Mother of the Maids (English royal court) explained

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]

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.^[6] 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.^[7]

Mothers of the maids

• Elizabeth Chamber of Stonor, to the consorts of Henry VIII.^[8]
• Mistress Marshall, household of Anne Boleyn.^[9]
• Mother Lowe, household of Anne of Cleves.^[10]
• Anne Poyntz (died 1554), household of Mary I of England.^[11]
• Elizabeth Hutton, household of Mary I.^[12]
• Dorothy Broughton, household of Mary I in 1557,^[13] may have been Dorothy, the wife of Sir Robert Broughton and the sister of Margery Wentworth, and through her the aunt of Jane Seymour.
• Mistress Morris, household of Elizabeth I in 1558.^[14]
• Kat Ashley or Katherine Ashley, household of Elizabeth I
• Anne Aglionby, household of Elizabeth I
• Elizabeth Hyde, household of Elizabeth I, in 1575.^[15]
• Elizabeth Jones, household of Elizabeth I, with Blanche Parry in 1571.^[16]
• Katherine Bridges, household of Anne of Denmark.^{[17] [18] [19] [20]} She received a free gift of £100 in 1611.^[21]
• Elizabeth or Ursula Beaumont, household of Henrietta Maria.^[22]
• Bridget Sanderson, wife of William Sanderson of the king's privy chamber, a daughter of Edward Tyrrell, household of Catherine of Braganza.^[23]

External links

• Ladies in waiting and maids of honour: The History Jar
• Monument of William Sanderson, Westminster Abbey

Notes and References

1. [Agnes Strickland]
2. John Gough Nichols, Chronicle of Calais (London: Camden Society, 1846), p. 172.
3. [Maria Hayward]
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. 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.
7. 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.
8. James Gairdner & R. H. Brodie, Letters & Papers Henry VIII, vol. 15 (London, 1896), p. 9 no. 21.
9. Retha Warnicke, Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), p. 74.
10. Maria Hayward, Dress at the Court of Henry VIII (Maney, 2007), 307.
11. David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1992), p. 355.
12. The Manuscripts of S. H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall, HMC volume 12, Part 7 (London, 1890), pp. 9-10.
13. Jane Lawson, 'Ritual of the New Year's Gift', Valerie Schutte & Jessica S. Hower, Mary I in Writing: Letters, Literature, and Representation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), p. 181: David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 192, 355.
14. Janet Arnold, 'Coronation Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I', Burlington Magazine, 120 (1978), p. 738.
15. Janet Arnold, Lost from her Majestie's Back (Wisbech: Daedalus, 1980), p. 54 no. 207.
16. Jane Lawson, 'Ritual of the New Year's Gift', Valerie Schutte & Jessica S. Hower, Mary I in Writing: Letters, Literature, and Representation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), p. 180.
17. https://archive.org/details/reportofroyalcom06grea/page/672/mode/2up HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 672
18. Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 69: Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 3 (London, 1791), p. 228.
19. [Nadine Akkerman]
20. Frederick Devon, Issues of the Exchequer (London, 1836), 141.
21. John Somers, Tracts during the reign of King James I, p. 378.
22. Caroline Hibbard, 'Henrietta Maria in the 1630s', Ian Atherton & Julie Sanders, The 1630s: Interdisciplinary Essays on Culture and Politics in the Caroline Era (Manchester, 2006), p. 104: Sarah Poynting, 'Henrietta Maria's Notorious Whores', Clare McManus, Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 164.
23. Henry B. Wheatley, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 2 (New York: Random House), p. 1027: John Stow, A survey of the cities of London and Westminster, vol. 2 (London, 1753), p. 574.