Mary Fleming's father having died the previous year in the Battle of Pinkie, her mother had an affair with the French king, the product of which was a son, Henri d'Angoulême, born around 1551.

The English diplomat Thomas Randolph recorded that the queen was consoled by Mary Fleming when she was disturbed by the discovery of the French poet Chastelard hiding in her bedchamber.

[5] Thomas Randolph was drawn into the dance, and described the costumes:"The queen of the Bean was that day in a gown of cloth of silver; her head, her neck, her shoulders, the rest of her whole body so be-sett with stones, that more in our whole jewel house were not to be found.

"[7] Mary Fleming married the queen's royal secretary, Sir William Maitland of Lethington, who was many years her senior.

[8] Jamie Reid-Baxter has suggested that the Scots Renaissance comedy Philotus, about a lecherous octogenarian seeking marriage to a teenage girl, may first have been performed during the Maitland-Fleming wedding celebrations.

This was a token alluding to the possibility of escape, and his continuing support for her, the mouse could free the lion by nibbling away the knots of the net.

[13] Mary Fleming wrote to William Cecil on 21 June imploring that the body of her husband, "which when alive has not been spared in her hieness service, may now after his death, receive no shame or ignominy".

[14] On 29 June 1573, and again on 15 July, she was ordered to return a chain or necklace of rubies and diamonds in her possession that had belonged to Mary, queen of Scots.

[19] Mary Fleming did not receive the restoration of Lethington's estate and properties until 1581 or 1582 by grant of King James VI,[20] gaining a rehabilitation on 19 February 1584 for herself and her son.

[21] She had two children, a boy James, who later became a Catholic and lived in France and Belgium in self-imposed exile, and a daughter Margaret, who married Robert Ker, 1st Earl of Roxburghe.