Perdita woman: Lady Margaret Wemyss

Biography

Lady Margaret Wemyss (1630-c.1649) compiled National Library of Scotland Dep. 314/23 from the age of twelve, possibly until her death at age 18 or 19. She was the third of the 11 children of David, second Earl of Wemyss (1610-1679) and his first wife Anna Balfour, daughter of Robert, Lord Burley (see James Balfour Paul, The Scots Peerage, vol. 8 (1914) 503, and William Fraser's Memorials of the Family of Wemyss of Wemyss, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1888)). Lady Margaret was born in Scotland at Falkland, the residence of Lord Burley, on 24 September 1630 and died sometime after 17 May 1648 , when she was seriously ill, but before her mother's death on 10 November 1649. She was unmarried. Margaret must have lived the first decade of her life at the Chapel of Wemyss, a manor place near Wemyss Castle, in Fife, and from 1639 at Wemyss Castle, where her parents moved after the death of the first Earl.

Margaret's older sister Jean (the only one of the children of the second Earl's first marriage to survive to adulthood) (19 June 1629-Jan 1717) married first Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus (in 1649 ) as his second wife, then George Gordon, Lord Strathnaver, afterwards fourteenth Earl of Sutherland, on 11 August 1659. Lady Margaret Wemyss's songbook, National Library of Scotland Dep. 314/23, probably came into the possession of the Sutherland family through this sister. Jean was also a lutenist. On fol. 42r at the bottom of a piece of solo lute music, Margaret has written, ""all the Lesons behind this are learned ut of my sisteres book""; Matthew Spring has shown that this could only have been Jean, since Margaret's other siblings were infants at the time. Also, in Jean's account book of 1650-54, National Library of Scotland Dep. 313/502, musical instruments such as lutes and virginals figure.

Margaret Wemyss's father, David, second Earl of Wemyss, was a staunch Covenanter, who fought in many of the major battles of the civil wars. At Tippermuir on 1 September 1644, James Graham first Marquis of Montrose beat the larger and better equipped Covenanting force under Wemyss's command. Margaret may have shared her father's sympathies, but the presence of a poem by Montrose, the well-known Royalist, in her manuscript (" "Burst out pour soull in main of tears"", fols 14r-v, msItem 3.6) raises interesting questions about how she came to have access to it. This copy is the only known extant manuscript version of the poem.


National Library of Scotland: Deposit 314/23
Songs for voice and bass viol, poems, and solo lute music (1643-c.1649)
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National Library of Scotland: Deposit 314/23
Songs for voice and bass viol, poems, and solo lute music (1643-c.1649)
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