WEIR, JOHN [SSNE 5929]
Text source
John Weir is a hard character to identify, sometimes being called an Edinburgh merchant in Poland c.1614. Confer with a man of the same name, also from Edinburgh, trading in Stockholm 1615-1616 [SSNE 6711].
Adding confusion, a Johannes Weiher (Johan Weiher, a Pole from Puck), served as a Polish diplomat to Copenhagen in 1617. The following year, 1618, that man acted as Count Putskenski’s envoy to London. Later, a Colonel 'Johan Weijer', was a co-conspirator with Sigismund III in a proposed invasion of Sweden in 1624. The two are often conflated.
Whether the same man or not, a John Weir was amongst the Scots and English in Poltowsk who subscribed to the subsidy for King Charles II in 1651. He and three others paid 250 florins in total.
Sources: Swedish Riksarkiv, Anglica V. James Spens to Axel Oxenstierna, 28 December 1618; L. Tandrup (ed.), Svensk agent vid Sundet (Aarhus, 1971), pp. 179-181, 193, 338-39, 341, 362, 431, 440, 516, 519-21; Axel Norberg, Polen i Svensk Politik, 1617-1626 (Stockholm, 1974), , pp.59 & 64; A.B. Pernal and R.P. Gasse, The 1651 Polish Subsidy to the exiled Charles II, Oxford Slavonic Papers, vol xxxii (Oxford, 1999), p.32; Z. Guldon and L. Stepkowski, Szkoci i Anglicy w Koronie w polowie XVII wieku, Kieleckie Studia Historyczne, ii (1977).
Service record
- POLAND-LITHUANIA, LONDON
- Arrived 1618-01-01
- Capacity AGENT, purpose DIPLOMACY
- POLAND-LITHUANIA, ARMY
- Arrived 1624-01-01
- Capacity OFFICER, purpose MILITARY
- POLAND-LITHUANIA, POLTOWSK
- Arrived 1651-01-01
- Capacity MERCHANT?, purpose MERCANTILE?