Spanish blanks plot

Last updated

The Spanish blanks plot was an alleged pro-Spanish Catholic conspiracy in Scotland, discovered in late 1592. A number of letters to Spain were discovered, which included blank sheets signed by prominent nobles.

Contents

Background

The Spanish Armada had failed in its attempt to conquer England in 1588. The undeclared Anglo-Spanish War continued, however. The Kingdom of Scotland under James VI was divided over religion, despite the formal ascendancy of the Church of Scotland, at this time in a presbyterian form. The Scottish nobility were turbulent, while the king was working to assert administrative and political control of the country against factional and religious strife. A Jesuit mission concerned with Scotland included William Crichton and Robert Abercromby; it looked to help from Spain to further the aims of the Counter-reformation in the British Isles.

Discovery

Andrew Knox, Minister of Paisley was sent to arrest George Kerr, [1] son of Mark Kerr of Newbattle. George Kerr was about to sail to Spain from the west coast of Scotland and carried incriminating correspondence. He was arrested at night on the Isle of Cumbrae. [2] The "Spanish blanks" which were found with other letters in a chest on Kerr's boat, were documents signed by four members of the Catholic nobility of Scotland, and otherwise left to be filled in. At first, the English diplomat Robert Bowes supposed the blanks had been written in invisible ink written with "white vitriol". [3]

James VI and Anne of Denmark were at Alloa Tower celebrating the wedding of the Earl of Mar and Marie Stewart, festivities were cut short when Sir John Carmichael and Sir George Home arrived from Edinburgh with news of the crisis. James VI rode to Edinburgh, where the kirk minister Robert Bruce and Robert Bowes explained their understanding of the situation and threat to him. [4]

George Kerr, his servant, and the letters were taken to Edinburgh and examined by the Privy Council on 2 January 1593. [5] Under torture, Kerr said that the blanks were to be filled in by Crichton, to forward a Spanish invasion. [6] Damagingly for James VI (it has been said), Kerr was also carrying a copy of a position paper by the king on the possible advantages to him in accepting Spanish help. [7]

Investigation

Three prominent Earls were directly implicated:

The fourth signature on the papers discovered was that of Sir Patrick Gordon of Auchindoun. [11] Erroll and Huntly were given a date of 5 February to appear and explain themselves: they did not do so, and went to ground in the north. The king was confronted by them on 24 October, on the road from Soutra to Fala, south-east of Edinburgh; they explained that the blanks related to their support for the Jesuits in Scotland. [6]

Others involved were:

Aftermath

An official account of the plot appeared in February 1593; it is assumed it was edited by John Davidson. It by no means included all the intercepted letters; but it printed a number concerned with William Sempill in 1589; the connection was that when Sempill's servant Pringle was found in England carrying letters to the Duke of Parma, they had included some from Huntly and Erroll. [17] [18]

Perceptions of James VI shifted after the discoveries: some assumed the affair showed the king had at least tacitly approved dealings with Spain, and many more put it down to slackness in anti-Catholic measures. [19]

Related Research Articles

Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll, also called "Gillesbuig Grumach", was a Scottish peer, politician, and military leader.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advocates Library</span> Law library of the Faculty of Advocates, in Edinburgh

The Advocates Library, founded in 1682, is the law library of the Faculty of Advocates, in Edinburgh. It served as the national deposit library of Scotland until 1925, at which time through an Act of Parliament the National Library of Scotland was created. All the non-legal collections were transferred to the National Library. Today, it alone of the Scottish libraries still holds the privilege of receiving a copy of every law book entered at Stationers' Hall.

Elizabeth, Lady Coke, was an English court office holder. She served as lady-in-waiting to the queen consort of England, Anne of Denmark. She was the daughter of Thomas Cecil, 1st Earl of Exeter, and Dorothy Neville, and the granddaughter of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley. She was the wife of Sir William Hatton and later of Sir Edward Coke.

Daniel Tilenus was a German-French Protestant theologian. Initially a Calvinist, he became a prominent and influential Arminian teaching at the Academy of Sedan. He was an open critic of the Synod of Dort of 1618-9.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal</span> Scottish politician

George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal (c. 1553–1623) was a Scottish nobleman and Earl Marischal. He succeeded as earl on 7 October 1581, upon the death of his grandfather, William Keith, 4th Earl Marischal.

Lieutenant-General William Kerr, 2nd Marquess of Lothian, was a Scottish peer who held a number of minor military and political offices. He was known by the courtesy title of Lord Newbattle until 1692, when he succeeded as Lord Jedburgh, then as Marquess of Lothian when his father died in 1703.

William Keith, 6th Earl Marischal was a Scottish lord, Earl Marischal and naval official.

The Octavians were a financial commission of eight in the government of Scotland first appointed by James VI on 9 January 1596.

The Westminster Conference of 1559 was a religious disputation held early in the reign of Elizabeth I of England. Although the proceedings themselves were perfunctory, the outcome shaped the Elizabethan religious settlement and resulted in the authorisation of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer.

William Crichton or Creighton was a Scottish Jesuit who became head of the Scots seminary in Flanders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacobean debate on the Union</span>

The Jacobean debate on the Union took place in the early years of the reign of James I of England, who came to the English throne in 1603 as James VI of Scotland, and was interested in uniting his Kingdoms of England and Scotland. With one monarch on the two thrones there was de facto a "regnal union", but since James was very widely accepted in England, the debate was not on that plane. A political union was more controversial and is often referred to as a "statutory union", underlining the fact that the legal systems and institutions involved were different, and had had distinct historical paths. That wider union did not in fact come about in the 17th century, but at the time of the Union of England and Scotland in 1707, arguments from the earlier period were again put into circulation.

Events from the year 1579 in the Kingdom of Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Scott of Thirlestane</span> Scottish lawyer (c.1670–1725)

Sir William Scott, 2nd Baronet of Thirlestane was a Scottish lawyer, known as a Neo-Latin poet.

Alexander Livingston, 1st Earl of Linlithgow PC was a Scottish nobleman, courtier, and politician. His wife was Helenor Hay, Countess of Linlithgow who was a Royal tutor.

George Wishart (1703–1785) was a Scottish minister who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1748. He was also Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the King of England and Dean of the Chapel Royal.

Ann Smith was an English anti-Catholic political activist. A devout Baptist, she and her family sheltered the rebel 9th Earl of Argyll when he was in hiding in London and fled with him to the Spanish Netherlands in 1683. She lived with her husband in Utrecht and following his death funded Argyll's Rising in Scotland and the contemporaneous Monmouth Rebellion in England. She hosted fellow conspirator Elizabeth Gaunt in Amsterdam and received a royal pardon for her activism in 1686, after which time records of her life cease.

Events from 1566 in the Kingdom of Scotland.

References

  1. ↑ Kirk, James. "Knox, Andrew". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/15780.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ Thomas M. McCoog; Campion Hall (University of Oxford) (1996). The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in Celebration of the First Centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (1896-1996). Boydell & Brewer Ltd. p. 216. ISBN   978-0-85115-590-6 . Retrieved 24 May 2012.
  3. ↑ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 823, 828–9, describes the blanks.
  4. ↑ Thomas Thomson, The historie and life of King James the Sext (Edinburgh, 1825), pp. 260-1.
  5. ↑ Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 829–833, with a list of the letters, not including the royal "position paper."
  6. 1 2 3 4 Thomas M. McCoog (1 January 2012). The Society of Jesus in Ireland, Scotland, and England, 1589-1597: Building the Faith Saint Peter Upon the King of Spain's Monarchy. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 81–4. ISBN   978-1-4094-3772-7 . Retrieved 24 May 2012.
  7. ↑ Marion A. Taylor (1 June 1975). Bottom, Thou Art Translated: Political Allegory in a Midsummer Night's Dream and Related Literature. Rodopi. pp. 180–1. ISBN   978-90-6203-038-5 . Retrieved 24 May 2012.
  8. ↑ White, Allan. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7931.{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. ↑ Saenz, Concepcion. "Hay, Francis". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12715.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  10. ↑ Sizer, J. R. M. "Gordon, George". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11036.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  11. ↑ W. B. Patterson (14 September 2000). King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom. Cambridge University Press. p. 14. ISBN   978-0-521-79385-8 . Retrieved 24 May 2012.
  12. ↑ Molland, George. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19758.{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  13. ↑ Annie Cameron, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 58 no. 30.
  14. ↑ P. G. Maxwell-Stuart (2001). Satan's Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland. Dundurn Press Ltd. p. 158. ISBN   978-1-86232-136-6 . Retrieved 24 May 2012.
  15. ↑ Helena Mennie Shire (26 August 2010). Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland Under King James VI. Cambridge University Press. p. 113. ISBN   978-0-521-14829-0 . Retrieved 25 May 2012.
  16. ↑ Loomie, A. J. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20600.{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  17. ↑ John Rawson Elder, Spanish Influences in Scottish History (1920), p. 188; archive.org.
  18. ↑ "Sempill, William"  . Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  19. ↑ Crawford Gribben; David George Mullan (2009). Literature and the Scottish Reformation. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 138. ISBN   978-0-7546-6715-5 . Retrieved 24 May 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.