The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain
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On 18 June, an embassy led by George Keith, fifth Earl Marischal, left Leith for Denmark. This time negotiations proceeded smoothly: Anna was wedded by proxy to James on 20 August, and set sail for her new home.15 In Scotland, elaborate plans were developed dictating ‘the manner how to receive the Queen’. Despite the pomp, there was a touching concern for young Anna’s sensibilities. Peter Young’s formal ‘harangue in Latin’ was to be executed ‘as briefly as may be’; everywhere she was to walk was to be ‘laid with Turkey tapis or tapestry’; there was to be ‘no working in the ships foreanent [outside] her lodging, during her remaining in Leith, nor nothing on the bounds within the two new ports that may unquiet her’; there was to be ‘no shooting … while the Queen be in her chamber’.16
But three weeks later, and there was still no sign of the ship carrying Anna. On 12 September, Lord Dingwall landed at Leith, and reported that ‘he had come in company with the Queen’s fleet three hundred miles, and was separated from them by a great storm: it was feared that the Queen was in danger upon the seas’.17 For some sixteen or seventeen days James stayed with Robert, sixth Lord Seton, at his home, Seton House, which afforded him a view of the Firth of Forth and any Leith-bound ship.18 When none appeared, the King ‘very impatient and sorrowful for her long delay’,19 ordered a fast to be held to ensure Anna’s safe arrival.20 As September turned into October, Colonel Stewart was ‘directed to Norway, to see what was word of the Queen’.21 He took with him a letter from James, written in French, and headed ‘The King to the Queen of Scotland in Norraway’:
Only to one who knows me as well as his own reflection in a glass could I express, my dearest love, the fears which I have experienced because of the contrary winds and the violent storms since you embarked, the more especially since the arrival here of some ships which put to sea after your own and came without word of you. My resultant anguish, and the fear which ceaselessly pierces my heart, has driven me to despatch a messenger to seek for you, both to bring me news of you and to give you the same of me … Praying you therefore to give credence to all that he will say to you on my behalf, I make an end praying the Creator (my only love) with all my heart to grant you a safe, swift and happy arrival in these parts so that you can make proof of the entire affection of him who has vowed to you alone all his love.22
He also composed a serious of marvellously overwrought sonnets, in one of which all possibility of romance was obliterated by an overly graphic account of the torments James felt:
O cruel Cupid what a ruthless rage,
What hateful wrath thou utterest upon me;
No medicine my sickness may assuage
Nor cataplasm cure my wound I see.
Through deadly shot alive I daily die,
I fry in flames of that envenomed dart
Which shot me sicker in at either eye
Then fastened fast into my hoalit heart.
The fever hath infected every part,
My bones are dried their marrow melts away,
My sinnows feebles through my smoking smart
And all my blood as in a pan doth play.
I only wish for ease of all my pain,
That she might wit what sorrow I sustain.23
As the English ambassador William Asheby noted, James was playing to the hilt the role of ‘a true lover’ who ‘thinketh every day a year till he see his joy and love approach’.24
Colonel Stewart arrived in Norway on 4 October, and learned what had happened. A flotilla, led by Anna on the Gideon, left Copenhagen on 5 September, but had only been able to stagger as far as Elsinore. There, accident piled on accident. That evening, a naval gun backfired, killing two gunners. The next day, another gun fired in tribute to two visiting Scottish noblemen exploded, leaving nine of the crew injured, and another gunner dead. Once at sea, gales put the ships under immense stress, and one report had Anna’s ship missing for three days and three nights. On the 10th, the Gideon was found to be leaking dangerously, and had to anchor at Gammel Sellohe in Norway to make repairs. In high seas, two of the other ships in the flottilla, the Samson and the Josua, collided, taking the lives of two more sailors: soon the Samson too was unusable, stuck in Flekkerø harbour. Ostensibly repaired, the Gideon set out once again on 28 September; once again sprung a leak; and once again the fleet returned to Norway, this time to Flekkerø. By now it was Michaelmas, 1 October, and the Danish sailors firmly believed that the foul weather would continue until Christmas. With boats damaged, and too many friends maimed and killed, they had no intention of going any further. By the time Colonel Stewart arrived on 4 October, the leaking Gideon was no longer safe (it took sixteen men to pump it as it made a final journey to Varberg in Denmark), and it was decided by Stewart and the Earl Marischal that Anna’s Scottish entrance would have to be delayed until the spring. Glad to be on dry land, after a month of seasickness, Anna, with the Earl Marischal and her tiny court, rode to Akershus in Oslo.25
James was informed of the decision not to travel by a letter dated 7 October – a letter that ironically managed to reach him at Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh, in just three days. In his own account, the news upset him to the point that he ‘could [not] sleep nor rest’, and he made a snap decision: ‘ay, upon the instant, yea very moment resolved to make possible on my part, that which was impossible on hers’:26 if his Queen could not come to Scotland, then he would go to her in Norway. In his absence, James appointed the Duke of Lennox, still only fifteen years old, as President of the Council, with Bothwell to act as his deputy, while as a strategic move to neutralise the Kirk, minister Robert Bruce was brought into the Council. Rather than risk a backlash against Maitland, James resolved to take him with him. James informed his Council to expect him back within twenty days, but he cannot really have believed he would return so quickly. These preparations made, late in the evening on 22 October, the King, Maitland, and a retinue of some three hundred, set sail from Leith.27
James set down his reasons for going in a letter to the Scottish people, to be read after his departure. It is a fascinating document. He knew well, he wrote, that ‘the motion of my voyage at this time will be diversely skansit upon [looked upon]’, resulting in ‘my great dishonour’ as well as ‘the wrangous blame of innocents’. He therefore wanted to make it clear that he kept his plans ‘generally close [secret] from all men’ – including Chancellor Maitland, the man to whom he usually entrusted ‘any secrets of my weightiest affairs’. He wrote this because James knew if he had confided in him, Maitland would have ‘been blamed of putting it in my head’, since Maitland was daily accused of leading the King ‘by the nose as it were, to all his appetites, as if I were an unreasonable creature [a creature without reason] or a bairn that could do nothing of myself.’ James did not want to be the cause ‘of the heaping of further unjust slander upon his head’. And he proclaimed this now as much ‘for my own honour’s sake, that I be not unjustly slandered as an irresolute ass who can do nothing of himself’.
But the letter also gave his reasons for the marriage.
As to the causes, I doubt not it is manifestly known to all how far I was generally found fault with by all men for the delaying so long of my marriage. The reasons were that I was alone, without father or mother, brother or sister, King of this realm and heir apparent in England. This my nakedness made me to be weak and my enemies stark [strong]. One man was as no man, and the want of hope of succession bred disdain. Yes, my long delay bred in the breasts of many a great jealousy [suspicion] of my inability, as if I were a barren stock. These reasons and innumerable others, hourly objected, moved me to hasten the treaty of my marriage; for, as to my own nature, God is my witness I could have abstained longer nor [than] the weal of my patrie [country] could have permitted. I am known, God be praised, not to be intemperately rash nor conceity [flighty] in my weightiest affairs, neither use I to be so carried away with passion as I refuse to hear reason.28
It is a shockingly unguarded letter, written by the King in his own h
and, and apparently without any advice from his close counsellors. This is no declaration of love for Anna, nor even a political, pragmatic explanation for his marriage. Instead, it testifies to James’s fear of ridicule because of challenges to his masculinity. His lack of an heir makes him weak politically, but also damages his virility, as if he were incapable of being a father, not a real man. During his years with James, Lennox was libelled ‘a feeble sow, that saw his wife deflowered before his eyes’.29 More recently, there had been speculation about James’s relationship with his new favourite, Alexander Lindsay, spoken of as ‘the King’s only minion and conceit’, ‘his nightly bed-fellow’, and perhaps James felt the need to prove some kind of masculinity by becoming a husband.30 But even as he asserts his virility, he admits quite openly that his own nature would not have driven him to marriage – and certainly not at this stage of his life. James was eager to share these feelings with his people, and to place his letter in the Register of the Privy Council for posterity: reading the letter now, it’s difficult not to conclude that his much-vaunted romantic yearnings for Anna were little more than the conventional posturings of an amateur poet.
On 27 October James’s ships were sighted off the Norwegian coast, and two days later they landed at the island of Flekkerø, where Anna had stayed; with a proper sense of romance, James insisted that he should ‘sleep in the same place as she had slept earlier’, ‘with a poor man’ at a small farmhouse.31 Bad weather delayed James’s immediate progress, and Steen Bille, who had been the Danish ambassador in Scotland, departed for Oslo to inform Anna of her husband’s arrival. As Bille left, a salute from the King’s ship went awry: the cannon had been fully loaded by mistake, and what was meant to be a gesture of goodwill ended with one of Bille’s kinsmen losing his arm, and a boy on another ship losing his life.32 What James Melvill described as the ‘mickle foul weather of a stormy winter’33 slowed James’s progress, and he reached Oslo only after three weeks’ trek, making his entrance on the afternoon of 19 November, escorted by assorted Danish, Norwegian and Scottish nobles. To the Danes, James appeared as ‘a tall, slim gentleman thin under the eyes [perhaps lean-cheeked, or with deep-set eyes?], wearing a red velvet coat appliquéd with pieces of gold so that there was a row of golden stars and another row where the velvet could be seen. He also wore a black velvet cloak lined with sable.’34 He processed to the great hall of Old Bishops’ Palace to meet his new bride. According to one chronicler, James went straight to Anna, not pausing to take off his boots. ‘His Majesty minded to give the Queen a kiss after the Scots fashion at meeting, which she refused as not being the form of her country. Marry, after a few words privately spoken between His Majesty and her, there passed familiarity and kisses.’35 The half-hour encounter was regarded as ‘a joyful meeting on all sides’.36
Four days later, they were married in the same venue, ‘with all the splendour possible at that time and place’. The hall was decorated with tapestries, and the couple stood on a piece of red cloth, with two chairs covered in red damask. At 2 p.m. the Danes and Norwegians accompanied James from his lodgings to take him to his bride. When the couple arrived, James walked on to the red cloth, standing ‘with his hands on his hips’. Anna followed, to stand at his side. After some brief singing,37 the service, a standard homily on marriage, was conducted in French by the Leith minister David Lindsay, who described the bride as ‘a princess both godly and beautiful, as appeareth to all that knoweth her’.38 After plighting their troth, the marriage was blessed, and the bishop delivered an oration in Danish. As the couple left, the local bishop saluted James in Latin, wishing him good fortune in his new marriage and in his reign. ‘Hoc scio te ex corde precari’ (I know that you wish it from your heart), James replied. ‘Certe ex corde precatur’ (certainly he wishes it from his heart), said Maitland. ‘Hoc lubens accipio’ (then it is dear to me), replied the King.39 The wedding breakfast was perhaps less than spectacular: ‘a reasonable banquet being on such an accident,’ as one observer put it sniffily.40 Leading Nordic scholars such as Jacob Jacobssøn Wolf, Anders Sørensen Vedel, Halvard Gunnarssøn and Jens Nielssøn wrote eulogies in Latin, and were rewarded with lavish gifts.41 A month of celebrations followed, including a welcome day of hunting on the island of Hovedøya.42
On 22 December, the newlyweds set out for Denmark, to spend the first few months of their marriage at Elsinore’s then newly built Kronborg Castle.43 As James left, ‘he stood up in the sledge and bade all the people good night not only in Scots but also in Danish’.44 En route, he was ‘well entertained by the way in many of the priests’ houses’, and, according to David Calderwood (perhaps with wishful thinking), ‘he had occasion to consider and to take to heart the poverty of the ministers of Scotland, and to think upon some remeed [remedy]’.45 On 4 January, at Bohus, the King and his Queen danced, one of the very few times James is known to have indulged since his childhood displays for visiting dignitaries.46 Finally on 21 January, James and Anna reached Elsinore, sailing there in a small boat sumptuously furnished in red velvet. They were back in the world of courtly ceremony, and they entered the castle in a formal procession, with each Scottish councillor escorted by a member of the Danish Council. James was greeted by his mother-in-law, dowager Queen Sophia, the ten-year-old King Christian IV, Duke Ulrick, and Christian’s four regents.
James was to be based at Elsinore until early March,47 and the pervasive mood was alcoholic. Whether fairly or not, the Danes had gained an international reputation for their drinking, starting the day with the traditional Danish spirits brœndevin, moving on to German ale, and finishing off with Prussian beer. Ben Jonson claimed that the Danes were seeking to ‘drench | Their cares in wine’ but more importantly, according to Cornelius Hamsfort, court doctor to Anna’s father, Frederick II, drunkenness was deemed a sign of manliness. Frederick had been infamous for his drinking, indulging in a drunken fistfight at his sister’s wedding, and falling from his horse into a river: the oration at his funeral frankly admitted that drinking had shortened his life. If James’s baptism had spoken volumes about Scotland’s factional religiosity and strained international relations, then perhaps Christian’s 1577 baptism had done the same for the Danish national character: in a mock battle between the ancient Israelites and the Philistines, the Danes playing the Philistines were drunk enough to ignore history, and refused to yield to David and his men, instead beating up the Israelites, before the entire nobility piled in.48 The King of Scots soon acquired the habit, and Sir James Melville was only one of several who remarked on James’s increasingly prodigious taste for drink. The King, he recorded, ‘made good cheer and drank stoutly till the springtime’.49
Slowly, the drunken winter at Elsinore melted into spring. James and his entourage moved on to Copenhagen on 7 March, where more academic pursuits awaited him. He visited the Royal Academy, and imbibed learned discourse from Hans Olufsen Slangerup, the professor of theology, and Anders Christiensen, who, as professor of medicine, was an early teacher of modern practical anatomy. In conversation with the Bishop of Zealand, Povel Mathias, James insisted on his love for matters literary: he assured Mathias that ‘From my earliest days I have been addicted to the literary arts [addictus sum litteris] – and I should like to declare that today.’ To show his enthusiasm, he sent gifts to the Bishop to be bestowed on the University including seven large books, a gilded cup, and purses of money for some doctors who had given him a book, and for the Copenhagen hospital.50 From Copenhagen, James moved on to the village of Roskilde on 11 and 12 March, to visit the great cathedral that served as the burial place of the kings of Denmark. James listened to a Latin oration by Mathias, and debated with Niels Hemmingsen, the elderly leading Danish theologian. Much of the doctrinal discussion centred on Hemmingsen’s Calvinist-tinged Lutheranism (for which he had been removed from his office of Professor of the University of Copenhagen): a Danish account records that Hemmingsen ‘discussed, with acute perception, predestination. For he was completely a disciple of Calvin.’ The
theologian made a huge impact on James: he confided to a local priest that meeting Hemmingsen stood alongside seeing a monument to Frederick II in Roskilde Cathedral, and witnessing the Danish churches free of idolatry, as one of the highlights of his visit.51