Jacques de la Brosse

Jacques de la Brosse, (c. 1485–1562), cupbearer to the king, was a sixteenth-century French soldier and diplomat. He is remembered in Scotland for his missions in 1543 and 1560 in support of the Auld Alliance.

After the death of James V, Scotland was ruled by Regent Arran. His regency was challenged by David Beaton and Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox. Lennox even threw doubt on Arran’s legitimacy. His grounds were the complex legal circumstances of Arran's father’s second marriage. Into this troubled situation Francis I of France sent a diplomatic mission and military aid to support the alliance between France and Scotland. The Auld Alliance was threatened by an agreement, the Treaty of Greenwich, which would lead to Mary, Queen of Scots marrying Prince Edward. The French envoys, Jacques de la Brosse, with his colleague, the lawyer, Jacques Ménage, seigneur de Caigny, and the Papal Legate Marco Grimani, Patriarch of Aquileia, brought money and munitions to Dumbarton Castle on 6 October 1543, and unwittingly delivered them to Lennox. According to the later narratives of Claude Nau and John Lesley, they arrived in 5 ships with 60,000 crowns. Nau and Lesley wrongly give the name of the legate as the nuncio, Pierre Francis Contareni, Patriarch of Venice, but mention another colleague, 'James Anort', meaning James Stewart. There were seven ships and James Stewart of Cardonald, a Scots Guard officer who escorted La Brosse and Ménage, told Beaton that the envoys were, "na grett personages" who had brought, "sellvar and artellyery monesyzonis pekes and halberdes."

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