The lady Arabella’s suitor to her majesty lady Jane Drummond, was third daughter of Patrick, third lord Drummond. She married Robert, the second earl of Roxburghe, and was mother to Hary, lord Ker. She possessed distinguished abilities, was one of the ladies of the queen’s bedchamber, and governess to the royal children. She died October 7, 1643. Her funeral was fixed on by the royalists as a convenient pretext to assemble for a massacre of the leading covenanters, but the numbers proved too inconsiderable for the attempt. She was hurried in the family vault in the chapel-royal, Holyrood-house: the vault was long open to public view. The editor of “Heriot’s Life,” in 1822, gives her autograph as “Jane Drummond,” and speaks of having seen her coffin and remains thirty years before, shortly after which period he believes the vault to have been closed. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” of February, 1799, plate II., there is a fac-simile of her autograph, as countess of Roxburghe, from her receipt, dated May 10, 1617, for “500l., part of the sum of 3000l., of his majesty’s free and princely gift to her, in consideration of long and faithful service done to the queen, as one of the ladies of the bedchamber to her majesty.”
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR.
Mean Temperature 58·15.
[195] General Biographical Dictionary.
[196] Communicated by Mr. Johnson, of Newark.
[197] “Arabella Stuart,” in Evans’s Old Ballads; supposed to have been written by Mickle.
[198] Mr. D’Israeli.