Scotland's exchequer was now solvent, and withholding the money would only hurt the king and Thomas Foulis and Robert Jousie who administered the money. Roger Aston later noted that Thomas Foulis and Jousie had persuaded James VI not to recall Foulis before he obtain the subsidy money. David Foulis received £3,000 on 18 September. In October David Foulis was ready to leave London with seven trunks, three with goods for the Scottish royal household, and some packs and hampers of broad cloth, kerseys, and silks. Succession tracts The English diplomat George Nicholson reported in February 1598 that Foulis had directed the printer Robert Waldegrave to publish a Latin succession tract written by Walter Quinn, a tutor to Prince Henry and corrected by a Flemish resident in Edinburgh, Adrian Damman. Such works argued that James VI should be Elizabeth's successor. Waldegrave was reluctant to print it. No copies of this work are known to have survived. It has also been suggested that Foulis smuggled manuscripts of succession tracts by Peter Wentworth from England to be printed in Edinburgh. This work was A Pithie Exhortation to her Majesty for Establishing a Successor to the Crown, printed by Waldegrave in 1598. Valentine Thomas and the king's honour In 1598 Foulis was an ambassador in England discussing the Valentine Thomas affair. Thomas alleged that James VI had asked him to assassinate Elizabeth, an accusation that might prejudice his succession to the English throne. By 24 February, James VI was displeased with Foulis's efforts, for overreaching his instructions and accepting an unsatisfactory settlement, obtaining "so slight a vindication of honour in the matter of Valentine Thomas contrary to his instructions, dangerous to his succession to the Crown of England." James VI wrote to Elizabeth about potential damage to his reputation which "may in some measure be obscured by murmuring surmises flowing from this filthy spring." The English ambassador in Scotland Robert Bowes discussed Foulis's suitability for this delicate mission with Sir Robert Ker, saying that Foulis was too ordinary a man for an extraordinary business, and some of his previous diplomatic speeches had not been praiseworthy. Ker spoke in Foulis's favour, to soothe Bowe's "mean conceit of him." He was instructed to intercede in a legal case for George Bruce of Carnock, whose ship had been forced to take on a group of African and Portuguese captives. Business at court in August was interrupted by