Helen Graham

Notes:

She was definitely a daughter of the first earl of Montrose. The will of William Graham, who was killed at the battle of Flodden Field in 1513, acknowledges a debt to the Laird of Luss (i.e. John Colquhoun, father of Humphrey), on account of his daughter's dowry, and also the Laird of Luss younger (i.e. Humphrey).

Burke's Peerage and Burke's Landed Gentry, and thus many online sources, show William Graham's daughters Margaret, Elizabeth, and Helen, in that order, as daughters of William Graham by his second wife Janet Edmondstone.

This cannot be true of Elizabeth. The Complete Peerage 4:470 says that Walter Drummond, grandson of John Drummond and Elizabeth Lindsay, "m., in Feb. 1513/4, his cousin Elizabeth, 2nd da. of William (Graham), 1st Earl of Montrose [S.], by his first wife Annabel, 4th da. of John (Drummond), Lord Drummond abovenamed." It can be seen that if Walter Drummond and his wife Elizabeth were cousins, it would have to be the case that Elizabeth was a daughter of William Graham's first wife, Annabel Drummond.

CP says of Annabel Drummond that "[s]he was living 1492" and that her son William Graham, second earl of Montrose, was "a minor at his father's death", 9 Sep 1513, but "was served heir to him" 24 Oct 1513. The Scots Peerage narrates this latter event in a way that suggests that the younger William was still a minor on 24 Oct 1513: "William […] was under age at the death of his father, but in virtue of the Act of 24 August, was served his heir 24 October, 1513." SP goes on to emphasize and extoll his precocity: "He early displayed qualities of prudence and statesmanship which enabled him, over a long life," [etc.]. CP notes that the younger William "was present in Parl. [S.] 2 Jun 1514" and that he married his only wife, Janet Keith, in Dec 1515. All of which suggests that the second earl attained his majority no earlier than the end of 1513, which means that he has to have been born to Annabel Drummond no earlier than the end of 1492, and given that he could perfectly well have married while still a minor, plausibly as late as 1497 or 1498.

Also, according to SP, William Graham and Annabel Drummond had a second son following William: "Walter, a younger son of the first marriage, who had a tack of Little Cairnie for nineteen years from the Abbot of Inchaffray, 8 January 1541-42, and appears to have been ancestor of the second family of the Grahams of Thornick, afterwards Cairnie." If so, this moves the end of Annabel Drummond's life to no earlier than the end of 1493. And again, given that the first son could easily have been born as late as 1497-98, she was quite possibly still living in 1498-99.

The date of William Graham's marriage to Janet Edmondstone is unknown to us, but the earliest record of them as married is a charter dated 17 Mar 1505. According to CP she died between that date and 15 Apr 1506.

The papal dispensation for Helen Graham's marriage to Humphrey Colquhoun was dated 13 Jul 1509.

If Annabel Drummond died as soon as the records allow, say December 1493, and William Graham married Janet Edmondstone as soon as possible, say the first part of 1494, and Helen Graham was their first child, born say early 1495, then the papal dispensation for her marriage to Humphrey Colquhoun, dated 13 Jul 1509, was issued when she was fourteen. Which is hardly unheard-of among the aristocracy of 15th/16th century Scotland, but also adds up to a pretty tight fit.

Additional to this is the fact that William Graham and Annabel Drummond married in 1479, and yet their eldest son and heir cannot have been born earlier than late 1513. It is implausible that they spent the first dozen years of their marriage having no children. We have seen that daughter Elizabeth has to have been the issue of William and Annabel. Margaret is specified by SP as a daughter of the second marriage. Aside from the fact that this implies, in SP's usual manner of listing offspring, that the other daughters, whose mothers are not noted, were from the first marriage, it also means that Helen, Jean, and Elizabeth are the only known offspring of William Graham whose birth can be used to fill the childbearing years from 1480 to 1492. (The other legitimate child of William Graham, Patrick, is given by SP as his son by his third wife, Christian Wawane.)

Taken together, we think the evidence preponderantly suggests that Helen Graham was a daughter of William Graham's first wife, and probably, as the order of William's children in SP suggests, his eldest daughter.

Helen married Humphrey Colquhoun about 13 Jul 1509. Humphrey (son of John Colquhoun and Elizabeth Stewart) was born in of Luss, Argyll, Scotland; died in Jan 1538. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Lady Aikitt, elder, sheriffdom of Ayr.

"In 1578-79, another of [the Colquhoun] clan, Helen Colquhoun, was accused of the 'treasonable administering of poysoun' to her spouse, William Cunninghame of Aiket; but the fragmentary records give us little information about these trials…" ["Poisoning in Scotland", citation details below]

The will of Helene Colquhoun, Lady Aikitt, elder, sheriffdom of Ayr, was proved in the Edinburgh commissary court on 13 Mar 1596.

The 1877 Colquhoun pedigree ("Colquhoun of Luss", citation details below) shows Helen Colquhoun, daughter of Humphrey, marrying a "James" Cunningham of Aiket; it also gives her mother's name as "Katherine", rather than Helen, a mistake that also appears in many Burke's Pedigrees products. In a pair of posts to soc.genealogy.medieval on 10 Oct 2019, John Brandon points out that the papal dispensation of 1509 clearly identifies Humphrey Colquhoun's wife as Helen. As to whether Humphrey Colquhoun's and Helen Graham's daughter Helen was indeed, the Helen who married Cunningham of Aiket, Brandon points to the marriage of Robert Graham of Knockdolian, who was known to have been involved in dealings with William and Helen (Colquhoun) Cunningham, to Christian Graham, daughter of the second William Graham, 2nd earl of Montrose — further evidence of Graham-Colquhoun prosopographical adjancency.

Helen married William Cunningham before 24 Oct 1564. William was born in of Aiket, Ayrshire, Scotland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"Marion Cunningham, Lady Bar, died at her home in Ayr in January 1623. She was the daughter of William Cunningham of Aiket and Helen Colquhoun, daughter of a Highland chief. […] She grew up in an age of aggression in northern Ayrshire, the time of the great feud betewen the Montgomery Earl of Eglinton and the Cunningham Earl of Glencairn which lasted over seventy years in the sixteenth century." [Ayr and Its People, citation details below]

Marion married John Lockhart in 1595 in Stewarton, Ayrshire, Scotland. John (son of Alexander Lockhart and Margaret Kennedy) died in 1614. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Janet married John Cunningham before 8 Jan 1634. John (son of William Cunningham and Agnes Cunningham) died before 17 Apr 1672. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]