Mary Middlemore
Mary Middlemore (died 1618) was a Courtier and Maid of Honour to Anne of Denmark, subject of poems, and treasure hunter.[8][9] Rowland Whyte mentioned the maids of honour and others dancing at Hampton Court in the presence chamber of Anne of Denmark, with a French visitor, the Count of Vaudémont.[15] Around Christmas time 1609/10, Sir Edward Herbert fought with a Scottish gentleman who had snatched a ribbon or "topknot" from her hair in a back room of the queen's lodgings at Greenwich Palace.[24] The queen's secretary William Fowler dedicated poems to her in 1609, possibly for a third-party,[25] including the Meditation upon Virgin Maryes Hatt, and Aetna which includes her name; "My harte as Aetna burnes, and suffers MORE / Paines in my MIDDLE than ever MARY proved", and devised an Italian anagram "Madre di mill'amori", the mother of a thousand loves.[33] The gift has sometimes been assumed to be intended for the queen, but it may be connected with the financial ruin and death of her step-father Sir Vincent Skinner, who had been building a country house at Thornton Abbey.