by Неизвестный
In the meantime, Morton arrived at Stirling and proposed that he should be appointed First Lord of the Council; a meeting of pro-Morton nobility agreed to move the next Parliament from Edinburgh to Stirling. On 6 July, the Privy Council issued a proclamation denying rumours that James was being held at Stirling against his will.51 When Parliament opened on 15 July, Mar was permitted to carry the sword, and confirmed as the guardian of Stirling Castle and James, but with the caveat that four of the new Council should always be in attendance on the King. This smelled bad to Morton’s enemies. They demanded that Morton be required to return to his ‘own dwelling-place’, and that James be returned to the custody of Erskine of Gogar, this time at Edinburgh Castle. It was Robert Bowes, the English ambassador, who arbitrated an agreement that Mar should maintain his custody of the King at Stirling, but that the Council should include more of the anti-Morton faction. This compromise was signed by James on 15 August.52 Mar’s powers were confirmed in March 1579 when the Council decreed that nobody should be allowed to enter Stirling Castle armed while the King was in residence, and that Mar should be allowed to make arrangements for attending the King while he was hunting.53 The traumatic attack on Stirling unsettled James, and from that date he was understandably uncertain of Morton. In the months following, he turned instead to the Council’s second lord, the Earl of Atholl. But their friendship was shortlived. In April 1579, Mar threw a banquet for the King and all the nobility as a gesture of their reconciliation. But when Atholl returned home from the banquet, he suddenly died, prompting, once again, the inevitable rumours of poison.54
In the summer of 1579, Morton’s ruthless scheme of suppression finally reached the apparently invincible Hamiltons. He invoked the ‘Pacification of Perth’ which granted a pardon to those fighting against the King, but then declared it was invalid against those implicated in the assassination of Moray. The estates of Lords Claud and John Hamilton were seized, and the young men fled the country; their father, Châtelhérault, was already dead. His widow was taken into custody, and Morton took great delight in blasting the Hamilton strongholds. Of most immediate importance to James, though, the suppression of the Hamiltons had ramifications for the succession of the Scottish throne, which now passed to the Lennoxes, the family of James’s father King Henry. Henry’s brother Lord Charles Stuart, who had become Earl of Lennox after his father’s death in 1572, died after four years, leaving one daughter, Arbella. The ex-Regent’s younger brother, Robert, Bishop of Caithness, was created Earl of Lennox in June 1578; despite being over sixty and a lifelong bachelor, he married in January 1579, hoping to father a child. But if the marriage were childless, the male line would be traced to the children of the Regent’s youngest brother John Stuart, Lord d’Aubigny, who had settled in France. First among them was Esmé Stuart, Sieur d’Aubigny, and in the late summer of 1579, inspired by the defeat of the Hamiltons, he arrived in Scotland to stake his claim.55
CHAPTER FOUR
The Phoenix
ESMÉ STUART, SIXTH Sieur d’Aubigny, arrived at Leith on 8 September 1579 and was promptly escorted to Edinburgh where he was warmly welcomed by the town’s magistrates.1 When thirteen-year-old James met him for the first time one week later in the Presence Chamber of Stirling Castle, Esmé prostrated himself before his cousin ‘desiring the King of Heaven to bless his Majesty with perpetual felicity’. Esmé was thirty-seven years old and married with four children. He was also decidedly handsome, ‘a man of comely proportions, civil behaviour, red-bearded, and honest in conversation’.2 For James, who had been betrayed by one after another of his supposed friends, Esmé seemed the perfect ally. According to a contemporary account, ‘No sooner did the young King see him, but in that he was so near allied in blood, of so renowned a family, eminent ornaments of body and mind, [he] took him up and embraced him in a most amorous manner.’3
James was smitten, but the Kirk was dismayed. It stood to reason that, as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Henri III of France, d’Aubigny must be a staunch Roman Catholic. Secret intelligence had it that d’Aubigny was ‘furthered, and sent with instructions, by the Guisians’, the faction clustered around the ultra-Catholic Duc de Guise. It was said that before d’Aubigny had embarked for Scotland he met privately with the exiled Catholic Bishops of Glasgow and Ross, planning a campaign to undo the friendship with England, revive relations with Queen Mary, and ultimately to reinstate the Roman faith in Scotland. Indeed, had he not spent six hours with the Duc de Guise himself on the very ship that was to bring him to James? And where did his money come from? His lands were heavily mortgaged, but somehow he contrived to bring 40,000 gold pieces, that could have come from nowhere but the Pope, the King of France and the Guisians, and for no other reason than to corrupt the nobility.4 His retinue did nothing to dissipate the rumours. With him came ‘a Monsieur Mombirneau, a subtle spirit, a merry fellow, very able in body, and most meet in all respects for bewitching of the youth of a Prince’. Together, wrote the Kirk man James Melvill, ‘they within few days insinuate themselves so in favour of the young King’.5
With d’Aubigny’s arrival, and perhaps not coincidentally, came James’s first entry into public life. On Tuesday 29 September, James left Stirling for the first time in eight years, headed for Linlithgow and from there on to Holyroodhouse. It was a grand procession, the King accompanied by d’Aubigny, Morton, Angus, Argyll, Montrose, Mar, and some two thousand horsemen. The Humes and the Kers with three hundred horse welcomed him at Corstorphine to the west of the city. Edinburgh burgesses stood in full armour in the Long Gate, where he dismounted and saw the castle cannons shot. After the salute, since the pageantry was unfortunately not quite ready, the King processed around the city in great pomp to Holyroodhouse.6
James made his formal entry into Edinburgh on Friday 17 October at the West Port. He was welcomed by the town’s magistrates, and about three hundred citizens in their finery, under a magnificent purple velvet canopy. There he watched a performance based on the judgement of Solomon, deciding which of the two women claiming to be a baby’s mother was telling the truth: Solomon was later to become one of James’s favourite scriptural characters, after whom he consciously fashioned himself. After listening to a harangue in Latin by John Sharp, he progressed to the old port of the Strait Bow, where a globe hung, opening artificially as he passed to reveal a young boy who presented to the King a pair of silver keys to the town. Singers, accompanied by viol-players, sang the twentieth psalm. At the Tolbooth, which was decorated with the craft guilds’ standards, were four ‘fair young maids’ representing the cardinal virtues of Justice, Temperance, Fortitude and Prudence, all of whom made an oration. A firework Wheel of Fortune was ignited. As James processed to the Great Kirk, he was invited in by ‘Dame Religion’ to hear a sermon by James Lawson on Psalm 2: 10, exhorting James and his subjects ‘to do their duty, to enter in league and convenant with God’.
Further up the High Street at the Mercat Cross, a man in a ‘painted garment’ and a garland of flowers represented Bacchus, sitting on a puncheon, a large beer cask. He welcomed James ‘to his own town’, quashed several glasses and threw them into the crowd. According to eyewitness accounts records, some three puncheons – over two hundred gallons – of wine were used. The Salt Throne was the scene for a representation of the genealogy of the Kings of Scotland, a trumpet fanfare, and a cry of ‘Well fare to the king!’ The Nether Bow boasted a representation of James’s horoscope, ‘the conjunction of the planets, as it was in the time of his nativity’, with ‘Ptolemy’ conveniently on hand to describe the future happiness described in his stars. At the abbey, the town of Edinburgh presented James with a cupboard worth six thousand marks. The glamour of the day’s festivities overshadowed the injuries caused to several spectators by the overcrowding in the narrow streets.7
While Edinburgh looked eagerly to the King, James only had eyes for d’Aubigny. It was not long before the King’s affection for his French cousin, unguardedly and physically displayed, was public
knowledge. Sir Henry Woddrington recorded how James was ‘persuaded and led by him, for he can hardly suffer him out of his presence, and is in such love with him, as in the open sight of the people, oftentimes he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him’.8 The very openness of his affections prompted some observers to suggest that their relationship contained something more personal and intimate, or ‘inward’ in the language of the times. The clerk to the Privy Council, David Moysie, wrote how ‘his Majesty, having conceived an inward affection to the said Lord Aubigny, entered in great familiarity and quiet purposes with him’.9 Later commentators, with the dubious benefit of hindsight, have seen James’s affection for Esmé as the prototype for a whole string of relationships with men which would become a lifelong pattern. A typical example is John Hacket who wrote of ‘the sweetness of this King’s nature’ that caused ‘from the time he was fourteen years old and no more [in fact he was thirteen], that is, when the Lord Aubigny came into Scotland out of France to visit him, even then he began, and with that noble personage, to clasp some one gratioso [favourite] in the embraces of his great love, above all others’.10 But Hacket was not born until 1592, thirteen years after the Lord Aubigny came into Scotland, and he was accused of ‘filching’ his information from the historian William Camden, himself not familiar with Scottish affairs of this period. Moreover, James’s love for d’Aubigny was different in kind from the passions that dominated his adult life. His later loves were typically callow young men whom James attempted to mould, acting as a teacher, or father figure; but in this relationship it was d’Aubigny who played the sophisticated older man. From him, James learned of the culture of the French court, a world that his mother had been part of and different indeed from the fortress existence at Stirling. D’Aubigny seems to have reciprocated James’s love, tenderly calling James – who had been taught to fear Buchanan as his ‘master’ – ‘mon petit maistre’.11
While d’Aubigny’s love may have been sincere, it was all too easy for opponents to see his influence as corrupting and they were only confirmed in their view by events at the Parliament that began in Edinburgh on 20 October 1579. The Kirk ministers in particular were none too happy with the direction in which James’s emotions were led. While the Parliament reiterated the act made in the first year of James’s reign concerning the Confession of Faith, establishing the Kirk, they were dismayed when, shortly after the Parliament, d’Aubigny purchased a dispensation to hold markets in Tranent on the Sabbath, and a supersedere to prevent him from ‘being troubled for a year for religion’, effectively an immunity from the pressures of the Kirk to conform. As ‘crafty fellows’ flocked ‘under his wings’, d’Aubigny’s powers grew. At the Parliament, he was appointed commendator of Arbroath, a post forfeited by Lord John Hamilton; soon after, he became Keeper of Dumbarton Castle – this appearing particularly sinister to the Kirk, since Dumbarton’s strategic position in the Firth of Clyde meant the castle could be used as a base to ‘allure the King, and transport him to France at his pleasure, or receive forces out of France’.12 Not all observers were so negative. The writer of a ‘Memorial of the present state of Scotland’, written on 31 December 1579, believed that the Kirk ministers were ‘resolved of Monsieur d’Aubigny’s good inclination to religion’. He confirmed James’s intimacy with d’Aubigny, but claimed that d’Aubigny had worked to consolidate Anglo-Scottish relations by telling James of the ‘idle and licentious life’ of the French King, which made Henri ‘odious’ to him. Significantly, the ‘Memorial’ also records an early instance of what was to become James’s abiding passion – to ‘delight the fields in hunting and riding’, although it also noted that his relative poverty meant that he had only a handful of horses to ride.13
In March 1580, James put pressure on Robert Stuart to resign as Earl of Lennox and gave the title to d’Aubigny. Bowing to the Kirk, James persuaded Lennox to come to Edinburgh in April ‘to be instructed by the ministers who mean to labour on him till the first of June’, to ensure his proper conversion to Protestantism; the King himself helped the worthy cause by giving Lennox copies of the Scriptures in French. By June 1580, the ministers and the Scriptures had done their work: Lennox wrote to the General Assembly announcing his conversion, and declaring that God had called him to a knowledge of his salvation. At the same time, and clearly as a reward, James admitted Lennox to the inner circle of government, the Privy Council.14 But Lennox had his most lasting impact in his rearrangement of James’s household, drawing on his experience of the French court of Henri III. He invented for himself a new and powerful office: Lord Great Chamberlain and First Gentleman of the Chamber. As Chamberlain, Lennox undertook the role of the Master Household, organising and provisioning the King’s household, while as First Gentleman of the Chamber he ensured his continued intimacy with the King. Lennox thus had a hand in government, control over the King’s household and the King’s ear: a remarkable concentration of power.15
Many felt threatened by the Frenchman, but it was Morton who was most at risk. Lennox became a magnet for his enemies, most notably Argyll, and Morton, feeling increasingly marginalised at court, disappeared to his country estates. The court soon descended into fearful whispering. Argyll let James know that Morton planned to kidnap him and take him to England; James was scared enough to leave his hunting and seal himself up in Stirling Castle again in February 1580. Lennox had enough influence to persuade the King to go riding to Doune a month later, but by now James had developed a decided nervousness at the sight of weapons, and just the sight of armed men among Lennox’s retinue was enough to send James galloping back home to Stirling. With endearing bluster, James recounted these incidents to the English ambassador Robert Bowes, not as examples of fear, but of incisive judgement. He would escape future attempts, he declared, and even if he did fall into enemy hands, he’d display such ‘inconstancy, perjury and falsehood’ that they’d regret ever seizing him.16
By the spring of 1580, James had regained his confidence enough to venture away from Stirling again. On 20 May, he set out on the first of what was to be become an annual ritual: a ‘progress’ through his country, moving this year through Fife and Angus before returning to Stirling in mid-August. The progress was good for James’s personal standing in Scotland since it gave his people the chance to see him in the flesh – an opportunity they had been denied for thirteen years – but it served an additional, more practical purpose: James had been informed by his Lord Treasurer that he was in debt to the tune of £40,000 to the Treasury, and since the entertainment of the King and his retinue on the progress was paid for by his lucky hosts, it was a welcome chance to save money.17
An odd incident occurred when the progress reached St Andrews in July. As the spectators were waiting for an entertainment to be played at the New Abbey, a ‘frenetic man’ known as Skipper Lindsey stepped into the empty performance space, and ‘paceth up and down in sight of the people with great gravity, his hands on his side, and looking loftily’. Lindsey was ‘rough with hair’, great tufts on his brows and ‘upon the neb of his nose’, and his bizarre appearance provoked the crowd to laughter. But when he started to speak, he gained their attention, as if he had been a preacher, as one observer put it. With a ‘mighty voice’, he spoke of how God had rescued him from his previous wicked, riotous and abusive life, and concluded that ‘God would not be miskenned by the highest’. Then, looking up to the window where James and d’Aubigny stood watching, with Morton underneath them, Lindsey warned Morton that ‘his judgement was drawing near, and his doom in dressing [was in preparation]’. Morton was reportedly ‘so moved and touched at the heart, that, during the time of the play, he never changed the gravity of his countenance, for all the sports of the play’.18 Skipper Lindsey’s words were to prove oddly prophetic.
The Kirk was still not convinced by Lennox’s protestation of faith. In July, he sent a letter to the fortieth General Assembly convened at Dundee, offering ‘free and humble offer of due obedience, and to receive
your will in anything it shall please you I do’.19 These, as the Kirk chronicler David Calderwood admitted, were ‘fair offers’ but they covered ‘deep designs, as time declared afterward’. The ministers were particularly concerned that, even if Lennox were sincere in his conversion, his household was a sanctuary for staunch papists. Later in the session, Lennox tried to dislodge this fear by having one of the servants, Henry Kerr, make a passionate confession of how he had ‘lain long in blindness’ but now acknowledged the Protestant religion ‘to be the only true religion’. The ministers remained unsatisfied. When the General Assembly met again in Edinburgh in October, it presented a petition to James requesting, among other matters, ‘That order be taken with papists in the King’s house’, and Henry Kerr had to appear again to explain why there had been a delay in securing a French-speaking minister for Lennox’s household, as the Kirk had commanded.20