Lesbian Love Affair of 16th Century Scotland

In the midst of the most hostile period in Scottish history, comes a passionate lesbian love story. Set against post-Reformation Scotland, with Mary Queen of Scots on the throne, is Marie Maitland whose erotic lesbian poetry gives us a rare and significant insight into same-sex love and desire at this time. What exactly do her poems say? And how was she able to get away with it at such a dangerous time in history for queer people? Joining Kate today is Ashley Douglas, historian, translator and author of With My Own Hand https://shop.nationalgalleries.org/all-products/with-my-own-hand-the-secret-life-of-marie-maitland-scotland-s-sixteenth-century-sappho/?srsltid=AU7gw4VaXeLQh-o54VS3HvusAV5GBJ0pR4nNsXIwYehHFX5fjbuYAH2O, the first book telling the story of Marie Maitland. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 0:37Speaker 01

  In Our Time is a world-class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the 3rd century? I'm Misha Glennie, and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  It's one of the first times, really, that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.

• 1:11Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely Betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to Betwixter Sheets. Hello, how fabulous to see you round here. And just in case you needed to see even more of us, we've actually set up shop on YouTube. So if you're the kind of person that enjoys seeing your podcasts as well as hearing your podcasts, hop on over and give us a little follow. It'll be fab to see you there as well. But for now, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects. And you should be an adult too. And that's the same whether you're watching us on YouTube or you're listening to us here, because we care about your safety. Right, on with the show.

• 1:54Kate Lister?

  It is 16th century Scotland and Marie Maitland is being a very dutiful daughter. Her father is blind, it's terrible, and she spends all of her time helping him with his papers, his reading, his writing, his copying. It's all very respectable. She's even said she can't get married because she has to look after her dad. What a lovely thing to do. Except, except, Marie has been doing a little bit of writing of her own. Poems about longing, poems about kissing, poems about sharing a bed, and not with a man. No, Marie has been writing about her passionate love for other women. Do I detect an ulterior motive for shunning marriage at work? I think I might be doing.

• 2:37Kate Lister?

  In deeply religious Scotland nearly 450 years ago, Marie was writing about same-sex desire defiantly, openly, happily. But who was she writing about? What did other people think about this? And how the hell did she get away with this? I'm ready to find out if you are.

• 3:23Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixter Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Finding evidence of female desire in history books is hard enough. Believe me, I have done the legwork. Finding evidence of women loving other women? Well, that is very tricky, which is what makes today's guest and the topic so exciting and so important. Historian, translator and author Ashley Douglas is going to join us and take us back to 16th century Scotland and into the world of a woman whose writing is filled with passionate desire for other women. Are you ready to find out more? I know I am.

• 4:08Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixter Sheets. It's only Ashley Douglas, how are you doing?

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Good morning, I am delighted to be on this podcast with you, Kate. I'm such a huge fan and it's so fun to be on it myself this time.

• 4:20Kate Lister?

  Well, I heard you talking to the rather gorgeous and dashing Anthony Delaney on the After Dark podcast about your research and about the book that you've just published, which we're going to explain in a minute. I confess, I was rather jealous, it's like, I want the lesbian history.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  Well, I was desperate to come on this podcast, so it's all worked out fantastically.

• 4:39Kate Lister?

  So I'm thrilled that you're here. And honestly, you smashed it out of the park on After Dark, you were brilliant. But you're a Scottish historian and the book that you've just published tells the story of Marie Maitland. And if anyone's listened to the After Dark one, they'll know who that is. But I'm going to imagine that most people, that's not a name that they're going to have been familiar with.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  They're not, and they shouldn't feel bad for never having heard of her. I get this quite a lot now, people saying, oh, I feel so bad that I've not heard of her before. But my book is literally the first time that her story has ever been told. So you can't really have heard about her before unless you've been reading some very, very niche academic articles about manuscript literary culture in early modern Scotland. But my book tells her life story for the first time in full. It is based on five years of original archival research, where I've been uncovering primary records that have been unseen for centuries. And it is such an exciting story, as you know.

• 5:37Kate Lister?

  And any story of a woman from this point in history, the 16th century and 16th century Scotland as well, is amazing just by virtue of being a story of a woman in the 16th century. But her story is particularly significant. Can you explain why?

• 5:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah. Not only does Marie live a remarkable life as a woman at the time that she lived in, just for context, this is the 1500s in Scotland. She lives out her life in Reformation era Scotland. So in 1560, we have, of course, the Scottish Reformation, where Scotland abandons the old church, the Catholic Church, for really a very extreme and austere form of the new, a particularly Scottish brand of Calvinism. And this new social, moral, religious order is obsessed with policing people's private lives, their sex lives, you know? Sex out with marriage is not okay, let alone sex between two women or two men. And in this most hostile of contexts, I think possibly one of the most hostile times in

• 6:37Speaker 04

  Scottish history to be a woman, let alone a lesbian, Marie Maitland was also a woman who loved other women and who had an intense, passionate relationship with at least one other woman. And we know about this because of the really erotic and passionate poetry that she's left us behind.

• 6:54Kate Lister?

  It's such an amazing story that you've found and recovered. And you just, you're reading it going, how? Everything we know about that time period, everything we know, like you said, how hostile it was and how, not only like anti-sex, but deeply misogynistic and how difficult it was to be a woman. And here's Marie, I'm a lesbian, I'm going to write poems about being a lesbian. Being a lesbian's amazing. Like, it's an incredible story.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, and as you say, it's celebratory almost, like often when we're dealing with LGBT history, unavoidably, because for so much of history, we've been persecuted and criminalised and executed. A lot of the records we have are by their nature criminal records, written by other people, they're condemnatory. And in the case of Marie Maitland, what we have is primary records of queer history in a queer woman's own voice, written in her own hand, in which her celebrating of her love, her sapphic love for another woman. This is so rare and precious in lesbian history and LGBT history. And it's just such a joy for me to be able to share this with everyone in my new book.

• 7:56Kate Lister?

  The only comparable artifact I can think of would be Anne Lister's diary, because it's in her words. And as you say, that is extraordinarily rare.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  You're completely right. Anne Lister is another example of a woman who's unapologetic and proud to be a lesbian, and that's so rare. But what's so cool about Marie is she is several centuries earlier than Anne Lister. That's not to detract from Anne Lister's significance at all, but Marie Maitland is several centuries earlier. She's, I sometimes say she's Scotland's answer to Gentleman Jack, but actually she came first.

• 8:30Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  And at the same time, she's also, so she's a couple of centuries earlier than Anne Lister, she's also, her poetry is among the earliest known lesbian love poetry in any language in Europe since sappho. So I'm sure your listeners will know this already, but sappho, the original lesbian of ancient Greece, who gave us the very word lesbian and sapphic that we still use to describe women who love women today. Sappho also, of course, enshrined her intense, passionate, erotic love for other women in verse. And Marie Maitland's poetry, which is in historical Scots, is, as I say, among the earliest known such verse since the OG lesbian sappho. And that's why I give my book the subtitle, The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland's 16th Century Sappho.

• 9:16Kate Lister?

  It's a great title. That's great. I love the alliteration. So I've got to ask then, how did you find this story? Because this isn't something Google-able, she's not mentioned in other books, she's not, how did you find her story?

• 9:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the lesbian love poetry that Marie wrote is contained in a manuscript that's called the Maitland Quarto manuscript. And the manuscript has been known about for centuries since it was written, but it's quite a niche manuscript of Scots language poetry. And if you're not a specialist in like Scottish history, early modern manuscript culture, you're probably not going to know about this manuscript. My main academic background is actually Scots language history, linguistic history and Scottish history. And I was doing a series of blogs for the National Library of Scotland, without taking this into a total detour into the linguistic history of Scotland. It is safe to say that Scots is no longer the official, formal language of state. It has long since been displaced by English in that respect.

• 10:10Speaker 04

  But in the 16th century and for centuries before that, the Scots language was very much the unquestioned formal language of Scottish court, parliament, kings and queens and all the social classes. So at the time that Marie Maitland lived, it was just the language of Scotland. So her poetry, this manuscript in historical Scots. And yet I had been doing a series of blogs for the National Library showcasing significant Scots language text through the centuries. So I'd done one, for example, on Barbers the Brus, like an epic medieval poem about the Wars of Independence and everything. And I was working my way through the centuries. And the Maitland Quarto manuscript, which I was aware of as a Scots language scholar... Was, as far as I knew, a manuscript of poems by some significant men, by the male

• 10:55Speaker 04

  great and good of 16th century Scotland, including King James VI. So that's also your James I later, but at this point, he's just King James VI of Scotland, and he wrote in Scots language poetry and some other significant male court poets and Sir Richard Maitland of Leithington. So these names will already sound connected. So this is Marie's father. So it's called the Maitland Quarto, traditionally because of its associations with the Maitland family, the Maitland men. And it is a significant manuscript of Scots language poetry. So I thought, well, I'll do my next blog piece for the National Library, we'll write about this, this manuscript. And I went into the National Library, this is about five years ago now, 2020 or so. And I just took out a modern print edition, a 1920 print edition of this Maitland Quarto manuscript, thinking that I was going to be reading some nice

• 11:40Speaker 04

  16th century poems by some men. But from the moment I opened the first page, I was confronted with a woman's name, Marie Maitland, twice emblazoned on the front page and the date 1586. So I'm already thinking, who is Marie Maitland? I didn't know this had anything to do with a woman. I started reading through the poems and right enough, there were poems by Sir Richard Maitland of Leithington, that's Marie's father, by King James VI, by her brother, John Maitland, by other male court poets. But in amongst this poetry by the male great and good of 16th century Scotland, there were all these anonymous poems without any name at the bottom. And a lot of these poems were in female voice. And one of them in particular, when I hit it, was unmistakably a poem from one woman to another woman. And

• 12:24Speaker 04

  it was a love poem, and it was an erotic poem. So if I wasn't expecting to find a woman's name on the front cover of this book, I certainly wasn't expecting to find about 30 anonymous poems. And I sure as fuck wasn't expecting to find a lesbian love poem hidden in this manuscript. So from the moment I found this, I knew that this was something incredibly significant. And I had to then find out everything else about this, this woman. As I say, the manuscript has long been known about, it's always been known about by scholars, it's been written about in like very academic journals and stuff. But they've never been that interested in the female author, the anonymous poetry. And by the way, there are two further lesbian love poems, they've never been discussed

• 13:05Speaker 04

  in academia before. This, this first one, the very explicit one that I first came across, poem 49, has been spoken about in academic settings before, but you know, in that very academic, caveated, fence sitting way. The other two lesbian poems I then later discovered have never been written about before. And nobody had ever, ever went to look for details of, of Marie's life, to the extent the manuscript's been discussed, it's been very much within, you know, the acad- it's almost like an academic silo problem. It's been literary studies and they talk about the manuscript. And it's almost bamboozling that nobody's thought, well, does nobody want to go and research the life of this woman who's named there, who's named in poems, who to my mind explicitly definitely wrote the lesbian poems. By the way, Marie's later compared to Sappho in another one of these anonymous poems. Like,

• 13:50Speaker 04

  it's so juicy, it's so tantalising. But I'm the first person to ever have thought, well, let's go research her life, like in historical records and see what we find. So that's how it all came about, a chance discovery of the lesbian love poems in a Scots language manuscript, given my Scots language background. And obviously from that point on, it was like, I need to find out everything about this woman. And the, the result is the book.

• 14:13Kate Lister?

  How do you know that Marie wrote the lesbian poems that are in the collection of the anonymous?

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Well, because she wrote the manuscript, she compiled the manuscript.

• 14:24Kate Lister?

  Oh, there we go then, that's that.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that, that's point one. She, she, she wrote the manuscript, her name's on it, she is named as its creator and several other of the poems. I should say, there's 95 poems in total, most of them are by men and attributed to men. And then there's about 30 anonymous poems as well. The anonymous poems are mostly written by women. It's that Virginia Woolf quote, you know, anonymous, who wrote so many poems without signing them was often a woman. Like nowhere has that been more true than, than with this manuscript. And some of these poems are by Marie, some of them are potentially, one of them by her lover, potentially others as well, and, and by other women around Marie. And, and among the poems written about Marie by other people, there are poems that literally describe her

• 15:07Speaker 04

  as the creator of this manuscript, to say Marie is writing this book. She is literally compared to Sappho. So we've already explained the significance of that. It is the best evidence you could possibly hope for of women around Marie at the time saying, Marie is a big lesbian. Like Marie is a Scottish Sappho, Marie is a poet in the image of Sappho. And so when you've got a manuscript with her name on the front cover, there's poems comparing her to Sappho, and there's then like a series of lesbian poems. Do you know, it, it's so obvious. But of course, this hasn't stopped academics from fence sitting, because within academia, I'm sure you'll know this as well, Kate, when it comes to LGBT history in particular, it's like the bar is set so high, almost impossibly high. So it's like, okay, I know you've got this manuscript with her name on the front, and

• 15:49Speaker 04

  she's compared to Sappho, and there's explicitly lesbian poems. But unless you've got like video evidence of shagging taking place, we just can't be sure.

• 15:57Kate Lister?

  Whilst writing the poems, yeah.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly, whilst writing the poems.

• 16:01Kate Lister?

  You do see that a lot. I remember talking to Gareth Russell about his book on James I and VI, which he called Queen James. And, and he said that, like, like, how much evidence do you need that they're writing, the king and his lovers are writing to one another saying, I want to be your dog. I want to be like, and he's like, like, the bar is so much higher for LGBT history. But that, that sounds pretty conclusive to me.

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Completely, completely. And by the way, that's only some of the manuscript evidence. We are still firmly within the realms of talking just about the evidence in the manuscript. So with, with my book, obviously it started with the manuscript. And then what I went and did was research primary archival records, historical records of Marie's life. And when you add in then the evidence for the life she lived, it is just beyond all reasonable doubt. I can't stress enough that from my perspective, even the manuscript alone, even if you, like, because obviously when I went searching for records, I didn't know if I would find anything. We're like four centuries and more on, she's a woman nonetheless, a remarkable one.

• 16:59Kate Lister?

  Really rare to find it.

• 17:00Speaker 04

  Yeah. So when I first went searching for records, I did not know if I would find anything. And I might not have found anything. And it still would have been worth writing a book about if I only had the manuscript. And if I only had the manuscript as a source, I would still be saying, this is a manuscript that contains lesbian poetry. Yeah, she's a lesbian. But when you add in the primary records, so if, am I able to just give your listeners some context to the, the life story?

• 17:23Kate Lister?

  Please do. We should talk about who she was. So yeah, give us some context.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. So as I say, I was already convinced she's a lesbian, it's her manuscript, these are lesbian love poems. And then the records of her life, the story that they told me is as follows, in a nutshell, because obviously there's a whole book. So Marie is, is born into a very significant Scottish political family called the Maitlands of Leithington. And we've mentioned her father already, Sir Richard Maitland of Leithington. He is a poet himself, he's a historian, he's a collector. And then in his professional life, he's a high court judge, he's keeper of the privacy seal to Mary Queen of Scots. So

• 17:57Kate Lister?

  Oh, he's a big deal.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  He's a big deal. So yeah, it's not a normal family. She's born into her, her big brother, William Maitland is secretary to Mary Queen of Scots. And her other brother will later be chancellor to James VI. So this is a family really at the heart of political and court life in Scotland.

• 18:12Kate Lister?

  This is highfalutin, hanging around with, well, they are aristocrats.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, 100%. But of course, the men get to do all the fun stuff and be all politicians. The girls, the Maitland girls, there's four of them in total. So Marie has three sisters. For the girls, it's a different story. Even if you're an elite girl, the best you can hope for is to make a good marriage and bear children. That's it. We're all, we're all familiar with that in history. So this is Marie's life. And really, she should simply have come of age and got married. The average age of marriage for women of her status was about 18. We find in the records, I've gone and found in the records, all of her, her three sisters, they come of age, get married exactly as we'd expect. We see Richard Maitland of Leithington arranging a nice marriage to a first son of a local landed family. And then they have children and that, that's the records on them. And really, in the records,

• 18:59Speaker 04

  we should also have found a contract of marriage for Marie Maitland, his younger daughter. But instead of a contract of marriage for Marie Maitland, what we find is her being set up with independent income. Because what happens is her father goes blind in 1561. So for context, this is the year after the Reformation in 1560, and it's the year that Mary Queen of Scots returns to Scotland to take up her role as queen, having been sent off to France for her safety. So that's where we are in Scottish history. And Marie Maitland, the fourth daughter, the youngest daughter of the Maitlands of Leithington, is just coming of age. She would have been a very desirable marriage prospect in the Scottish landed elite. And instead of marrying, her father goes blind and she becomes his secretary. And this is the twist of fate that redetermines her life in a way that would otherwise have

• 19:44Speaker 04

  been unthinkable. And of course, we know as well from the later records that she's also a lesbian. So this is a perfect twist of fate for women who loves other women and would have had really no interest whatsoever in marrying a man. What a convenient opt out. Blind father, you become his secretary.

• 20:01Kate Lister?

  She must have been there going, oh no, oh, that's terrible. I guess I'll just have to stay home then.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  Exactly. And, and, and if that hadn't happened, to be clear, if her father had not gone blind, there is no way she would have been able not to marry. It, it, it was the only path for her. And this is just post-Reformation Scotland as well. So you can't even be a nun. Great root for historical lesbians. Even that has gone for Marie. So it was marriage or marriage. And then at the last minute, she gets this, like, almost mythical, like, twist of fate that gives her this opt out.

• 20:33Kate Lister?

  Do we know why her dad went blind? I mean, I guess it could have been anything. Was it an illness or was it?

• 20:38Speaker 04

  I think just deteriorating eyesight, because there's records referring to his, like, poor eyesight and ill health for many years before. Because he's quite an important chap. So there's loads, loads of records talking about him. Yeah. So it seems that it'd been deteriorating for a long time. And then by this point, he's just lost his sight completely. But he still wants to continue to serve. He wants to continue to write poems. He wants to serve the, the new queen, Mary Queen of Scots has just returned. He's served her mother, the Queen Regent, Mary de Guise. He wants to serve the young queen as well. But in order to do so, he's going to need support. He's, and especially with Marie, he would have had court clerks, like male court clerks and stuff professionally.

• 21:14Kate Lister?

  Is it still unusual that his daughter would have volunteered, well, like, that his daughter would have taken this role when presumably he's a man of means, he could have got professional transcribers and clerks to do this for him?

• 21:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it is quite unique and unusual. And I think it shows that there must have been real enthusiasm on Marie's part to, to fulfil this role. And then that she was also really helping him. Because yeah, he would, he would absolutely have had male, very educated male servants and court clerks to help him with his business. I think what's important as well is that he did also have a lot of personal passions in addition to his professional roles. He's a passionate historian, he's a poet. So, you know, you can imagine where why you'd want your daughter to help you with that, rather than like a man who you're paying to help with your duties as a judge, that that guy might not be like, I'm not, I'm not staying like to help you write your poems, do you know? But if you've got a daughter and she's there round the clock for you at home. And to go back to the manuscript, it is the most complete record of Sir Richard's poems

• 22:12Speaker 04

  that we have. This is the kind of origin story of the manuscript or the cover story, if you will, is Marie creating a perfect, pristine record of her father's poems. So she just seems very opportunistic. You know, 16th century Scotland is so hostile to women. It is so hostile, certainly to lesbians, they wouldn't have been conceived of as that. It was sodomites. It was a grave sin in the eyes of the Kirk, a crime in the eyes of the state. So if you're going to live that sort of life, you're having to do it very undercover and carefully and cautiously. And at every step, Marie outwits the patriarchy and outwits the society she's living in. So she takes up a road to her blind father as secretary. We know and she knows that that also gives her an opt out from marrying a man and means that she can continue to pursue a relationship with a

• 22:57Speaker 04

  woman carefully and secretly. To the society around her, she is a dutiful daughter, sacrificing herself to the needs of her father, right? And then even with the manuscript on the face of it, it is a manuscript of her father's poetry created by a dutiful daughter. And within its pages, she slips lesbian poetry and female authored poetry. So this is Marie's story all the way through.

• 23:29Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Ashley and Marie after this short break.

• 23:35Kate Lister?

  In case you weren't aware, World Mental Health Day takes place in October. And I don't know about you, but I'm taking this as a reminder to practise some proper self-care. Saying no to plans I don't want to go to, guilt-free snacking and Halloween movie marathons. It's also the perfect time to check in with yourself and your mental health. For many, it can mean taking that step and speaking to a professional who can help and guide you through any difficulties you're having. But often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. A lot of online therapy platforms don't accept insurance at all, which means even during a month focused on mental health, you're stuck paying out of pocket or signing up for an expensive monthly subscription.

• 24:19Kate Lister?

  This is where Rula comes in. They partner with over 120 insurance plans, making the average copay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Because the whole point of World Mental Health Day is making sure people actually get help, not just think about it. And Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is actually helping you move forward. With World Mental Health Day this October, it's a good reminder that taking care of your mental health can start with one step. Visit rula.com/shets to get started. That's R U L A dot com slash S H E E T S. You deserve mental health care

• 25:02Kate Lister?

  that works with you, not against your budget.

• 25:08Speaker 05

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• 26:16Kate Lister?

  So is she getting paid then to be the secretary? So you said that like, that she, because that's the key for all women throughout all history is income.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:24Kate Lister?

  Is being able to make money. Because this was ultimately why women had to get married. They had to. There's no, like, they can't earn their own money. You have to go and get, well, I mean, they can earn crap money, I guess. But especially the aristocrats, they're not going to go and get a job, are they? So did she earn an income through this?

• 26:39Speaker 04

  She did. And this is what I mean about, you know, the manuscript is an amazing source on its own. And then you go, this is the sort of stuff I was finding at the archives. Imagine my excitement. I didn't know if I was going to find anything. And instead, I am falling over myself. Here's Marie Maitland getting another independent income. Here's another one. So yeah, because in serving her father, she was indeed missing out on the financial and social security of marriage. Because how else does a woman have somewhere to stay or clothes on her back? As you say, it's not an option. You have to get married, regardless of your sexuality. Normally, you need to marry a man to have any income, safety, security. So in serving her father, she is missing out on this security. And of course, her father is going to pass away at some point. He's not going to live forever. So what we see in the records is instead of Marie getting married and having

• 27:23Speaker 04

  security that way, her father sets her up with a series of independent incomes. She becomes incredibly independently wealthy. And this is both to give her income while she's, while her father is still alive and she's serving him. But the amount she is set up with is far too much for just disposable income while her father's alive. This is to set her up as an independent woman for life. So what they, what the Maitland family have accepted is that by the time that her father dies and she's no longer needed as his secretary, she is going to have far exceeded marriageable age and not be able to marry anymore. So therefore, they are setting her up for life. And one of the coolest records I found is Marie investing her dowry. So the amount, this is the exact same amount

• 28:05Speaker 04

  that each of her sisters had paid for them in dowry. And instead of Marie, being paid for Marie to a husband, she gets it and she independently invests it. So she lends this money at massive interest to some landowner from Aberdeen. And therefore, she has interest payments coming in, also the principal sum is still due back to her. And this is what I mean about the historical records only further bolstering the picture you get of Marie. This is, this is from the manuscript. This is an independent woman with financial agency, social agency. And some of these records are really funny because they call her like a chaste virgin. So she's getting set up with all these independent incomes by landed men. It's landed men who are becoming obliged to pay her money. But they all describe

• 28:49Speaker 04

  her as like Marie Maitland, lawful daughter to Sir Richard, chaste virgin, like the most, she's the most virgin-y, chaste virgin that has ever lived, right? And then you've also got poems in the manuscript. This is where you have to read the historical records alongside the poetic records. They just marry up so perfectly. So at the same time that you've got Marie getting these independent incomes and being described as a chaste virgin in the state historical record, you've got poems written by women who knew Marie also saying like Marie, she's so committed to virginity. She's like the virgin goddess Diana. But it's so tongue in cheek, you know, because what's implied the whole time is like heterosexuality. She may be a virgin in heterosexual terms, but she's 100% shagging a woman this whole

• 29:31Speaker 04

  time. So it's like, the whole time, she's just like outwitting the patriarchy so much. Publicly, she is, yes, I'm such a chaste virgin. I have never had any interactions with any men ever, probably very true.

• 29:41Kate Lister?

  Just love my dad.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  Just love my dad. I'm like sacrificing. I would so love to be married to a man and bearing children, but I am.

• 29:47Kate Lister?

  God, I'd love to be married to a man.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  I'm sacrificing myself to my father. And you know, she hoodwinks Scottish society to this effect. All the public records are to this effect, Marie Maitland, the most chaste, loyal daughter of Sir Richard. And then in this manuscript of poetry, which also on the surface is apparently about her being dutiful to her father, creating a lovely record of her father's poems. And in this book, she's slipping her own lesbian love poetry. And there's poems by her, by women who knew her, comparing her to Sappho, comparing her to like the virgin goddess Diana, and celebrating her great chastity, her renowned chastity and virginity. It is tongue in cheek.

• 30:26Kate Lister?

  What do we learn about her from the poems then? I mean, do we know, like, that she, did she have relationships? Do we, like, to what extent? Were they, were they relationships? Were they, it sounds like they were physical. But what does the poems tell us about this woman?

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. So the, one of the most powerful poems is called Poem 49, just because it's the 49th poem in the manuscript. And in this poem, Marie declares literally her desire to marry another woman. So this is not just a sexual relationship. It's very clear. There are some very erotic lines in the poem. They're, they're definitely getting it on. But it's also deeper than that. It is her, honestly, it is so pained, it's so emotional to read. I read it so many times now and it still always gets me when I read it. And my strong sense is that the occasion that caused Marie to write that specific poem was her lover getting married off. Because obviously, she would have had a convenient opt out of a blind father. All other women in this society, Marie's sister, her lover, all the other women eventually would have to marry a man. Because what else are you

• 31:26Speaker 04

  going to do? Only Marie has this opt out. And yeah, she writes this poem to the woman that she was deeply in love with. And the first part of it, she's just describing how beautiful and perfect and intelligent the woman is. But then the sort of crescendo of the poem, she bursts out into this stanza that says, I really wish that I could take your husband's role. I wish that I could be that to you instead. So, you know, you get the sense it's not just an erotic sexual relationship. That is a deep love. And it's really funny, actually, because this leads me on to a point about John Knox and penises.

• 32:02Kate Lister?

  Always want to talk about John Knox and penises.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  So there's this line in the poem where Marie says, I wish that I could have the part of your husband. So part is the Scots way of saying part. It's just the English word part. But even in modern Scots, we still say part. But in early modern Scots, when Marie's writing, this, this word has a dual meaning. It can mean just like part or role. So I wish that I had the part or role of your husband. Also has a secondary meaning of penis. And the main source for this secondary meaning is John Knox, who criticises a promiscuous parishioner for having his part in the pot. So.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  So it's like, thanks, John Knox, for helping me to interpret a lesbian love poem for centuries on.

• 32:41Kate Lister?

  Oh, it'd be so gross. It'd be so mad about that. Would you read us a little bit of perhaps poem forty-nine?

• 32:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah. I'll do, um, should do the first two stanzas because they end on like the diorotic line, yeah. So here we go. And this is from like the fifteen-seventies, and it's in historical Scots, so I will just read it in historical Scots.

• 33:02Kate Lister?

  Players do.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  "As Phoebus in his sphere's hight, Prusellus the cape crepusculeine, and Phoebe, oh, the star is lift, your splendor, so, madam, I whine, does only pass all feminine. In sapient superlative, endue it with virtues, say divine, as Lernud Palace redevive. And as by hidden virtue unknowen, the adamant draws iron there till, your courteous nature so has drawn my heart, yours, to continue still. Say great joy does my spirit fulfill, contemplating your perfection, ye wield me holy at your will, and ravish my affection."

• 33:44Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow. That's just beautiful to listen to. What is she saying there? I could pick out certain bits of it, but what's, what's the meaning there?

• 33:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. And I mean, it's, it's quite flowery. Never mind the historical Scots. It's very flowery language as well. Maria is like so well educated because she obviously doesn't marry normally. She ends up gaining a massively enriched education in this, this role, serving her father. She's so well read in like her Bible, her classics, everything. So the opening line, "As Phoebus in his sphere's hight," is really just "as the sun in the sky."

• 34:17Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  "As Phoebus in his sphere's height," um, again, more typical Marie, "Prusellus the cape crepusculeine," like, "out does the, the cape of twilight." Um, so crepusculeine, that people might know it in terms of like those crepuscular animals that come out at dusk. So it's that sort of, yeah. So like, what, you know, once you break down the words, it all does start to make a bit more sense. So yeah, "as the sun in the, the height of the sky surpasses the cloak of twilight, and Phoebe, oh, the star is lift, and as Phoebe, the moon, out does the light of all the stars, your splendor, madam, I believe, does only surpass all womanhood. In sapient superlative, you are endowed with virtues so divine, it's as if Lernud Palace, the goddess Athena, has been brought back to life."

• 35:02Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then she goes on, "And as by hidden virtue unknowen, the adamant draws iron to it," which is like a common metaphor at the time. It comes up in Shakespeare and stuff as well. "Your courteous nature so has drawn my heart, yours, to continue still. Such great joy does my spirit fulfill, contemplating your perfection, you govern me holy at your will, and ravish my affection."

• 35:26Kate Lister?

  I mean, that's pretty heavy, isn't it?

• 35:28Speaker 04

  And that's just the opening two stanzas. And despite this, academics of, of course, maybe suggested it's a friendship poem.

• 35:35Kate Lister?

  Same old, "Govern me at your will and ravish my affection."

• 35:42Speaker 04

  If I don't that to my friend, I think my wife might be asking me some questions.

• 35:47Kate Lister?

  That's, it's not, I mean, it's, it is true. I know that historians get a lot of stick for like, you know, like they're, they're just good friends trope, but you know, that people do like to be cautious and there were different social customs and, you know, that people did write to one another in, in much more intense language than perhaps they would do today. But even taking that into account, that's not the language of friendship.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  It's not. And when, as I say, that poem goes on to declare, "I want to marry you."

• 36:11Kate Lister?

  So, and they definitely don't say that.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  They definitely don't say that.

• 36:14Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Friends definitely don't say that. Like, if you want to see that, the language of friendship, uh, look at the letters between Mary Queen of Scotland and Queen Elizabeth, you know, which is a drama all to itself. But like that, that is not what is being said here. Do we have any idea who she's writing this about? Do we know who this person is?

• 36:31Speaker 04

  We unfortunately don't. That's the one thing I've not been able to properly discern. Um, yeah, I mean, it will certainly have been another elite woman, same sort of social status as Marie, because not least because she's described as learned and educated and everything as well. And only somebody of that social status would, would receive that sort of education. Um, Marie lives out her life in Edinburgh and Island, so geographically it's going to have to be somebody of that sort of landed elite. Um, but beyond that, it was, it was too impossible to discern. What we'd need is like a letter or, or something like that. And I know there are records out there, Kate, I don't even know if I should say this on here, but there are records out there that was denied research access to. So I'm hopeful that I might get to see them, um, at some point. It's quite frustrating

• 37:13Speaker 04

  knowing that there, there is private correspondence. Um, but this is the problem when things are held privately. Fortunately, a lot of my research, the documents I've been talking about, like Marie investing her dowry, the, the marriage contracts of her sisters, the other records of her financial independence, they've all fortunately been at the register of deeds of the Court of Session, which are held at National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh. And other sources that I've looked at have been at the National Library of Scotland. But then there are sources that are still held by private families and private residencies. And then as a researcher, you just have to ask permission and they can just tell you.

• 37:47Kate Lister?

  They can just say no. Oh my God, that is frustrating.

• 37:51Speaker 04

  And that's what's happened. So that would be the best way to potentially one day, hopefully be able to identify the lover. The other thing you could do is like, because I've also dated this poem to Marie's lover, the occasion of Marie's lover getting married off, what you could do is go through the register of deeds of the Court of Session and look at all the women that were married in the rough date frame, and then try and break that down by geographical location. But I just thought, like, I did think about that in the process of my research, and I thought it just would not be worth the, the time and energy.

• 38:19Kate Lister?

  You just went in a full hyper-focus with this, didn't you? Wow.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, my wife's always, always saying, I'm autistic, big surprise, everyone's going to be so shocked. But my wife was like, ultimately, the book is just like a special interest that go way out of hand.

• 38:32Kate Lister?

  But look what it produced. It's, it's so amazing. Hyper-focus is normally produced nonsense. And this is just, this is just such an important piece of work.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  It's a superpower when it's harnessed for, for good things. Yeah. So like me, just like obsessively every weekend, and my wife didn't see me for like five years. I'm just going to the library and I'm just sitting with my, like, and I should say, these, all these records that I've been looking at, the historical records, they're in secretary hand. So that's like reading hieroglyphs. If you're not trained in it, like paleographically, it's completely different script. It's in historical Scots language. So you had to first, you know, in terms of this research, the first thing is determining where records might be, if they exist. You don't even know they exist, but if they exist, oh, they might be in this register, like collection of financial records, um, like account books. So first thing you need to do is work out where those records are, request to see them, are you allowed to see them, then go in. And then you've got a bunch of records in secretary hand older Scots, you've got to transcribe them from secretary hand to normal, modern

• 39:26Speaker 04

  script. And then you want to translate them from historical Scots to modern English. And then you can start analyzing them. So this was, this was super hyper-focus. Um, but I had to draw the line because I got a publishing contract. Like, I was in the process, obviously, of researching and, and starting to build a book when I then got the publishing contract. And then you're working to deadline. And I would, even I had to draw the line and say, Ashley, you do not have time to, um, extract all the women who got married between fifteen-seventy and fifteen-eighty-five. And also some records are damaged, you know, and, and these are very old books. So sometimes the bit, the bit of paper that you need, and I have had that with some of the Maitland stuff, they just leave like a sort of slither of paper. I don't know if you've had that in primary stuff. Yeah. But they just, and it's so tantalizing. They leave like a little slither. It's like, this is where another page was, but it's not there anymore.

• 40:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah. This might have been the one that you wanted. Ha, ha, ha. And it's.

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Like damage in a fire or whatever. So I, I just, I couldn't justify, all I would have had at the end of it anyway, is a list of names of women who it might have been. And I still wouldn't have been able to nail down which one it was.

• 40:24Kate Lister?

  Then you're just looking at names going, uh, who out of these names would have ravished my affection?

• 40:27Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. So I, that was a very long way of saying like, no, like I, I didn't manage to determine the actual name, specific identity, but there are research avenues I could still pursue to potentially hopefully find it.

• 40:51Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Ashley and Marie after this short break.

• 40:59Kate Lister?

  Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 41:41Kate Lister?

  What happens to Marie? Because she seems like she's hit the lesbian jackpot here. Because she's got a dad who's blind, hurrah. She's got independent income. No one is now expecting her to get married. This is the perfect cover. Everyone's going, what a lovely daughter she is. When actually she's, you know, and she's running around enjoying all of these lesbian relationships. But what happens to her?

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a sad ending. And I know you've read the book, so you'll know. She doesn't actually have a happy ending. But I will stress first of all that for most of her adult life, like this is a positive, rare positive example of lesbian history. For most of her adult life, she gets to live a meaningfully independent life as a woman, as a woman who loved women. But sadly, when her father dies, she becomes the property of her oldest living male relative, which is her brother John, who's the chancellor to King James VI. And he immediately has her married off. And she is 40, around 40 at this time. And as I've said, there is no intention for her to marry. She has been set up with independent wealth. She has been completely set up for life.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  And what's really fascinating in one of the documents, one of her incomes, she has so many, I was losing track of them in the records. And one of her records is fascinating because she leaves her wealth to nieces. So obviously normally you would just leave it to your heirs and successors, which would be spouses and children. You don't normally name people, like by explicit name, you just say heirs and successors. But for Marie Maitland, she doesn't have a husband and she doesn't have, she's not going to have children through not having a husband. So when she's thinking about her wealth, she's leaving it to nieces. So that's a further clue that really there is no intention for her ever to marry and have her own legitimate heirs to inherit stuff. She is leaving it to nieces. And kind of cool in itself that she leaves it to nieces. She's got nephews as well.

• 43:28Kate Lister?

  To the nieces.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  But really cool lesbian auntie, early lesbian auntie goes. I also love being a lesbian auntie. It's really fun.

• 43:36Kate Lister?

  I can see her now. But it wasn't, it wasn't to be. So what happened?

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, despite the fact she's got all this independent wealth, she's, she's named her nieces as substitute heirs. She's probably already decided where in Edinburgh she's going to have her independent residence. And her father dies in 1586. And before he is cold in the grave, she has been married off to a young man half her age. She's married off to some 20 something to essentially solve some political problems that are bothering the king. And, you know, her brother is the king's right hand man. So it's his problem as well. He has a big political problem on his desk in the shape of a family called the Lodgers of Hull. And he's been trying to solve this problem for the past three years or so already. But suddenly he has a new card to play in the form of an unmarried sister. And we know that in this thing, marriages are, for the most part, they're not love matches.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  They're political, economic, religious necessities, and often they're politically strategic. So for John Maitland, overnight, he's like, oh, great. I've now got an unmarried sister and I can play that card to solve a political problem to please the king. And he does that. And Marie, as I say, she's well past marriageable age. The average age of marriage for a woman like Marie is 18. They're certainly married off by their early twenties. She is 40, like about 40 years old, if not older.

• 44:53Kate Lister?

  She must have been livid.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  And then obviously she's also, not that it's not possible to have children in older age and more and more people are doing that today. It's not to suggest that's not the case, but it's not optimal child bearing age. And especially in an age where medicine has nowhere near as advanced as it is now. And Marie obviously has to consummate the marriage for it to be legal. So she does have to consummate the marriage. She, she does conceive. And she dies 10 years later. So she's married off in 1586. She's dead by 1596. She leaves behind four children under the age of 10. Goodness knows how many.

• 45:28Kate Lister?

  She's, wow, they really went at it.

• 45:30Speaker 04

  Goodness knows how many miscarriages and stillbirths are in there as well. And my strong sense, the records don't even tell us. We don't, we don't get a record of Marie's death until she's been dead for a long time. Her husband marries again immediately. Before he's even registered her death formally, he's remarried. Yeah, it's brutal. There's no love in that marriage, that's for sure.

• 45:48Kate Lister?

  No.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  And we don't actually get the cause of death in the record, which also suggests it was so obvious and common that it didn't need to be mentioned because death and childbirth is very common at this time.

• 45:58Kate Lister?

  Oh, so you think she died in childbirth?

• 46:00Speaker 04

  As I say, she leaves behind four children under the age of 10. And my strong sense is that she died in childbirth for not long after, after the fourth one, by which time she would have been 50, 50 plus.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  And that's it. And she disappears from the record. She disappears from the records when she gets married. A marriage contract, and it's a very weird marriage contract. I'll go into this in great detail in the book. It is not a normal marriage contract in any way, shape or form. There's an urgency to it for a start. It's, it's a very business political contract. And it's like they're trying to get it done before anyone changes their mind. There's multiple parties to it, more, more than normal. And like the first page of the marriage contract is Marie and Alexander Loder, they have to marry between today and tomorrow without further delay. Doesn't normally happen. So from the first page of this seven page marriage contract, you're like, oh, this is weird. So it's, it's just, it's a political fix. Her brother uses her.

• 46:52Kate Lister?

  Do you know what happens to the kids? I mean, does she have descendants walking around today?

• 46:56Speaker 04

  I don't know. Sometimes people tell me they're related to her. I've not, I've not verified the claims, but I think I've met some of them actually. As ever, we know more about the boys. It just goes on, you know, it's perpetual, it's imperperp. We know more about Marie's brothers than we do about her sisters. We then know more about her, her sons than we do about her daughters. One of her sons has quite an illustrious like political career. The other one also dies young. But she disappears from the records. So from 1586, she just goes and then we don't get reference to her again until after she's dead. And it's the reference back. We don't know where she was buried. That's the other thing that I've annoyingly not been able to nail down. There's a few most likely locations, but that's also not been possible to pin down. I've, I've still got stuff on my to do list, you know, there's still things that I'm.

• 47:40Kate Lister?

  You do, you do, don't you? So as a final question then, like, it's, it's, I mean, poems are incredible in that they're shining a light on passions and emotions. And like the historical records can show you what happened, where, where and when. But trying to get like a sense of who this woman was, who do you, do you think, like, is she someone that you'd like to have gone for a drink with? Is she like, what kind of personality do you think that this woman had reading between the lines?

• 48:06Speaker 04

  I think definitely, I think she was a pretty unique and special woman, most like Anne Lister, who you brought up earlier, like that self belief and self love in a society and in a time that has no place for you and is shocked by you. It's that unapologetic confidence as a lesbian. Okay, she, she played it safe, like publicly, she played by the rules, but privately and who she was to the women around her and to her lover. And the, the, the sense of herself that she conveys in, in the poems that she wrote herself and in the poems that other people, the women who knew her best, wrote about her. She comes across as like a pretty remarkable, iconic woman. And I would absolutely love to meet her. I think she'd be really cool. And she almost makes me feel, I don't want to say ashamed, but she had definitely more

• 48:51Speaker 04

  self confidence as a lesbian, as a woman who loved other women in like John Knoxie's Scotland than I would have had when I was at high school. And I always feel kind of humbled by that, you know, because like 21st century Scotland, it's not perfect, right? But it's pretty decent to, to be a gay person in modern Scotland today. And I still was like well into my twenties before I came out and all of that. And then you've got this woman in like literally post-reformation Scotland, just writing this powerful love poetry to another woman, like proudly comparing herself to Sappho. She's, she's like citing biblical scripture in defence of her Sapphic love. You know, this is, this is, this is Calvinist Scotland where the churches are, it's a society, the Bible is really the word of God and you live your life by scriptures.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  And she is citing scriptures in defence of her Sapphic love. Like that is so bold. So I'm just constantly inspired by her and I think it'd be really cool to meet her.

• 49:45Kate Lister?

  It also suggests something of a lesbian community that must have existed at the time, which is another incredibly rare thing as a historian that you're always trying to get hold of is like, how do these communities exist? But I mean, if people, if, if other women are writing about her and they're aware of the fact that she loves other women, that it's so tantalising. But and you sort of get that with the Anne Lister diaries as well of like, there existed some kind of infrastructure of these women found one another and gravitated towards one another.

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Totally. And, and yeah, there's actually, there's one woman that we can identify by name in the manuscript. It's not Marie's lover, unfortunately, because the dates do not work at all. But there's one of the anonymous poems that's obviously in female voice. It's kind of semi anonymously ascribed to G dot H. And you can work that out to be Grizzle Hay of Yester. Yester's like another place near Leithington in East Lothian. And again, the contents of that poem match up with the contents of her life. So we've been able to identify by name, one woman, Grizzle, quite a cool name, actually.

• 50:46Kate Lister?

  That's a very cool name.

• 50:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. So you've got, you've got definitely Marie, definitely her lover, definitely Grizzle Hay of Yester. And who knows how many other individual women are represented among those 30 odd anonymous poems. But maybe, maybe as the research goes on, like I really hope that my book is not the end of this discussion. This is just like the first time that Marie's really been brought into the limelight at all. And I'm hopeful that there will be more research. I'm also continuing to look for stuff. I just had a deadline to hit with this first book.

• 51:17Kate Lister?

  Ashley, you have been absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for doing this research and bringing this woman back into public conversation. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 51:28Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me on the podcast, Kate. It's been an absolute pleasure. I'm mostly on Instagram, so that's at Ash Douglas Scott. And I'm doing a bunch of like festivals and bookshops and stuff over the next year or so.

• 51:41Kate Lister?

  Amazing. Well, will you come back on and tell us any updates that you have?

• 51:46Speaker 04

  You'll be my first call when I get access to those letters.

• 51:48Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much. You've been marvelous.

• 51:54Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Ashley for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. And don't forget that we are available on YouTube. If you wanted to head over there and give us a little subscribe. It's not that I want to have more subscribers than Dan Snow, but you know, I want to have more subscribers than Dan Snow. Coming up, the next episode in our mini series about famous penises throughout history. Whose will it be? You'll have to tune in to find out. And if you want us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Theodorov and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Freddy Chick.

• 52:36Kate Lister?

  Join me again, Betwixt and Sheets, History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  In Our Time is a world class seminar every week. Why was Jeremy a lonely snail? What were lines doing in York in the third century? I'm Misha Glennie and every week I'm joined by expert guests to explore the ideas that shape our world.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  If I was going to define mathematics, I would say it's the study of structure.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.