Humphrey Dethick (born 1577) was an English merchant on the Italian peninsula who killed a man in Scotland in 1602 during a royal christening.
[4] In Florence a prostitute introduced Dethick to Lorenzo Lucenbardis (Usimbardi), a secretary of Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
He had thought of going to Turkey from France and had written to Sir Thomas Shirley, an adventurer who planned to attack the Ottoman Empire, but this didn't work out.
[5] Robert, the son of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark was christened on 2 May 1602 at Dunfermline Palace.
He seemed insane and was examined by the court physicians, probably Martin Schöner and John Naysmyth, who declared that he was faking his madness.
[11] Sir John Carey at Berwick-upon-Tweed heard that Dethick was asleep in his chamber at Dunfermline when others including the victim came into the room to take away his weapons.
[12] News of the events were reported in London, and John Chamberlain wrote on 17 June,[13] "we have likewise much talk of one Dethicke (sometime factor for Hickes in Cheapside at Florence) that should come thence into Scotland with intent to kill the king, but being unable to bear the burden of such an enterprise fell distract and beside himself.
News of his imprisonment was current in London, and on 27 June Philip Gawdy wrote:The King of Spain is chief instrument in all, and his finger was deeply in a conspiracy lately intended against the King of Scots, to have been performed by a fellow that was Hix [Baptist Hicks] his man of Cheapside, and an Italian that came not according to appointment.