Sir David Foulis, 1st Baronet

Sir David Foulis (died 1642) was a Scottish politician.

Life

Foulis was the third son of James Foulis of Colinton, by Agnes Heriot of Lumphoy, and great-grandson of Sir James Foulis of Colinton (d. 1549). His brothers were James Foulis of Colinton, and George Foulis goldsmith and Master of the Mint (1569-1633). His sister Margaret Foulis married the lawyer and king's advocate Thomas Hamilton in 1597. The goldsmith Thomas Foulis was his uncle.

From 1594 onwards David Foulis was actively engaged in politics, and many of his letters are calendared in the Calendar Scottish State Papers.

Essex and a diamond ring

Foulis was often in London and concerned with the receipt of an annuity or subsidy from Queen Elizabeth.[1] He made friends with Anthony Bacon, a client of the Earl of Essex.[2] In his letters he referred to Essex as "Plato."[3]

On 1 July 1594 he received £4,000 sterling for James VI.[4] His uncle, the goldsmith and royal financier Thomas Foulis, made an account of the spending of this money for James VI, along with the tax money on his gold mines, money coined at the royal mint by Thomas Acheson, and £680 Scots received from the Secretary, Richard Cockburn of Clerkington in December 1594, with another £3,000 received by David Foulis at London in August 1595.[5]

Foulis wrote to Anthony Bacon about the arrival in July and August 1594 of the ambassadors for the baptism of Prince Henry. Foulis (and the English ambassador Robert Bowes) heard of discussions that Anna of Denmark's sister Augusta might marry Count Maurice.[6] After the baptism he went to the north of Scotland with James VI. He wrote to Essex that the king had pawned his jewels for £2,000 sterling to fund this military mission, and declared that no house where the Catholic mass has been said would remain standing.[7] Foulis reported on demolition works at Huntly Castle while the Countess of Huntly looked on, and destruction at Slains, in a letter to Anthony Bacon.[8]

On 8 July 1595 at Falkland Palace James VI gave him a diamond ring worth 200 crowns to give to someone in London, probably the Earl of Essex.[9] His mission was to ask for money for James VI and financial assistance for his brother, Thomas Foulis. He was also to discuss the affairs of the west border and the border warden Walter Scott of Buccleuch, and congratulate the Queen on the Earl of Essex.[10] On his return to Scotland, on 27 September at Falkland, Foulis wrote a letter in French to the Earl of Essex, assuring him that James VI had a good opinion of Elizabeth. He had not given the earl's letter to the Chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane, who was ill. Foulis thought the Chancellor would recover, and form a firm alliance with the Earl of Mar and abandon the cause of William Ker of Cessford and Buccleuch, who had lost the support of Anne of Denmark. She was now in accord with her husband, who was dissatisfied with the amount of English money Foulis had received in London (only £2,000). Unfortunately for Foulis's scheme, Maitland did not recover to cement these alliances, but died at Thirlestane Castle on 3 October.[11]

Kinmont Willie

Foulis was sent to London in March 1596 with the king's letters and news of foreign Catholics in Scotland.[12] He was given 100 crowns and a promise of a monthly allowance of 60 crowns.[13] James VI received an anonymous letter criticising Foulis's abilities, and suggesting William Cecil and the Earl of Essex were working together against the king's interest.[14] This year Elizabeth delayed giving money to Foulis for James VI because of the offence caused by Walter Scott of Buccleuch who had rescued Kinmont Willie from Carlisle Castle. Foulis wrote to James VI on 20 July that his discussion were going well with the queen, and he used a figure of speech drawn from tennis, "I praise God the ball is yet aloft and I hope shalbe kept at the stotte."[15]

James wrote to Foulis to continue asking, pointed to agreements made in 1588 and a promise made by the ambassador William Asheby. James Hudson wrote to Sir Robert Cecil about the king's letter, saying that Foulis was "perplexed with fear" about the outcome. Hudson suggested that Scotland's exchequer was now solvent, and withholding the money would only hurt the king and Thomas Foulis and Robert Jousie who administered the money. He received £3,000 on 18 September.[16] In October David Foulis was ready to leave London with seven trunks, three with goods for the Scottish royal household, and some packs and hampers of broad cloth, kerseys, and silks.[17]

Succession tracts

The English diplomat George Nicholson reported in February 1598 that Foulis had directed the printer Robert Waldegrave to publish a Latin succession tract written by Walter Quinn, a tutor to Prince Henry and corrected by a Flemish resident in Edinburgh, Adrian Damman. Such works argued that James VI should be Elizabeth's successor. Waldegrave was reluctant to print it. No copies of this work are known to have survived.[18] It has also been suggested that Foulis smuggled manuscripts of succession tracts by Peter Wentworth from England to be printed in Edinburgh.[19] This work was A Pithie Exhortation to her Majesty for Establishing a Successor to the Crown, printed by Waldegrave in 1598.[20]

Valentine Thomas and the king's honour

In 1598 Foulis was an ambassador in England discussing the Valentine Thomas affair. Thomas alleged that James VI had asked him to assassinate Elizabeth, an accusation that might prejudice his succession to the English throne.[21] By 24 February, James VI was displeased with Foulis's efforts, for overeaching his instructions and accepting an unsatisfactory settlement, obtaining "so slight a vindication of honour in the matter of Valentine Thomas contrary to his instructions, dangerous to his succession to the Crown of England."[22] James VI wrote to Elizabeth about potential damage to his reputation which "may in some measure be obscured by murmuring surmises flowing from this filthy spring."[23]

The English ambassador in Scotland Robert Bowes discussed Foulis's suitability for this delicate mission with Sir Robert Ker, saying that Foulis was too ordinary a man for an extraordinary business, and some of his previous diplomatic speeches had not been praiseworthy. Ker spoke in Foulis's favour, to soothe Bowe's "mean conceit of him."[24] He was instructed to intercede in a legal case for George Bruce of Carnock, whose ship had been forced to take on a group of African and Portuguese captives.[25] Business at court in August was interrupted by the funeral of William Cecil and later in August Elizabeth complained to him about James VI writing to the Earl of Tyrone.[26] He was also questioned about a Scottish embassy to the German states instructed to discuss the likely demise of Queen Elizabeth and their support for James VI's title to the English throne.[27] Foulis brought back a sapphire engraved by Cornelius Dregghe with the portrait of Elizabeth for Anne of Denmark to wear, bought by Robert Jousie for £17.[28]

Richard Douglas wrote to his uncle Archibald Douglas, who dissapproved of Foulis and his employment, that Foulis was a fool and Archibald's dire enemy, and that James had begun to realise that Foulis was a "foolish person" and he would not be sent to England again.[29] In August 1599 James Sempill of Beltrees went to London instead, and gave £400 to the goldsmith George Heriot from the English annuity, for jewels delivered to Anna of Denmark.[30]

In September 1599 he had dinner at Colinton castle with his brother and an English adventurer, Henry Lee. They were able to watch the king hunting from top of the tower or "house head." James VI stopped to eat and afterwards talked with Lee.[31] Foulis was again in London in December 1601. He wrote to the Earl of Mar about some jewels and that he was displeased by the actions of James Sempill of Beltrees.[32]

England

Foulis bought Ingleby Manor in 1608

Escutcheon of the Foulis baronets of Ingleby

Foulis was buried at Ingleby Greenhow

He came to England with King James in 1603; was knighted 13 May of that year; was created honorary M.A. at Oxford 30 August 1605; and was naturalised by act of parliament in April 1606. He obtained with Lord Sheffield and others in 1607 a patent for making alum in Yorkshire; purchased the manors of Ingleby and Battersby from Ralph, Lord Eure, in 1609; and was made a baronet of England 6 February 1619–20. He acted as cofferer to both Prince Henry and Prince Charles.[33]

In May 1610 Prince Henry sent him to Bath with news of the assassination of Henry IV of France for his cousin Frederick Ulrich, son of the Duke of Brunswick, who cut short his visit and returned to London.[34] A copy of a royal household edict and roll of servant's wages that Foulis paid in 1610 was published in 1802 by Edmund Turnor[35]

Sir David, high in the favour of James I, was the recipient in 1614 of the notorious letter of advice to the king sent from Italy by Sir Robert Dudley, titular duke of Northumberland. In 1629 Foulis gave evidence respecting the document after it had been discovered in the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. Dudley also sent designs for warships to Foulis in 1612 and 1614, hoping by these schemes to gain advancement by means of the royal favourite, the Earl of Somerset.[36]

As member of the Council of the North he chafed against Thomas Wentworth's despotic exercise of the president's authority, and in July 1632 not only denied that the council existed by parliamentary authority, but charged Wentworth with malversation of the public funds. Wentworth indignantly repudiated the accusation, and Foulis appealed in vain to Charles I for protection from Wentworth's vengeance while offering to bring the gentry of Yorkshire to a better temper. He was dismissed from the council, was summoned before the Star Chamber, was ordered to pay £5,000 to the Crown and £3,000 to Wentworth, and was sent to the Fleet Prison in default (1633). There he remained till the Long parliament released him, 16 March 1641.

Foulis appeared as a witness against Strafford at the trial in 1641. He died at Ingleby in 1642. [37]

Family

By his wife Cordelia, daughter of William Fleetwood of Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire—she died in August 1631 and was buried at Ingleby—Foulis was father of five sons and two daughters.

The eldest son and second baronet, Sir Henry, was fined £500 by the Star Chamber when his father was punished in 1633; was lieutenant-general of horse under Sir Thomas Fairfax in 1643; married Mary, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Layton, knight, of Sexhowe, and was father of Henry Foulis. A second son, Robert, was a colonel in the parliamentary army. .

A daughter, Anne Foulis, married the physician, George Purves in 1639.[38]

The baronetcy became extinct on the death of the eighth baronet, the Rev. Sir Henry Foulis, on 7 October 1876

Through his grandson, the third baronet Foulis is an ancestor of actor Benedict Cumberbatch.

References

1. Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1593-1595, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 627.
2. Alexander Courtney, 'The Secret Correspondence of James VI, 1601-3', in Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, Doubtful and dangerous: The question of the succession in late Elizabethan England (Manchester, 2014), p. 136.
3. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), pp. 163, 178, 183.
4. Paul Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 168-9, 411: Annie I. Cameron, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1593-1595, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 471: Joseph Bain, Calendar of Border Papers (Edinburgh, 1894), p. 550: HMC 3rd Report: De L'Isle and Dudley (London, 1872), p. 229 (as David "Forbes").
5. Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts, 1588-1596', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 74-86.
6. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 184: Annie I. Cameron, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 404.
7. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 186.
8. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 192.
9. Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts, 1588-1596', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 76, 88.
10. Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1593-1595, vol. 11 (Edinburgh, 1936), pp. 634-5: HMC 3rd Report: De L'Isle and Dudley (London, 1872), p. 229 (as David "Forbes").
11. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 299.
12. Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1595-1597, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1952), pp. 148, 158.
13. Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts, 1588-1596', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 89-90.
14. Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1595-1597, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1952), p. 161.
15. HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 668: Cited, 'Stot, Stotte', Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700)
16. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 146.
17. Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1595-1597, vol. 12 (Edinburgh, 1952), pp. 251, 253, 256, 278-9, 334-5.
18. John Duncan Mackie, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1597-1603, 13:1 (Edinburgh, 1969), p. 167.
19. Nicholas Tyacke, 'Puritan Politicians and KIng James VI and I', Thomas Cogswell, Richard Cust, Peter Lake, Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain: Essays in Honour of Conrad Russell (Cambridge, 2002), p. 35.
20. Tara L. Lyons, 'Male Birth Fantasies and Maternal Monarchs', in Helen Ostovich, Holger Schott Syme, Andrew Griffin, Locating the Queen's Men, 1583-1603 (Ashgate, 2009), pp. 196, 259.
21. HMC 6th Report: Earl of Moray (London, 1877), p. 668-9.
22. HMC 6th Report: Earl of Moray (London, 1877), p. 660.
23. HMC 6th Report: Earl of Moray (London, 1877), p. 660.
24. HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 8 (London, 1899), pp. 315-6.
25. John Duncan Mackie, Calendar State Papers Scotland: 1597-1603, vol. 13 (Edinburgh, 1969), pp. 186-7, 194-5, 297, 309, 343, 345-7.
26. HMC 6th Report: Moray (London, 1877), p. 668.
27. Michael Pearce, 'Riddle’s Court, Banquet and Diplomacy in 1598' in History Scotland, 12:4 (2012), pp. 20-27.
28. Michael Pearce, 'Anna of Denmark: Fashioning a Danish Court in Scotland', The Court Historian, 24:2 (2019) p. 141
29. HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 8 (London, 1899), p. 484: HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 9 (London, 1902), p. 135.
30. HMC 9th Report: Lord Elphinstone, part 2 (London, 1884), p. 196: William Fraser, Elphinstone Family Book, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1897), p. 140.
31. Joseph Bain, Calendar of Border Papers, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1894), pp. 562-3
32. Henry Paton, HMC Mar & Kellie, vol. 2 (London, 1930), p. 33.
33. Thomas Birch, Memoirs of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, vol. 1 (London, 1754), p. 162.
34. Thomas Birch, Life of Prince Henry (London, 1760), p. 189.
35. Edmund Turnor, 'A Declaration of the Diet and Particular Fare of King Charles I when Duke of York', Archæologia, XV (London, 1802), pp. 1–12.
36. George Warner, Voyage of Robert Dudley to the West Indies (London, 1899), p. lii-iii.
37. G. E. Cockayne, Complete Baronetage: 1611-1625, vol. 1 (Exeter, 1900), p. 135.
38. John Blackburn, The register book of Inglebye iuxta Grenhow (Canterbury, 1889), pp. xlv, 73.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Foulis, David". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.