English bards and Scotch poetics: Scotland's literary influence and sixteenth-century English religious verse

The traffic of literary influence in the early-modern period has typically been perceived as flowing from England to Scotland. This article considers the courtly style of the Scottish reformation through consideration of the writings of James VI and I, Alexander Montgomerie, and other members of the Castalian Band; and, by considering their influence on Henry Lok, an English spy and sonneteer resident at the Scottish court, argues that Scottish literary fashion was already affecting English verse in the decade before James succeeded to the English throne.