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1572. The king, to whom he had offered to ship those
of them that could be spared to Holland for service under
the Prince of Orange, had refused the proposal. For
this he was not to be blamed. As to the conspiracy, his
answer was rather evasive. He still adhered to his former
statement that he first heard of it at Reval through
Balfour, and called Cahun’s fate well merited, because he
had said all Scots were traitors, and it would never do for
the sake of one scoundrel to make the whole army suffer.
Asked if he had written to the Scottish Regent and
defamed King John, he strongly denied the fact, reiterating
that if he was guilty he was ready to suffer death, for
honour was dearer to him than life.
In the meantime the Government in Scotland warmly
pleaded the cause of the prisoners, of whose sad fate it
had at last been informed.1 On the 20th of August 1574
the Earl of Morton, in the name of King James VI.,
then a boy of eight, wrote to the Swedish king. He
even resolved to send a special Envoy, Magister Patricius
Whytlace, to Sweden. When the king was informed of
his arrival at Elfsborg on the 5th of October, he was
greatly afraid it might be a herald carrying a declaration
of war in his pocket. He therefore gave strict orders to
ascertain first who the messenger was, and to close the
gates of Stockholm against him if he was a “herald.”
This embassy seems to have had this effect at least, that
the lives of the two prisoners were spared, and that they
were to be kept in separate places in Sweden until an
agreement between Sweden and Scotland could be
arrived at. Unfortunately this agreement never took
place. It was of no avail that the Scottish Government
1 On the 18th of July 1574 Walsingham writes to the English
Government concerning the news of the conspiracy in Sweden. (See
Calendar of State Papers.)
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