Person Page 326

Euphame ("Lilias") Drummond was born circa 1467.

Vice-admiral John ("the Ambassador") Fleming, 2nd Lord Fleming, and Euphame ("Lilias") Drummond were married circa 1492.^1,2

Euphame ("Lilias") Drummond died poisoned with her two sisters after April 1502. Pinkerton - Fleming was a man of flagitious charafter, having, in order to deftroy his own wife, poifoned her and her two fitters at once, a crime known to all Scotland

Hunter -
The Queen, in consequence of entering into a marriage with the Earl of Angus, was called on to resign her office of Regent ; and was so incensed at the idea of being deprived of power, that she requested assistance from her brother, Henry VIII. of England, to enable her to retain possession of her office. It appears that Lord Fleming had by this time deserted her party, and incurred her resentment ; for in the letter in which she requested this assistance, she says, "It is told me that the Lord adversaries are prepared to siege me in the Castle of Stirling. I would, therefore, that Lord Chamberlain Fleming be held waking in the meantime with the Borderers. I trow I shall defend me well enough from the others till the coming of the English army." The passion of the Queen having been thoroughly roused, she appears to have stickled at nothing by which she might blacken the character of Lord Fleming, and fire the indignation of her brother against him. In one of her letters, she accuses him of having been guilty of a most atrocious crime. "For evil will," says she, "that he had to his wife Euphemia Drummond, caused poison three sisters, one of them his wife ; and that is known as truth throughout all Scotland. And if he be good to put about the King, my son, God knoweth." The sudden death of Lord Drummond's three daughters, Margaret, Euphemia, and Sybilla, by poison, is a historical fact ; but, so far as we know, not a shadow of proof remains to implicate Lord Fleming in a tragedy so foul and unnatural. During his subsequent career, no one ever publicly charged him with being either an accessory or a principal party in the perpetration of this crime, which would not very likely have been the case had it been supposed that he was guilty. James Stewart, then Duke of Rothesay, and afterwards James IV., was passionately attached to Margaret, one of the daughters who was poisoned. Many historians assert that he had actually married her privately, and that as the union was within the prohibited degrees, he was only waiting for a dispensation from the Pope to have it legally solemnized. Three parties in the state were violently opposed to this marriage — first, the clergy, because it was within the degrees prohibited by the Church ; second, a portion of the nobles, because they wished the Prince to ally himself in marriage with the royal family of England ; and third, the Kennedys, because the Prince had carried on a love intrigue with Lord Kennedy's daughter Jane, whom it was expected he would marry. It was, no doubt, by some of these parties that the deed was committed, and not by Fleming, who apparently had no motive in murdering not only his own wife, but the wife or mistress of the young Prince, and her sister. Had James IV. really believed him to be the murderer, he would, considering his passionate attachment to Margaret Drummond, and his grief at her untimely death, very quickly have brought him to the ignominious doom that he would, in that case, have so justly deserved.^1,3,2,4,5 She was buried after April 1502 in Dumblane Cathedral. They ly burried in a curious vault, covered with three faire blew marble ftones joyned clofs together, about the middle of the queer of the cathedral church of Dumblane; for about this time the burial place for the familie of Drummond at Innerpeffrie was not yet built.⁶