Gregory Railton
Gregory Railton (died 1561) was an English administrator and Clerk of the Signet. As a Protestant, Railton went into exile during the reign of Mary I of England.
Career
[edit]Gregory Railton was for many years Ralph Sadler's servant and "inward man".[1]
During the war known as the Rough Wooing, Railton was Treasurer of the Wars in the North (1549–1551).[2] In 1552, he requested a licence to eat meat on fast days as he ill from a "sore ague" contracted at Chichester.[3]
Railton was a Marian exile in Frankfurt during Mary's reign. On his return to England, Railton was posted to Berwick-on-Tweed. During the crisis of the Scottish Reformation, he deciphered coded letters,[4] and was a correspondent of John Knox. He was involved in negotiations with the Duke of Châtellerault, one of the Protestant leaders in Scotland.[5]
The English ambassador Nicholas Throckmorton and the diplomat Thomas Randolph organised the rescue and secret journey of Châtellerault's son, the Earl of Arran, from France to Scotland via Switzerland. Railton was sent to meet the Earl, who was travelling under the alias Monsieur Beaufort, at Alnwick.[6]
In October 1559, Knox wrote to Railton describing the inception of his The History of the Reformation in Scotland.[7] He also wrote to describe a silver gilt seal and a "trim staff" or sceptre sent to Scotland for Mary of Guise, Regent of Scotland. It was engraved with disputed heraldry that asserted the claim of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the throne of England.[8] The heraldry was also displayed in France and observed by Throckmorton and his colleagues. Michel de Seure, the French ambassador in London, wrote to Mary of Guise about the friction caused by the controversial heraldry.[9]
Gregory Railton died in 1561. Nicholas Throckmorton recommended John Somers for his position as Clerk of the Signet.[10]
References
[edit]- ^ Simon Adams, Ian Archer, George W. Bernard, "A Journall of Matters of State", Religion, Politics, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Camden Society, 2003), p. 61 fn. 43: James Gairdner & R. H. Brodie, Letters & Papers, Henry VIII, 20:1 (London, 1905), p. 331 no. 631.
- ^ Howard Colvin, History of the King's Works, 4:2 (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 698.
- ^ C. S. Knighton, Calendar State Papers Domestic, Edward VI, p. 251 no. 696.
- ^ Joseph Stevenson, Calendar State Papers Foreign Elizabeth, 1559–1560, (London: Longman, 1865), p. 37 no. 76.
- ^ Jane Dawson, John Knox (Yale, 2016), pp. 184–188: Christina Hallowell Garrett, The Marian Exiles: A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 265–266.
- ^ Joseph Stevenson, Calendar State Papers Foreign Elizabeth, 1559–1560, (London: Longman, 1863), p. 516 no. 1290
- ^ Andrew Lang, "Knox as a Historian", Scottish Historical Review, 2:6 (Glasgow, 1905), p. 113.
- ^ John Parker Lawson, History of the Affairs of Church and State in Scotland by Robert Keith, 1 (Edinburgh: Spottiswoode Society, 1844), p. 395: Agnes Strickland, Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, 3 (London, 1843), pp. 254–256.
- ^ Estelle Paranque, Elizabeth I of England through Valois Eyes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 47.
- ^ Joseph Stevenson, Calendar State Papers Foreign Elizabeth, 1561–1562 (London: Longmans, 1866), p. 303 no. 496: Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1560–1563, 2 (London: HMSO, 1948), p. 100