Spies and Intelligence in Scotland, C. 1530–1550

Chapter 4 Spies and Intelligence in Scotland, c. 1530–1550

Amy Blakeway

In April 1539, Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, visited Berwick-upon- Tweed. The arrival of this veteran of the Flodden campaign so close to the border provoked substantial interest amongst the Scots, and Norfolk soon re- ceived a visitor: an unnamed Scot whom the duke considered to be “a very sure spiall.”1 This individual, who dwelt close to Berwick and had friends in the town, claimed he had been ordered by James v to use his “frends” to “serche to knowe what is the occasion of the Duke of Norffolks nowe cumyng to these parties.” When the man later reported that Norfolk “cam for none ill intent,” James v enigmatically responded that “It is trouthe, for I am so aduertised by diuerse waies.”2 Uncovering precisely what these “diuerse waies” of dis- covering events in England consisted of poses challenges, since spying was, by its nature, an activity shrouded in secrecy – few records were produced, and fewer remain extant. Nevertheless, enough survives to offer some insight into how the Scottish crown obtained “advertisements,” a word which strictly meant warning but might encompass a broader definition of news, in the 1530s and 1540s. Whilst intelligence was gathered throughout the period, from 1544 onwards, but increasingly from 1547, the Scottish crown paid agents to enter England where they and their servants remained for extended periods of time. This suggests that one of the ways in which the Scottish crown responded to the depredations of the Rough Wooings, the Anglo-Scottish conflict fought between 1543 and 1550 over the union of the nations through the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to Henry viii’s son Edward, was to develop its intelligence network. This innovative response under pressure was far from unique: as Cynthia Neville’s work has shown, even in the darkest days of the Wars of Independence the Scots managed to “wrest a significant degree of autonomy out of the conflict with England,” and the enduring influence of Scots law on border law was far greater than that of English common law.3 The network of information-gatherers we shall meet in this chapter demonstrated a similar

1 Norfolk to Cromwell, The National Archives [tna]: London, SP1/146 fo. 245v. 2 Norfolk to Cromwell, 2 April 1539, tna: SP1/146 246r. 3 Cynthia J. Neville, “Scottish Influence on the Medieval Laws of the Anglo-Scottish Marches,” shr 81 (2002): 161–185 at 163.

84 Blakeway combination of tenacity, perspicacity, and activity in the face of English ag- gression and occupation. The central role which information gathering played in early modern diplomacy has long been acknowledged, with Garrett Mattingly influentially not- ing the importance of information procuring to the newly emergent resident ambassadors.4 More recently scholars have realised that the line between diplomacy and espionage was extremely fine, and discussed spies themselves in greater detail.5 Diplomacy and espionage were so close that in August 1542 the English accused the Scottish ambassador of having come solely “pour espier” and duly imprisoned him.6 Spying, therefore, was an activity that took place on the borders of legitimate diplomatic endeavour, and, as the example from April 1539 shows, expanding the pool of individuals involved in cross-border political discussions beyond heralds and ambassadors could offer advantages. In a sixteenth-century British Isles context, however, discussion of the activities of spies and intelligence gathering has focused on English endeavours in the reign of Elizabeth i, and the activities of Francis Walsingham, as principal secretary to Elizabeth i, have garnered particular interest.7 A small but grow- ing number of studies exploring late medieval intelligence have demonstrated that Walsingham’s networks represented a development of earlier precedents rather than an innovation, since significant English intelligence networks were operating, for instance, during the Hundred Years’ War and at the close of the fifteenth century.8

4 Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflen Company, 1955), 109–10. 5 J.R. Alban and C.T. Allmand, “Spies and Spying in the Fourteenth Century,” in War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C.T. Allmand (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1976), 73–101 at 75; Gemma L. Watson, “Roger Machado, Perkin Warbeck and Heraldic Espio- nage,” The Coat of Arms 228 (2014): 51–86, at 53; Steve Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603–1746 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 251. 6 Marillac to Francis i, 5 Aug. 1542, in Correspondence Politique de mm. Castillon et Marillac am- bassadeurs de France en Angleterre 1537–42, ed. Jean Kaulek (Paris: Commission des Archives Diplomatiques, 1885), 445. 7 P.E.J. Hammer, “An Elizabethan Spy Who Came in from the Cold: The Return of Sir Anthony Standen to England in 1593,” Historical Research 65 (1992): 277–295; Robyn Adams, “William Herle and the Mid-Elizabethan Polity,” Historical Research 83 (2009): 266–280; Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox eds, Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmil- lan, 2011); Stephen Alford, The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth i (London: Allen Lane, 2012); Stephen Alford, “Some Elizabethan Spies in the Office of Sir Francis Wals- ingham,” in Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture, ed. Adams and Cox (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 42–63; John Bossy, Under the Molehill: An Elizabethan Spy Story (New Ha- ven: Yale, 2001). 8 Christopher Allmand, “Information et espionage pendant la Guerre de Cent Ans,” in La France et les Îles Britanniques: Un couple impossible?, ed. Véronique Gazeau et Jean-Philippe