Mary Fleming

Scottish noblewoman
Australian military

Mary Fleming ('/f//l//ɛ//m//ɪ//ŋ/; also spelled Marie Flemyng; 1542–fl. 1581) was a Scottish noblewoman and childhood companion and cousin of Mary, Queen of Scots. She and three other ladies in waiting (Mary Livingston, Mary Beaton and Mary Seton) were collectively known as "The Four Marys". A granddaughter of James IV of Scotland, she married the queen's renowned secretary, Sir William Maitland of Lethington.

Mary Fleming was the youngest child of Malcolm Fleming, 3rd Lord Fleming, and Lady Janet Stewart. She was born in 1542, the year her father was taken prisoner by the English at the Battle of Solway Moss. Her mother was an illegitimate daughter of James IV of Scotland. Lady Fleming became a governess to the infant queen, also born in 1542, and the dowager queen, Mary of Guise, chose Lady Fleming's daughter Mary to be one of four companions to the young queen. Mary Fleming and Mary, Queen of Scots, were first cousins.

In 1548, five year old Mary Fleming and her mother accompanied Mary, Queen of Scots, to the court of King Henry II of France, where the young queen was raised. 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. In 1554, Mary, Queen of Scots played the Delphic Sibyl and Mary Fleming was the Erythraean Sibyl in a masque performed at the Château de Saint Germain en Laye, written by Mellin de Saint Gelais.

When Mary was imprisoned at Lochleven Castle, Maitland and Mary Fleming sent her a gold jewel depicting the lion and mouse of Aesop's fable. 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. Mary wore the jewel at the castle and Marie Courcelles, one of her women provided a description and said it a gift from Fleming. Mary kept this jewel with her in England until her death. Mary Fleming and her husband were in Edinburgh Castle in 1573 when it was held by supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots against an English army supporting the government of James VI of Scotland. She was captured with her husband when the castle surrendered on 28 May 1573. She was surrendered to Regent Morton and kept a prisoner in Robert Gourlay's House. Her husband was carried out of the castle on a litter because he was unable to stand or walk. He died at Leith on 9 June 1573 before his trial in the custody of William Drury. 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". As a result, Queen Elizabeth asked Regent Morton to spare the body, which he did. 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. The piece had been a pledge for money lent to William Kirkcaldy of Grange, captain of Edinburgh Castle. The piece was described as "a chayn of rubeis with twelfth merkis of diamantis and rubeis and ane merk with twa rubys in 1578.

Mary Fleming did not receive the restoration of Lethington's estate and properties until 1581 or 1582 by grant of King James VI, gaining a rehabilitation on 19 February 1584 for herself and her son. She was allowed the benefit of a property Maitland had given her, Bolton in East Lothian. 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. In 1581, Mary, queen of Scots asked Elizabeth I to grant Fleming safe conduct so she could visit the imprisoned queen of Scots. There is no evidence that Mary Fleming went. The last documents attributed to her are her letter to William Cecil and a letter to her sister discussing some bad feelings that existed between Fleming and her brother in law Coldingham. She married secondly, George Meldrum of Fyvie.

In the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Mary Stuart's lady in waiting Annette Fleming, played by Susan Lynch, is an allusion to Mary Fleming. In the 2013 2017 CW television series Reign, the character Lady Lola Fleming, played by Anna Popplewell, is based on Mary Fleming. In the 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Fleming is played by actress Maria Victoria Dragus. Lady Mary Fleming features prominently in the 1820 novel The Abbot by Walter Scott, where she shares Mary Stewart's imprisonment in Lochleven Castle and escape from it.