WALSINGHAM AND THE WITCH ENGLAND’S FAILED ATTEMPT TO PACIFY KING JAMES VI
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. 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
