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referring the reader who is anxious to know the part
played by Scottish officers in Germany during the Thirty
Years’ War to these books in order to avoid repetition,1
the sketch may now be filled in by the use of letters and
other papers scattered here and there in the archives and
libraries of Sweden.
No Scottish name during the time of Charles IX. and
Gustavus Adolphus is more frequently named in court or
camp than that of Sir James Spens of Wormiston. He
served many kings, and succeeded in winning the favour of
all of them ; he was an intimate friend of Oxenstierna, and
attached to Gustavus Adolphus with feelings of sincere
veneration. About his early career we have already
spoken. The date of his entering the service of the
King of Sweden is variously given. It must have been
before 1606, for in the month of April of that year
King Charles IX. writes to him concerning the levying of
troops, 600 horsemen and 1600 foot-soldiers.2 Other
letters on the same subject followed in 1607. Two
years later, on the 4th of January, he gives a receipt for
two bills of exchange, one to the amount of 1000 Thaler,
the other of 9000 “ Imperiales,” for levying purposes, to
be paid by a merchant and banker, Coote, in London.
Not long afterwards we find him in the English
metropolis. A very rambling letter, written in the worst
possible German, and dated Griinwitz (!)—Greenwich—
26th May, 1609, has come down to us.3 In it he tells his
master, the King of Sweden, of the English king’s new
book against the Pope, which was to be sent to the
Protestant German princes in order to bring about a
1 The Scots in Germany, Part II.
2 Riks A. Dipl. Angl. Spens Correspondence.
8 Ibid. In a letter of King Charles to Spens, copper and iron is
promised to him in case the money should not suffice (4th January, 1609).
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