Mary Middlemore
Introduction
Mary Middlemore (d. 1618), Courtier and Maid of Honour to Anne of Denmark, subject of poems, and treasure hunter.
Mary Middlemore was the eldest daughter of Henry Middlemore of Enfield, a groom to Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Fowkes.
Mary's brother Robert Middlemore (d. 1629) was an equerry to King James. A monument to Robert and his wife Dorothy Fulstow or Fulstone (d. 1610) can be seen at St Andrews, Church, Enfield.
After her father died, her mother Elizabeth married Sir Vincent Skinner (d. 1616) an ambitious MP.
Mary was appointed a Maid of Honour to the queen in 1604, her companions were Anne Carey, Mary Gargrave, Elizabeth Roper, Elizabeth Harcourt, and a daughter of Sir Henry Woodhouse.
Around Christmastime 1609, Sir Edward Herbert fought with a Scottish gentleman who had snatched a ribbon from her hair in a back room of the queen's lodgings at Greenwich Palace. Herbert would have followed up by fighting a duel in Hyde Park, but the Privy Council prevented it. John Chamberlain recorded that the Scottish man was an usher to the queen named "Boghvan", also recorded as "Jacques Bochan".
The queen's secretary William Fowler dedicated poems to her, the Meditation upon Virgin Maryes Hatt, and Aetna which includes her name; "My harte as Aetna burnes, and suffers MORE / Paines in my MIDDLE than ever MARY proved", and devised an Italian anagram "Madre di mill'amori", the mother of a thousand loves.
On 29 April 1617 Middlemore was granted a licence by the king to have workmen seek treasure in Glastonbury Abbey, St Albans Abbey, Bury St Edmunds Abbey, and Romsey Abbey. She died later in the year, and perhaps did not profit from prospecting in the ruins. The gift has sometimes been assumed to be intended for the queen, but it may be connected with the financial ruin and death of her step-father Sir Vincent Skinner, who had been building a country house at Thornton Abbey. Around this time, her mother joined the queen's household.
Mary Middlemore died of consumption on 3 January 1618 and was buried the next day at Westminster Abbey.