¹ See the regent to Henri Clutin, sieur d’Oysel, 3 May, and to her brothers, 21 and 28 May (below, nos 24, 28, 32), in which she reveals that this letter had been intercepted and that she has seen a translation of it into English.

² René de Lorraine, marquis d’Elbeuf (1536–1566).

³ Elizabeth I wrote to the duke of Holstein on 17 December 1559 thanking him for his offer of service and inviting him to England (CSPF, II, no. 576, note).

⁴ There is a note at the end that the whole of the following passage – given here in italic – ‘est en chiffre, et le deschiffrement est en ung papier à part’.

⁵ The official account of the Conspiracy of Amboise was dated 17 March and printed at Lyon: Lettres du Roy à monsieur le seneschal de Lyon . . . concernans la revelation et grace que sa Majesté veult faire à ceulx qui avoient conspiré contre l’estat de la religion et son Royaume (Lyon, 1560).

⁶ Monluc's instructions have not survived in any other form.

⁷ Jean de Montaignac (see p. 40, n. 7).

⁸ Saint John's Tower at Ayr.

⁹ Gilbert Kennedy, 4th earl of Cassillis (d. 1576).

¹⁰ Dunure castle, Ayrshire.

¹¹ Leith, on the Firth of Forth.

¹² Henri Clutin, sieur d’Oysel. See M.-N. Baudouin-Matuszek, ‘Un ambassadeur en Ecosse au XVIe siècle: Henri Clutin d’Oisel’, Revue historique, 281, no. 1 (1989), pp. 77–131.

¹³ De Seure.

¹⁴ See p. 61, n. 47.

¹⁵ Ottaviano Bosso (Octavien Bos), valet de chambre and diplomatic agent of Francis I and Henri II.

¹⁶ Henri Clutin, sieur d’Oysel.

¹⁷ On 28 March a letter arrived at Edinburgh from de Seure (Dickinson, G. (ed.), Two Missions of Jacques de La Brosse (Edinburgh, 1942), p. 88Google Scholar). On 1 April the regent withdrew into Edinburgh castle and the French garrison of the town to Leith. At this point, La Brosse seems to have abandoned his plan to travel home via England.

¹⁸ Henry Sinclair (1508–1565), lord president of the Court of Session, December 1558. He had been given the temporalities of the bishopric of Ross in 1558 (after the death of David Paniter) but was not consecrated until 1560 because of delays in obtaining papal dispensation. Member of the council under Mary Stuart.

¹⁹ The original would have read ‘1559’, as the paschal year began on 14 April in 1560.

²⁰ Space has been left in the manuscript for the addition of these names.

²¹ This letter was drawn up and sent on 31 March (copied into the AE letter-book) but a duplicate was sent on 9 April, the original of which fell into English hands. The wording of the two letters is very slightly different. The text given is that of the original, supplemented by the AE letter-book where words are missing. The passage in italics indicates the section that was written in cipher in the original.

²² The Conspiracy of Amboise.

²³ The words ‘Nota que l’autre lettre est dactee à Amboyse’ are added to this text.

²⁴ Lacunae in the following lines of text.

²⁵ Berwick.

²⁶ Presumably Sir George Howard (d. 1580), nephew of Thomas, 3rd duke of Norfolk, an experienced courtier and soldier who served all the monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I and had participated in the Garter embassy to France in 1551.

²⁷ Presumably the ‘cinq articles’ of the regent detailed in Monluc's account, in Paris, Négociations, pp. 392–414, at p. 408.

²⁸ Dumbarton.

²⁹ Inchkeith.

³⁰ Heading, ‘Minutte d’une lettre de la Royne douairiere d’Escosse à monsr d’Oysel toute escripte de sa main’, which explains the occasional puzzling transcription.

³¹ George Gordon, 4th earl of Huntley (1514–1562), a grandson of James IV by his daughter Margaret. The regent was ambivalent about him; he had accompanied her to France in 1550 but had joined the Congregation (he was later to fall foul of Mary queen of Scots and her half-brother Moray).

³² John Stewart, 4th earl of Atholl (d. 1579), a supporter of the regent and enemy of Huntley.

³³ This seems to be the event referred to in the La Brosse journal under the date of 17 April (Dickinson, Two Missions, p. 120).

³⁴ Corbeyran de Cardaillac Sarlabous, a notable Gascon captain (1515–1586), had served in Scotland since 1548 and had been captain of Dunbar since 1553. He had returned to France in 1557, when he served in the campaigns of Calais and Thionville, and then came back to Dunbar in 1559, where he remained until September 1561. See Forestié, E., Un capitaine gascon au XVIe siècle: Corbeyran de Cardaillac-Sarlabous (Paris, 1897), esp. pp. 59–77Google Scholar, which documents his activities at Dunbar.

³⁵ Blackness castle, an advanced artillery fortification on the south side of the Firth of Forth, surrendered to the English on 15 April.

³⁶ Neither of these letters seems to have survived.

³⁷ Transcription error for ‘campagne’?

³⁸ Wigtownshire. The previous commendator, James Gordon, died in 1559/1560.

³⁹ Gilbert Kennedy, earl of Cassillis, who also seized the lands of Crossraguel Abbey by torturing its commendator at his castle of Dunure (see above, no. 9). Cassillis managed to install his follower Thomas Hay as commendator in place of Gordon's son.

⁴⁰ Headed ‘From the Q. Dowager of Scotland to m^r d’Oysell being beseged in Lithe by the Quenes mat^es forces [under] the Duke of Norfolk.’

⁴¹ Similar words in the narrative of La Brosse: see Dickinson, Two Missions, p. 136.

⁴² According to the report of the cardinal de Lorraine and duc de Guise to the king of Navarre, 18 May 1560, ‘le roy a eu presentement nouvelles d’Ecosse, de la Royne nostre seur et de ceulx qui sont dans le petit Lict comme les Anglois y ont esté tres bien frottés tant en plusieurs saillies où ils ont esté constraincts et battus, et des leurs seullement ils ont perdu sept cens hommes mortz sur la place, quatre pieces d’artillerie éncloués et une enseigne, que en dix assaultz où ilz ont esté si bien battuz qu’ilz n’ont plus envye d’y retourner et ceulx de dedans ont si bon courayge et sont si bien fourniz de gens de bien, de vivres et tout aultres munitions qu’ils n’ont nul peur ny crainct et ne fault que le Roy soit en peyne deulx de quelque temps, car Dieu mercy ils sont beaucoup mieulx que nous ne pouvions promectre et asseurer’ (Russian National Library, St Petersburg, Autographs, 49, fo. 6; I have used the copy in the Bibliothèque de la Société de l’histoire du Protestantisme français, Paris, MS 846).

⁴³ James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell (1534–1578), later husband of Mary queen of Scots.

⁴⁴ These phrases seem to be condensed.

⁴⁵ James Croft, governor of Berwick.

⁴⁶ Representatives of the Lords of the Congregation: Lord Ruthven, Sir John Maxwell, and Sir William Maitland of Lethington.

⁴⁷ A Scottish messenger who was travelling through England to Flanders in March 1560 and after that back to the north of Scotland (CSPF, II, p. 442). Possible the ‘Harrie Wilson’ mentioned by Throckmorton in ibid., no. 149. He was a relative of William Chisholm, bishop of Dunblane 1526–1564, who had been captured by the Lords of the Congregation and imprisoned in Stirling.

⁴⁸ See p. 49, n. 23.

⁴⁹ See the following letter, no. 30.

⁵⁰ Arthur Erskine (1523–1571), of Blackgrange, son of John, 5th Lord Erskine, and brother of John, 1st (or 17th) earl of Mar, married to Magdalen Livingtone; equerry of Mary Stuart.

⁵¹ See letter of 30 April, no. 21.

⁵² Ninian or Ringan Cockburn (d. 1579), brother of the laird of Ormiston, captain of the Garde écossaise, who seems to have played a devious role between the French court and the Scottish opposition. See Throckmorton to Cecil, 22 May 1560, in CSPF, III, no. 116, where it seems as though a number of French messengers had been suborned by Throckmorton and Cecil and that Throckmorton had obtained copies of letters from the Guises to their sister through him. Cockburn had benefited from his position at the French court (see BnF, fr. 4588, no. 59, fo. 51: confirmation of a gift of land to ‘Greignan Colleburn, gentilhomme escossois, cappitaine du chasteau de Feismes’, made by Henri II on 15 November 1556 for nine years starting on 1 January 1557, ‘de tout le revenu, proffit et esmolument de [ladite] terre et seigneurie de Feismes, ses appartenances et deppendances, ainsy qu’elle se poursuit et comporte, scituee et assize au village de Vitry’) and yet worked for English envoys in France as well as for Mary Stuart.

⁵³ Coldingham (Berwickshire), north of Eyemouth.

⁵⁴ The abbey of Cambuskenneth or Stirling (Augustinian) had been held by David Paniter as commendator until his death in 1558. Adam Erskine was appointed commendator in 1562 and remained so until 1605. He and his brother David (commendator of Dryburgh) were bastard sons of Lord Robert Erskine, killed at Pinkie. Robert's brother was John, 6th Lord Erskine and later 17th earl of Mar (regent of Scotland, 1571–1572).

⁵⁵ This was sent by Throckmorton on 17 September with a long account of his meeting with the French king and his councillors at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 15 September (CSPF, III, no. 534). The paper was drafted by Claude de L’Aubespine, who wrote of the letters of Francis and Mary that he was sending to Throckmorton on 16 September, apologizing for the delay in replies to Elizabeth's letters, since Mary was still in bed ‘mais il fault pardoner aux dames quant elles demeurent au matin mesmement aux femmes grosses comme nous pensons qu’est nostre maistresse’ (TNA, SP 70/18, fo. 63). This was a useful opportunity to sow anxiety in England.

⁵⁶ Accompanied by a similar letter from Mary Stuart (TNA, SP 70/18, fo. 67).

⁵⁷ The interview with Antoine took place on 16 February at Fontainebleau. The next day Bedford had a private audience in order to discuss the reform of the Church. Antoine replied: ‘I thanke the Quenes maiestie your mistress for this her gentle visitacion, and congratulacion on my behalf. She hathe made many proufes of her good will unto me, God sende me some good occasion and opportunitie to recompense this her kindenes agayne. And wheras it likethe her to put me in remembraunce to advaunce the honour and glorie of God and his true doctrine in thys realme, I do hartyly thanke her for it and do thinke my selfe moche bounden unto her for the same [. . .] and albeit I cannot bringe to passe all thynges as I wyshe nor so seme as I wold, yet I desire the Quene your mistress to conceive of me that I will employe my selfe to do the best I can. You knew very well (quod he) it is xxx^ti yeres ago that the reformation of religion was first talked of and entended in your realme, and could not be brought to that passe as it is till nowe. And also your realme hathe bene vexed with troubles and tumultes as you know well enough.’ He added that, with the responsibility of first prince of the blood and being the queen mother's chief counsellor, he wished to avoid dangers: ‘for these respectes we walke the more coldely and procede the more advisedly. But (quod he) I trust things will come to a good ende.’ To Throckmorton he said: ‘the grettest part of this realme be adversaries to this cause and the trewe religion’ (see Letter of Bedford and Throckmorton, 26 February 1560/1561, TNA, SP 70/23, fo. 135 (156)r–v).

⁵⁸ This must be the paschal year 1562, since the date of Easter was 6 April in 1561 and 29 March in 1562.

⁵⁹ The grand prior and the marquis d’Elbeuf passed through England on the way to Scotland in August 1561 and so evidently did not return until the following March.