Alexander Hay

Alexander Hay of Easter Kennet (died 1594) was a Scottish lawyer and politician. Career Hay was clerk to the Privy Council of Scotland from March 1564, Director of Chancery and Keeper of the Quarter Seal in 1567, and Clerk of Register in October 1579 after the death of James MacGill. His lands were at Kennet in Clackmannanshire. Hay attended the conferences in York in 1568 discussing the issues around the deposed Mary, Queen of Scots. A list of evidence and charges against Mary supplied to Queen Elizabeth's delegation is known as Hay's articles, or the "Book of Articles". In November 1570 he wrote to Earl of Mar at Stirling Castle describing his recent conversation with the English ambassador Thomas Randolph. He heard that Margaret Fleming, Countess of Atholl had sent a jewel to Mary, Queen of Scots, but it had been intercepted and given to Queen Elizabeth. The jewel was no bigger than the palm of a man's hand and made "in form of a heirse of harthorne", well-decked with gold and enamelled. It depicted an enthroned queen with a rampant lion worrying a leopard, with the inscription, "Fall what may fall, the lion shall be lord of all". The discovery was to be kept secret. Richard Bannatyne, a secretary of John Knox, also described the jewel, thought to allude to the English succession, in his memoir.