We are delighted to feature a guest blog on the SWARN site by Georgianna Ziegler, Louis B. Thalheimer Assoc. Librarian and Head of Reference Emerita at the Folger Shakespear Library in Washington D.C.
Esther Inglis (or Langlois) was one of the most important creative women working in early
modern Scotland. While her contemporary, Elizabeth Melville was the first Scottish woman to have her
writings printed, Inglis was the first woman in Scotland or England to include self-portraits in her
writings. She also developed a career, in partnership with her husband Bartilmo Kello, that brought her
into the political realm. She was multi-talented; a calligrapher, manuscript illuminator, and embroiderer
who also wrote religious poetry.
Inglis was born in Dieppe around 1570. Soon afterwards, her Huguenot family fled religious
persecution, first going to London and then to Edinburgh. Her father, Nicolas Langlois, established a
French school there in 1574 at the request of the burgesses. In addition to other subjects, the school
offered handwriting, taught by her mother Marie Presot, a calligrapher herself and her daughter's teacher.
The school was such a success that in 1581, James VI granted a pension of £100 per year to Langlois.
Inglis mastered forty styles of handwriting. Over sixty of her manuscript books survive; fourteen
are located in Scotland, with ten in Edinburgh itself - the largest collection in any one place, as follows:
National Records of Scotland: 1
Edinburgh University Library: 4
National Library of Scotland: 5
For an updated listing of all known manuscripts, see: https://estheringlis.com/ms-locations/
De La Grandeur de Dieu (1592). Edinburgh University Library MS La.III.440, fol. 60
Photograph by G. Ziegler
A portrait of Inglis by an anonymous artist is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Painted
around 1595, it shows a serious young woman with red-blond hair and grey eyes, holding a book. The
honeysuckle and carnation flowers in the background suggest that this was a marriage portrait, and around that time she married Bartilmo Kello (1563-1631). He was university educated - probably at St. Andrews - and had worked for both Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney and commendator of Holyroodhouse, and his son John, also commendator and a member of James VI's privy council. Probably through these connections, Bartilmo began a career in the shadowy world of espionage, with contacts at the Scottish court and with Sir Anthony Bacon, one of Elizabeth I's spymasters.
Soon after their marriage, Inglis worked in partnership with her husband, creating beautiful black-
and-white manuscripts featuring biblical texts for Queen Elizabeth, Anthony Bacon, the Earl of Essex,
and Prince Maurice of Nassau, Protestant leader in the Netherlands - all in 1599. The elaborate front-
matter includes coats of arms, dedications to each person by Inglis and by Scottish theologians and
educators Andrew Melville, Robert Rollock, and John Johnston, and by Bartilmo Kello (to Prince
Maurice). In addition, Inglis includes several poems written to herself by Melville, Rollock and Johnston.
All four of these manuscripts contain self-portraits, and three of them have embroidered bindings made by her.
Inglis was known for her skill with the needle as well as the pen, attested in dedications to her by Rollock and Johnston : 'her needle vies with her pen', and she 'compos[ed] numberless lines of verse, shapely designs and letters./ All these she delivers, even outdoes with her needle, art and poetry'. Of her surviving manuscripts, seventeen have embroidered bindings, mostly sewn by herself. In 1608 she made an especially beautiful one for Prince Henry when he was almost fourteen:
Folger Library MS V.a.94. Argumentum Psalmorum Davidis, 1608. CC BY-SA 4.0
A 1615 manuscript made for King James VI and I shows a phoenix on the front and back.
National Library of Scotland, MS 8874. Les Pseaumes de David, 1615. Photograph by G. Ziegler
Both of these manuscript books are very small: the one for King James 90 X 60mm (about 3 1/2 by 2 3/8 inches).
In 1599, Inglis began including self-portraits in her manuscripts, first in black-and-white, and after 1605 in colour. She sits at her desk, pen in hand and ink to the side, with an open book in front of her. She wears the garb of a middle-class woman, with high-crowned black hat over a French hood. Her earliest portraits include a lute and music on the table, since she is using the engraved portrait of French poet Georgette de Montenay (1540-1581?) as a model. This portrait by Pierre Woeiriot appeared in some of the editions of Montenay's Emblemes Chrestiennes, published on the continent beginning in 1567, a book that Inglis knew well. Soon, however, she stops including the musical elements and focuses on her writing accoutrements. In later manuscripts she updates her attire and often cuts down the self-portrait, showing only her bust against a blue background, as in painted miniatures.
Bodleian Library MS Bodl. 990, Self-portrait of Esther Inglis in Les Proverbes de Salomon, 1599.
Dedicated to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. CC BY-SA 4.0
Inglis's sources for her manuscripts are mostly biblical texts drawn from the Geneva bible, or Psalms in French verse from the Marot-Bèze version. She also often uses religious poems by Guy du Faur, Sieur de Pybrac and Antoine de la Roche Chandieu. She seems to have made her own Anglo-Scots translation of Chandieu's Octonaires, and she wrote several other poems in her manuscripts. For more on her sources see: https://estheringlis.com/sources-2/
In addition to King James and the two royal princes, Inglis gave manuscripts to many other Scots including Ludovic Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox; Archibald Campbell, 7th Duke of Argyll; William Douglas, 7th Earl of Morton; Elizabeth, Lady Erskine, Countess of Kellie; and Sir David Murray of Gorthy. Murray, a companion to Prince Henry and good friend of Inglis's, received three manuscipts from her. She often presented her manuscripts as New Year's gifts and would have expected some remuneration as part of the gift-exchange protocol.
Inglis and Kello moved to London from 1604-1607, following the Stuart court on James VI and I's accession to the English throne. They then lived in Essex where Kello had been given a living as a minister, until 1615 when they returned to Edinburgh. Their eldest son, Samuel, enrolled at the Tounis College, Edinburgh and eventually acquired a living back south in Sussex. Inglis managed her career while bearing eight children, four of whom survived to adulthood. She is a true Scottish treasure.