervention, and published an estimate of her expenses in 1636.
[64] In 1598 her gardener in Stirling, Thomas Cameron, was warned by the Kirk Session not to allow his serving woman to lodge in his house, for fear of slander.
