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Margaret Cunningham's autobiographical writing, plus a letter from her to her first husband, and a letter to her sister. : Correspondence; Memoir c. 1622-1623
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- English
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- Marlborough, Wiltshire : Adam Matthew Digital, 2008
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- 1 online resource
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- AMDigital Reference:MS 874, fols. 363-384
- The manuscript is probably a later scribal copy, written in a single hand. Although the two copies of Cunningham's "Life" in the National Library of Scotland are not autograph, both manuscripts claim to be a "just and true account . . . as it was first written with [the author's] own hand" (MS 874, fol.363r). Just as Cunningham appears to have written of her sufferings in an attempt to obtain a legal separation from her first husband, it is possible that the account was later circulated in order to justify publicly her divorce and remarriage. The narrative functions as a coherent defence, for Cunningham chronologically details the repeated instances of abuse and the steps she took to defend herself. She frequently provides exact dates and place names, as well as the names of the people who attempted to help her, those who aided her husband in his abuse, and the women with whom he had affairs. Cunningham is also careful to note that her husband's behaviour toward her "was seen in the countrey, to his great shame" (fol.365v). Whilst the "Life" portrays Cunningham as an innocent victim, the copy of the letter placed after it establishes her loyalty to the Reformed Protestant tradition. In the letter Cunningham warns her husband, then travelling in Europe, to beware of the "detestable Idolatry of Papists", and declares her hope that his faith is "sure grounded on the rock of Christ Jesus" (fol.371v). She urges him to seek the company of John Welsh, the Reformed minister, who had been imprisoned and then banished for approving a General Assembly at Aberdeen in 1605 (Dictionary of Scottish Church History, p.861). The close of her letter, in which she declares her intention to bring her "poor basket of stones to the strengthning of the walls of Jerusalem" echoes almost verbatim a passage in Anne Vaughan Lock's 1590 dedication to the Countess of Warwick (fol.375v; Lock, p.77). [This was pointed out by Jill Millman.] It is possible that Cunningham became familiar with Lock's works during her youth, for the Cunningham family was known for its support of the Scottish Reformation, and would no doubt have welcomed the writings of John Knox's correspondent. Cunningham's grandfather, the 5th Earl of Glencairn (d.1574, DNB), was an intimate friend of Knox (1505-1572, DNB), and actively assisted him. The 6th Earl of Glencairn, Cunningham's father, participated in the "Ruthven Raid", overthrowing the Lennox administration, which had been "suspected of a Romanising policy" and "committed to the maintenance of an episcopate" (Scots Peerage, IV.243; Donaldson, p.209). Much of the family's religious zeal seems to have been inherited by Cunningham's sister, Ann, who "raised a regiment of cavalry for the Covenanting cause" (Hamilton, p.21). Ann's husband, however, does not appear to have shared her ecclesiastical views. As Royal Commissioner, the 2nd Marquis of Hamilton "gave much offence to the Covenanters" by enacting into law the Five Articles of Perth, designed to impose Episcopalian worship ceremonies on the Church of Scotland (Aiton, p.57). If Cunningham's "Life" was circulated among Covenanters, it seems likely that one of the reasons for including a copy of her 1622 letter to Ann was that the epistle paints an unflattering portrait of the Marquis. Cunningham repeatedly evokes the Marquis's dubious acquisition of her first husband's lands, saying of her children that it would "be both sin & shame to his Lo: to suffer them to live as beggars seeing his Lo: possesses all that portion by which they should have lived" (fol.379v). She speaks of the Marquis having "medled" with her children's inheritance, and points out that she paid her eldest daughter's dowry herself, adding, "Few would thought but his Lo: would have helpt to have payed her tocher" (fols.379v-380r). Although several copies of Cunningham's letters and "Life" were made during the seventeenth century, the writings do not appear to have been published until 1827. In the introduction to this 1827 edition, C.K. Sharpe (1781?-1851, DNB) notes that the publication is based on "two manuscripts, neither of which is in the hand writing of the authoress. One was long possessed by a family related to Lady Margaret, and is now much torn and defaced; the other is the property of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, who . . . allowed it to be transcribed by the Editor" (Sharpe, p.i). Neither of the extant copies in the National Library of Scotland resembles the first document described by Sharpe, but the second is most likely MS 906. Although both MS 874 and MS 906 were owned by Scott (1771-1832, DNB), Sharpe's edition usually follows MS 906 in the few places where the two manuscripts vary. In a July 1826 letter, Scott mentions the loan of the document, writing to Sharpe, "I send you a curious manuscript of Lady Margaret Cunningham pray copy it if you have a mind & keep it as long as you like" (Scott, X.70).
- Reproduction of: Margaret Cunningham's autobiographical writing, plus a letter from her to her first husband, and a letter to her sister., c. 1622-1623.
- National Library of Scotland