“ The title of “Maid of Honour” is given to an unmarried lady attached to the personal suite of a queen. The custom of sending young girls of noble or good birth to the court of a prince or feudal superior, for the purpose, primarily, of education, goes back to early feudal times, and is parallel with the sending of boys to act as pages and squires to the feudal castles. The regular establishment of maids of honour (filles d’honneur) appears first in the royal court of France. This has usually been attributed to Anne of Brittany, wife of Charles VIII. ”

“ Among those whose beauty Catherine used in her political intrigues, the most famous were Isabelle de Limeuil, Mlle de Montmorency-Fosseux, known as la belle Fosseuse, and Charlotte de Baune. The filles d’honneur, as an institution, were suppressed in the reign of Louis XIV., at the instigation of Mme de Montespan—who had been one of them—and their place was taken by the dames de palais. ”

“ In the English court, this custom of attaching “maids of honour” to the queen’s person was no doubt adopted from France. At the present day a queen regnant has eight maids of honour, a queen consort four. They take precedence next after the daughters of barons, and where they have not by right or courtesy a title of their own, they are styled “Honourable.”
The Scottish Maiden was an instrument of capital punishment formerly in use in Scotland. ”