Series 3 > Foreign correspondence with Marie de Lorraine, Queen of Scotland, from the originals in the Balcarres papers > Volume 7

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BALCARRES PAPERS
places David Panter was immediately concerned, but Lord
Erskine’s letter 1 makes it appear that the gift of the
abbey, as reward of his services in the negotiations with
the Governor of Scotland, was at first not welcomed by
the recipient. The Bishop would appear to have for¬
warded all his correspondence to the Queen regardless of
its importance, for while one letter dealt with the appoint¬
ment of a valuator for the lands of Chatelherault, another
dealt with some pottery that the Bishop had ordered,2
and another from James, son of the Duke Governor,3 begged
the Bishop to talk over matters with the Archbishop of
Glasgow and see whether they could induce his father to
give him an allowance more suitable to his position, as
otherwise he was unable to serve the King fittingly.
A few undated letters, which have no indication by
which it is possible to assign them to any particular period,
are still interesting. One from Reynault de Montauban,4
written from Edinburgh, described some crime committed
in Glasgow for which he desired punishment on the per¬
petrator, ‘ le scarabillat si villain.’ Jeanne Linderovail 5
wrote of the news of the Court, but her peculiar spelling of
names makes them hard to identify ; it is possible that the
date is about 1557. Frangoise d’Ally 6 made the remark
that she would have liked an hour’s conversation with
her correspondent, Lady Livingston ; and if the letter were
as mystifying to the recipient as it is to decipher now,
conversation would have been the easier way. The one
really intelligible part of the letter is an inquiry in a post¬
script whether a certain gentleman with a violet doublet
was still at Court. Lastly, Margaret Stewart,7 who may
have been the daughter of Sir James Stewart of Beith,
prayed the Queen Dowager that the man who had stolen
1 App. B, I. ! Letter XCV. 3 Letter XCVI.
4 Letter CLXXXVIII. 6 Letter CXCIII. 6 Letter CCII.
7 App. B, IV.