Jacques de Bousie

Jacques de Bousie (floruit 1580–1610) was a Flemish confectioner known as a "sugarman" working in Edinburgh, Scotland, employed by James VI and Anne of Denmark.

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.

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".

They bought from Sarah Kerwood, a "sweit meit wyfe" in Edinburgh, and the court apothecary Alexander Barclay supplied boxes of wet and dry confections.

[4] In August 1583 the town treasurer Mungo Russell was asked buy wine and "crotcherts" for the arrival of Francis Walsingham, an English ambassador.

[6] When Charles II was in Scotland in 1650, spices were bought in December for Christmastime from Andrew Reid, a merchant in Perth, including 13 pounds of "scrotckets and confects".

[7] During Anne of Denmark's formal entry to Edinburgh on 17 May 1590, she went up a street called the West Bow, where a boy with mathematical instruments played the female personification of Astronomy, "Astronomia" or "Astrologia".

[19] 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.

[21] James VI bought sugar, hampers with glasses, and two barrels of boxes of comfits, confections, and banqueting stuff in London in November 1596.

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