Walsingham and the witch
England’s failed attempt to pacify King James VI
Queen Elizabeth I, by permission of National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Against a backdrop of strained Anglo-Scottish relations, in September 1583 Queen Elizabeth I sent Sir Francis Walsingham, her principal secretary of state and spymaster, to Scotland with an entourage of 80 intelligence agents, men-at-arms and servants. William Ashby accompanied Walsingham and was subsequently dispatched to London to personally report to the Queen and her Privy Council. Although the queen was notorious for her vacillation, her instructions to Walsingham were explicit: to confront the ‘young Prince', King James VI, about his duplicity in professing ‘perfect amity' with her while strengthening ties with England's enemies, and to make it clear that if he desired a continuation of peaceful relations plus English financial support, he must cast aside ‘the seduction of his evil-affected counsellors'.
Relations between the two countries were at a nadir. Scotland was perceived by the English as savage, ungovernable and ‘the old beggardly enemy, the people of which were known for “their aversion and natural alienation… from the English'”. Royal authority was a pretence, the penniless yet profligate teenage king a mere figurehead, literally seduced by a succession of unscrupulous and corrupt noblemen. Elizabeth I privately referred to James as ‘that false Scotch urchin'. The kingdom was riven by murderous lairds constantly changing allegiances for political and financial gain. Although Scotland had undergone a Protestant reformation a generation earlier, by the early 1580s religious affiliation was secondary to domestic politics, much to the frustration of the three great powers vying for strategic influence – England, France and Spain.
Generally, the Scots equally despised the English as their ‘auld enemies'. Over the past three centuries, English armies had invaded Scotland numerous times, including the pillaging and burning of Edinburgh and nearby villages in 1544, which older Scots remembered with deep animosity.
In 1581 a proclamation was made across Scotland ´that no Scottish man have any dealing or intercourse with any Englishman… that no Scottish man or woman bring any victuals to Berwick on pain of death’, and that any Englishman entering into Scotland was to be arrested and imprisoned. Robert Bowes, Elizabeth’s permanent envoy to Scotland from 1577 to 1583 (who preferred to be based safely across the Border at the heavily-fortified frontier town of Berwick), reported that ‘It is now thought as dangerous in Scotland to confer with an Englishman, as to rub on the infected with the plague, and most men openly flee the English company...’.
SCOTLAND’S GEOSTRATEGIC IMPORTANCE
Despite their contempt, Elizabeth and her government recognised Scotland’s vital geo-strategic importance, representing threats as potential military bases for enemies such as France and Spain, as well as counterreformation forces committed to replacing Elizabeth with the Catholic claimant Mary Queen of Scots. Walsingham called Scotland ‘the postern-gate to any mischief or peril that may befall to this Realm’.
The English were increasingly concerned about the dominant influence of Esmé Stuart, the half-French, Catholic, Seiur d’Aubigny, who after meeting the thirteen-year-old James in 1579 quickly became ‘master of his grace’s person [and] alienated the king’s mind from the amity of England’. In March 1580, the king forced his cousin, Robert Stuart, earl of Lennox, to relinquish his title, which was promptly awarded to d´Aubigny. In the same year, the formal establishment of a royal household marked the beginning of fiscal recklessness and mounting debts. The new earl swiftly consolidated control over James and assumed an active role in government.
Lennox plotted against the pro-English earl of Morton, the last regent, whom he saw as an impediment to his growing authority despite the earl’s retirement. After Morton’s execution in June 1581, allegedly for participating in the murder of the king’s father, Lord Darnley, the English saw their hope of controlling James slip away.
The queen’s cousin, Lord Hunsdon, told Walsingham: ‘What hope her majesty may have that the king of Scots in any respect will be ruled by her so long as this Council is about him, he leaves to wiser than himself, but for his part he looks not for it’. Hunsdon subsequently warned Sir Francis that Elizabeth would find that James’s ‘fair speeches and promises will fall out to be plain dissimulation’, and that any friendly overtures from the king and Lennox would prove to be nothing but ‘French promises and Scottish false practices’. In Hunsdon’s opinion: ‘her majesty will do best to let them alone with their own doings, who shortly will devour one another… and to be utterly forbidden to have any traffic in England, which is the only way to bring down their pride and insolency’.
Walsingham’s agents provided intelligence that Lennox was actively conspiring with the French, the Spanish and Catholic Scottish lairds. Lennox was reported to have drawn ‘the King to carnal lust’ (sodomy was a mortal sin and punishable by death) and to be aiming at the overthrow of the Protestant religion ‘by seeking to seduce the king by filling his ears with wicked devices and speeches and withdrawing his residence to places frequented by Papists, full of traitorous persons to his estate, and overflowing with whoredom and all kinds of insolences’.
After news of the edict barring Englishmen from Scotland in April 1581 was received in London, the privy council – at Walsingham´s insistence – blamed Lennox, agreeing that he would not have taken such a ‘violent course’ without ‘some expectation and hope of timely maintenance from foreign parts, which were better prevented than let run on’. The council agreed that an English army should be prepared to invade Scotland. Elizabeth forbade this, opting for a diplomatic solution. The queen probably took seriously French king Henri III’s threat that if ‘she settled things in her own way in Scotland’ Henri would prevent this ‘with all his forces’ and that ‘for every soldier she sent thither he (the king of France) would send four, and all other assistance in a like manner’.
Walsingham found that King James’ intercepted letters and devotion to Lennox demonstrated ‘how dangerous an enemy therefore he would prove unto England if he should happen to run to any other course’. Diplomatic alarms in London reached a crescendo when, in August 1581, James raised Lennox to a dukedom, second in rank to himself. Lennox and the earl of Arran – ‘the worst thought of, and accounted the falsest that is in Scotland’ − who were uneasy partners at the head of Scotland´s government and rivals for James´s favour, were notorious for their corruption, systematically extorting money, land and goods from a wide variety of nobles, merchants and the Kirk (the Presbyterian Church).
THE RUTHVEN RAID
English apprehension about the course of James’s government was relieved by the `Ruthven raid’ in August 1582 when a group of lairds launched a coup d’etat. The king was lured to Ruthven Castle, home of the earl of Gowrie, and effectively placed under house arrest. Gowrie led a faction known as the Lords Enterprisers, Protestant noblemen who believed that alignment with England was strategically necessary to end the resurgent threat of Roman Catholicism.
A government was formed, headed by the earl of Gowrie, with the king as its nominal figurehead. The new regime sought to bring fiscal order out of the economic chaos caused by Lennox’s corruption and financial incompetence as well as James’ uncontrolled spending. Gowrie, the royal treasurer, was personally owed £45,376 (over £1 million in modern terms) by the king for expenditures including livery for the royal household, tennis equipment, James’ hats, and various other sundries.
The new regime forced James to banish Lennox, ostensibly by showing him the `craft, subtilty, and treason’ of the duke and his accomplices, as well as alienating the king’s `mind from the amity of England and to think nothing pleasant but that which proceeded from the Papists in France’. James – taken under heavy guard to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh – was probably persuaded to issue a royal banishment order by a threat to arrest and execute his favourite, who was to be `pursued with fire and sword as a traitor’ if he did not leave Scotland. Lennox began plotting to overthrow the Ruthven regime and reinstall James as his puppet king.
The king resisted attempts by the Ruthven lords and the English to turn him against Lennox. After receiving safe conduct passes, Sir George Carey (son of Lord Hunsdon), and Ambassador Bowes, hurried to Scotland to meet with James. When the English envoys expounded on the duke´s `evil intent’, James went red in the face and passionately defended Lennox, continually muttering that he did not believe the allegations against him. Carey told Queen Elizabeth that James’ `great affection’ for Lennox `seems not to be quenched’.
To dissuade Lennox from raising forces to rescue James, the Ruthven lords threatened that `if he did not at once retire to France’, they were resolved to `send the King to England, or put him out of the way by some other method’, implying that James could be assassinated if a rescue attempt was launched.
The king’s guard, commanded by the treacherous Colonel William Stuart, cousin of the earl of Arran, were essentially mercenaries, willing to give their allegiance to whoever employed them (or turn against those who no longer could pay their wages).
FEARS FOR ELIZABETH
Frustrated by the queen’s neglectful, parsimonious attitude towards Scotland, Walsingham confided his fears to the earl of Leicester, stating that French and Spanish subversive efforts were unabated and that he `holds Scotland for lost unless God be merciful to this poor island’. Fearing that it might already be too late to save the Ruthven regime from collapse, Sir Francis met with Lord Burghley, the queen’s chief advisor, and fellow privy council members and got their support for £10,000 per annum for Scottish `pensions’ to buy King James’ unequivocal cooperation. Elizabeth vetoed the proposal.
Sir Francis, the consummate spymaster, had good reason to fear for England and his queen, who sometimes seemed maddeningly unconcerned about the intelligence he shared documenting plots against her realm. Leicester had complained to Walsingham that Elizabeth was slow to believe that the great increase of Catholics was of danger to the realm, adding that he prayed that `the Lord of His mercye open her eyes’. English Jesuits changed from simply ministering to Roman Catholics to actively promoting sedition against Elizabeth and her government. Some became willing agents of the continental powers, reporting to their French, Spanish and Papal contacts that many Catholics `were anxious to see the deliverance of England from its Protestant yoke and would even go so far as to join an army sent to depose Elizabeth’.
The French duke of Guise was plotting the assassination of Queen Elizabeth with the knowledge and backing of Spanish King Philip II. Walsingham considered Guise, head of the Catholic League, to be England’s most implacable enemy, instigator of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres of French Protestants in 1572. Lennox had been actively conspiring with Queen Mary – and through her with Guise – and was only waiting for the political environment in Scotland to be `in a fit state for our forces to go thither and begin the enterprise in accordance with the plan proposed last year’.
The `enterprise’ was a plan to liberate James VI, reunite him with his mother, and gather Catholic forces for an invasion of England. Juan de Tassis, Spanish ambassador to the French court from 1581 to 1584, reflected a hard-line shift in Spanish foreign policy from his predecessor who believed that the `English problem’ (i.e. Protestantism and Queen Mary’s claim to Elizabeth’s throne) could be solved by diplomatic means. Tassis believed that an open war against England, through Ireland or Scotland, was needed to reassert Spain’s dominant presence in European politics. A landing was to take place at the port of Dumbarton, on the Clyde river, and de Tassis gave 5,000 crowns as a bribe to the captain of Dumbarton Castle to support the invasion. To give the ‘enterprise’ the appearance of a Catholic crusade, there would be ‘soldiers of various nations’, including Italians and German Catholics’, and equal numbers of French and Spanish men-at-arms. The hope was to land 3,000-4,000 troops, or ‘a much larger force, almost a regular army’.
Mary Queen of Scots was seen as the key to ‘banish the jealousy which may exist between Spain and France if each nation for itself yearns for the conquest of England’. Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to England, pointed out to King Philip ‘the many advantages… to your interests by the elevation of the queen of Scots to the throne after England has been converted, and for many reasons France will equally benefit’. Walsingham and Burghley believed that Spain’s strategic objective was not just to restore Roman Catholicism across Britain, but to make England and Scotland vassal states within the Spanish empire.
A ROYAL MARRIAGE PROPOSAL
Nominally acting for the king, in May 1583 the Ruthven regime sent a special embassy to London, jointly led by Colonel Stuart and John Colville, to ask for an alliance, for money, and to propose marriage to the queen or to have her advice on an alternative marriage partner for King James. Stuart, cousin of the Earl of Arran, who had been Lennox’s rival for James’s affection and favour, served as the king’s personal ambassador (and Arran’s agent), whereas Colville represented the Ruthven regime.
Walsingham knew that James felt desperately in need of financial help from France or England, and that the king had assured de la Mothe, the French ambassador, that ‘although he had two eyes, two ears, and two hands, he had but one heart, and that was French’. James had decided, before giving further encouragement to France, to try to come to an understanding with Elizabeth, for financial aid and in hope of being named her successor. The Ruthven lairds wanted to cultivate James as a Protestant monarch, and hoped that with adequate political and monetary support from England, their beleaguered government would survive.
The 49-year-old Elizabeth was amused by the seventeen-year-old James’s marriage proposal, drolly responding that ‘with respect to the King’s marriage, she thanked them much for placing into her hands a matter of such great importance.... As for herself, she had decided to decline, as she thought she was better without a husband... she would say no more but that there was no person in England with the necessary qualifications for the purpose’.
When the Scottish ambassadors had a second audience with the queen, they did not pursue the marriage propositions, focusing on ‘the importance of an offensive and defensive alliance’ with the Ruthven regime, to help the Protestant religion become more firmly established, and to obtain a ‘loan’ for the king. Afterward, the queen complained bitterly to Walsingham and Burghley about the ‘importunity’ of the Scots, ‘who were always asking for money, and using their religion as a pretext for despoiling her, which she would never allow’.
The following day, Stuart again met with Walsingham, bringing ‘great pressure’ on him to persuade Elizabeth to help James, reiterating the threats of being forced into alliances with England’s enemies. That night, Walsingham briefed the queen. Across the vast gulf of nearly four-and-ahalf centuries, Elizabeth’s reply to her principal secretary still strikes a plaintive chord. The queen told Sir Francis ‘that her own servants and favourites professed to love her for her good parts, Alençon [the queen’s erstwhile suitor, Francis, duke of Anjou and Alençon] for her person, and the Scots for her Crown, three entirely different reasons, but they all ended in the same thing, namely, asking her for money. The one object was to drain her treasury, but she would take care to defend it, as money was the principal sinew and force of princes’.
When Walsingham told Stuart that Elizabeth refused to provide any more funding, he flew into a rage, threatening that ‘the queen would repent of it, when perhaps it would be too late to remedy the evil that would befall her’. Stuart was probably deliberately provocative, either to engender a diplomatic break that would decisively lead to a French alliance, or to play a high stakes game that would compel the English to open the royal coffers to Scotland.
Consternation over Scotland returned to London the following month, in June 1583. As expected, ‘the guard finding no surety of pay’ scattered, James regained his freedom, and the Gowrie regime collapsed. Mary Stuart was overjoyed at her son’s deliverance ‘out of the hands of the traitors who held him’, and wrote to the Spanish and French ambassadors in London to ‘advance the execution of our enterprise’.
WALSINGHAM’S MISSION
Increasingly incensed by reports of James’ secret dealings with England’s foreign enemies and the growing influence of Arran, Stuart and the anti-English faction, the queen told a confidant that ‘she could never be secure whilst that boy lived’. By early August Elizabeth had resolved to send Walsingham to Scotland to ‘endeavour to stay the dangerous effects’ of the king’s return to power before it was too late.
At first, Walsingham refused to go, knowing that Anglo-Scottish relations were so bad that the diplomatic mission would be a failure, for which he would be blamed. His colleagues admonished him for refusing an order from the notoriously vindictive sovereign, to which he reportedly replied: ‘He saw no good could come of it, and that the queen would lay upon his shoulders the whole of the responsibility for the evils which would occur. He said she was very stingy already, and the Scots more greedy than ever, quite disillusioned now with regard to the promises made to them; so that it was out of the question that anything good could be done’.
Summoned to Greenwich Palace, Walsingham threw himself at Elizabeth´s feet and swore by ´the soul, body and blood of God that he would not travel to Scotland, even if she ordered him to be hanged for it, as he would rather be hanged in England than elsewhere’.
Her patience exhausted, the queen commanded Walsingham to go to Scotland. Fearing the loss of his head, Walsingham reluctantly obeyed, although he told a friend that his mission would ´be with as ill a will as ever he undertook any service in his life’ because the Scots’ resentment had ‘grown into so bad terms that he fears he will be able to do little good there, and therefore would most willingly avoid the journey if by any means he might do it without her majesty’s extreme displeasure’.
On 17 August 1583, Walsingham departed for Scotland. Sir Francis was authorised to tell James that if he would ‘alter the wrong course lately begun’ the English government was prepared to ‘augment’ his pension. However, if the ‘young Prince’ could not be brought to heel and agree on ‘amity’ with England, the secretary was to make it clear that the queen would lose no time in pursuing a ‘last remedy’, and that ‘she will not neglect any means… to further it’ – a thinlyveiled threat of an English invasion.
Prior to his leaving London, Elizabeth reportedly gave Walsingham a ‘verbal commission’ to take any steps he deemed ‘most advisable’ in accordance with what he knew to be her wishes. Walsingham had permission to promise James that if he would ‘not marry out of the island’ (to a foreign Catholic princess) and would ‘bind himself to England’ then Elizabeth would declare him her heir and hold out ‘great hopes’ for ‘the release of his mother’.
For decades, the English government dangled the succession in front of James to keep him in line, particularly in times of crisis such as the aftermath of the king's liberation from the Ruthven regime, and during the Armada threat half a decade later. Despite evidence that Mary was conspiring to depose the English monarch, in the late summer of 1583 Elizabeth was undecided about her cousin's fate, apparently considering it more useful to keep her alive than to execute her.
Walsingham feared that he and his entourage would be in danger because of Scottish suspicion that he was on an intelligence collection mission (which was true to a certain extant), and due to the recent arrest of Scots working as English agents who were ‘very straitly examined [tortured] what intelligence they had with the ministers of England'. On the Scottish side, James feared that the large English delegation intended to kidnap and take him to England to be imprisoned like his mother.
Walsingham arrived in Scotland on 28 August and was kept waiting in Perth for over a week for his audience with James. While the English waited in mounting frustration, the Scots engaged in a crude form of psychological warfare to bait them. James, who was to become known for his obsession with witchcraft and black magic, employed a witch and ‘common scold' named Kate to sit outside the walls of Perth to taunt, revile and otherwise curse Walsingham and his entourage as they passed. Kate was paid the then princely sum of £6 and ‘a new plaid' for her service. She was fortunate to be on the government payroll as in Scotland the practice of witchcraft and consulting with witches were capital offences.
When Walsingham finally met the ‘ungrateful and conceited' king at Perth he ‘showed him how far forth his regality stretched, and that his young years could not so well judge what appertained to matters of government'. Sir Francis accused James of rejecting Elizabeth's ‘so good and sound advice´ and threatened that ‘Her majesty means to live in good peace with her neighbours, yet hath she not her sword glued in the scabbard, if any wrong or dishonour be offered unto her', adding that ‘her majesty is as able to live without the amity of Scotland as any of her progenitors'. James responded with what Walsingham described as a ‘distemperature' (a disordered mental condition), stating, ‘with a kind of jollity', that as an absolute king he could do whatever he liked with his subjects, and Elizabeth had no more right to question his choice of councillors than he would of hers.
Immediately after the last of two short audiences, Walsingham returned to his quarters to write an impassioned letter asking for Burghley's ‘friendly and careful defence' for what he expected to be ‘the greatest blame' that would be laid on him for the failure of his mission. Sir Francis said ‘that there is no hope of recovery of this young Prince, who, I doubt [not] – having many reasons to lead me so to judge… will become a dangerous enemy… unless there may be some good means found to prevent the same'.
Walsingham left Scotland on 15 September, ill, melancholy and fearful of the wrath of his queen. The following day, the staunchly Roman Catholic Lord Seton wrote to Mary Queen of Scots: ‘at the departure of the ambassador Walsingham, your son certified to me that he is determined to send me to [France] with all speed. I perceive that he is thoroughly determined to continue the friendship and league of this kingdom, and to follow in everything the advice of Monsieur de Guise, and to complete the treaty commenced between you and him'.
CONCLUSION
Walsingham's fear that he would be blamed proved to be groundless, possibly because of the intervention of Burghley. Bitter about his delegation, which he thought had further damaged relations with Scotland, the secretary refocused on the omnipresent threat from English Catholics and their foreign supporters. Soon after his return to London his dark mood was lightened by the eradication of a conspiracy that planned to overthrow the queen after invasion led by the duke of Guise in conjunction with an uprising of English Catholics. Less than four years later, Walsingham succeeded in his long-term goal of having James' mother, Mary Queen of Scots, beheaded.
Despite Walsingham's pessimism, his mission resulted in English realisation that James VI was not a mere child who could be manipulated as a puppet from London, or from Paris or Madrid for that matter. An entente was established and a defensive alliance negotiated. James kept his throne by playing off the great powers – as well as his courtiers – against each other. Elizabeth maintained the king's ‘amity' by dangling the succession and providing financial incentives including a £4,000 annual pension. James' patience was rewarded 20 years after Walsingham's bedevilled diplomatic mission when the ‘young prince' was crowned monarch of both England and Scotland.
Dr Timothy Ashby, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, is the author of ‘Elizabethan Secret Agent: The Untold Story of William Ashby (1536-1593)’, to be published by Scotland Street Press in Spring 2022.William Ashby accompanied Walsingham´s delegation in 1583 and subsequently was English ambassador to Scotland from 1588 to 1590.
