Margaret Vinstarr

Margaret Winstar, more accurately recorded as Margaret or Margrethe Vinstarr, was a Danish gentlewoman and favoured attendant of Anne of Denmark at the Scottish court of James VI. Her birth and death dates are unknown, but she was active from about 1590 to 1600 and appears in contemporary records under several spellings, including Winster, Vinkstarn and Weiksterne. She is chiefly remembered for rescuing her lover, John Wemyss of Logie, after he was imprisoned at Dalkeith Palace in 1592 for his involvement with the rebellious Earl of Bothwell. Margaret persuaded the guards that Wemyss was required by the queen, brought him through the royal apartments and helped him escape through a window using a rope or knotted sheets. Anne refused James VI’s demand that Margaret be sent back to Denmark, and Margaret later married Wemyss and became known as Lady Logie.

Margaret appears as Margareta, one of the two principal characters in Naomi Kelsey’s historical novel The Burnings. The novel fictionalises her journey from Denmark to Scotland with Princess Anna, her relationship with John Wemyss and her involvement in the political and religious turmoil surrounding the North Berwick witch trials. I could verify no other published novel in which she plays a clearly identified role, although her rescue of Wemyss is the basis of the traditional Scottish ballad The Laird o Logie, and she appears in several modern works of nonfiction about Anne of Denmark and the court of James VI. No authentic portrait of Margaret is known, and no portrait is stored in Wikidata property P18; any image used for her should therefore be identified as an imaginative reconstruction rather than a historical likeness.