ABSTRACT
Writing about a Scottish Calvinist diplomatic network at the centre of some of Lutheran Sweden’s most important diplomatic endeavours in the early seventeenth century may seem a niche subject at best. The ultimate consequence of decades of debate and controversy led to the ‘Statement of Faith’ by the Uppsala Assembly on 20th March, 1593. Sweden adopted the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and specifically denied anyone the right to practise any form of Roman Catholicism or the quasi-Catholic rituals of Johan III. The diplomatic credentials of James Spens have been thoroughly researched by a number of scholars, most notably Alexia Grosjean and Arne Jonsson, though never explicitly within a confessional framework. Spens was famously a senior colonel in Sweden from 1606, eventually rising to the rank of ‘General of British’ troops in that country. In October 1613, a Muscovite embassy arrived in London bringing rich gifts of sable and fox fur for King James.
