Mother of the Maids (English royal court)

Mother of the Maids was a position at the English royal court. The Mother of the Maids was responsible for the well-being and decorum of maids of honour, young gentlewomen in the household of a queen regnant or queen consort.[1]

Anne of Cleves brought a household with her to England,[2] and in 1540 "Mother Lowe" was the mother of the "Dowche Maydes".[3] Anne Poyntz was given a "billiment" head dress to wear at the coronation of Mary I of England, and took part in the Royal Entry.[4] At the coronation of Elizabeth I in 1559 there were six maids of honour under the Mother of the Maids.[5]

An ordinance for the English household of Anne of Denmark made on 20 July 1603 allows for six maids (of honour) and a mother (of maids) and four chamberers.[6]

In 1632, the Mother of Maids, Ursula Beaumont, and six maids of honour at the court of Henrietta Maria took part in the masque The Shepherd's Paradise.[7] When one of the maids, Eleanor Villiers, a daughter of Edward Villiers, was pregnant, she, her partner Henry Jermyn, and Beaumont, Mother of the Maids, were imprisoned in the Tower of London.[8]

  1. ^ Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vol. 6 (Philadelphia, 1847), p. 310: William John Thoms, The Book of the Court: Exhibiting the History, Duties, and Privileges of the several ranks of the English nobilty (London: Bohn, 1844), p. 350.
  2. ^ John Gough Nichols, Chronicle of Calais (London: Camden Society, 1846), p. 172.
  3. ^ Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Maney, 2007), 307.
  4. ^ Henry King, 'Ancient Wills, 3', Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 3 (Colchester, 1865), p. 187.
  5. ^ William Tighe, 'Familia reginae: the Privy Court', Susan Doran & Norman Jones, The Elizabethan World (Routledge, 2011), pp. 76, 79.
  6. ^ HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 672.
  7. ^ Sarah Poynting, 'Henrietta Maria's Notorious Whores', Clare McManus, Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 163–64.
  8. ^ Sarah Poynting, 'Henrietta Maria's Notorious Whores', Clare McManus, Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 176–77.