to repair and enlarge two silver chandeliers for Prince Henry. He gave the pen to the infant prince to mark the mark the paper, and wrote "I will testifie this is the prince's awin mark." There were doubts about his credit in November 1596. In May 1597 Foulis and Jousie were made collectors of a new custom of 12% on imports, with powers to confiscate the sails of ships in case of non-payment. Bankrupted Foulis became involved in the administration of the Scottish exchequer by the group knowns as the Octavians. In October 1597 one of the group, the king's advocate Thomas Hamilton, married Foulis' sister Margaret. They gave him a role on 29 December 1597 overseeing royal expenditure. However, Foulis was bankrupted by the scheme on 17 January 1598. Roger Aston wrote that Foulis was treasurer in all but name and after twenty days "fell by his wits" and lay "in great extremity". David Calderwood called his distress a frenzy, "phrenesie". Aston wrote that he had hoped Foulis and Joussie would lend him money to buy land, but they had received no English subsidy for two years. The English correspondent George Nicolson provided an alternative explanation for Foulis' distress, that James VI had taken back a jewel pawned to Foulis, the Great 'H' of Scotland. James had given the jewel to Anne of Denmark who, Nicolson says, had offered it to her friend Elizabeth Douglas, Countess of Erroll as recompense for the demolition of Slains Castle. Foulis had received the "H" in pledge for a loan of £12,000 Scots made to the king in September 1594, and the Privy Council asked his brother, James Foulis of Colinton to return it in January 1598. The immediate cause of Foulis' financial disaster was a legal move by one of the Octavians, John Lindsay of Menmuir, Master of Metals, to suspend payments by the comptroller, George Home of Wedderburn. It remains unclear if Lindsay and other Octavians and the king planned this to bankrupt Foulis and if so, fully understood the consequences. James Hudson wrote in May 1598 that Foulis had pawned a gold lion set with a ruby worth £400 with the London goldsmith Robert Brook of Lombard Street, which Hudson suggested belonged to James VI. Robert Jousie was unable to pay Brook's interest or other sums due by Hudson, or the money they jointly owed to Hudson. He considered having