Nicholas Williamson
Hochstetter wrote that bearer who brought the letter to Williamson would be able to draw a pattern for making a special iron saw to be made locally.
[10] Steffan Murr worked processing copper ore at the Newlands and Caldbeck stamp mills, and his English family is documented.
[15] Another recusant at the fish weir riot, George More of More Hall near Sheffield, fearing arrest by the Archbishop of York, made his way to Flanders.
Law was chosen for the mission because he was an acquaintance of Alexander Seton, Lord Urquhart, a significant Scottish courtier and a Catholic.
[35][36] Painted ceilings in the house with fruit and flower motifs, like those in some other Scottish interiors including Gladstone's Land, may relate to religious iconography.
[37][38] David Law hid his breviary in the garden at Henry Lee's house in Carlisle in an attempt to disguise his status as a priest.
[41] After his release, David Law returned to his studies at Louvain and later joined the Catholic mission in Scotland as a secular priest.
[43] Henry Lee relieved Williamson of a gold chain worth £60 and £3-10s in cash, with three rings, two purses, and a sword and pistol.
[44] Williamson was taken via Tuxford to the Gatehouse Prison in Westminster and then to the Tower of London, suspected of working with Francis Dacre to convert James VI of Scotland to Catholicism.
[47] Williamson talked about "Morton",[48] meaning the Scottish Jesuit Father John Myreton or Myrton, brother of the Laird of Cambo.
He brought from the Cardinal a chain with a square gold palm-sized jewel, with a carved bone image depicted the crucifixion set beneath crystal.
[51] This gift parallels an earlier incident in June 1566, when an English agent Christopher Rokeby gave a crucifix to Mary, Queen of Scots.
[53] Thurland's house at Gamston on Idle had been a convenient location for traffic with Scotland on the North Road and the lodgings of Mary, Queen of Scots.
[56] The Attorney General, Edward Coke, thought that behind Williamson's trip to Scotland was a wider plot to "disable" and hinder James VI and Arbella Stuart from political action, while increasing Catholic support in England for Spain.
[59][60] Williamson's mission included an offer to James VI that Francis Dacre, a grandson of the 4th Earl of Shrewsbury, could muster a force of men on the border to support him in England, should this become useful.
Some "letters of conspiracy" written in Italian and found in Flanders were sent to him by the Estates and arrived in March on the same day as Father Myreton.
James VI forwarded copies to Henry IV of France and Elizabeth I on 4 April together with Myreton's papers, so that the conspiracy could not harm his reputation.
[70] Richard Martin discovered that Edmund Williamson ran a kind of pawnbroking business from his house in Philip Lane, Cripplegate, obtaining luxury goods from young men for small sums, less than their worth.
Nicholas Skeres, an associate of Christopher Marlowe involved in the credit racket, was taken by Martin at Edmund Williamson's house, and held for a few days.
[71] Skeres and Ingram Frizer were con-men, practicing the kind of swindles which inspire Thomas Middleton's city comedy Michaelmas Term.
John Harpur locked the papers from Wilne in an ark chest in the nearby water mill and then took them to a house of the Earl of Shrewsbury at Sawley.
It was discovered that she had left two pillow cases stuffed with documents with a friend, her first-cousin Joanna Pearsall or Peshall at Horsley, Staffordshire.
[79] John Harpur of Swarkestone's previous relationship with Nicholas Williamson as a colleague, and his possible leniency during the search at Wilne was called into question.
[80] William Cecil called him the "Great Cossenor Williamson" - a cozenor, meaning that he had tried to trick or subvert the Earl of Shrewsbury from his proper allegiance to Elizabeth I.
Portington lived at Worksop Manor Lodge, a substantial house of advanced design and an indication of the high social status of some of Shrewsbury's employees.
Anne Williamson's letter to her husband asking for a farthingale and sleeves to be made for her in the latest style in December 1590 reveals her anxiety related to social status.
