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 born around 1551. Mary, Queen of Scots and her companions returned to Scotland in 1561 after the death of Francis II of France. The English diplomat Thomas Randolph recorded that the queen was consoled by Mary Fleming when she was disturbed by the discovery of the French poetChastelard hiding in her bedchamber. After having "some grief of mind" the Queen took Mary to be her "bedfellow". During the twelfth day of Christmas pageant in January 1564, Mary Fleming played the part of Queen of the Bean. Thomas Randolph was drawn into the dance, and described the costumes:
"The queen of the Bean was that day in a gown of cloth of silver; her head, her neck, her shoulders, the rest of her whole body so be-sett with stones, that more in our whole jewel house were not to be found. The Queen herself that day apparreled in colours white & black, no neither jewel or gold about her that day, but the ring that I brought her from hanging at her breast, with a lace of black and white about her neck."
On 19 September 1564 William Kirkcaldy of Grange wrote that the Royal Secretary, William Maitland was showing an interest in Mary Fleming: "I doubt not but you understand me by now, that our secretary's wife is near dead, and he a suitor to Mrs Fleming, who is as fit for him, as I am to be Pope!
Marriage to Maitland
Mary Fleming married the queen's royal secretary, Sir William Maitland of Lethington, who was many years her senior. The following evidence suggests that the marriage was successful, despite rumors that they were unhappy and that Mary wished to murder her husband:
The wedding occurred after a three-year courtship that weathered ambivalent relations between Maitland and Mary, Queen of Scots, to whom Mary Fleming was a lady-in-waiting and had been since the age of five.
Maitland was so infatuated with Mary Fleming that he wrote to William Cecil about it.
The courtship was the talk of both the Scottish and English courts.
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 was forced to give up her possessions. Jewellery given or loaned to her by the Queen of Scots was taken by the English commander 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 she was ordered to return a chain or necklace of rubies and diamonds in her possession. The piece had been a pledge for money lent to William Kirkcaldy of Grange, captain of Edinburgh Castle.
Later life
Mary Fleming did not receive the restoration of Lethington's estate and properties until 1581/2, by grant of King James VI. While there is some dispute about this, the evidence is that she never remarried. 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 Maitland actually 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.
In the 2007 film , Mary Stuart's lady-in-waiting, Annette Fleming, played by Susan Lynch, is an allusion to Mary Fleming. In the 2013-17 CW television series Reign, the character, Lady Lola Fleming, played by Anna Popplewell is loosely based on Mary Fleming. In the 2018 film Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary Fleming is played by Romanian actress Maria-Victoria Dragus.
