ISBN 13: 9781841586687
Author: Mary McGrigor
Imprint: Birlinn
Publication Date: Apr 2008
Format: PB
Anna,
Countess of the Covenant
Lady
Anna Mackenzie, daughter of Lord Seaforth, was born in 1621. Famed for
her beauty, she married the Earl of Balcarres when she was nineteen,
but her happy life at Balcarres Castle in Fife was shattered by the
Civil War. Following the death of Charles I, Balcarres raised an army
to fight for Charles II.
Defeated by Cromwell he fled with his wife to Holland where, reduced
to great poverty, Anna the angel of the exiled court became a governess
to Prince William of Orange, later William III.
Balcarres died tragically in his wife's arms. Returning to Scotland
to struggle with financial and familial difficulties as her correspondence
reveals she managed to save the family estates from bankruptcy for her
surviving son, before she married Archibald, 9th Earl of Argyll.
Too soon tranquility vanished again as Argyll conspired with Monmouth
to overthrow James VII. Upon his capture he was beheaded. Countess Anna,
imprisoned, was spared execution. She survived to remain as the mainstay
of her family until her death at the age of eighty-five in 1707.
Anna, Countess of the Covenant is an extraordinary account of an extraordinary
woman in one of the most fascinating periods in Scottish, British and
European history.
