Note 546 — Chapter I · SUMMARY.

The spy to whom we are indebted for the inimical anecdotes of James’s adventures in France, urges the Douglases to solicit Henry VIII.’s most effectual letters for their pardon and recall to Scotland, to be delivered to James V. on the day of his bridal, which, adds he, “is to be on St. Katherine’s day, if all promises are kept; nevertheless the letters of Henry VIII. should be with the King of France (who was to be the pleader in the case) the evening before the marriage. Cause the writings ye shall send me to be delivered in Depe (Dieppe) to George Hume.”

These directions could never be complied with, for some English person captured the dispatches while overhauling the Scotch messenger’s budget either by sea or land, and the copies remain in the Cottonian Collection with this significant endorsement—“The trew coppys of the Scottysh lettres, taken of lait from a Scott, good as I thinke to be seyn (seen).”