page_title: Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar
section_title: Bringing up a King and a Prince at Stirling Castle
hierarchical_section_title: Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar / Bringing up a King and a Prince at Stirling Castle
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context_page_description: Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar, was a Scottish landowner, courtier and royal servant, the keeper of the infant James VI and his son Prince Henry at Stirling Castle
  Annabell Murray was a daughter of Sir William Murray of Tullibardine and Katherine Campbell of Glenorchy. John Murray, 1st Earl of Tullibardine was one of her nephews. In contemporary documents her name is often spelled "Annabell" or "Annable", and less frequently "Annabella".
context_section_description: A month after giving birth to the Prince on 19 June 1566 Mary, Queen of Scots visited the Earl and Countess of Mar at Alloa Tower. In August Lord Darnley was jealous of Annabell Murray's intimacy with the queen, along with two other close companions Agnes Keith, Countess of Moray and Jean Stewart, Countess of Argyll. In March 1567 Mary entrusted Annabell Murray with the young infant James, to be brought up at Stirling Castle. After the Earl of Bothwell married the queen in May 1567, he tried to get the prince from Stirling but the Earl of Mar stalled him with excuses.
  Mary was captured by her enemies, and abdicated at Lochleven Castle. Her half-brother James became Regent and gave Annabell £500 Scots to give to the "rockers", women who rocked the king's cradle.
  Lady Mar was the head of a large household serving the infant king at Stirling Castle. In 1568 James Cunningham of Drumquhassle was the Master of Household, Helen Littil was the chief nurse, five ladies including Christian Stewart, granddaughter of James V, took turns to rock the royal cradle, while the four Hudson brothers played their viols, there were cooks and brewers, Margaret Balcomie washed the king's linen and she had washed the linen of Mary, Queen of Scots at Linlithgow Palace.
  In January 1570, Mary, Queen of Scots, in captivity in England, sent a present of clothes to James VI at Stirling. She wanted these to be his first proper clothes provided by his mother. In her letter to the Countess of Mar she said the gift did not include essential buttons, which with the rest of her jewels were kept from her, "whereto there wants such buttons as were worthy to garnish it, thanks to them who withholds from us suchlike and better." Mar obtained Mary's buttons for James three years later.
  In her letters Murray described the king's well-being in formulaic terms, writing at least three times to Grey Colin Campbell, laird of Glenorchy, that "the Kingis Majestie is rycht blyth (praise to God)", a phrase which was reassuring during the years of the Marian Civil War.  In one of his earliest letters James called Annabell "Lady Minny". Elizabeth I of England sent a letter congratulating her on taking good care of the king on 7 February 1572. Among the childhood companions of James VI was her own son John, and her nephew Sir William Murray of Abercairny.
  John Erskine, Earl of Mar became Regent of Scotland in 1572. This was a rise in status but the wife of a Regent had no defined political role or state duties. Mar died in October 1572 (rumoured to have been poisoned). He had made a will in 1568, wishing his widow would follow the advice of his brother and others from the Erskine family, and his friends the Laird of Lochleven, John Cunningham of Drumquhassle, and Archibald Haldane, to guide her "in all things that concerns the treatment of friends and entertainment of them to the king's grace service for the honour of the house." Annabell Murray kept these men around her. She promised to repay money Mar had borrowed from the Laird of Lochleven, giving assurances as she "would not do to no other in Scotland but to you."
  Annabell Murray continued to look after the king at Stirling, with Mar's younger brother Alexander Erskine of Gogar, the Master of Mar. His three sons, George, James, and Archibald joined the king in his schoolroom at Stirling.
caption: A crowned letter 'A' at Mar's Wark, Stirling, may stand for "Annabell", or "Areskine" a variant of "Erskine"
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