Elizabeth Lindsay

Notes:

Living 22 Sep 1509.

Elizabeth married John Drummond before 1470. John (son of Malcolm Drummond and Mariota Murray) was born about 1446; died before 18 Dec 1519 in Drummond Castle, Perthshire, Scotland; was buried in Innerpeffray, Perthshire, Scotland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: Abt 1500

Annabel married William Graham on 25 Nov 1479 in Muthill, Perthshire, Scotland. William (son of William Graham and Helen Douglas) was born between 1463 and 1464; died on 9 Sep 1513 in Flodden Field, Northumberland, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1501

Notes:

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (citation details below):

Drummond, Margaret (d. 1502), royal mistress, was the eldest of the six daughters of John Drummond of Cargill, first Lord Drummond (d. 1518), and his wife, Elizabeth Lindsay. James IV may have met Margaret when he visited Drummond Castle on 25 April 1496, and she appears to have succeeded Marion Boyd as James's mistress about this time. Coupled with the growing influence of Archibald Campbell, second earl of Argyll, whose sister Isabel was Drummond's daughter-in-law, Margaret's affair with the king helped in the advancement both of her father, who held the office of justiciar from February 1495 until 1501, and of his kinsman Walter Drummond, dean of Dunblane, who became clerk register in 1497. Official acknowledgement of the relationship came on 3 June 1496, when James installed Margaret in apartments in Stirling Castle; a reference by the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro de Ayala, to a lady being kept by the king in great state in a castle describes this arrangement.

Margaret Drummond lived at Stirling Castle under the care of its keeper, Sir John Lundy, and of his wife until 30 October 1496, when she was moved to Linlithgow, possibly to give birth to the daughter, also called Margaret, whom she bore the king. The liaison effectively ended in March 1497, when Margaret and her daughter were sent home to Drummond, but although James IV had embarked on his long-running affair with Janet Kennedy in 1498, Margaret received a crown lease for nine years of lands in the earldom of Strathearn, dated 23 January 1498, possibly at the time of her marriage—according to de Ayala she was married off after her return to Drummond, although there is no supporting evidence for this. The king certainly seems to have accepted a measure of responsibility for his erstwhile mistress, as payments to her of £21 and 41s. for her daughter's nurse were made as late as June 1502. When Margaret died, towards the end of 1502, James had their daughter Margaret brought from Drummond Castle to Stirling, where royal children were traditionally brought up, and he paid a quarterly fee until at least 1508 for two priests in Dunblane Cathedral to sing masses for Margaret Drummond.

A number of stories concerning Margaret Drummond's time as royal mistress appear in the eulogistic history of the Drummond family which William Drummond, later first viscount of Strathallan, completed in 1681. He states that the king had known Margaret since 1488 and had desired to marry her, but in 1502 some courtiers, determined to help the king to a far more advantageous marriage, and fearing that his infatuation with Margaret would prevent this, caused her and two of her sisters, with whom she happened to be dining, to be poisoned. There is no contemporary evidence for these stories, and official records attest a much briefer and less dramatic liaison than the exaggerated account presented by William Drummond.

Family/Spouse: James IV, King of Scots. James (son of James III, King of Scots and Margaret of Denmark) was born on 17 Mar 1473 in Holyrood, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland; died on 9 Sep 1513 in Flodden Field, Northumberland, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Living 21 Aug 1514.

Elizabeth married George Douglas between 20 Jul 1485 and 31 Jan 1489. George (son of Archibald Douglas and Elizabeth Boyd) was born about 1469; died on 9 Sep 1513 in Flodden Field, Northumberland, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

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]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1490

Archibald married Margaret Tudor on 6 Aug 1514 in Kinnoull, near Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. Margaret (daughter of Henry VII, King of England and lord of Ireland and Elizabeth of York, Queen Consort of England) was born on 28 Nov 1489 in Westminster Palace, Middlesex, England; died on 18 Oct 1541 in Methven Castle, Perthshire, Scotland; was buried in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. [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]

Margaret married Matthew Stewart on 29 Jun 1544 in St. James Palace, London, England. Matthew (son of John Stewart and Elizabeth Stewart) was born on 21 Sep 1516 in Dunbarton Castle, Dunbartonshire, Scotland; died on 4 Sep 1571 in Stirling Castle, Stirlingshire, Scotland; was buried in Chapel Royal, Stirlingshire, Scotland. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]