1. James’s Daemonologie in Forme of ane Dialogue was published in Edinburgh in 1597.
2. Moysie writes: ‘Upone the vii day of Februar or therby, the erle of Huntlie, with sex or sevin scoir of his friendis, past out of the kingis house, and maid thame to giang to ane horse rease at Leithe: bot quhen they wer theare, hafing the execution of a bluddie conspiracie in thair hairte, they past to the Queinies ferrie, quhiar they had causit stay the passing over of all boittis, and past toward the plaice of Donnybirsell besyd Aberdour, perteining to unquhill James Erle of Murray… quhaire he was slayne’.
3. James was a critic and poet of some talent, and his court was distinguished by the group known as the Castalian Band. This included William Fowler, Alexander Montgomerie and John Stewart of Baldynneis, and James himself laid down the style of their work in his Reulis and Cautelis, sometimes considered to be the first major Scottish work of literary criticism.
4. The young James had as his tutor George Buchanan, one of the outstanding classicists and the major Latin poet of the age. James would have known well the techniques of argument based on Plato’s presentation of Socrates and his method of philosophical debate.
5. In August 1582, when he was 16, James had been captured by some of the Scottish Lords and held prisoner at Ruthven Castle until June 1583.
6. Graham was one of the North Berwick witches, supposedly consulted by Bothwell. In November 1590 they admitted meeting the devil in the form of ‘a man with a redde cappe, and a rumpe at his taill’.
7. James’s father was Darnley, the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, who, having himself been involved in the murder of her servant Riccio, was murdered at Kirk ο Field near Edinburgh in 1566. Mary was suspected of having a role in his death and was forced from the throne in 1567.
8. Mary was held captive by Elizabeth I for fifteen years after she was forced to seek protection in England and was executed, in 1587, for her alleged involvement in a papist plot against Elizabeth.
9. ‘Act ο attainder’ was an act decreeing a judgment of death or outlawry for treason without a trial.
10. James used some of his sonnets as introduction to his Essayes of a Prentise published in Edinburgh in 1585.
11. ‘Episcopacy’, as the Scots defined what was to become the English version of protestantism, was not regarded by Scottish protestants as being truly a Protestant system because it retained the place within the church of bishops, who were anathema to the reformed Church of Scotland with its democratic basis in the ordinary members of the Church.
12. ‘If ye walk contrar unto me… ’: Leviticus, XXVI, 27–32.
13. James had previously had to deal, in 1589, with ‘blank’ communications from various Scottish lords to other European monarchs. These contained signatures over which appropriate text was to be entered when they reached their destination.
14. The use of ‘cypher letters’ is presented by Tytler as part of Elizabeth’s dealings with Bothwell, and McLellan follows the attributions of names given in Tytler.