Portrait of Lady Mary Feilding, Marchioness of Hamilton when young (1612-1638)

Painted in 1622 by Daniel Mytens (1590-1656)

The compiler of the M4/21 inventory describes this painting as 'A younge Gentilwoman in a ruffe w[i]th a [garland, deleted] fether in hir heade'.The compiler of the contemporaneous M4/22 obviously knew better, simply writing 'My Lady picture when shee was yong' and indeed the portrait shows Lady Mary Feilding, daughter of William, 1st Earl of Denbigh at the age of nine, in the year that she was married to sixteen-year-old James, Earl of Arran, later 3rd Marquis of Hamilton. Child marriages had generally gone out of favour by this time but, in the aftermath of the 1603 Union of the Crowns, King James VI and I was eager to encourage the complete integration of Scotland and England by arranging such matrimonial alliances. Moreover, this one would please both his English favourite, George, Duke of Buckingham, who was the bride's maternal uncle, and his leading Scottish courtier, the 2nd Marquis of Hamilton.

Unfortunately the bridegroom bitterly resented being married off to a mere child and after his father's death in 1625 his relations with Buckingham deteriorated rapidly. The 2nd Marquis's physician, George Eglisham, published in Antwerp a book entitled Prodramus Vindictae, accusing Buckingham of having poisoned his patient and the favourite received from the King appointments and pensions which Hamilton thought should have been his. In the autumn of 1626, the 3rd Marquis therefore withdrew to his Scottish estates, humiliating his wife by leaving her behind in London and ignoring all her family's efforts to persuade him to return. He did so only in 1628 after Buckingham's assassination and, on Charles I's insistence, finally consummated his marriage.

The attribution of this portrait to Mytens is supported by the c. 1638 Inventory entry M4/20/96 "One picture of My Lady to the middle in a ruffe, with a feather in her heade, of Mittens".

The painting is listed in :

Hamilton Inventory M4/20 entry 96
Hamilton Inventory M4/21 The thirty seventh Case
Hamilton Inventory M4/22/ - 37 Case
Hamilton Inventory M12/1/ Page 5 Line 4 - 'In the Drawing Room
near Her Grace’s [3rd Duchess’s] Bedchamber'