Mary Seton was a Scottish courtier and later a nun. She was one of the four attendants of Mary Queen of Scots known as the Four Marys. She was a sister at the Convent of Saint Pierre les Dames in Reims at the time of her death.
Mistress Mary Seton's role and talent as the Queen's hairdresser was described in detail by Sir Francis Knollys, Mary's keeper at Carlisle Castle in his letter to William Cecil of 28 June 1568. Mary had told Knollys that Mary Seton was the finest 'busker' of a woman's head and hair in any country. Knollys wrote that;
"Yesterday, and this daye she dyd sett sotche a curled heare uppon the Queen, that was said to be a perewyke that showed very delycately: and every other day lightly... she hathe a newe devyce of head dressyng, withowte any coste, and yett setteth forthe a woman gaylye well."
At first Mary Seton was given a room to herself with two beds, one for her maid or 'gentlewoman' Janet Spittell. She also had a manservant called John Dumfries. In March 1569 the Earl of Shrewsbury noted that Queen Mary would sit and sew in his wife Bess of Hardwick's chamber at Tutbury Castle accompanied by Mary Seton and Lady Livingston. In August 1570, Mary's mother, Mary Pieris, Lady Seton, who was at Blair Castle with the Countess of Atholl, heard her daughter was ill, and wrote from Dunkeld to Queen Mary to ask if she could come home. The messenger carrying the letters, John Moon, was captured, and Mary Pieris was imprisoned in Edinburgh, for writing to the exiled queen. In October, Queen Elizabeth heard that Mary Pieris had been arrested and would be banished from Scotland for writing to her daughter and Queen Mary, and took action that Regent Lennox should be advised that she thought it no great cause. Pieris had already been released, before Elizabeth's intervention, promising not to write to Queen Mary again. When Queen Mary was moved to Sheffield Castle in September 1571, Mary Seton stayed in attendance, but her servant John Dumfries was excluded and kept in the town. Janet Spittle was sent back to Scotland. Mary Seton then had an older woman as her servant, Janet Lindsay, and as they were tired of each other by April 1577, she was allowed back to Scotland. At Sheffield in November 1581, Robert Beale questioned Mary Seton about Queen Mary's recent illness, which had a quick onset. Seton said that she had not seen the Queen as ill before, her side gave her evil pains especially in the thigh and leg. The Queen lacked appetite, was losing sleep, and in Seton's opinion could not long continue. The master of Mary's household in England, Andrew Beaton, wished to marry Mary Seton, but as she had made a vow of celibacy, Andrew travelled to Paris to obtain a dispensation. He died during his return journey.
The Convent of Saint-Pierre in Reims
Sometime around 1585 she retired from the Scottish Queen's household in England to the Convent of Saint-Pierre at Reims in France where the abbess was Renée de Guise, the sister of Mary of Guise and aunt of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary wrote a letter to Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury on 22 February 1608, mentioning that her right arm was paralysed, and the letter was in French because she had forgotten the little English she knew after twenty years, as a 'poor recluse in a monastery.' She wrote that she had sent other letters to the Countess and Lady Arbella Stuart. Mary Seton died at the Convent in 1615. Little else is known about her last years at Saint Pierre les Dames other than what was written by James Maitland, the expatriate Catholic son of William Maitland of Lethington. Maitland visited the convent and found Seton to be living in poverty and suffering from failing health. He complained to her family, to whom he was remotely related, and to Queen Mary's son James VI of Scotland, but there is no evidence of a response. The bequests in her will show that she was wealthy.
In popular culture
In the 2013-17 CW television seriesReign, the character, Greer of Kinross, played by Celina Sinden is loosely based on Mary Seton. In the 2018 film Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary Seton is played by actress Izuka Hoyle.
