Gilbert Curle
Gilbert Curle or Curll (died 1609) was a Scottish secretary who served Mary, Queen of Scots during her captivity in England.
[4] According to the confession of Nicolas Hubert alias French Paris, Mary wanted Curle in her service to replace Alexander Durham in 1567 shortly before the murder of Lord Darnley.
[9] He brought letters in 1577, as noted by John Constable and Gilbert Talbot, who wrote that Curle's brother and another Scot came selling linen to the household.
[17] Coded letters to the French ambassador Castelnau mentioning the arrival of Barbara Mowbray or one of her sisters in Mary's household were discovered in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and deciphered in 2023.
[19] The marriage was discussed in October 1584 at Wingfield, and Ralph Sadler notified Francis Walsingham that the couple had written to the Laird of Barnbougle for permission to marry, and Mary had asked him to speed the letter.
Sadler and his assistant John Somers admitted that Curle had justly noted that the glazing was in disrepair in the great tower, but they suspected Mary's household were reluctant to move for "secret causes".
Somer thought that Mary intended to send Curle as a messenger to Scotland, and he provided a sketch of the secretary's character for William Cecil.
Curle was not so quick-witted or prompt as Nau, French-like, but with a shrewd melancholy wit, and not so pleasant in speech and utterance, and suspect enough.
[44][45] Curle and Claude Nau were arrested, brought to London, and interrogated on 4 August 1586, suspected of involvement in the Babington plot.
[48] Francis Walsingham asked Mary's keeper Amias Paulet to move her from Chartley Castle and detain the two secretaries.
[51] On 2 September 1586, Curle noted on a copy of a letter to Charles Paget that Mary had first given him a draft in French, which he translated into English.
[52] During his detention, his mother-in-law Elizabeth Kirkcaldy wrote from Barnbougle to the Scottish ambassador in London, Archibald Douglas, asking for his help.
[56] In May 1594 there was a rumour that the rebel Francis Stewart, 5th Earl of Bothwell had been secretly lodged in Janet Curle's house on the Castle Hill in Edinburgh.
[57] Walsingham sent news to the Scottish Court in September 1586 that Mary was to be moved to Fotheringhay, and that "the matters whereof she is guilty are already so plain and manifest (being also confessed by her two secretaries), as it is thought, they shall required no long debating".
[58] When Mary's household moved to Fotheringhay, Gilbert Curle's wife Barbara, his sister Elizabeth, and sister-in-law Geillis Mowbray, and his servant Lawrence, a Scotsman, remained at Chartley.
[61] Later, Kennedy told the Spanish ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza that she had blindfolded Mary at the execution, rather than Elizabeth Curle, because she had precedence of noble birth.
[65] A note made around 1589 indicates that Geillis Moubray, who had returned to Scotland, her husband Sir James Lyndsey, and her sister Jean Mowbray received pensions from Spain paid in gold ducats.
[76][77][78] Mary had asked Elizabeth to give Barbara Curle a gold ensign depicting one of Aesop's fables and two rings, one with a diamond.
[79] She was to give Curle's youngest child two rings, one set with five little opals, and a small chain of coral and mother of pearl.
[82] She also had several items from the queen's wardrobe, including a silk camlet gown, a black petticoat edged with sheepskin, a russet satin doublet, and a beaver felt hat.
[83] Mary made a plan that Philip II of Spain should have her rights to inherit the English throne after Elizabeth I, if James VI was not by then a Catholic.
[84] Elizabeth Curle and Mary's apothecary Pierre Gorion were said to have carried her instructions to the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Bernardino de Mendoza.
