William Eure

Last updated

Sir William Eure of Bradley was an English aristocrat and political intriguer.

He was a son of William Eure, 2nd Baron Eure and Margaret Dymoke, and uncle of William Eure, 4th Baron Eure, two years his junior, with whom he must not be confused..

With other members of family, he visited and harassed Thomas Posthumus Hoby and his wife at Hackness, near Scarborough, leading to well-documented litigation and counter-claims. The Eure family were traditional and Catholic recusant landowners in the area and Hoby was a relative newcomer and Puritan. [1]

He was employed at the Scottish border by Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresby. [2]

In Nevember 1600 William Eure came into Scotland with his servant Clement Armorer. Sir Robert Ker brought him to meet King James VI at the house of Sir George Home at Spott. [3]

Robert Carey reported this suspicious meeting, held "in the dead time of night", to Sir Robert Cecil. Eure denied all at first, then confessed to having "long conference" with James VI at Spott. Cecil was especially disappointed by Eure's denial which multiplied suspicions, although he thought the matter had beginnings only in some "very venial" cause. [4] William Eure was imprisoned in the Tower of London for this visit, suspected of treasonous dealings. [5]

His older brother, Ralph Eure, 3rd Baron Eure, was concerned by his arrest and potential harm to his family. [6] Scottish diplomats made representations on William Eure's behalf and also to clarify that James VI had not made any faults. Queen Elizabeth's statement of 11 May 1601 stressed that Eure's was his denial to superior officers at Berwick that he had met the Scottish king. [7]

William Eure was one of small number of English gentry figures whose visits to Scotland before the Union of the Crowns caused alarm to the English diplomatic community and border officials, another was Edmund Ashfield. [8]

Related Research Articles

Sir James Sempill (1566-1626) was a Scottish courtier and diplomat.

George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar

George Home, 1st Earl of Dunbar, KG, PC was, in the last decade of his life, the most prominent and most influential Scotsman in England. His work lay in the King's Household and in the control of the State Affairs of Scotland and he was the King's chief Scottish advisor. With the full backing and trust of King James he travelled regularly from London to Edinburgh via Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Edward Bruce, 1st Lord Kinloss Scottish lawyer and judge

Edward Bruce, 1st Lord Kinloss PC was a Scottish lawyer and judge.

Patrick Gray, 6th Lord Gray, known most of his life as Patrick, Master of Gray, was a Scottish nobleman and politician during the reigns of Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI of Scotland.

Edmund Ashfield (Catholic agent)

Edmund Ashfield was an English Catholic from Tattenhoe in Buckinghamshire. In 1599 he travelled to Edinburgh to meet James VI of Scotland. An English diplomat organised his kidnap and rendition in the belief that Ashfield was an agent of James VI and working to further his succession to the English throne.

Sir David Foulis was a Scottish politician.

King James VI of Scotland communicated in secret with the administrators of Queen Elizabeth I of England between May 1601 and her death in March 1603. In this period it was settled that James would succeed Elizabeth, his distant relative, but this result was kept a secret in a small diplomatic community. James's accession to the thrones of England and Ireland is known as the Union of the Crowns. From 1586 onwards James also received money from Elizabeth, an annual subsidy, which forged closer links.

Thomas Fowler (courtier)

Thomas Fowler was an English lawyer, diplomat, courtier, spy, servant of the Countess of Lennox, broker of the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, steward of the Earl of Leicester, advisor to James VI of Scotland and the Scottish ambassador in London, Archibald Douglas.

Sir Roger Aston of Cranford, Middlesex, was an English courtier and favourite of James VI of Scotland.

Andrew Hunter, Scottish minister and political agent.

John Fleming, 6th or 7th Lord Fleming (1567–1619), Scottish aristocrat and diplomat.

Frances Howard, Countess of Kildare Irish Noble

Frances Howard, Countess of Kildare, courtier, and governess of Princess Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia.

Barbara Ruthven was a Scottish courtier and favourite of Anne of Denmark, expelled from court after the death of her brother.

Stephen Lesieur or Le Sieur was a Swiss-born English ambassador to Denmark, Florence, and the Holy Roman Empire.

Francis Mowbray or Moubray was a Scottish intriguer.

George Nicholson or Nicolson, was an English diplomat in Scotland.

William Eure, 4th Baron Eure KB was an English nobleman.

James Douglas of Spott

James Douglas of Spott was a Scottish landowner and conspirator.

George More was an English Catholic exiled in the Spanish Netherlands. He visited the royal court of Scotland in 1598.

Nicholas Williamson English lawyer and Catholic recusant.

Nicholas Williamson was an English lawyer and Catholic recusant in the 1590s. He was arrested in 1595 after planning a visit to the court of James VI of Scotland. The Jesuit William Crichton had hoped that Williamson would encourage the ambition of James VI for the throne of England.

References

  1. ↑ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 10 (London, 1904), p. 104.
  2. ↑ Alexandra Gadja, The Earl of Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (Oxford, 2012), p. 38.
  3. ↑ John Duncan Mackie, Calendar State Papers Scotland, 13:2 (Edinburgh, 1969), p. 771 no. 621.
  4. ↑ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 11 (London, 1096), p. 15, 90.
  5. ↑ John Cedric Aveling, Northern Catholics: the Catholic recusants of the North Riding of Yorkshire (London, 1966), p. 121.
  6. ↑ Joseph Bain, Calendar of Border Papers, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1894), p. 741 no. 1350
  7. ↑ John Duncan Mackie, Calendar State Papers Scotland, 13:2 (Edinburgh, 1969), p. 821 no. 659.
  8. ↑ Alexander Courtney, 'The Secret Correspondence of James VI, 1601-3', in Susan Doran & Paulina Kewes, Doubtful and dangerous: The question of the succession in late Elizabethan England (Manchester, 2014), p. 136.
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.