Jacques de Bousie

Jacques de Bousie (floruit 1580-1610) was a Flemish confectioner working in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he worked for James VI and Anne of Denmark.

Jacques de Bousie prepared a sugar banquet at Riddle's Court

Bousie was asked to make confections in September 1589 for the arrival of Anna of Denmark, when it was expected she would sail to Scotland. Instead James VI went to Norway and Denmark to meet her. He sent Sir John Carmichael back to Scotland on 20 April 1590 with instructions for their reception, including, "speciallie that the Flemishe sugerman may be commanded to have in readiness all such confections and sweet meats as before he took in hand for the said banquets."[1] Bousie, "confett maker", was paid £400 Scots for these desserts, and £18 for "confectors" supplied to James VI for his voyage. The "Flemish baker of sugar" was paid another £180 for confections and sweet meats for banquets at this time. Sugar products were held to have medicinal value, and while James VI was in Denmark the court physician John Naysmyth bought confitures and sweets called "scrotchets".[2]

The English ambassador Robert Bowes described a particular Scottish form of banqueting to William Cecil, as the details given of a banquet mentioned in a previous letter had puzzled Queen Elizabeth. Bowes explained that some Scottish banquets consisted of "small provisions of delicates having spice [sweet]meat and wines, of no great matter or value." James VI and the Earl of Bothwell enjoyed a banquet like this, "with good liking and favourable countenances", on 15 August 1593 at the Shore of Leith before the king embarked in a ferry boat for Kinghorn. Jacques de Bousie would have supplied sweetmeats for such banquets.[3]

Bousie may have supplied the twelve boxes of "scrochertis and confectis" that were thrown at Anna of Denmark during her ceremonial entry to Edinburgh.[4] Bousie became a favourite of Anna of Denmark, and in April 1592 she asked the council of Edinburgh to make him a burgess and guild brother. This was controversial because Bousie did not meet the town's strict criteria, so the council representatives James Nicoll, Thomas Aikenhead, Clement Cor, George Heriot elder, and George Heriot younger rode to Dalkeith Palace to speak to her about the request. The outcome is unknown.[5]

The town authorities were keen to protect their livelihoods from incomers. In January 1594, the town allowed another Flemish craftsman, a clock and watch maker, probably Adrian Bowdowingis, a friend of the painter Adrian Vanson, the right to work in his craft and have a shop, despite not being a burgess or free man of an Edinburgh craft, because he was contracted to regulate the town's clock.[6]

Bousie worked at the baptism of Prince Henry at Stirling Castle in August 1594. Desserts were served in azure and gilt Venetian glasses from a model ship in the Great Hall, made in the form of a variety of sea foods "with other infinite things made of sugar, and most truely represented in their own shape." A sugar banquet in the Palace followed.[7] Bousie and the sommelier Jeremy Bowie were paid £220 for glasses to serve desserts.[8] Similar banquets with sculptural sugarwork were popular in England, including the entertainments for Queen Elizabeth at Harefield, and at Elvetham presented by the Earl of Hertford, where dishes included animals and mythical beasts.[9]

In May 1598 Bousie was employed by Edinburgh council for a banquet given in honour of Anna of Denmark's brother, Ulrik, Duke of Holstein, at Riddle's Court.[10] He was paid £184 Scots and his "boys", his workers, were given ten shillings. Carrying Bousie's glass dishes and other equipment to the Banqueting House cost twelve shillings. Planks were borrowed from a timber yard at Leith for temporary shelves to display the desserts and patisserie.[11]

Another supplier, Thomas Burnett, who regularly sold groceries to the royal households, provided sugar candy to the infant Princess Margaret in 1599.[12]

A marriage was recorded at the West Kirk of St Giles on 30 June 1601 between "Jacques de Bussyne" and Anna Dammaris.[13] It is not known if Jacques de Bousie was related to Elizabeth de Boussy, or Bousson de Podolsko, laundress to Anna of Denmark in England, who married the courtier James Maxwell.

Eventually, town authorities condemned banqueting. In 1624 Aberdeen ruled against "all sorts of sugars, confections, spiceries, and dessert, brought from foreign parts" and other extravagances at christenings.[14]

References
  1. Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1589-1593, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 261.
  2. Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts, 1588-1596', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), 31, 48, 56, 72: George Powell McNeil, Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. 22 (Edinburgh, 1903), p. 156-7.
  3. Annie I. Cameron, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1593-1595, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 147, 162.
  4. Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Burgh Records of Edinburgh: 1589-1603, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1927), p. 331.
  5. Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh: 1589-1603 (Edinburgh, 1927), p. 64.
  6. Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh: 1589-1603 (Edinburgh, 1927), p. 107.
  7. William Fowler, A True Reportarie (Edinburgh, 1594)
  8. Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 80.
  9. Louise Stewart, 'Social Status and Classicism in the Visual and Material Culture of the Sweet Banquet in Early Modern England', The Historical Journal, 61:4 (December 2018), pp. 913-942
  10. Amy Juhala, 'Edinburgh and the Court of James VI', Julian Goodare & Alasdair MacDonald, Sixteenth-Century Scotland: Essays in Honour of Michael Lynch (Leiden, 2008), p. 357.
  11. Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, vol. 6 (Edinburgh, 1927), pp. 218, 362-365: Michael Pearce, 'Riddle’s Court, Banquet And Diplomacy in 1598', History Scotland Magazine, 12:4 (2012), pp. 20-27: Edinburgh City Archives, Treasurer's Accounts, 2, pp. 135, 137.
  12. National Records of Scotland, Royal household book, E31/17.
  13. Francis Grant, Parish of Holyroodhouse of Canongate: Marriages 1564-1800 (Edinburgh, 1915), pp. 603, 612.
  14. Robert Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1858), p. 535.
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