Scottish Text Society publications > Old series > Poems of Alexander Montgomerie

Ivi
INTRODUCTION.
grate in the Court, and, as he sayth hymselfe, kingis man.
I pray your highness lette me knowe what he was that
he slewe last, which, as he saythe, is the cawse of his
commynge hyther.” In the Treasurer’s accounts also
there is a record that in February 1581 payment was
made to “ Thomas Churchyard, Inglisman, conform to
the kingis precept,” a sum of two hundred pounds
“ Scotch money.” Churchyard, who seems to have had a
touch of the swaggering swashbuckler about him, appears
to have incurred the jealous enmity of certain unknown
persons in Edinburgh, who on more than one occasion
attempted his life by firing on him. Accordingly, in the
end of June 1581, he obtained the king’s leave to depart
southwards again. This visit of Churchyard’s to the
Scottish Court, which extended for over a year, coincides
with the period of James’s dawning literary ambitions,
and of his beginning to play the part of a patron of
letters. In such literary surroundings as have been
described, Churchyard was not the man to hide his light
under a bushel; his presence at the Court and the king’s,
patronage of him he doubtless owed to his prestige as
an English poet. Nothing is more likely than that he
took a part in promoting the literary activities of the
Court, and it is easy to think that in the circumstances
he would vigorously press upon the attention of the
Scottish poets English models.1
§ 27. Another of these gentlemen of fortune who
1 In his poem entitled “ A Praise of Poetsie ” he commends “ Dauy Lindzay
and Buckananus ” (the latter he had possibly met in Edinburgh), and in the
marginalia notes, “ lames the first that was King of Scotland and K. lames
the sixt now reigning, great poets.” Has this evidence of James’s authorship
of the ‘ Quair ’ been noted ? Churchyard no doubt got his information at the
Scottish Court during his residence there.