|
|
| Perdita woman: Anne, Lady Halkett |
|
|
|
Biography Anne (Murray), Lady Halkett is the author and scribe of fifteen extant manuscripts (excluding correspondence): an autobiography ( British Library MS Additional 32376) and fourteen volumes of religious meditations (National Library of Scotland MSS 6489 to 6502). She was a member of the upper Scottish gentry, who lived from 1622 to 1699. She was born in London on 4 January 1622 (though see Loftis, p. 7 for the suggestion that the year of her birth was 1623). She refers in her meditations to turning 66 on 4 January 1687/8 (NLS MS 6497, msItem 41, pp. 342-343). Her autobiography ( British Library MS Additional 32376) describes the early years of her life, leading up to her marriage to Sir James Halkett in 1656. Anne Murray was a younger daughter of Thomas Murray (1564- 1623), a cadet of the Murray of Tullibardine family, and of his wife Jane Drummond (d. 1647). Thomas Murray was Provost of Eton College, and at one time a tutor to Charles I; Jane was governess to two of Charles I's children: Henry, Duke of Gloucester and then Princess Elizabeth. Anne had three brothers, Henry (d. 1672), Charles, and Will (1617-1649), and a sister Elizabeth (d. 1689), who married Sir Henry Newton, afterwards Puckering. Anne's first romantic relationship was with Thomas Howard ( 1625-1678), later second Lord Howard of Escrick, a match of which both families disapproved. Anne resolved to marry no one until Howard married someone else (which he did in 1646), causing a rift with her mother. In 1647 she met Colonel Joseph Bampfield ( 1622-1685), a spy for the king, with whom she began a relationship of several years even though rumours kept surfacing that his wife was still alive. She and Bampfield helped James, Duke of York escape from St James Palace on 20 April 1648. Halkett consented to a secret engagement with Bampfield and lived for a time at Naworth Castle (or Noward, as Halkett writes in her meditations) in East Cumberland with Sir Charles Howard and his wife Anne. She met Charles II at Dunfermline, Scotland in 1650 who thanked her for saving his brother, and she tended wounded soldiers at the Battle of Dunbar. She spent two years at Fyvie (with the family of the earl of Dunfermline), then moved to Edinburgh where she met Sir James Halkett. Eventually she agreed to marry Sir James. The wedding was on Saturday 1 March 1656 after which Anne moved to his seat at Pitfirrane Castle in Fife (though they also spent time in London, given that she wrote some volumes of her meditations there). She became the stepmother to two sons and two daughters. She clashed with her eldest stepson, Sir Charles (d. 1697) in later years over her jointure. Halkett lived in Dunfermline from 1671, after her husband's death, until her own death in 1699. Anne Halkett had four children, most of whose births and deaths she discusses in her meditations: Elizabeth (Betty) (born 26 November 1656, died 13 November 1660), Henry (born 13 June 1658, died 12 May 1661), Robert (Robin) (born 1 February 1660, died 5 October 1693), and Jane (born 11 October 1661 , died 11 February 1666). Sir James Halkett died on 24 September 1670. On 14 February 1671 Halkett moved from Pitfirrane to Abbott House in Dunfermline just behind Dunfermline Abbey, where her husband was buried. Halkett continued to practice medicine in her widowhood and began to take noble children into her household. Throughout her autobiography and meditations her debts were a source of concern to her. She spent many hours meditating and writing, as attested by her surviving manuscript meditations and by her minister ""SC"" who wrote in The Life of the Lady Halket (Edinburgh, 1701), pp. 54-55, that she divided each day into three parts: 5 hours for devotion, 10 for refreshment, and 9 for business. Her hours of devotion were 5-7 am, 1-2 pm, 6-7 pm, and 9-10 pm. Certain days of the week were also the occasion for additional meditating, preeminent among them being Saturday (the day of her husband's death). Halkett's religious sympathies were Episcopal, though in her earlier meditations she argued for tolerance on several occasions, believing that in essentials, Presbyterians and Episcopals were the same. But after Presbyterianism was firmly reestablished in Scotland with the triumph of William and Mary in 1689 she became less tolerant, and she campaigned vigorously for the two Episcopal ministers at her church (Mr Cooper, probably the ""SC"" who published a biography and several of her tracts in the early eighteenth century, and Mr Graeme), who were deposed. Halkett's political allegiances were strongly Stuart royalist. Throughout her meditations she writes of the king: meditating repeatedly on the " "murder"" of Charles I, praying constantly for King Charles II's reign, and that his false counselors would stop leading him astray, deploring James II's Catholicism yet lamenting his exile to France in 1688 and always speaking of him as her true king. Her contempt for William and Mary are evident, for example in a meditation on Mary II's death in 1694. Anne Halkett died on 22 April 1699. The biographical sketches of Anne Halkett's life provided by Loftis and in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography rely mainly on the autobiography and not on the numerous biographical details revealed in her manuscript meditations. |
|
|
|
National Library of
Scotland: MS 6489 Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies: D/EP F32 National Library of Scotland: MS 6496 British Library: Add. MS 32376 British Library: Add. MS 32376 National Library of
Scotland: MS 6489 National Library of Scotland: MS 6490 National Library of Scotland: MS 6490 National Library of Scotland: MS 6491 National Library of Scotland: MS 6491 National Library of Scotland: MS 6492 National Library of Scotland: MS 6492 National Library of Scotland: MS 6493 National Library of Scotland: MS 6493 National Library of Scotland: MS 6494 National Library of Scotland: MS 6494 National Library of Scotland: MS 6495 National Library of Scotland: MS 6495 National Library of Scotland: MS 6496 National Library of Scotland: MS 6497 National Library of Scotland: MS 6497 National Library of Scotland: MS 6498 National Library of Scotland: MS 6498 National Library of Scotland: MS 6499 National Library of Scotland: MS 6499 National Library of Scotland: MS 6500 National Library of Scotland: MS 6500 National Library of Scotland: MS 6501 National Library of Scotland: MS 6501 National Library of Scotland: MS 6502 National Library of Scotland: MS 6502 |