Introduction

While eight of the poet Elizabeth Melville's nine letters to her young clerical protégé John Livingstone have been in print since 1845, the present note contains the first edition of her two holograph letters to her son James Colville. These letters are almost our only direct source of information about Melville's relations with any of her offspring. We have no proof of the exact date of Melville's own birth c.1578, or that of her marriage to John Colville c.1596. Neither do we know the birth dates of any of her children. We do, however, know that her eldest son was Dr Alexander Colville (c.1595–1666), who graduated M.A. from Edinburgh on 22 July 1615. We also know that the youngest son was Samuel (M.A. St Andrews, July 1634). Melville's other sons were James (fl. 1625–41), Robert and John (both fl. 1629), and they had at least two sisters: one unnamed, who died before August 1625 but is mentioned in both letters to James, and Christian (fl. 1634–46).

Elizabeth Melville spent her own childhood at the long-vanished Halhill Tower, near Colessie in north Fife, with her sister Margaret and her brothers James and Robert. Their mother was Christian Boswell (d. 1609) of the family of Balmuto, an estate near Burntisland, and their father, Sir James Melville of Halhill (1535–617), was a busy courtier and diplomat. His famous Memoirs, written in old age, are exclusively concerned with public matters, ‘to serve for an exempler of lyf and better behavour … concerning the service of princes and medling in ther affaires’. However, his genuine care for his children's upbringing is clear from the opening words of the Memoirs’ prefatory letter to his son: