When Mary, Queen of Scots was deposed and a prisoner in Lochleven Castle, her half-brother James Stewart was made Regent of Scotland. As Regent Moray he needed money to rule and to subdue his enemies, the supporters of his sister. He raised funds by coining her silverware, and asking his treasurer Robert Richardson and his…
Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin (1599-1663) was keen to acquire a portrait that he had heard was a masterpiece, the sitter being someone he admired. He was anxious this new treasure would not be spoiled in transit. He sent these instructions to his cousin Alexander Bruce at the Hague on 15 September 1659. Bruce had…
Katherine Erskine married Thomas Hamilton, later 2nd Earl of Haddington, and was known as Lady Binning. She died in 1635, and her mother Marie Stewart, Countess of Mar, was anxious to recover jewels which her servant Charles Mowatt had pawned. He had also died. Marie Stewart gave her agent John Wallace an inventory of the…
Advice for a patient with gonorrhoea sent by Thomas Davidson, an apothecary in Edinburgh, 24 March 1568. This letter was probably sent to William Douglas, Laird of Lochleven. The patient was too far from Edinburgh to send a urine sample. Davidson died in 1574 and his registered will includes a full inventory of his apothecary…
A Dundee merchant’s letter offering dress fabrics, June 1573, survives in the Morton papers held by the National Library of Scotland. Peter Clayhills wrote to Agnes Leslie, Lady Lochleven, sending her order of fabrics. He offered her summer dress fabrics, and velvet from the stock that had ‘come home’ from abroad, and cloth he expected…
Among the papers of Mary of Guise held in the National Library of Scotland there is a record of cloth of gold bought in 1548 to make three gowns for Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587). Her agent Henri Cleutin, sieur d’Oysel, was instructed to buy the fabric from merchants who supplied the French court. Cleutin, known…
Visual sources for costume and clothing in sixteenth-century Scotland are very rare, but there are archival sources. Personal clothing appears, albeit infrequently, in wills. The wills of Edinburgh merchants and stall holders regularly include their entire stock books of textiles running a gamut from local woollens to figured Italian velvets imported via the markets of…
This post is about the furnishings of tower houses, and the documentary record. The first thing to note is that Scottish furnishings from the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries are very rare. This may be contrasted with the apparent survival of quantities of English chunky Jacobethan furniture, and it occurs to me that a rather smaller…
In Scotland, Anna of Denmark had her own household separate from the kings’. These people lived with her and worked with her. An ambassador called it ‘her small family.’ The council of Denmark and her mother Sophie of Mecklenberg had organised a small household on her departure. After her coronation in May 1590, Anna was…
This post is about the early wall paintings at Kinneil House, West Lothian, Scotland, based on a talk given to the Friends of Kinneil; partly about how the paintings were restored, and came to look as they do today, and partly about what they may have meant in the sixteenth century. The paintings are a…
Objects and the Archive 