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

Iviii
INTRODUCTION.
the arrival of the Queene out of Denmark (1589).” “To
the King of Scots upon occasion of his longe stay in
Denmark, by reason of the coldnesse of the winter and
freezing of the sea.”1 “To the King of Scots, whome
as yet he had not scene.” The allusions in these sonnets
point to personal and friendly relations having been
established with James sometime after the publication of
the ‘ Essayes of a Prentise,’ and some years before the
date of the ‘ Poetical Exercises.’ A reference to him in
a letter of Thomas Fowler’s to Lord Burghley, written
on October 20, 1589, gives definite evidence of his presence
in Scotland at that date. A year later he was maturing
a scheme by which the Catholic Powers were to make
certain James’s accession to the throne of England, on the
understanding that he would relieve the English Catholics
of their existing disabilities. In October 1597 he is re¬
ferred to by a Scottish correspondent as “one Constable,
a fine poetical wit, who resides in Paris, has in his head
a plot to draw the Queen \i.e., of Scotland] to be a
Catholic.” Probably his last visit to Scotland was paid
in March 1599, when he arrived in Edinburgh armed with
a commission from the Pope. But after a vain effort to
negotiate with the king, he was obliged to take himself
off in September. A year later he fell under suspicion
of being the author of a book entitled ‘ A Counterfeit
Discourse,’ to which allusion is made in a letter from
George Nicolson to Sir Robert Cecil (July 22, 1600):
“The Ving is much offended thereat, accompting some
practising Papist to have made it. Walter Quin, as I
1 James sailed for Norway on October 22, 1589, and did not return till
May of the following year.