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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
List of Illustrations
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
ACT I
Christ Had His John and I Have My George
The King’s Way
The Malcontent
All We Here Sit in Darkness
Debateable Lands
Apethorpe
Baynard’s Castle
St George’s Day
The Matter of the Garter
Neither a God nor an Angel
Keeper of the Seal
Made or Marred
Wickedest Things
Poor George Villiers
ACT II
Two Venturous Knights
The Favourite and the Fountain
A Masque on Twelfth Night
The Spanish Match
Periwigs
The House of the Seven Chimneys
Secret Intelligencers
A Farewell Pillar
Fool’s Coats
ACT III
The Greatest Villain in the World
The Honey and the Sting
The English Junta
A Secret Matter
The Banqueting House
Countless Difficulties
The Forger of Every Mischief
A Game at Chess
Hobgoblins
To Ride Away an Ague
The Price of a Princess
What an Age We Do Live In
ACT IV
We the Commons
Poisonous Applications
Anne of Austria
And So the Devil Go with Them
All Goes Backward
The Knot Draws Near
Common Fame
The Bottomless Bagg
The Forerunner of Revenge
Great Matters of Weight
A Silly Piece of Malice
Dissolution
The Devil and the Duke
The Scrivener’s Tale
I Am the Man
Sad Affliction’s Darksome Night
Epilogue
Photographs
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Also by Benjamin Woolley
About the Author
Copyright
THE KING’S ASSASSIN. Copyright © 2017 by Benjamin Woolley. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
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First published in Great Britain by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan
First U.S. Edition: July 2018
eISBN 9781250125057
First eBook edition: May 2018
* In 1599 William had taken his stepmother Mary, along with his father, to court to establish his entitlement to the family estates, after it emerged that Sir George senior had used the property as security against his mountainous debts.
† There is some debate about the social position of a ‘waiting woman’ and how it impacted on Mary. In Shakespeare’s Othello, Emilia is the waiting woman and confidante to Desdemona, Othello’s unfortunate wife. In The Scornful Lady by Mary’s distant cousin Francis Beaumont, Abigail is a waiting woman trapped by her servitude into becoming an ageing spinster and predatory nymphomaniac.
* Mary’s age is a matter of conjecture. Nativity and horary charts drawn up by Richard Napier (Bodleian MS Ashmole 329, f66v) suggest she was born on 23 December and was thirty-six years old in April 1610, giving a birthdate of 23 December 1574. This makes her rather younger than is generally accepted. For example, the DNB gives her birthdate as c. 1570.
* Thanks to James’s first Parliament frustrating his plans for a union of his kingdoms, Great Britain had yet to be formally created. However, it was recognized as a de facto entity by many foreign rulers, and treated as such by James himself.
* A Scottish diminutive of Stephen, referring to St Stephen, who, according to tradition, had the face of an angel.
* According to Glyn Redworth, who first brought this letter to the attention of British historians, ‘though this word might be used to describe a patron or go-between, by the seventeenth century it was indelibly associated with the eponymous protagonist of Fernando de Rojas’s immortal drama of sexual intrigue and licence, the brothel-keeper Celestina. It had come to mean “pimp” – or, in the case of the crone, “procuress”. Being the sole Spanish word that Charles employed in this suspiciously brief note, it was of some consequence.’
* The reasons for the breakdown of negotiations is highly controversial, with Glyn Redworth blaming a culture clash but others, such as Robert Cross, seeing Charles’s concern for his sister and brother-in-law as a decisive factor.
* The paintings, which ended up in the collection of the Earl of Jersey at Osterley Park, were destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1949. The chalk-and-ink sketch is in the collection of Albertina Museum in Vienna.
* It is possible George did not even attend the funeral. There is mention of a ‘master of the horse’ in the cortege, who it has been assumed was the duke, but he may have been Thomas Howard, who served Charles in that capacity when he was the Prince of Wales.
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