Mary Sutton, Countess of Home

In 1597 her younger brother Ferdinando and her sister Anne were lodged in Clerkenwell, as wards of their aunt Elizabeth Harington and uncle Edward Montagu of Boughton.

[4] After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, her mother Theodosia Harington seems to have been an important member of Princess Elizabeth's household and before their marriage in London, Frederick V of the Palatinate gave her a valuable gift of silver plate.

Anne Dudley bequeathed to Lady Home, "a little ring made in the fashion of a heart enameled black with a little diamond".

[7] Her youngest sister, Margaret Dudley (1597-1674) married Miles Hobart of Plumstead (born 1602) in 1627 at St Ann Blackfriars, London.

The couple had a historical connection; her grandfather Edward Sutton, 4th Baron Dudley had been the keeper of Hume Castle in the Scottish borders which had been captured from Alexander Home's grandmother, Mariotta Haliburton in 1548.

[14] The poet David Hume of Godscroft wrote a Latin verse to be said on this occasion which contrasted Mary's rebuilding of the earl's houses with the destruction wrought by her grandfather during the war of the Rough Wooing.

He refers to the improving work of her English hand;Mentiar; aut nullis horrendam ducimus Anglam,Judice te; vultum respice, sive animum.Nec fera miscemus, truculento, proelia, Marte:Sed colimus, casti, foedera sancta, thori.Hinc surgunt mihi structa palatia, diruit AnglaQuae quondam, melior iam struit Angla manus:Hinc quam fausta tibi procederet UNIO, si sicExemplo, saperes Insula tota, meo.

Abraham Hume, a recent graduate of St Andrews University, was her chaplain around the year 1630, and he is said to have composed "remarks" objecting to London life and public affairs based on his experience of the Caroline court with his patron.

[19] The Countess of Home employed the lawyer Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall and he recorded some details of her business in his diary.

[21] She disputed the ownership of lands of Coldingham Priory, and particularly the Northfield of Coldingham and the teinds of Auldcambus and Fast Castle, with Francis and John Stewart, sons of Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell before the Privy Council of Scotland in 1620 and the issue continued in following years with interventions from James I and Charles I.

She owned a copy of John Parkinson's Herbal,[33] an influential work by an apothecary and botanist who supplied plants to Charles I and Henrietta Maria.

[35] In February 1633, the Earl of Morton obtained her permission for the house to be at the disposal of Charles I during his visit and coronation in Scotland, but the plan was cancelled due to the death of her son.

[36] She kept detailed inventories of her houses which record purchases made in London, listing beds, tapestries, and her books including volumes of sermons and a work penned by Esther Inglis.

She acquired items with Harrington knot heraldry from the sale of the effects of her cousin the Countess of Bedford, and a set of silver candleholders that had belonged to Marie de' Medici, mother of Henrietta Maria.

Lady Home wrote of an unsatisfactory inventory that it;"has byn wildely tacken in & are no way to bee trusted tow for comparein them with my own little book.

I find in some roomes that neather in theare notes of what they say wants nor in that they say restes will bothe make up togeather which is sayde to bee in my booke of maney sondre partikeulor thinges.

"[40]The housekeeper at Floors near Kelso,[41] Jane Descheil, was married to the coachman, she paid cleaners, fed the cat and the turkeys, brewed ale, made honey, bleached cloth, supervised a carpenter mending buffet stools, and sewed a featherbed, while Lady Home was away.

At Twickenham Park, the housekeeper Judith Plummer was the wife of the gardener, and she embroidered shadow work on a bedsheet which the Countess treasured.

[42] In the 1630s and 1640s it became fashionable to own free-standing trompe d'oeil portraits of servants, family members, and children, now called "dummy boards".

In 1638 she discussed the design of a tomb in white and black marble for her family to be built at Dunglass with Nicolas Stone in person at his workshop in Long Acre, which was not executed.... my will is to have the tombe made with our pictures to the waist in white marble and three through stones to be laid upon us, I, my lord, my dear son Home and my selfe, & I would be laid betwixt them, & so my picture sett, Mr Stone the stone cutter that dwells in Long Acre showed me a tombe he had made for a knight & his wife in that maner ...[45] Dunglass Castle was destroyed by an explosion in August 1640 and among the fifty two dead was John White, an English plasterer who also worked for her at The Hirsel, and at Winton House for George Seton, 3rd Earl of Winton.

[47] In Scotland, before the wedding, following the king's instructions, the lawyer Thomas Haddington convened a meeting of the six lairds of the Home surname to tell them about the marriage plans.

[51] Mary Mildmay Fane, Countess of Westmorland wrote letters to her daughter Grace in Scotland solicitous of her health, including passages in cipher, one referring to loss of her hair through illness.

She was aware that this was problematic, writing "And I am not ignorant that my houses both in Edinborough as Canongate and in Aldersgate Street being inheritance I cannot dispose so of them by this my late will neither by the laws of England nor Scotland".

It also came to light that Mary had lent £2,000 to the Earl of Cleveland and obtained property in Hackney and Stepney, and £1000 to Elizabeth Ashfield, a neighbour in Aldersgate, gaining her lands at North Barsteed in Suffolk.

[57] A challenge to the administration of the will by a third-party William Dudley, demonstrating that goods belonged not to Lauderdale but to his daughter, and that the executors had not been lawfully appointed, failed in 1658.

It is due to the complexities of dividing her goods and this legal battle that her inventories survive to give a unique insight into the material culture of Anglo-Scottish aristocrat in the 1630s.

Anne of Denmark sent instructions to the chamberlain of her Dunfermline estates, Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie, to distribute presents of money at the christening, and Anna Hay, Countess of Winton was to be her representative.