Having dealt with that part of the general plan of bringing foreign troops to the aid of Sweden which was so successfully carried out by Mönnichhofen, we approach the main subject of this little work—namely, the history of the Scottish levies, and of the disaster that befell the very small portion of them that succeeded in leaving Scotland and landing in Norway.
Our starting-point in this part of the inquiry must be the commission addressed by Gustavus Adolphus to Sir James Spens, Laird of Wormiston.[29]
It gives an authentic indication of the measures subsequently adopted for obtaining levies in Scotland as well as in Holland. The young warrior and statesman refers to promises made by Sir James Spens to Charles IX., and to the services which his father had required of him, urging him to hasten his return (evidently from Scotland) with the "promised three thousand soldiers of proved faithfulness and bravery." He wished them to be infantry, not cavalry. The main object was the arrival of Sir James Spens at Elfsborg, by the 1st of April 1612, "with the before-mentioned number of troops, properly equipped with the needful accoutrements." Spens was to be paid at Hamburg the sum of 20,000 imperials, and was assured that any further expense he might incur in the matter of the levies would be repaid to him punctually and with the greatest cheerfulness. Gustavus Adolphus added: "Furthermore, we have thought (right) that it should be notified to you that we have arranged with our general (duce), our truly-beloved Johannes Mœnichovius, that he is to transport his thousand infantry, fully furnished with necessary arms, from Holland to Elfsborg, in the beginning of spring. If, therefore, you combine your fleet and army with the ships of the aforesaid Mœnichovius, we shall be extremely glad."
The execution of this part of the plan was subsequently rendered impossible by the fall of Elfsborg and the command which the Danes obtained of the approaches to Sweden by sea.
The proceedings of Spens in this matter are not disclosed in the documents so far discovered,[30] which prove that Colonel Andrew Ramsay was the active organizer of the levies in Scotland. King James I. in one of his letters calls him "the chief of the business, whose brother all men know what place he hath with us." The influence Andrew Ramsay possessed at the Court of King James probably caused him to be engaged by Spens. One of his brothers was Sir John Ramsey, a favourite of King James, and who, while one of the royal pages, in the year 1600, was instrumental in rescuing the king from assassination at Gowrie House, near Perth. It was another brother of his—Alexander Ramsay—who was the leader of the small detachment of Scots destroyed at Kringelen, in Norway, and not George Sinclair, as hitherto assumed.
That the king's name was privately but unjustifiably used in the proceedings of Colonel Andrew Ramsay, was subsequently acknowledged by the latter, and hence the suspicion arose in Denmark that King James was cognizant of those proceedings. But the documents preserved in Edinburgh show that King James did not become aware of what Andrew Ramsay and the officers with him were doing in Scotland until about the 31st July 1612, the date on which the king wrote to his Scottish Privy Council as follows:—
"Whereas it is said there is a colonel and certain captains levying men to go to Sweden, we wonder that any subject of ours dare presume in that kind to serve any foreign prince, not only without our licence but directly against our meaning and special promise made to our dear brother the King of Denmark[31].... It is therefore our pleasure that ye certify as to what that levying of soldiers meaneth; by what authority it is done; and that ye make stay of all proceedings therein till ye shall be advertised of our further pleasure concerning that matter."
Nine days later, the king wrote to his envoy at Copenhagen[32] that he had heard, "by mere accident, of levies in Scotland ready to embark under Ramsay, Steward, and some other captains;" and "being displeased, gave order presently for the stay of the levy. And whereas good numbers of them were already embarked before His Majesty heard the news, or ready to embark, His Highness hath given order to discharge them, and doth utterly disavow any acts of theirs," etc.
But the Danish king was already well acquainted with those proceedings; for the British envoy at Copenhagen wrote to King James on the 10th August 1612 (the king had written to him on the 9th August) that the King of Denmark was informed that "one Menigowe, a Fleming, having in company with him fifteen hundred men, is to meet with Andrew Ramsay in some part of the north of Scotland, about Caithness or Orkney, who has more than a thousand Scottish men with him; and so they mind to join their forces together, and to fall upon Norway and spoil some towns, and so go into Sweden." The King of Denmark, added the envoy, had been informed by persons from Scotland that Ramsay had levied men about Edinburgh and embarked them at Leith; and His Majesty argued that "such levies so near Edinburgh could not be done without permission of the State."
Indeed, the excuses of the Scottish Privy Council, to the effect that the levies had been made secretly, did not satisfy even King James, who wrote to his envoy that, to quote his own expression, he "misliked some dulness of theirs."
The action taken by the Scottish Privy Council immediately on receipt of the peremptory orders of the king was as follows:—
On the 4th August 1612 a proclamation was issued "discharging the transporting of soldiers to Sweden," and another "against the soldiers enlisted for Sweden;" while two acts were passed—the one "charging" or accusing "Captains Hay, Ker, and Sinclair" of having enlisted men for the wars of Sweden, and ordering them to desist from their enterprise, etc.; the other summoning Colonel Andrew Ramsay to appear before the Council to "hear and see His Majesty's will, pleasure, and direction" in respect of the men of war enlisted under his pay and command to be transported to Sweden. Next day the Lords of the Council ordered officers of arms "to pass, command, and charge the masters, owners, skippers, and mariners of ships and vessels freighted for transport of soldiers to Sweden, that they bring in their ships to the harbour of Leith, and there suffer them to lie," and not to set sail until they know the Council's will and pleasure towards them, under pain of being denounced as rebels and "put to the horn."[33]
On the 15th August an act was passed by the Council, ordering that "the companies of men lately enlisted under the charge and commandment of Colonel Ramsay and some other captains, for the wars of Sweden, be broken up, and that they shall in no wise be transported to Sweden;" and on the same day another act, ordaining that the companies under Colonel Ramsay, who had meanwhile professed his willingness to render obedience to the king by disbanding them, should be landed, one half at Leith, the other half at Brunt or Burnt Island, on the other side of the Forth.
The latest document regarding these matters, obtained from the General Register Office in Edinburgh, is dated the 18th September 1612. Colonel Andrew Ramsay had been summoned to appear before the Council on the latter date, to answer regarding the unlawful levying of troops; and having failed to do so, he was forthwith denounced as a rebel.
Those acts and proclamations[34] give a very interesting and, indeed, important insight into the methods Colonel Andrew Ramsay and his confederates had adopted in Scotland.
We first of all find that Sir Robert Ker had apprehended in the middle shires[35] of Scotland a number of malefactors, part of whom he sent, or rather intended to send, to Sweden. In the second place, the proclamations assert that the Scottish officers therein named "have violently pressed and taken a great many honest men's sons, and have carried them to their ships against their will, of purpose to transport them to Sweden." They are accused of going "about the country in a swaggering manner, awaiting the time and occasion how and where they may apprehend any persons travelling on their lawful adois,[36] and if they be masters of them they immediately lay hands on them and by force and violence convey them to the next shore, where they have their boats in readiness to take them on board of their ships.... So that there is such a fear and dread arising among the common people that none of them dare travel," unless they be "able to withstand and resist the violence and injury of the said persons." ... "And divers young fellows," continues the proclamation, "who were resolved to have come to these parts to have awaited upon the harvest and cutting down of the corn are," for those reasons, "afraid to come here." In the charge against Captains Hay, Ker, and Sinclair, it is alleged that the "honest men's bairns and servants" are detained on board the ships "as slaves and captives."
Any person disobeying the orders of the Council was threatened with the penalty of death. The levies were to be discontinued, the ships seized, their sails taken from the yards, and the men on board set at liberty; but not before the local authorities had visited the vessels, and taken out of them and delivered over to the bailies of Edinburgh "the persons who had been delivered to them by the Commissioners of the late Borders," as well as the persons whom Colonel Ramsay and his captains had received out of the tolbooths of Edinburgh and Dunbar.
The remainder of the companies were ordered to be landed, as already said, at Leith and Burntisland, but on condition that the men should not remain together or travel back in groups of more than two after their disembarkation, under penalty of death, to obviate the possibility of their committing acts of violence on passing through the country.
The remarkable fact that, in all these stringent and detailed regulations for the disbanding and landing of so many men, no mention whatever is made of the most ordinary military precaution of disarming them will be noticed in a succeeding chapter.
[29] Sir James Spens was the son of "Spens of Wormiston," who made Lennox, the regent of Scotland, captive at the seizure of Stirling by the forces of Kirkaldy in 1571, and who was slain at the same time while protecting his prisoner. The personage in question, so high in the favour of Gustavus Adolphus, was a prominent type of the Scottish adventurer of that age. He went to Sweden in 1610 as envoy from King James I., there being at the time a question of betrothing Gustavus Adolphus, then Crown Prince, to an English princess—namely, to Elizabeth, the daughter of James I., married subsequently to Frederick, the Elector Palatine of the German Empire. We find him later in Denmark, offering the mediation of England between Christian IV. and Charles IX. On this occasion he was so ungraciously received at Copenhagen that he narrowly escaped with his life. Sir James Spens entered the Swedish military service, from which, however, he was recalled by King James, who, a short time after, sent him back to Stockholm as ambassador, in which character he invested Gustavus Adolphus with the Order of the Garter, and took part in the negotiations that resulted in the Peace of Knäröd. On one occasion he went to England as ambassador from the Swedish Court. In 1622 he was created Baron Spens of Orreholmen, in Vestergotland. He died at Stockholm in 1632, after having been made, in 1629, General in Command of the English and Scottish regiments in the pay of Sweden.
[30] It appears from the correspondence of Sir Robert Anstruther that the "Lord of Wormiston" landed at Elsinore on the 4th June 1612, having been sent simultaneously with Sir Robert Anstruther to arrange a peace between Denmark and Sweden. The Danish Chancellor was induced to grant him a safe-conduct into Sweden; "whereupon a nvmber hath wondred and thinks he shall haue small thank for his panis." F. H. Jahn, the Danish historian of the Calmar War, asserts that Spens was "secretly supported in his recruiting business."
[31] When as yet only King of Scotland, James was married (November 24, 1589) at Oslo, now a suburb of Christiania, to Anne, sister of Christian IV. of Denmark. She had previously gone through the ceremony of marriage with Earl-Marshal Keith, as proxy for the king, at the castle of Cronenberg; but on their way to Scotland the Danish ships, driven by storms to the coast of Norway, landed the princess at Oslo. With great gallantry King James came over to fetch her with a large fleet, and remained at Oslo, after his marriage there (performed by Robert Bruce, court chaplain), until the 21st January 1590, when he sailed with his bride for Copenhagen. The ties of relationship, and the duties and obligations of King James towards his "good brother" the King of Denmark, are fully recognized in the documents now published; but the impartial historian cannot fail to take into consideration the character of that sovereign and his conduct in other matters, such as the negotiations with Spain and the family interests connected with them.
[32] King's Secretary to Sir Robert Anstruther, 9th August 1612.
[33] The latter threat meant, in Scottish law, a declaration of outlawry, after three blasts of a horn, and the putting up of a citation at the quay, pier, or shore in Leith, or at the market cross in Edinburgh.
[35] The Border counties of Scotland were ordered to be called the middle shires on the union of the two kingdoms.
[36] Plural of ado, business.