Elizabeth, he sent a request through one Roger Ashton to Lord Scrope, the Warden of the English West Marches, 'for to have her Majesties players for to repayer into Scotland to his grace'. In reply Scrope wrote from Carlisle on 20 September to William Ashby, the English ambassador at Edinburgh, begging him to notify the King, that he had sent a servant to them, 'wheir they were in the furthest parte of Langkeshire, whervpon they made their returne heather to Carliell, wher they are, and have stayed for the space of ten dayes'.[1] After all, the Lapland witches and their winds delayed Anne's crossing for some months, and James had himself to join her in Denmark. It is, I think, only a conjecture that the players whose 'book' was submitted on 3 June 1589 for the licence of the Kirk Session at Perth, in accordance with the order of 1574, were Englishmen.[2] But certainly 'Inglis comedianis' were in Scotland in 1594, probably for the baptism of Henry Frederick on 30 August, and received from James the generous gift of £333 6s. 8d. out of 'the composicioun of the escheit of ye laird of Kilcrewch and his complices'.[3] Probably Laurence Fletcher was at the head of this expedition, for on 22 March 1595 George Nicolson, the English agent at Edinburgh, wrote to Robert Bowes, treasurer of Berwick, that, 'The King heard that Fletcher, the player, was hanged, and told him and Roger Aston so, in merry words, not believing it, saying very pleasantly that if it were true he would hang them also'.[4] In any case, Fletcher appears to have been the leader of a company whose peregrinations in Scotland a few years later, much favoured by James, were also much embarrassed by the critical relations which then existed between the Sovereign and the Kirk. It s only a conjecture that this was the company which was refused leave to play at St. Andrews on 1 October 1598.[5] But of greater troubles, which took place*
- ↑ E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum for 21 Jan. 1882. I am sorry to say that Mr. Scott suggests that Shakespeare was of the company.
- ↑ J. Scott, An Account of Perth, in Sir J. Sinclair, Statistical Account of Scotland, xviii (1796), 522.
- ↑ J. C. Dibdin, Annals of the Edinburgh Stage (1888), 20, from Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland. A True Accompt of the Baptism of Prince Henry Frederick, printed in 1594 (Somers Tracts, ii. 171), records plays amongst other festivities, but does not say that English actors took part.
- ↑ Scottish Papers, ii. 676. I suppose that this document is the authority on which P. F. Tytler, Hist. of Scotland, ix. 302, describing the events of 1599, says of Fletcher, 'He had been there before, in 1594; and on his return to England, had suffered some persecution from his popularity with James'.
- ↑ D. H. Fleming, St. Andrews Kirk Session Register, ii. 870, 'Ane
