Marie Maitland, Scotland’s Sixteenth-Century Sappho

Vulgar History Podcast

Marie Maitland, Scotland’s Sixteenth-Century Sappho 

September 2, 2026

Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster. I’m a historian and an author, and I’ve been curious about the Tudor era since I was a small child. This season on the podcast, we’re talking about the notorious Tudors: who they were, the times they lived in, and what was happening elsewhere in the world at the same time. 

This week is one of those elsewhere-in-the-world-at-the-same-time episodes because we’re talking about Scotland. And we kind of set the stage, if you listened to last week’s episode about the Witches of Scotland, we talked a bit about what’s happening in that sort of chaotic time, the Tudor era moving into the Stuart era up in Scotland. 

This week, I’m so excited to have a very special guest on the podcast, who is historian, translator and author Ashley Douglas, who has got a new book that’s called With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland’s Sixteenth-Century Sappho. This book is such a treat, and it’s such a treat to get to talk to Ashley about her research because it’s, like, the dream of so many historians to discover, to unearth somebody who the historical record has not really talked about, to be the first person to really put together what this person’s story is. I don’t want to spoil anything for you; I’m going to let Ashley explain the story. So, please enjoy this conversation I had with Ashley Douglas about Marie Maitland. 

—————

Ann: So, I’m joined today by Ashley Douglas, author of the new book, With My Own Hand: The Secret Life of Marie Maitland, Scotland’s Sixteenth-Century Sappho. Welcome, Ashley. 

Ashley: Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to speak to you today. 

Ann: I’m really excited to speak to you as well. I mean, this is such an interesting story, and I’m just such a nerd for other people’s research, and you have done a historical, like, police detective-level investigation just to unearth Marie Maitland. Could I just ask you first to share the story of how you first encountered her? 

Ashley: Sure! It was by complete chance. As you say, it’s like a historian’s dream to come across a genuinely unknown story and to be discovering documents that nobody has seen for centuries. So, it was complete serendipity that I ended up researching and writing the story. My main academic background is in languages and history; I’m a Scots language specialist. Scots, just as a little bit of background, was the language of the Scottish nation in the 1500s, in my period. Obviously, in modern Scotland today, English is our official language and all of that, but we still speak Scots as a spoken language. Back in the 1500s, the Scots language was the unquestioned language of church, state, court, parliaments, kings, queens. 

I was working on a little historical series for the National Library of Scotland, writing about famous Scots language texts. So, I’d written about, for example, Barbour’s The Brus, which is the sort of epic medieval poem about the Wars of Independence and Robert the Bruce. And I was just working my way through the centuries, and I was getting to the 1500s, and I was aware of this manuscript called The Maitland Quarto Manuscript, which is known among academics. It’s not well known in the public consciousness, but if you’re, sort of, a 16th-century Scottish historian and you’re into Scots language, you’ve definitely heard of this Maitland Quarto Manuscript that contains poems in Scots by, as far as I was aware at that point, men, including King James VI of Scotland. He’s the one that’s later also James I of England, but at this point he’s just still James VI of Scotland. 

He was also a Scots-language poet, big champion of the Scots language, actually, before he also became King of England. That’s a whole other discussion, but he’s a very fascinating example of shifting linguistic loyalties depending on political and social situation. But when he’s King of Scotland, he praises the Scots language as distinct from English and writes poems and everything. There’s also poems in this manuscript by Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, who was a poet at this time, and a judge, and Keeper of the Privy Seal to Mary, Queen of Scots. And so, I had decided I was going to write about this manuscript to tell people about the significant source of Scots language poetry. 

So, I went into the National Library of Scotland, and I took out a modern edition, not the original manuscript, I would come to that later. At this point it was just, like, a 1920 modern print edition of the manuscript of this poetry, and I thought I was going to be reading the poems of men, of the male great and good of 16th century Scotland. I was excited enough about that. That was going to be a good day. And instead, I opened this edition, and on the front page of this manuscript I saw a woman’s name, twice, emblazoned in decorative fonts. It had “Marie Maitland, 1586,” not once but twice. And I was immediately thinking, who is this woman? I didn’t know there was anything to do with a woman with this manuscript, I thought it was just male poetry. So, I’m immediately thinking, okay, this is different to what I was expecting. 

And then, as I was going through the manuscript, right enough, there were poems by various high and mighty Scottish men of the 16th century, and there was a poem by King James VI. I found all of that. But I also kept coming across anonymous poetry, unsigned poetry, and I started reading one of these anonymous poems, and it was quite clearly a lesbian love poem in the voice of one woman to another. So, I wasn’t expecting to find a woman’s name on the front of the manuscript, I wasn’t expecting to find thirty anonymous poems, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to find a lesbian love poem in a 16th-century Scottish manuscript. So, this was the chance discovery. 

This was in, like, 2020, and of course, I immediately knew that this was hugely significant because this is 16th-century Scotland. I know your listeners have heard some of that context. 

Ann: But it’s a very… The church is, like, overseeing everything, stomping down anything that they don’t like. And I would presume they don’t like lesbians. [chuckles]

Ashley: They absolutely do not like lesbians, or sodomites, as they would have called them. So, this manuscript was completed in the year 1586, as I said, that’s on the title page along with Marie Maitland’s name. Completed in the year 1586, but a lot of the poems in it date also from the years leading up to that. So, the poems, some of them are written even in the 1570s and earlier. 

In 1570, we have the date of the first recorded execution for sodomy in Scotland. So, we’ve had the Scottish Reformation of 1560, a very extreme and austere form of Calvinism,  church and state clamped down on all forms of what’s perceived to be immoral and deviant behaviour, including sodomy. 1570, we have the first recorded execution of two men for sodomy. In 1625, we also have in Scotland a conviction of two women for sodomy as well. So, this is the context in which this manuscript was written and in which this love poem from one woman to another was written by Marie Maitland, the woman whose name is also on the front of the manuscript. 

So yeah, seeing this poem in this time period, I was immediately aware this is huge. This is astounding that this poem was written at all, let alone that it was hidden away in a manuscript anonymously and survived to the present day. Until I came upon it and started sharing it, it was not widely known. Its true significance had not been meaningfully recognized and sung about. So, I immediately went back to the National Library and said, “I know I was going to just write about Scots language history, but this piece is going to be a wee bit different. This is going to actually be about LGBT history as much.” So, we ended up bringing out this article on the manuscript in LGBT History Month, February 2021. So, it was shared in both Scots language history but also LGBT history, so it was so important. 

And of course, at the same time, I was already beginning to share about the manuscript and this one – the first lesbian love poem I discovered amongst its pages; we might go on to it later, I actually ended up discovering a further two, but the first one I discovered, the most explicit, the most in-your-face, this is a screaming lesbian love poem – is called “Poem 49” just because it’s the 49th poem in the manuscript. I immediately started sharing about that. But of course, at the same time, I needed to know more about this manuscript and more about the woman whose name was on the front and who’d clearly written it. And there’s so little out there about her. 

You kindly mentioned my book at the start of the episode here, and it was published in July 2026. It was the first time, my book is literally the first time her story has ever been told. So, when I first had come upon this name in the manuscript, obviously, I went looking for information about her. All I could find was a tiny Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, very little information, and some of it is actually wrong, I now know, having gone away and done original archival research. Very little information out there about Marie Maitland, and even the stuff that is out there is not always entirely accurate. So, I exhausted the available print sources, secondary sources that are already out there very quickly, and decided I’m going to have to just undertake primary archival research. I do have a master’s in Scottish history from the University of St Andrews, so fortunately, between my Scots language expertise, remembering that historical Scots is the language of the nation at this time, so all the sources are in historical Scots, and my Scottish history degree, I was in a position to go looking. 

So, I then spent five years doing original archival research in mostly national records of Scotland, so looking through things like the Register of Deeds of the Court of Session, Privy Seal records, all that sort of thing, and various other manuscripts that are held in special collections at the National Library of Scotland, and other sources elsewhere in archives in the UK and across Scotland. But it was really just a case of starting from zero. I’ve got this name of this woman… We’ll come on to this, won’t we? Marie Maitland, I knew she was part of the family, the Maitlands of Lethington. Her father’s got poetry in the manuscript. So, I knew the family she was part of. We know quite a bit about her brothers. I know you are familiar with Secretary Lethington. 

Ann: Oh, yes. 

Ashley: Yeah, so as some of your listeners will know, Secretary Lethington being Mary, Queen of Scots’s famous secretary. Marie is his sister. So, it’s quite good because the Maitland of Lethington men are quite well known; I kind of knew exactly who her family were and what was going on in Scotland at this time, sure. But in terms of constructing her life as a woman, it was a case of starting from scratch and just go and look in the archives: what primary records are there? Fortunately, I found tons. I mean, you might not have found anything, you know? I might have found very little. And instead, I found a historian’s dream, as I say, to actually come across so much archival material that nobody knows about, that is not in any print source, and to be the person transcribing it from, first of all, all these records are in secretary hand. 

Ann: That was my question. So, did you have to learn how to read this kind of handwriting? 

Ashley: I had that from my degree already, fortunately. 

Ann: Oh, perfect. 

Ashley: Yeah, yeah. But you’re right. Without that, you would first need to do paleographical training. Yeah, this script is like, if you don’t know it, it’s like trying to read hieroglyphs or something. It’s totally impenetrable. It’s a different script. 

Ann: Like, the only modern equivalent I can think of is like shorthand, you know, that people might use. So, a symbol that means a word, is it that sort of thing? 

Ashley: Things like that. Yeah, you’ve got abbreviations in there. Like, some of the letter forms are even different. So, yeah, in some cases, letter forms are different, so you have to learn letter forms. And then, you’ll also have to learn all their abbreviations for common words. They’ll often do… If they’re writing “with”, they’ll just do a W, a secretary hand W, and then a little superscript T, is West. They’ll often abbreviate place names, like Edinburgh will end up looking like three squished letters together with the little T. So, yeah, you have to learn individual letters and then the abbreviations. So, you’re first of all, transcribing from secretary hand script into, like, normal Latin letters. 

And then, the text you’ve got is in historical Scots, so then it’s a case of translating from historical Scots to modern English. So, it’s first of all transcription, and then translation, and then you can begin to hopefully decipher what it actually says and put it all together. So, I did five years of original archival research, transcription, translation, and then had a big mass of sources in front of me, and from that, pieced together Marie Maitland’s quite remarkable life. 

Ann: Well, and that’s the thing. I’m just picturing the steps of first, like, finding the sources that she’s mentioned in, transcribing them, and then, like you just described, then you have to put these in order and like, “Okay, well, why would she do this and then this? And why would this…?” So, I described it to like investigative work. It’s almost like solving a mystery, really. And the mystery is who is… 

Ashley: Yeah, in the middle of the research process – obviously I’m now in the position where I’ve published this book, and there’s a coherent biography – but obviously when you’re, like, two years in and you’ve found some sources, but you’re still looking for others, and it’s almost like the pin board with your main characters and “She was here then.” It really was like that. And trying to, you know, working out, “Here’s what I know. Here’s the facts that I know about what was happening in Scotland at that point. Mary, Queen of Scots, is deposed in this year, and the Maitlands of Lethington, the family, Marie’s family, have their castle confiscated from them in this year. So, therefore, she can’t possibly have been there in this year.” You know? 

So, you’re working from known historical facts about Scottish history writ large, known historical facts about the Maitlands of Lethington as a family, about her father, about her brothers, and then gradually piecing in the documents that were specifically about Marie Maitland. “Oh, in this year she did this, in this year she had this income,” and slotting all of that together to get to the coherent narrative that we’ve now got of her life. 

Ann: It’s so impressive to me, like, as someone who’s read your book. I read the book, and because it’s an unknown historical figure, so I was just like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next.” So, it’s very exciting for me to read that. But I can only imagine what it was like for you to piece it together, to figure out… To figure this whole story out. It’s incredible work. I’m in awe and also a little jealous that you got to do that, [both chuckle] because to be the one to put it all together, it’s amazing! 

Ashley: No, it is such a privilege as a historian. Because as you say, most figures of this significance and about whom there are so many records, really, they’ve all been found by now, right? Or been written about by now. It’s almost a good thing, the fact that we’ve so overlooked women’s history and sapphic history, which is why it was still there for me to find, because obviously historians of previous generations have not been interested in seeking out her story, even though her name is right there on the manuscript. It’s right there! These records are right there in all the archives, and I’m the first person to have gone, “She seems like somebody worth looking into.” 

I’m always saying it’s both it is both an honour, as you say, and very exciting and a real privilege to be the historian getting to uncover these records for the first time in centuries and tell the story. At the same time, it is a source of great regret and almost anger that it has taken until 2026. Those records have been there the whole time. Why has nobody else decided to tell this woman’s story, or to look into this piece of sapphic history? D’you know, it’s kind of like a bit of a double-edged sword for me, how I feel about it. I’m like, really, it shouldn’t have fallen to me in the 2020s, as a lesbian woman myself, to care enough to recognize the significance enough of the manuscript in the poem to go and look for it. But, you know, the world being what it is, I’m glad that somebody has done it eventually, and I’m so excited to share this story with the world. 

Ann: So, if we can just let everybody, just to sort of like put Marie in a time and a place, well, specifically her family, the Maitlands. Can you explain, kind of, at the time she’s born is the youngest of countless siblings? You could tell me… It’s a huge family. Her older siblings are much older than her. But who are the Maitlands at the time that she’s born? What is their importance to Scottish society? 

Ashley: Sure. So, the Maitlands of Lethington are a significant family of the Scottish elite, the landed elite in the Lowlands. They have their main castle home at Lethington, which is just outside the Royal Burgh of Haddington, which is just down the coast from Edinburgh. That will maybe allow people to orient themselves. So, east coast of Scotland, just down from Edinburgh. 

And the Maitlands of Lethington, as I say, they’re quite an important family, or at least the men, because this is 16th-century Scotland; the men get to play important roles. So, Marie’s father, Sir Richard Maitland of Lethington, as I mentioned, is a judge – also a poet, a historian, a collector, but in terms of his professional roles, he’s a judge – and he is a Keeper of the Privy Seal to Mary, Queen of Scotland. Straight away, it is clear that this is not a normal family; this is a family that is right next to royalty. They are at the right-hand side of kings and queens. So, yeah, Marie’s father serves Mary, Queen of Scots. Her brother, her eldest brother, William Maitland, who’s Secretary Lethington. 

Ann: AKA Scottish Machiavelli. 

Ashley: The Scottish Machiavelli, indeed. So, he’s tied up in everything to do with Mary, Queen of Scots, that whole dramatic reign; he is at the heart of all of that. He’s never far from the action. And then, Marie’s next eldest brother, John Maitland, almost the next chapter of Scottish political history, he will serve as Chancellor to King James VI, so the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. There is also another brother called Thomas Maitland, who unfortunately dies early when he’s out on a diplomatic mission to get support for the Queen’s party in the civil war that follows Mary, Queen of Scots’ deposition. So, he unfortunately dies early, otherwise, I’m sure he would also have gone on to have a glittering political career. He was kind of already in the middle of one, and then he got some sort of fever when he was travelling on the continent and died. 

And then, there are also four Maitland girls. As you mentioned, a lot of siblings. As ever, we know much more about the men than we do about the women. We know about her brothers’ illustrious political careers. They all obviously studied at the University of St Andrews; they went off to pursue their studies on the European continent. 

Marie and her sisters did not get to do this. All that we know about Marie’s sisters, like most women of the time, is the name of the man that they married and the children that they bore, because that was really the only expectation of women at this time. It was too obviously— And even more so when you were of the elite, it was to marry well for social and political connections and then bear as many children, i.e. as many legitimate heirs, as you can. Of course, this is only intensified in the immediate aftermath of the Reformation, where you can’t even be a nun anymore. 

So, Marie actually was born in about the late 1540s in East Lothian, so she would have grown up in the shadow of a magnificent abbey just outside Haddington, which was overseen by a formidable prioress. So, perhaps Marie, as the youngest of four daughters, had harboured hopes of becoming a nun, and then she is like a teenager when the Reformation happens. This is such a dramatic transformational moment for Scotland, it’s like an overnight revolution. Literally, walls come crashing down; the landscape changes! Buildings that were there, cathedrals, monasteries, nunneries, these buildings are destroyed, going to mass is now illegal. If Marie had ever harboured hopes of becoming a nun, not an option anymore for women. 

Ann: Because her family was, they were Catholic, right? 

Ashley: They were very clever and canny and tried to evade taking an extreme side, because this is obviously a very fraught time where most people, or many people, are either very, very reformist or very, very loyal to the old church. The Maitlands, the Maitland men, are certainly quite canny and try to play both sides as long as possible. And then, when the Reformation occurs, they go along with it; they don’t resist it. But they certainly are not a family that come across as passionate, puritanical reformers. I think they’re more pragmatists. So, they weren’t clamouring to tear the old church down. They weren’t part of that crew. But once Catholicism had been replaced by Protestantism, they didn’t then be rebels and stick to Catholicism, do you know? They kind of just go along with it. 

This is the world that Marie is born into. So, she is born into a world where Scotland is still a Protestant nation, and by the time she’s entering her early teens, the Reformation has happened. So, now she is reaching the age of womanhood and marriageable age, and a world where the option to be a nun is not even there anymore; it’s marriage or marriage. We see in the records how her three older sisters have all been married off to good first sons of local landed families, and really, this should have been Marie’s path as well. It’s the only path available to her; she can’t even be a nun anymore. 

Instead, as you know because you’ve read the book, a twist of fate happens, and just as Marie is reaching marriageable age, and what we should find in the record is another contract of marriage, just like her three sisters. Instead, her father goes blind in the year 1561. This is the year after the Reformation, it’s the year that Mary, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland from France to take up her role as Queen of Scotland, and this year, Marie’s father goes blind. This misfortune for him is really the opportunity for her to sidestep the otherwise inevitable fate of marriage because she becomes her blind father’s secretary. This is the twist of fate that redetermines her life in a way that would otherwise have been unthinkable; there is no way she wouldn’t have had to marry, it was the only option. 

And instead, by her father going blind, she gets to eschew marriage and instead pursue, in the context of the time, a meaningfully independent life as a woman, remain unmarried for most of her adult life, and serve as her blind father’s secretary, increase her education, have an enhanced education, even beyond what her late sisters would have had, amass financial wealth, independent financial wealth, and social privilege. So, this sounds like it’s fictional, doesn’t it? Like, it’s such an amazing story, and this is her real life. This was a real woman in 1500s Scotland. 

Ann: Well, and to me, as the youngest sibling, I’m excited when it’s like, this kind of happened to her because she was the youngest. She was the only child left. It’s not just like he looked at all of his children and was like, “You’re the one who will be my scribe.” It’s like, she’s the only one left. But it just so happens that she takes to this so well, obviously. Another person maybe wouldn’t have taken to this, wouldn’t have started writing their own poetry and stuff, and she does. So, it’s clearly like a twist of fate, but she was the perfect person to be there at that time, it seems like. 

Ashley: I completely agree with you. It’s like, chance upon chance upon chance. Chance one, her father goes blind. Chance two, she happens to be the youngest daughter who’s still at home, the only unmarried one. And then, yeah, also, as you say, she was probably the best suited to it because we know from her poetry and from the whole story of her life that she was definitely a woman who loved other women. And assuming she was a woman who loved exclusively other women, i.e. a lesbian in modern terms, who would have had very little interest in marrying a man, this is such the perfect opt-out. You couldn’t dream of this sort of opt-out in 16th-century Scotland, to not have to marry and instead get to remain independent and pursue your romance with another woman. That level of freedom would have been unthinkable if she wasn’t in this role as her blind father’s secretary. 

And it’s also why, as you suggested, she hasn’t resisted this at all, because you could imagine a different character, say, a woman who was heterosexual and actually wanted to marry a man and start a family and all of that, because those did exist as well, of course – queer people existed in the past, so did heterosexual people, so cool – and if Marie had been heterosexual, maybe, you know, she would have not liked the idea of sacrificing her whole life, essentially, to just being her elderly father’s secretary. Instead, what we get through the records is she is enthusiastically committed to this opt-out, to never marrying, which to me is just further evidence of the fact that she was absolutely a woman who loved, probably exclusively, other women. She showed no issue at all with completely forfeiting marriage, children, that whole thing. She was like, “No, no. It’s totally fine. It’s totally fine. I’m really happy to just do the secretary role instead. Honestly, don’t worry about me.” 

Ann: Well, and I think also, in terms of her personality and her skill, as you find in the poetry, which we will talk about, the fact that her father was somebody… He could have hired a man to come and be his scribe, he could have thought, like, “Well, this is inappropriate.” He was a man who seemed to have supported her and wanted her to continue to be independent. Like, you find that in some of the other legal paperwork where she’s given sort of her dowry back to invest. So, her father was supporting her in this, which not every father would have, I would imagine. 

Ashley: Completely. It seems she was genuinely useful to her father because you’re correct; he’s a wealthy, well-connected man. He would have had court clerks at the court and everything. But I suppose what he gets from his dutiful youngest daughter is that 24/7 in-house support. And she’s very clever, we see this from her poetry. She can write in secretary hand as well; she learned secretary hand as well. Generally, this was a script used predominantly by men because it was used for things like court clerks and ambassadorial roles that only men performed. 

So, Marie would have initially been taught italic script as part of her, sort of, standard elite woman education. But as she steps into role as her father’s secretary, she also has to learn secretary hand, and then a couple of years later, we’ve got documents almost certainly in her hand, in fluent secretary hand script. We get from her poetry how educated and classically educated, biblically educated and erudite she was. There are obviously, as you know, both poems by her and poems about her by other women. There’s obviously a group of women around her who think she walks on water the way that they write about her in poetry, comparing her to Sappho, comparing her to Olympia Morata, who’s a famous Italian reformer and also a very intelligent Renaissance-educated woman. 

So yeah, she’s a special character. And you’re absolutely right, her father could have married her off at any point and gained assistance; he could have hired a male person to do that job. Instead, Marie’s obviously doing such a good job and so happy to stay in the role that she serves her father all the way up until his death. 

Ann: So, you know, that phrase, like, “Living in interesting times.” This is happening; she’s being her father’s scribe, she’s supporting him. And then, for various reasons that you explain in the book, the family kind of goes into exile. The family, just in terms of, like, sometimes the people in power support them, sometimes they don’t. So, there are these years where she and her father are not able to live in Lethington Castle, they have to go elsewhere. What was it like tracking down that information from those years? 

Ashley: Yeah, that’s tricky. These are almost the absence of evidence. So, what I can say for sure is they were not at Lethington Castle during this year and this year because it was confiscated from them. Where precisely they were is harder to pin down, but we have records of them being certainly at Dundas Castle, which is just north of Edinburgh, for some of the time. And also, as a judge and somebody very closely connected to the court, Sir Richard would definitely also have had lodgings in the centre of Edinburgh. So, it’s like, we can say they definitely weren’t at their own castle home because it was confiscated. They were at Dundas some of the time; they will otherwise have been around Edinburgh, maybe staying with other landed friends and around Edinburgh, maybe at her father’s court lodgings in the centre of town. 

We sometimes also have people writing letters. Like, there’s a letter that gets written to Elizabeth I; it’s in the voice of Sir Richard Maitland, but he obviously wasn’t writing it because he’s completely blind. By this point, he must have dictated it to somebody. Marie is by far the most likely candidate for the actual author, the scribe of the letter. We know that this letter was written at Edinburgh. It’s very helpful when they write that. Obviously, they weren’t doing it so that future historians could pinpoint where they were, but it’s very helpful when they say, “At Edinburgh, 1571,” and you’re like, “Okay, we can locate them in Edinburgh here.” 

Yeah, so it’s just a case of getting what information you can from primary documents, working on, almost by exclusion, “Well, they can’t have been here, so here are the places they might have been,” and sometimes you actually do get, “Oh, they were definitely here at this particular time.” 

Ann: And just looking at her life… So, she was born in Lethington Castle, then she’s spending some years away. At what point do you think she started putting together the Quarto? This book? 

Ashley: Yeah. So, my very, very strong sense is that the Quarto, the manuscript, began to be compiled during these years of exile. So, the exile takes place following the civil war that ensues after Mary, Queen of Scots’s deposition, and the Maitland boys, the brothers, not the father crucially, but Marie’s brothers all go in big time for the Queen’s party, for Mary, Queen of Scots’s party. And unfortunately, they’re not victorious. The King’s party, representing the young James VI, is victorious, and then the Earl of Morton, who’s the leader of that party, punishes the Maitlands because they’ve backed the wrong political horse. 

They lose, and then the victorious regent really, really comes down hard on them, and it’s him that confiscates Lethington Castle. But from the father, even though Sir Richard Maitland took no side in the conflict, he’s like a very studious, neutral, calm judge, and he famously says, like, he just thinks civil war is terrible for the nation. He just wants everyone to come together for the welfare of the nation. He’s disappointed in his sons for going into politics. He more pursues the law and history and poetry, and all of his sons go, like, straight into politics, proper, messy politics, where sometimes you’re up, and sometimes you’re down. Even though he himself has completely eschewed that life and chosen the quieter life of literature and the law, he is punished. The Regent Morton confiscates Lethington from him and therefore Marie, because she is still part of her father’s household. 

So, what we have is a letter to Elizabeth I (that’s one of the examples I mentioned earlier), and it’s Richard Maitland writing to Elizabeth I, the Queen of England, because we obviously, in Scotland, don’t have an adult monarch at this point. We have civil war and regents and all of this, and Baby King James is not in a position to be mediating this. 

So, Richard appeals to the Queen of England and says, “I took no part in this war.” You know, I give this letter in quite some detail in the book, because I think it just is so evocative of this is the situation, this is the world that Marie’s living in, this is her life. And it’s quite a pained letter to read. It’s like so… just desperate. He says, “I took no part in the civil war. I was completely neutral. Surely it is not correct that the father should be punished for the crimes of the sons. This does not accord to any law of God or man. This is just so unfair. And I’m begging you, renowned Queen of England, famed for your justice and everything, to intervene and have my lands and property restored to me.” I mean, unfortunately for him, Elizabeth did not intervene. She never replied to the letter, as far as we’re aware. We know it arrived with her because it’s held in the state archives in England, so we know it definitely arrived with her down there, but there’s no record of any response. Indeed, the castle home was not returned to them until much, much later. 

So, it seems… I mean, to be fair to Elizabeth I, she might take one look at that and say, “Why would I get myself involved in the Scottish domestic problems?” But Sir Richard was obviously desperate, you know? And it was a completely unfair situation; it was not a just thing to do to confiscate the father’s castle for the crimes of the son. But that’s what happened. So, the blind, elderly Sir Richard, who’d taken no side and done nothing wrong and his wife and his remaining daughter at home are homeless. They do not have their castle home, and instead, they’re relying on the hospitality of friends or his lodgings in the town of Edinburgh. 

It is in this time, this long period of exile following the civil war, a very dark time for the Maitland family, that I believe that Marie embarked upon creating this manuscript to offer herself and her father, like, a source of comfort in these very dark and chaotic times, a sense of comfort, control, and order. As I mentioned, as well as being a statesman, the Keeper of the Privy Seal to Mary, Queen of Scots, and a judge, Richard is also a passionate historian and poet and collector, and we see that in a lot of the other records. He collects early law reports of the Court of Session in Scotland; he collects poetry by older Scottish poets from even earlier centuries. He’s also a poet himself. 

Until the manuscript that Marie creates, his poetry is quite messy the way it’s recorded in other sources. It does appear in other contemporary sources, but not in full, there’s sometimes errors in the copying of it. It’s obviously been copied by people who are not as intimate with it, so they sometimes make scribal errors and put it into a different source, and there’s not a complete record. So, it’s very easy to imagine, knowing the character of this man, it’s easy to imagine that he would have really liked the idea of all of his poems being really neat and collected together in one place, chronologically, no errors. And who is better placed to undertake this task than Marie, his dutiful daughter, who’s been his scribe and secretary for many years at this point, who’s a very well educated, very skilled scribe by this point? And indeed, after his blindness, when he continues writing poetry, he will have dictated these poems to Marie in the first instance. So, she is so well placed to create this record of his poetry. 

But of course, amazingly for us, she doesn’t just record her father’s poems. She certainly records her father’s poems beautifully and in full; it is the most complete collection of his poetry that we have to this day. But in the collection, she also puts in some poems by other court figures, men, including King James, who’s older by this point, obviously. I think this is to reflect just, like, the status of her father and the connections of the Maitland family and also, in amongst this poetry of the male great and good of 16th-century Scotland, she, of course, also includes unsigned poems, so-called anonymous poems. But I like the Virginia Woolf quote “Anonymous was often a woman,” certainly in this case. She also includes about 30 anonymous poems, so many of which are obviously by women; some are by Marie, some are by women around Marie, and three of these poems are lesbian love poems. 

So, I find it an interesting consideration as to whether she always started out with that goal or whether, you know, she started off creating genuinely, “I’m going to create a manuscript of my father’s poetry,” and then it occurred to her in the process opportunistically to start including some of her own poems…

Ann: To sneak some of these in, yeah. 

Ashley: Yeah, or whether that was always the goal, whether that was the goal from the off. Either way, we ended up with this manuscript with all her poems in it. But it’s one of those things that we’ll never know for sure, right, whether that was always the goal from the start, or whether it was something that occurred to her as she began, because the anonymous poems don’t start appearing until quite late in, which perhaps suggests it was more opportunistic that she started to slip them in. 

Ann: So, take us back to when you were first going through the manuscript that you were first looking at when you first discovered Marie herself, and you found this poem, and you’re like, “Oh, this is a lesbian love poem.” Describe the poem and why it’s so obviously a lesbian love poem? 

Ashley: Oh, of course. Well, first of all, it is definitely in the voice of one woman to another woman. That is completely clear from several references within the poem. One line of which, for example, says “We, unhappy women,” referring to the speaker of the poem and the subject of the poem, refers to them as “we,” as women. So, there you go. There’s a whole chapter of the book which goes through the poem and the nine stanzas detail, and I would take up, like, the next two hours on this podcast if we did the whole point, but let’s do it in summary. 

Poem 49 is a poem of love from Marie to the woman who had her heart. In this poem, Marie, among other things, states her explicit desire to marry this woman. It does not get clearer than that in terms of this being a love poem, not a friendship poem, a love poem. She wants to marry the women. It’s also very erotic. One of the lines, for example, says, “You wield me wholly at your will and ravish my affection.” Again, this is not platonic, this is deeply erotic. In this poem, Marie just gushes about this woman. She says she’s, like, the most beautiful woman, the most intelligent woman she’s ever seen, she surpasses every other woman who’s ever existed. And then she goes on to talk about their bond and why they should be able to be married, and she says that their bond of love outdoes any such romantic bond that’s ever existed in any place or time, mythological and real. 

Ann: And she gives examples, right? 

Ashley: She does, yeah. Some of these examples are so fascinating as well, because a lot of these examples are so homoerotically coded. If we needed yet further evidence that this is a lesbian love poem from one woman to another, we’ve got the “I want to marry you” bit, which is kind of enough in and of itself. But we’ve got, yeah, she wants to marry her, there’s eroticism. 

And then, some of the examples that she lists out as other, you know, idealized romantic couples are very homoerotic, for example, Achilles and Patroclus and David and Jonathan from the Old Testament, and then also Ruth and Naomi from the Old Testament. There’s a whole section of the poem where she is listing out idealized married couples who symbolize the bonds of marriage in the best way possible, and every time Marie lists them out, she says, “Not even these people who were so famed for their devotion come close to us.” There’s heterosexual married couples that she lists out from the classical world, like Porcia and Brutus, but in amidst this stanza on idealized marital couples, including heterosexual ones, she places a female-female couple, Ruth and Naomi, clearly positioning that as also like a sapphic same-sex marriage. 

So, it’s an absolutely astounding poem on so many different levels, especially in the context, as we’ve said, of this post-Reformation Scotland, the church clamping down on all such so-called deviant behaviour, and here we have a Reformation-era woman actually appealing to the Bible in defence of her sapphic love. It is absolutely astounding. 

Ann: I find that so interesting, because you mentioned too earlier on about, like, she obviously, in the course of being her father’s scribe, he would have gotten, I don’t know, self-directed, but educated. She would have read, she’s clearly fluent, she knows about the classics; she knows the minutiae of, like, people from the Bible that maybe not everybody would have heard of. So, just the fact that she can pull out all of these references really speaks to just the depth of her knowledge of literature. She can say, “We’re like this, and we’re like this, and we’re better than them.” Like, it’s just impressive to me how many examples she goes through in this poem. 

Ashley: Completely. She’s so erudite. And I think it also speaks to something really significant, which is the validation that there is to be found in history or in literature of seeing yourself reflected back, right? So, Marie, as a woman who loved other women in 16th-century Scotland, she wasn’t falling over herself with examples, positive examples, of same sex relationships, was she? But she managed to find some. She found some in her Bible, she found some in the classics, and she found it in Sappho. 

Sappho, obviously, I’m sure as your listeners will know, the so-called original lesbian, the ancient Greek poet who immortalized her love for other women in verse, thereby giving us the very words we still use to describe women who love women today, namely Sapphic from Sappho and lesbian from Sappho of Lesbos. She’s as much a lesbian icon in the 16th century, in the Renaissance, which is obviously about a new flowering of interest in Greek and Roman literature in the classical world. This is the world that Marie’s also living in. The sort of two facets of her world and her education is, like, Reformation-era Scotland, so the Bible, and then the Renaissance, so renewed interest in the classics. And she manages to find positive, validating examples of herself as a woman who loved other women in both of those places. 

It’s also so significant that Marie is compared to Sappho in a later poem, a poem probably written by women who knew her. She’s compared to Olympia Morata, who was a Protestant reformer, a female Protestant reformer in Italy, and also a very famous learned woman of the Renaissance. Marie’s compared to her, reflecting her own learnedness and her own Protestant faith. Also, she is compared to Sappho, the ancient Greek lesbian poet. 

So again, in terms of evidence that Marie was a woman who loved other women, there’s so much of it. You’ve got the poem in her own voice that we just referred to, where she’s saying she wants to marry another woman. And then you’ve got a later poem by somebody else where Marie is compared to Sappho. She’s literally compared to the iconic lesbian poet. And then there’s two other lesbian poems, and there’s other poems where Marie is positioned as a sort of modern Diana, the goddess Diana, again, famed for her virginity and chastity when it comes to men, at least. The manuscript is just full of this picture of, like, this is a woman who loves other women. And is a poet in the image of Sappho, a woman in the image of the Virgin Goddess Diana; that is the picture of Marie Maitland that comes forth from the manuscript of poetry and then also from the historical records. 

I’ve only just mentioned things there from the poems. You’ve then also got the records, the historical records related to Marie’s independent finances and everything. Where, again, we get this picture coming through, she’s referred to as a chaste virgin, goddess Diana, again. The imagery, always important to see a chaste virgin in terms of heterosexuality, right? 

Ann: It’s so fascinating to me. I love the comparison to Sappho, it’s like, as a woman who loves women, but also as a poet, both of which… I’m glad that she knew that Sappho existed, like you were saying, just so she could know, like, “I’m not the first person to ever be like this.” There’s this rich history, and that’s why I think it’s so important and so wonderful that you’ve unearthed her story so that people… I think it’s so important for people to look back in history, especially queer people, to see, like, here’s examples. For her, here’s an example of somebody who clearly was living… She was having this independent life, and it’s not a sad story. You know, it’s like, she figured this out for herself, she fell in love, she wrote these poems. She was living independently. It’s such an interesting example, and so, so, so different from what you would expect in Reformation Scotland to be going on. 

Ann: You’re so right, and I’m so glad you’ve made that point, because when you’re studying LGBT history, a lot of it is, by necessity, depressing, because for so much of history, we have been persecuted and criminalized and executed and all of that. So, a lot of the time, LGBT history, as important as it is, is quite depressing, and it’s quite sad stories. This is a rare example of a positive, uplifting, as empowered as you can be, story of a woman who loved other women and who loved herself despite that in this era, which I’ve always found so empowering. 

As a lesbian myself, Marie Maitland fascinates me because she definitely had, like, a more secure sense of herself as a lesbian in 16th-century Scotland than I would have had in my twenties, d’you know? I’ve always been really inspired by the strength of character that she had and the self-love that she had to live in John Knox’s Reformation Scotland, where sodomy is, like, the worst sin you can imagine and there’s executions and convictions, and she is, like, so unapologetically and proudly declaring her love for another woman, appealing to the Bible in support of this, relishing comparisons to Sappho. 

You know, it’s hard for many of us today to be quite so joyous and bold in being people who love people of the same gender, and she was doing it with such class and flair in the 1500s in Scotland. I like to think that by writing this book, I’m giving queer people today, and especially women who love other women, a figure that they can feel validated and inspired by in the same way that Marie could look back to Sappho, and Ruth and Naomi in the Old Testament, Achilles-Patroclus. We need to see ourselves reflected in history and in the stories that we’re told, or we can feel alone and wrong. That’s why it’s so important to tell the story. Like, yes, it’s involved academic research, and I’ve got academic historical training – otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to do the research and write the book – but it’s also a deeply personal thing for me to have written this book, and I really hope it helps people and inspires people and validates people because it’s proof positive that women who love other women have always existed. We know that, as you say. We know that. But it’s really powerful to have examples, to have clear examples. 

Ann: Well, exactly. Just the situation that she was in her life, like, as her father’s scribe, where she was able to live independently, I’m sure, who knows, her sisters or other… They were in a culture where it was kind of like today’s trad wife, where it’s just like, the expectation in Scotland, Reformation, of women, their job was to get married and have as many children as possible, maybe die in childbirth, whatever, at least you had children. So, who knows how many of those women who got married and had children wouldn’t have chosen that for themselves. They didn’t have a choice. So, I think there’s some narratives that maybe are, like, sort of sad, it’s like, “Oh, they were forced into this,” or whatever, but she’s just like… What are your ideas about the other poems by women that are in this Quarto? I like to picture her with sort of like a group of, like, a little writers’ circle, or a little reading group or something, just women who like to talk about the classics together. Like, who do you think they might have been? 

Ashley: Yeah, I think that’s what was going on, like a small, close-knit circle of women. So, certainly her lover was part of this circle, right? And yeah, talking about the mostly sad stories, obviously, Marie’s lover was also a woman who loved other women, but she gets married off. Indeed, the poem that I’ve referred to a lot already, the one where Marie is declaring that she wants to marry her, my strong sense is that the impetus for that poem was her lover being married off because, unlike Marie, she didn’t have some convenient opt-out, a blind father who needed a secretary. So, my strong sense is Marie and her had been involved romantically, intensely, for quite some time, and then this is shattered at the point at which her lover has to marry a man. Of course, she does eventually. For what reason would she not? 

Because that is the part of Marie’s poem that says, “I want to marry you.” It’s not abstract. It’s in the context. It’s like, “I wish that I were married to you instead of the husband that you are married to.” It’s pained; you can feel it. And that’s the line where she says, “And if we could be married, then we would not hurt as we do now, unhappy women.” So, that’s that stanza which I invoked earlier in terms of how we know it’s a poem from a woman to a woman. She says, “We, unhappy women,” and the reason they’re unhappy is because her lover has been married off. So, yeah, even for Marie in that sense, although she herself wasn’t forced to marry as soon as she came of marriageable age, she still has to deal with the fact that she certainly can’t marry the woman she loves; the woman has to be married to a man. So, there’s still that wee bit of sadness in there. And her lover obviously would have been aware of the poems that Marie wrote. They’re for her, right? They’re for her. 

And then there’s one of the other lesbian poems that I uncovered, there’s this iconic Poem 49, which we’ve referred to. There’s another lesbian love poem, which is really fascinating. I’m actually really interested for readers to start to get their hands on the book and read it and see what people start to think, because Poem 72 in the manuscript is certainly another lesbian love poem from one woman to another. It echoes a lot of the themes of this very punchy lesbian poem, Poem 49, but the voice is just a bit more cautious, and it makes you wonder whether it’s actually Marie’s lover responding to her. Marie’s a very bold character, utterly audacious, really, and this Poem 72 is another sapphic poem, but it’s more careful, and it also sounds like a response. If Poem 49 is almost like a marriage proposal, Poem 72 is almost like an “I do.” 

So, this also makes it feel, to me, that it was her lover responding to her because it’s the same themes; it sounds like a response to Poem 49, and it’s a slightly different voice. So, I think it’s a poem by Marie’s lover in response to her. Could also be by Marie again, just continuing on the same theme and just continuing to pour out her love, but I’m really interested to hear what readers think. I don’t come down hard in the book; I leave it open as, it’s definitely one of the lesbian love poems, but whether by Marie or her lover, we don’t know. And then, there’s a third and final lesbian love poem in the manuscript, which is definitely by Marie, which sadly is a heartbreak poem. We’ve said it’s a really positive story. It is, in the context of LGBT history, but there is sadness in it as well. Their love story does seem to end in heartbreak, unfortunately. 

Ann: You say in your book, you suggest which of these poems might be a good reading for a wedding. Which one was that? 

Ashley: That’s Poem 72. That’s the response to the proposal one. Because the thing with Poem 49, as I’ve said, is it was born out of quite sad circumstances, it seems. It refers to the two women being in pain because the lover has a husband. And even though it does also declaim their undying love and everything, there’s, like, a sad bit in the middle. If I was going to do Poem 49, I’d want to extract just some stanzas, not the whole thing. 

Poem 72, though, is just this beautiful four stanzas that just read like marriage vows; they read like a response to a proposal. It’s like, “Yes, I would love to marry you and be committed to you forever. I give you my heart as a pledge.” And I don’t know if you notice at the front of the book, when I dedicate the book to my own wife, and it says, “My heart here I present and pledge perpetual.” That’s from that poem. So, that in itself tells you that I didn’t choose a line from Poem 49 to dedicate the book to my wife. The poem’s too, kind of, depressing at parts. I chose a line from Poem 72 to dedicate the book to my own wife. 

It pains us… It’s a source of regret that when we got married, it was 2017. So, it was, like, several years before I even had a clue who Marie Maitland was, so we couldn’t have any such reading at our own wedding. But I hope that future lesbians can have these poems at their weddings. I would have loved to have such a reading. But that’s the point of why it’s so important to tell the story. We got married in 2017 as two lesbian Scottish women, didn’t have a clue that Marie Maitland had ever existed. 

Ann: Exactly, and I think this would be so lovely as a wedding reading. I think that’s such a beautiful idea, and I love that you mention it in your book. 

So again, your book is With My— Actually, can you explain the title? With My Own Hand. 

Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. I would like to make clear, given that this is Vulgar History podcast, I feel I can say this: It is not a reference to masturbation, okay? [Ann chuckles] Some people have started to think it was that, and it certainly didn’t help when we started printing promotional posters – I’ve been doing events all year, even before the book has come out – and it certainly doesn’t look good when you have “Coming Soon: With My Own Hand.” [Ann laughs] Does not help the sense that some people have. Like, is it meant to be a sort of subtle reference to, like, female self-sufficiency? Like, it’s really not. But it’s quite funny that it’s accidentally that as well. But no, that’s not what it’s about. 

It is about an original record, as you said. It’s a series of really, really important sources, a bunch of acquittances, which are essentially receipts that Marie signed with her own hand in the 1580s. These are so important for so many reasons. Reason one is that they provide us with incontrovertible proof of her ability to write out of the pages of the manuscript, which is crucial. 

As I say, this manuscript has been known about in academic circles for quite some time, and despite the fact that her name’s on the front cover and various poems refer to her as its author and all of that, some academics have still said, “Oh, but we can’t be sure she wrote it,” which I personally have always found a bit ludicrous. I think there’s actually more than enough evidence, even if you just had the manuscript all on its own. Her name’s, like, emblazoned on the front cover twice. As you’ve read the book, you know there’s, like, an anagram of her name embedded in the first poem, which is so cheeky and so clever. It’s her again saying, “This is my manuscript.” There are various poems that literally refer to her as the author of the manuscript. So, personally, I’ve always found it difficult to understand why some academics have felt unable, on all those bases alone, to say, “Oh, she wrote the manuscript.” But they’ve all said, “We can’t be sure, and what we need to be sure is evidence of her writing, independent evidence of her writing that’s not the manuscript.” And I’ve found that. I have found that with these acquittances where she signs “With my own hand.” 

It’s really, really important that she writes “With my own hand,” because, of course, in this period, illiteracy is a big problem. Most people actually cannot write. Most women certainly can’t write. So, when Marie’s signing these documents, when she’s writing underneath “With my own hand,” that is her telling us, “I wrote this myself, I signed this myself.” Whereas today, most people can write, it’s normally enough now just to sign, right? You don’t have to write your name and then underneath write, “I did this with my own hand.” But because this was a time where a lot of people couldn’t write, they’d often have people sign, like a notary would sign on their behalf or whatever. So, unless somebody writes their name and also tells you, “I literally signed this with my own hand,” it doesn’t mean they personally held the quill and put their name to it; somebody could have done it on their behalf. But we have these records in Marie’s hand, obviously in her own hand, because she tells us, she says, “With my own hand.” So, that is why the title of the book is With My Own Hand. 

And also, because it kind of… I feel like it captures her whole life. It is actually just a quote from these series of acquittances. In its own context, it was just quite practical and quotidian. It’s not actually a hugely evocative statement in the context that it was written, and it was just quite practical. “Just so you know, I literally signed this myself,” for, like, almost just propriety, so people knew to verify that. But for me, it’s like, her whole life is about her ability to write and to leave us records of her life with her own hand. She’s left us records in her own hand. 

It was actually my wife as well, by the way, that suggested the title. Because we didn’t the book didn’t have a title for most of the writing process. I don’t know how other authors who’ve been on your podcast have found that with titles, but it didn’t have a title until the whole thing was written. And then it was like, “Okay, what title are we going to give this?” And my wife, who obviously knows the book as inside out as I do, because she has been by my side for the past five years as I researched it, she said, “Oh, what about With My Own Hand?” And I was like, “That’s genius. This is why I married you.” Like, excellent. 

Ann: It’s perfect, yeah. 

Ashley: And my publicist and publishing team agreed that’s so perfect. So, yeah, full credit to my wife for actually suggesting that’s what it should be. But it is indeed from a very significant primary record written by Marie. 

Ann: So, I warned you about this, but at the end of these sorts of episodes, I like to honour the people that we’re talking about by giving them a score in four different categories. And actually, what I’m doing in this series with the Tudor episodes is, you know, I’m going to have these scores, then at the end of this series, I’m going to do sort of like a playoff, you know, where people can vote for their favourite person. So, these scores will help with that. It’s also just kind of a fun way to wrap things up. 

So, for Marie, there’s the four categories. The first one is Scandaliciousness. How scandalous was she seen by people in her time and place? And it’s interesting. Because of her family and her father’s support, especially of her, like it doesn’t… Nothing you found was like, “Marie Maitland, she’s shocking.” Everyone’s just like, “She’s a chaste virgin. She’s a landowner. We’re cool with her.” It doesn’t seem like anyone in her time saw her as scandalous, or did they? I don’t know. 

Ashley: No, they didn’t. I think that’s such a fascinating thing. She was scandalous, and she was writing scandalous poetry, and she had a scandalous love for another woman, but she played the game so well, she outwitted the patriarchy. Because although she eschewed marrying a man and served as secretary to her father, and we know from these poems and from the insight into her emotional life that we have that she was definitely a woman who loved other women, but to the world outside, to her father, to society, she just looked like a dutiful daughter. If she wasn’t marrying, it was only so that she could serve her blind father. 

And of course, that was the only way for her to even remotely honour herself as a sapphic woman. You couldn’t be an open lesbian in this time. It’s just impossible beyond comprehension. So, it’s like, she was both absolutely scandalous, but was so good at it. She played within the rules, she outwitted the patriarchy, so nobody saw what she was doing as scandalous. What you actually had was a lesbian who grasped an opportunity to sidestep marriage. But to the world, she presented, “I am a chaste virgin. I am a dutiful daughter. I’m only not marrying because I’m serving my father.” So, kind of… I don’t know where she falls in that sense. Secretly scandalous. 

Ann: I know. What I’m going to propose… Each of the categories is, like, a 0 to 10 score. I’m going to propose a 5 out of 10 because it’s averaging the fact that she was scandalous, but she hid it, so it’s kind of like, right in the middle. 

Ashley: I agree. I think that’s fair. I think that’s fair. 

Ann: Which is interesting. I’ve scored people on this throughout all my episodes of my podcast, and I don’t recall somebody who was secretly scandalous, but covered it up so perfectly that, yeah. Good for her. You know, if she had been scandalous and none of, I don’t know, her life would have turned out very differently if people… 

Ashley: Well, if she’d been scandalous and genuinely had a public reputation in 16th-century Scotland for being a sodomite, we’d have very different records of her, and they would definitely then be in the realms of depressing LGB… She might have been, like, scandalous, “Oh, this lesbian,” but ultimately she would have ended up executed. 

Ann: Yeah. Or, you know, god knows, witchcraft trials, et cetera. 

Ashley: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Or charged with witchcraft or something, yeah. 

Ann: So, we’ll give her a 5. 

The next category is Schemieness, which, in terms of this podcast and the people we talk about, it’s just kind of like… I feel like this is going to be a high score for her, it’s a compliment. Somebody who just kind of sees what’s going on in the world and finds ways to pivot around and comes up with a plan, like they’re an active participant in their own life. 

Ashley: I think that’s a 10. I think this is a 10. This is why she’s only a 5 on the scandalous one, but a 10 on this one, because it’s like, she was so clever. Scandalous, but managed to not appear scandalous. 

Ann: Well, and people can read more about this when they get into your book, and you know, we don’t want to spoil too much in this episode, but we see when she is being an independent woman, and she has property and stuff, if someone doesn’t pay her rent, she will take them to court.  

Ashley: Oh, completely! She is an operator. She is absolutely a woman who operates in a man’s world with great flair and empowerment, which is insane. As you say, there’s the lesbian love poetry which we’ve spoken about a lot, but there’s also this evidence of her as a public woman participating in Scottish court life, and engaging in land and property networks with men across Scotland. And you’re right, there’s this one case where a man who was due her money – like, an important, prominent, powerful Edinburgh landed guy, has not paid her money she was due – and she just sues him. She has him declared an outlaw, and she gets the land taken off him and assigned to somebody else who will pay her the rents from them that she’s due. That is iconic. 

Ann: Yeah. No, exactly. I love… [chuckles] She gets the job done. She’s not just being like, “Oh, I’m a dutiful daughter just writing out what my father says.” It’s like, no. She’s like, “I’m going to write my secret lesbian love poetry, I’m going to have this love affair, I’m going to have my reading club, I’m going to take a guy to court.” Like, she’s doing stuff. 

Ashley: And yeah, exactly. Even those “With my own hand” records as well, that is her also signing her own acquittances. Those are documents that are saying, “I, Marie Maitland, have received this money that was due to me by so and so. I confirm that I’ve received it on time and in full.” Again, she’s doing that herself with her own hand. Not having a male clerk do that for her. Yeah, she looks after her own independent finances on her own terms. 

Ann: I think that this is also, in terms of you being the historian to unearth all of this stuff, it’s like, thank goodness she did all this stuff because there is all this paperwork! 

Ashley: There is. There is indeed, yeah. 

Ann: If she hadn’t been so litigious, if she hadn’t, you know… We wouldn’t have known what she was doing, but she was doing all these things, and it was being recorded, so you were able to piece together the story. 

Ashley: Exactly. And it’s good, it is useful as well, as we’ve touched on quite a bit, that she was born into such an elite and prominent family. So, obviously, there will also have been women among the lower classes of Scottish society who were women who loved other women, all of whom we just have no records. Occasional criminal records; they’re getting tried for witchcraft and stuff. But it is great that Marie was born into such an elite family, and then as a character herself was obviously just very litigious and very keen to have everything recorded and proper. 

Ann: So, the next category… Actually, I’m going to skip down and then go back just because I want to end with one. 

Ashley: And to confirm, she’s getting 10 for scheming, right? 

Ann: She is getting 10, yes. 5 for scandalous, 10 for scheming. 

The next category is what I call the Sexism Bonus, which is just kind of like, I like to give people points for what they had to put up with, and maybe they could have done more in their life were it not for the patriarchy they lived under. 

Ashley: Oh, definitely a 10 as well, right? Because this is 16th-century Scotland. I don’t think there’s, like, gets worse for women than this period in Scottish history. 

Ann: She did accomplish everything she did within the patriarchy. It’s like, her father supported her when he died; her brother kind of took over, and we won’t talk about what happens with that. But yeah, she thrived as much as she could, but how much more could she have done if she could just be a free woman who didn’t have to depend on a male family member, who could have just loved openly?

Ashley: Completely. She could have gone to university. 

Ann: Yeah, exactly. 

Ashley: Yeah. All her brothers go to St Andrew’s Uni, and she didn’t even have the chance to do that. Women just did not go to university, didn’t get to participate meaningfully in court life, or be ambassadors, or do anything like that. No! Yeah, definitely top Sexism Bonus as well. You just have to compare her to her brothers. You just have to compare Maitland daughter to Maitland son and then look at the different opportunities and freedoms they each had. 

Ann: I keep picturing this as a movie. I don’t know if you do, but I just keep thinking like, if this was the movie… It’s like, you know, the reading club circle where she meets her lover, all this stuff. But now I’m like, a movie somebody could do that wouldn’t be accurate, but it’d be like, she disguises herself as a man to go to university. I feel like that could be… 

Ashley: Augh! That would be ace. 

Ann: Yeah, and that’s where she falls in love. It would be basically the movie Yentl, [laughs] except in Scotland. 

The final category is Significance, and I suspect I know where you’re going to put her with this, but I’ll just explain. So, this is kind of her significance to Scottish history, her significance to queer history and also, honestly, her significance to you as a person who’s evidently so moved by her story. I’m going to guess… 

Ashley: Like 10, 10, 10. 

Ann: 10 is the highest we can go. 

Ashley: Yeah, but seriously, Marie Maitland is significant in her own time as somebody who lived such a unique and meaningful, independent life as a woman in 16th-century Scotland and wrote this lesbian love poetry. She is also, in terms of global sapphic history, she’s currently among the earliest known lesbian love poets since Sappho herself, that’s why the book’s subtitle is Scotland’s Sixteenth-Century Sappho, plus she’s compared to Sappho. Yeah, she’s among the earliest known lesbian love poets since Sappho of ancient Greece. So, this makes her significant to, not just Scottish, but like, the world’s LGBT history. And then, she’s also a few centuries earlier than Anne Lister, who is obviously, rightly, famed. I know you’ve done podcast episodes about her. 

Ann: I’m going to say, Anne Lister, in terms of the scale… So, Marie Maitland is coming up with a 35, is her score. Anne Lister has a 36, and I’m going to say Anne Lister was more scandalous. Anne Lister didn’t hide what she was doing. I think that’s where she got that one more point. 

Ashley: I’ll concede that. I’ll concede that. Like, if Marie is going to just narrowly be beaten by anyone, I’m okay if it’s Anne Lister. Anne Lister is amazing, but this also makes Marie kind of… Can she have Significance 11? [Ann laughs] Because Anne Lister is cool, but Marie is, like, two centuries earlier and in an even more hostile context. But on the flip side, as you say, not open with it. So, yeah… 

Ann: What if we do… I will concede. I can’t go higher than 10, but I can give her 5.5 in Scandalousness, and that gives her a 35.5, so then she’s just 0.5 below Anne Lister. 

Ashley: Or even 6, I’m really going for Marie here. 

Ann: [chuckles] Honestly, sure. Let’s do it. 

Ashley: Even just being, at all. And like, do you know what? She wasn’t, like, as bold as Anne Lister, but she still wrote down this lesbian love poetry and put it in a manuscript where another woman compares her to Sappho. Like, you know, it was still dangerous. It could have ended worse. Yeah, let’s give her 6. She’s not a 5. She’s 6 scandalous.

Ann: The scandalous, like, potential, for if this had been found out… 

Ashley: Yeah, the risk. 

Ann: So, then she and Anne Lister are both at a 36. 

Ashley: That’s fine, I’m okay with that. 

Ann: And just so you know, Mary, Queen of Scots, also a 36. 

Ashley: That’s cool, that’s right. These are the charts that Marie should be in. 

Ann: Yeah, she’s up at that echelon. Definitely. [chuckles] No, that’s wonderful. 

So, I want to just remind everybody: your book, With My Own Hand. So, this episode is coming out… It’s published by the time that this episode comes out. It’s coming out in August, and it was published in July. Do you have a website? Or how can people keep track of events and things that you’re going to be doing? 

Ashley: Sure. Yeah, I am not very good at updating my website, but people can go on it, and I will update it soon. But I mostly put things on Instagram, to be honest. 

Ann: Okay! If that’s the best place for people to follow you, yeah. 

Ashley: Yeah, yeah. If people follow me on Instagram, I’ll put all events and fantastic podcast episodes like this, I’ll put them all on my Instagram. 

Ann: And what is your Instagram name? 

Ashley: That would be helpful, yeah. It’s @AshDouglasScot. 

Ann: Perfect. 

Ashley: And Scot, it’s like .scot for Scotland, you know? Sometimes people think it’s a surname, like a double barrel, but it’s Ash Douglas, and then just S-C-O-T as in .scot, sort of thing. 

Ann: And I will link, so people can buy the book and also link to your Instagram as well, so people can follow you after they hear this, because, you know, we’ve only touched on this story and there’s so much more to this. It was honestly so fun for me to read your book, just not knowing the twists and turns of what was going to happen next, because it’s a story that’s never been put together before, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. 

Ashley: Yeah, people have said… Some reviewers have said it reads like historical fiction as a compliment, as a compliment. But that’s the way I decided to tell it as a biography, because that’s how her life, you know, that’s how it was for her. So, I wanted to tell it in real-time, that we don’t know anything that’s going to happen; we live her life in real-time with her. I think that was the most powerful way to tell her biography, especially when it’s a story that hasn’t been told. Obviously, you couldn’t really do that with that impact with Mary, Queen of Scots, because people probably have some sense of what’s going to happen. But the privilege of having a figure that people literally don’t know “What happens? What happens? When does she die?” People don’t know, so you do have to read it like a novel to the end to find out what happens. 

Ann: And I appreciate that. That’s what I try to do in my podcast as well, because there’s other biographies and, like, no shade against those biographies, but sometimes with someone like Mary, Queen of Scots, they’ll be like, “And that was the last time she ever saw her son.” And then, it’s not until seven chapters later you find out why. But it’s like, no! She doesn’t know that’s the last time she saw her son, so why are you putting that in the book? 

Ashley: Exactly. 

Ann: So, I like that your book… There’s not that kind of like, “Ohhh! Something bad’s going to happen.” I like that you’re right there with her and it’s, yeah, living the life. 

Ashley: Thank you. I’m really glad to hear that’s what I was totally hoping to achieve with that, so thank you so much. 

Ann: Also, I do want to just, like, really let people know, because you wrote this as… Like you were saying, people said it’s sort of like a novel, and it’s readable. It’s not a heavy, like, academic biography. It doesn’t require you to know the history of Scotland. Like, you’re giving the history that you need to understand her context, but it’s very readable. So, I want people just to know that, like… It’s not a textbook. 

Ashley: Yes. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, no. It’s not an academic-style book at all. 

Ann: It’s definitely very fun. And because Marie is, like, she’s just such a character, so it’s just fun to see what she’s going to do next. 

Ashley: Yeah. And I’ve put all the poems and stuff at the back because we thought people might like to see the poetry together. We put the three lesbian love poems at the back of the book as well so people can see them and hopefully use them as their wedding reading. 

Ann: I was going to say, make it easy for the wedding readings, for anyone out there planning. 

Ashley: Exactly, I literally was thinking that. Yeah, because obviously in the book, because I’m taking people through them because they’re in Scots language first, so there’s parallel translation throughout into English. But I obviously also split up the stanzas because we talk about them in turn. So, I thought it would be nice to have the poetry just… You want to be at your wedding and then, like, doing stanza one and then, like, flicking forward four pages like, “Where’s the second stanza of this one again?” So, I’ve very considerately put them at the back for all the future wedding readings I hope will take place. 

Ann: Well, actually, if I can just ask one more question, or if you could explain to people where the book is, and how it’s kind of hard to access the actual book. 

Ashley: Oh, yeah! The manuscript itself, absolutely. So, yeah, as I said, when I first was going to write about it, I just went and consulted a later print edition. There’s only one copy of the original manuscript in the whole world, this is the manuscript that Marie created with ink and quill. It’s now held in Cambridge at Pepys Library – Pepys Library, as in Samuel Pepys, like the famous diarist – which is part of Magdalene College of University of Cambridge, and it ended up there. It stayed in the Maitland family for some generations and then ended up being sold off to him. 

So, it’s been in his private collections for some centuries now, and it’s really hard to access. They’re very precious about their collection down there. So, if you don’t have a valid research interest and letters of introduction – I had to get a letter of introduction from my professor at St Andrews and the National Librarian in Scotland to even get in the door to get my hands on it, and I had to go all the way down to Cambridge from Edinburgh to see it. So, that’s where it is now. 

But it’s so good that I did go to see it physically, because, as you know from the book, the clues that you get from consulting the one document— And modern print editions are obviously great because they make things a bit more accessible, but they are then losing so much of the original physicality. So, things like paper changes, things like ink changes, things like copied-out lines. So, the physical properties of the manuscript tell us so much about its creation. 

For example, there are three paper changes within the manuscript, which obviously, if you’re consulting a print edition, you don’t see that because it’s all just on the same paper. When I went down – and I went down on two research trips, I’ve spent hours and hours up close in person with the manuscript – and when you’re holding it in your own hands, one, it’s just so significant to have that physical connection with Marie Maitland, who wrote it. The first time I held it in my hands was quite emotional, I’ll be honest. But secondly, you’re going through it, and you’re like, this is a different type of paper now. And why is it a different type of paper at this point? And what does that tell us about how this manuscript was actually created over a period of years? It’s a big book! It’s 95 poems in total, it was obviously compiled over some time and in different chapters. So, you can see the paper changes. 

You can see the ink changes. Not all the poems are recorded in the same ink, which again tells us, well, these ones were recorded at the same time, but this one’s in a completely different, higher-quality ink. So, this was added at a different time and perhaps has more significance attached to it because she’s used a much more striking, high-quality ink. 

And then, as I said, you can see where the lines have been copied out; these aren’t replicated in the print editions. And when a line’s been copied out, again, your eye is drawn to it, and you’re, “Why has that line been copied out?” And then maybe that line contains an anagram. But if you hadn’t gone and seen the original, you wouldn’t have lingered on the line, you wouldn’t have known to look at it more closely. But once I went down and saw the original and started noticing things like that, or where there are scribal errors. For the most part, the manuscript is super pristine. Marie’s a fantastic scribe and penwoman. And then, every so often, there’s a tiny scribal error, and these are so out of character that you then are asking yourself, well, where do these errors occur, and are they at times of heightened emotion? 

Yeah, so going to see the primary record was just the best thing to do. And I would say if anyone listening to your podcast is, like, doing historical research, my main recommendation, and please, people, just go to the primary records. Never ever just look at secondary sources or additions. Because even if an addition claims to be, like, a faithful, here’s exactly what’s in it, even if they give you all the right words from the document, you can’t see clues in the document itself, like ink, scribal changes, paper changes, errors. It’s like, you really need to go and be physical with primary records. 

Ann: And this is where I just see you like this detective, looking at this evidence and, like, how much you were able to learn from looking at the paper changes, and when it was… You need to look at the evidence! You can’t just take somebody’s word for it. 

I think you mentioned this in the book, but any thought to having this digitized so people can look at it? 

Ashley: Yeah. So, the National Librarian of Scotland, Amina Shah, is an absolutely wonderful woman. She has really championed me in this research from the beginning. A lot of my research and writing of the book was undertaken at the National Library of Scotland, so it’s been really central to the story. 

Amina is very passionate about access to collections, as am I. So, we both think it’s not ideal that this manuscript, which is so significant – it contains some of the earliest known lesbian love poetry in Europe since Sappho, it’s very significant to Scottish history – it feels not ideal that it should be sort of entombed in a private library in Cambridge, where it’s, like, really, really difficult to access and inaccessible. So, Amina is really trying her best to work with Cambridge to have it digitized at the very least. I mean, ideally, we’d like to get up in Scotland and have it on display. That’s maybe a bit too much of an ask, but at the very least, if it was high-quality digitized, and then anyone anywhere in the world would be able to look at it, because it’s amazing. 

Like, I’m so sad that my readers of the book, hopefully, when people finish reading the story of Marie Maitland, they will be so desperate to see the manuscript, and it pains me that it’s nearly impossible for anyone to get their hands on it or even their eyes on it. So, we’re really hopeful that in the next few years we’ll hopefully be able to persuade Pepys’s library to work with us to digitize it, because the National Library of Scotland is certainly willing to work with them to host the digital version and stuff like that. So, work in progress. 

Ann: Fingers crossed. I guess the first step is really… Well, the first step was you finding her, finding out about her, and then all of your detective work. Now that the book is out there and word is spreading, hopefully more people will know about her and will be there to champion and support the digitization. 

Ashley: Yeah. That’s what I’m hoping is that the book is the start, like, just the start of Marie becoming the household name that she should be, and her manuscript being known about in the way that it should be. 

Ann: Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It’s always such a pleasure to talk to people who’ve written books, historical books. But like, the depth… I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to someone who’s done this amount of sleuthing. [chuckles] 

Ashley: Oh, thank you so much. 

Ann: Digging around like this, just to unearth this whole story. It’s so impressive to me. 

Ashley: Oh, thank you, that’s very kind of you to say. It just, like, grew arms and legs. You know, you start, and then it just snowballed and snowballed. 

Ann: And then suddenly it’s five years later and you’re looking at deeds and, like, legal documents. 

Ashley: Yeah, yeah. I was very antisocial for a while. All my weekends and evenings were just, like, spent at the library poring over old documents from the 1500s. My wife’s very glad to have me back now I’ve returned to the 21st century. 

Ann: [laughs] It’s fantastic. Well, thanks again for joining me, and best of luck with your book and all the promotions you’re doing. 

Ashley: Thank you so much. 

—————

So, as Ashley said, you can keep up with her and what she’s doing – her social media, various book promotional events and things – at her website, which is AshleyDouglas.scot is where you can keep up with her. I super recommend this book if you’re able to get a copy of With My Own Hand. It’s such a fascinating book, and just really sort of turning, flipping the camera around from the narratives that you often hear about this era, even in Scotland. Well, no one’s really put this together, but you hear about Marie Maitland’s male relatives, but she was right there doing so much interesting stuff. And so, I really recommend everybody pick up a copy of this book. 

If you want to support me and this podcast to keep this show running, you can support me on my Patreon, where you can get ad-free episodes a few days early as well, if you pledge one dollar or more a month. If you pledge six dollars or more a month on my Patreon, you also get bonus episodes featuring me chatting with some of my friends, like there was a recent episode discussing the Shakespearean play Titus Andronicus. Coming soon, me and my same friends are going to be talking about one of their favourite books, which is A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. You never know what we’re going to talk about there, but it’s always a fun time. 

Members at the six dollars or more a month level also get access to our Discord chat, which is just a bunch of history, and it’s just having a nice time sharing memes, talking about The Traitors, whatever we’re up to. It’s just a nice place to be. As well as people at the six dollars or more a month level get access to my Zoom events. Information on the next one, coming up soon. So, head over to Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter to get a free trial or to join as a paid member. We’d love to have you there. 

I also have written a book. It’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Queen Without a Crown. It is available as a book, as an audiobook, as an e-book in basically every English-speaking country. You can get more information and order a copy of that at RebelOfTheRegency.com. 

And finally, I’m just going to suggest a way that you can support this podcast for absolutely free, like you’re doing right now listening to it, is you can, wherever you listen to it, just go in your little app thing, scroll up or down to where you can rate it five stars. That really helps out. And if you feel so moved, go ahead and leave, leave a little review. It’s been a while since we’ve done kind of a push to get more ratings and reviews, but those sorts of things really, truly help, and it’s something you can do to help support this podcast if you want to. 

Anyway, thank you so much for listening. And until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Vulgar History artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.

References:

Buy a copy of Ashley’s book With My Own Hand (affiliate link)

—

Get Discord access, ad-free episodes, and bonus episodes by joining our Patreon ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/annfosterwriter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

—

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy a copy of Ann’s book Rebel of the Regency⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

—

Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠commonera.com/vulgar15⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠commonera.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use code VULGAR15 at checkout

—

Get Vulgar History merch at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vulgarhistory.com/store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (best for US shipping) and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vulgarhistory.redbubble.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (better for international shipping)

—

Vulgar History is an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, which means that a small percentage of any books you click through and purchase will come back to Vulgar History as a commission. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Use this link to shop there and support Vulgar History.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices