During my research, and search for another worthy heroine [!] it struck me how often names and places crop up repeatedly. The 1600’s were an almost incestuous time where all the prominent families were related to each other somewhere along the line. The hero of my book was John Maitland, 2nd Earl Lauderdale, whose great uncle was William Maitland of Lethington, the renowned, ‘Secretary Lethington’ to Mary Queen of Scots.
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| Mary Queen of Scots |
William accompanied Mary into
the Scottish Highlands against the powerful Earl of Huntly, who led his troops
at the Battle of Corrichie in 1562 where he was killed. William regained the
Queen's favour and continued in her service until Mary surrendered herself to
Sir William Kirkaldy, another accessory to Rizzio’s murder, and the insurgent
nobles at the Battle of Carberry Hill. William then openly joined them and was
present at the Battle of Langside, which finally ruined Mary's cause in
Scotland.
Sir John Maitland was
created the 1st Lord of Thirlestane and married Jean Fleming, the heiress of
Lord Fleming, Lord High Chamberlain of Scotland during Mary’s reign.
When Mary fled to
England in 1567, Maitland joined with the new government, but acted in Mary’s
interests and formed a party to restore her to power. In 1573, Kirkaldy, held
Edinburgh Castle for Mary, along with William and his elder brother, John.
Elizabeth I sent troops to
quell the uprising, the defences of the castle were demolished and John, 1st
Lord Maitland of Thirlestane was imprisoned in Tantallon castle, while William
was held at Leith prison where he died, either from illness or, some said,
suicide.
The Maitlands were
notorious for playing both sides in their own interests, a tradition continued
when John Maitland, 2nd Earl Lauderdale, a staunch Covenanter up to 1647, then
he rode south and attempted to help Charles I escape his captors at Hampton
Court. When that plan didn’t go quite the way he wanted, he joined the young
Charles II and was eventually to become part of his famous Cabal when the king
was restored to the throne in 1660.
The Maitlands came from France with William the Conqueror in 1066, and settled in Northumberland.
In about 1250, Sir Richard Maitland married Avicia, the daughter and sole
heiress of Thomas du Thirlestane. Their Norman name, originally spelled
Mautalent, Matulant or Matalan, translates as ‘evil genius’, a name the men of
that family seemed to live up to through the centuries.
Their ancestral
home is Thirlestane Castle at Lauder on the Scottish borders which dates back to the 13th
century, when a Border fort was built on the site to defend the approach to
Edinburgh from the south. The central part of the present Castle was completed
in 1590, remodelled in the 1670s, and then again in the 1840s.
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| Thirlestane Castle, Lauder, Scotland |
The 2nd Earl was made Duke of Lauderdale by Charles II and he and his second
wife, Elizabeth Tollemache, renovated Thirlestane in the 1670’s, and turned it
into a magnificent residence fit for their king to visit, as they did with Ham
House in Richmond. The stone surround on
the front door at Thirlestane bears the entwined initials of the duke and Elizabeth, who
was Countess of Dysart in her own right.
Early in 1680,
Lauderdale suffered a stroke and resigned his posts, although he had quarelled with Charles II before that. He retired to Tunbridge
Wells to take the waters and died there in August 1682. The Dukedom died with
him and his brother Charles became the 3rd Earl of Lauderdale.
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| Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale 1679 |
Much of the furniture in
the Castle today is from the 19th century, mainly because the earlier contents
were removed on the Duke's death by Duchess Elizabeth who dispatched fourteen
wagon loads of furniture to Ham House in Richmond, before the people of Lauder
grew so incensed that they prevented the last wagon from leaving.
Duchess Elizabeth was at
heart a Scot, a tradition she maintained when her daughter by Lionel
Tollemache, another Elizabeth, married Archibald Campbell, 1st Duke of Argyll
in 1678, who was the son of James Stuart, 4th Earl of Moray, a direct
descendant of a daughter of the Regent James Moray, half brother to Mary Queen
of Scots.
Prince Charles Edward
Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, stayed at Thirlestane in 1745 after victory at
the Battle of Prestonpans when he led the clan armies south through Lauder, and
the troops camped in the Castle Parklands.
A dividing arch in the
dining room contains a bust of Captain Sir Frederick Maitland, to whom Napoleon
surrendered on board HMS Bellerophon after the Battle of Waterloo.
