page_title: Edmund Ashfield (Catholic agent)
section_title: On the beach
hierarchical_section_title: Edmund Ashfield (Catholic agent) / Mission to Scotland / On the beach
caption_attribution_description: English: Beach at Seafield Looking northwest from the point where the Promenade joins with Seafield Road.
context_page_description: Edmund Ashfield was an English Catholic from Tattenhoe in Buckinghamshire. He was educated at St Mary Hall, Oxford. In 1599 he travelled to Edinburgh to meet James VI of Scotland. The resident English diplomat organised his kidnap and rendition apparently in the belief that Ashfield was an agent of James VI and working to further his succession to the English throne. In 1606, Ashfield was involved in the rebuilding of Ashridge Priory for Sir Thomas Egerton. In 1612, the author Henry Peacham dedicated his Graphice, or the Auncient Arte of Drawing and Limning to Ashfield, by then Deputy-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. An aunt or cousin Cecily Ashfield was married to the Lord Chancellor Sir John Fortescue of Salden. Edmund's uncle Thomas Ashfield was a bailiff for the Earl of Oxford in 1571, and Edmund was Thomas's heir in 1609.
context_section_description: When the English ambassador in Scotland William Bowes and Willoughby discovered Ashfield's plans they organised a kidnap. John Guevara, the Deputy Warden of the East Marches and Willoughby's cousin, and three assistants were sent to Edinburgh. Willoughby later attributed the plan to his servant Waterhouse. They met Ashfield on the sands at Leith where he was riding with his Scottish friends and, it was alleged, gave him drugged wine, described as if "some opium had been given him with his sugar in his wine, which so bedulled his senses as he wist not what he did for the time." Then he was driven away to Berwick in the English ambassador's coach while thinking he was getting a lift back to Edinburgh. Guevara's team were armed only with the rapiers and daggers that they normally carried. Willoughby had also organised a ship to lie off Prestonpans to give support if necessary. Ashfield's papers too were seized in Edinburgh and taken to Berwick. Willoughby wrote to Robert Cecil explaining his actions on 13 June 1599, and refused to return Ashfield to Scotland.
caption: Sands at Seafield near Leith, where Edmund Ashfield was abducted in 1599
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