The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain
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The strongest condemnation is reserved for the Kirk. The Protestants in Scotland, James writes, were ‘clogged with their own passions’, so that the Reformation did not progress properly as it did in Denmark, England or some parts of Germany. Some ‘fiery spirited men in the ministry’ got carried away with their ‘guiding of the people’, and began to ‘fantasie to themselves a democratic form of government’. This notion, ‘overwell baited upon the wrack, first of my grandmother, and next of mine own mother, and after usurping the liberty of the time in my long minority’, led to them casting themselves as tribunes of the people, ‘and so in a popular government by leading the people by the nose’ – one of James’s favourite images – ‘to bear the sway of all the rule’. These ministers were the cause of all Scotland’s problems, James continued. All the factions of his childhood and ever since made sure to court the ‘unruly spirits among the ministry’, as a result of which ‘I was ofttimes calumniated in their popular sermons, not for any evil or vice in me, but because I was a King, which they thought the highest evil’.34
Basilikon Doron was first secretly printed, in an anglicised version, by Robert Waldegrave in a tiny 1599 edition of seven copies, for private circulation. Somehow Andrew Melvill got hold of a copy, even before the book was through the press. Not surprisingly, he found much to criticise, especially in James’s comments about the Kirk. At the Synod of Fife in September of that year, Melvill’s criticisms to Basilikon Doron were presented by John Dykes, lambasting what he saw as its pro-English, pro-episcopalian, pro-Catholic tendencies, ingeniously dubbed its ‘Anglo-pisco-papistical conclusions’.35 The Synod did not have time formally to censure the book before James had ordered the arrest of Dykes, who fled instead into England.36 But in time his complaints were drowned out by the overwhelming success of the book. Over the next few years, Basilikon Doron appeared in multiple editions that have been estimated at totalling as many as 16,000 copies: James had written one of the runaway bestsellers of the Renaissance.37
CHAPTER TEN
A Wild Unruly Colt
ON 6 AUGUST 1600, Edinburgh awoke to some very strange news. A series of letters arrived telling how, on the previous day, the Earl of Gowrie had sent his brother Alexander, the Master of Ruthven, to the King as he was hunting in Falkland Park. Alexander confided that his brother had found a great treasure in an old tower in his house at St Johnstone – a treasure that might be of help to the King, if he came over to see it that day, without fanfare. James continued hunting for a while, but, after a drink, took a fresh horse and rode on with Alexander, dismissing Lennox and Mar, and taking just a few servants. Despite orders, Lennox and Mar followed the King, and en route met the Lord of Inchaffray, who joined the train. At St Johnstone, James was greeted by Gowrie, who took him into his house and gave him a good dinner, before going into dinner with Lennox and the rest of the King’s men.1
While they were dining, Alexander persuaded the King to go quietly with him to see the treasure. James dismissed his company, and followed Alexander from chamber to chamber, whose doors the young man locked as they progressed. Finally, they came to a chamber containing a man – the man, so the King thought, who had found the treasure. But suddenly Alexander took hold of the King and drew his dagger, exclaiming that he had killed his father, and now he would kill him. James tried to dissuade him, pointing out that he had been very young when Gowrie was executed, and was therefore innocent of the death. Had he not made amends by restoring Alexander’s brother to a greater status than he had previously? If Alexander killed him now, he would not escape, nor would he be Gowrie’s heir; he was sure that Alexander had learned more divinity than to kill his prince; and he assured and promised him that if he stopped this enterprise he would keep it secret and forgive him. Alexander retorted that his preaching would not help him, and that he should die, and then struck out at the King. James and Alexander fell to the ground, and Alexander called on the other man to kill the King, but his accomplice answered that, though he was a courageous man, he had neither heart nor hand to do it. Despite being unarmed, in his hunting clothes with only his horn, James defended himself against Ruthven, and managed to struggle to the window to shout ‘Treason!’ His cries were heard by Sir Thomas Erskine, Lord Herries and John Ramsay, who ran up the stairs to him, but found the doors locked. Ramsay, however, discovered another way in: when the King saw him, he shouted out that he was slain, and Ramsay drew his rapier and killed the Master of Ruthven. Gowrie had told Lennox, Mar and the others that the King had left by a main gate, but when they ran out, there was no sign. Gowrie said he would go back and locate the King, and ran up the stairs with eight men, a steel bonnet and two rapiers; he was met by Ramsay, Erskine and Herries, who between them killed the Earl, both Erskine and Herries being injured in the process. Outside, Gowrie’s friends and the local townsmen demanded to know where the Earl was. Lennox and Mar were sent to the magistrates to pacify the situation, and the King and his company got away, James thanking God for his deliverance.
An hour after the news of the attack reached Edinburgh, a letter from the King arrived, outlining the story told above, and the ministers were summoned to appear before the Council. There, James’s letter was read out, and the ministers were ordered to ‘go to the kirk, convene the people, ring bells, and give praise to God’ for the King’s deliverance. But the ministers were not about to obey the King’s orders without considering the case more carefully. Meeting in the East Kirk, they concluded that they could not speak of treason, since the King had not mentioned it, and the reports by various courtiers were contradictory. They announced to Chancellor Montrose that they could not mention treason, but were happy to say ‘in general’ that James had been ‘delivered from a great danger’. The lords objected that all they had to do was read the King’s letter, but the ministers said it was better not to read it, in case they doubted it.2 At that moment, the minister David Lindsay entered, and told the story first hand. The situation seemed to be saved: Robert Bruce averred that if Lindsay was speaking the truth ‘as he would [be] answerable to God’, then he ‘was well content’. Lindsay went with the lords to the Mercat Cross, and delivered the story to the people, who bared their heads and praised God. And then came the usual celebrations: bells, cannon shot and bonfires.3
But soon it became clear that the ministers were not the only men suspicious of the King’s story. The doubts gave rise to superstitions. Just before the murders, it was said, the sea, which was at low tide, suddenly ‘ran up above the sea mark, higher nor [than] at any stream tide, athort [across] all the coast side of Fife, and in an instant retired again to almost a low water’.4 On the first Sabbath after the event, the shapes of men were seen in the murder room, ‘opening and closing the windows with great flaffing [fluttering, flapping], coming to the windows, looking over, and wringing their hands’. The next day, Monday the 11th, ‘such mourning’ was heard in the air ‘that the people about were terrified’. That afternoon, as James sailed from Clanesse (near East Burntisland) across to Leith, it was noticed ‘that there was ebbing and flowing three times at that tide; that the water betwixt Leith and Brunitland was blackish; that the ships in Leith haven were troubled with the swelling of the water’.5 All these were taken as signs that an unnatural act had taken place, that the deaths of the Ruthvens were murderous. James paid no attention. He was greeted at Leith with the usual great bombast of cannon and harquebuses, ‘as if he had been new born’, remarked Calderwood sardonically. Thanks were given in church for his deliverance, but James notably failed to respond to the preacher David Lindsay’s hope that now the King would carry out the vows he had made previously to ensure ‘performance of justice’; instead, Calderwood noted that James merely ‘smiled, and talked with these that were about him, after his unreverent manner of behaviour at sermons’.6
Despite his apparent nonchalance, James realised that he needed to make good the unlikely story he had told of events at St Johnstone. ‘Because many doubted of the report that was
made by the King and courtiers,’ wrote Calderwood, ‘many means were used to make good the report, with presumptions and testimonies which were gathered out of the depositions of some persons which were examined.’7 In this spirit, James processed with several noblemen from the church to the Mercat Cross, which had been draped with tapestry for the occasion, while Patrick Galloway delivered a sermon on Psalm 124, David being freed from the great danger of his deadly enemies, and James himself gave a speech supporting the notion that the Ruthvens had conspired to kill him, and had been slain as they attempted to put their plan into action, the two speeches lasting over an hour.8 Galloway took the opportunity to untangle a potential embarrassment to the Kirk. The dead Gowrie had been a notably staunch Protestant, but the preacher refused that interpretation: ‘let none think, that by this traiterous fact of his, our religion has received any blot: for one of our religion was he not, but a deep dissimulate hypocrite, a profound atheist, and an incarnate devil in the coat of an angel.’ Galloway cited objects and books which had been discovered since the Earl’s death, ‘which prove him plainly to have been a studier of magic, and conjurer of devils, and to have had so many at his command’. Gowrie had suspiciously lived outside the country, ‘haunting with Papists; yea, the Pope himself’ with whom the Earl had made ‘convenants and bonds’. Since returning to Scotland Gowrie had ‘travailed most earnestly with the King, and his Majesty has received from him the hardest assault that ever he did; from him, I say, to revolt from religion; at least, in inward sincerity to entertain purpose with the Pope’.9
In Galloway’s account, it was the evil Gowrie who led James, ‘a most innocent lamb, from his palace to the slaughterhouse’, in the expectation of ‘dinner, a cold dinner, yea, a very cold dinner, as they knew who were there’. ‘Now, judge ye, good people,’ he continued, warming to his theme, ‘what danger your David was in, whom, as an innocent lamb, he was closed up betwixt two hungry lions thirsting for his blood, and four locks betwixt him and his friends and servants, so that they might neither hear nor hearken unto him.’ His delivery against these odds was nothing short of a miracle that could only be ascribed to God. Galloway had proof. His source was not the King, but the very man who ‘should have been the doer of the turn’ – the mysterious armed man. ‘He is living yet, he is not slain, a man well enough known to this town: Andrew Henderson, chamberlain to my Lord of Gowrie.’ Galloway brandished a letter of confession from Henderson: ‘any man that would see it, come to me, and see if they can know his hand writ, for their satisfaction.’10 ‘This is the verity,’ concluded Galloway, ‘which will satisfy any good subject: for as these rumours that go, that the King was a doer and not a sufferer, a pursuer and not a pursued, it is not true nor likely.’ Did they really think that, if James had had such a plan, he would have gone to the very place where Gowrie was so well liked, with only ten men to keep him company, men who were all friendly with Gowrie, like Lennox ‘his godbrother’ and Mar ‘his godfather’, who gave him his name when he was baptised. Men who refused to believe the King would ‘perish in their incredulity. There are evidences enough of this verity. Now, what am I that speak these things? One, as I protest before God, who loved the Earl of Gowrie better than any flesh in the earth except his Majesty.’11
Few were convinced by Galloway – ‘partly’, as Calderwood writes, ‘because he was a flattering preacher’, but partly because Henderson was the fourth man to have been unmasked as the ‘armed man’. An early proclamation identified him as Oliphant, ‘a black grim man’. But later he was named as Leslie, and then again as Younger. Younger was at least a Gowrie servant, but he had been safely in Dundee on 5 August. When he heard that he was implicated, Younger started out for Falkland, but was slain before reaching Edinburgh by an overeager captain named Harry Bruce. Patrick Galloway assured James: ‘Now, sir, the man which should have helped to have done the deed, he could not be gotten alive, but there he lieth dead.’ Galloway then set up his friend Gowrie’s chamberlain Andrew Henderson as the armed man. Unfortunately, Henderson was no ‘black grim man’, but ‘a man of lower stature, ruddy countenance, and brown bearded’. Even James, asked while hunting the day after the attack whether Henderson was the armed man, said ‘it was not he, he knew that smaike [ruffian] well enough’.12
Within a week, reported George Nicolson, ‘it is begun to be noted that the reports coming from the King should differ’: the third man in the chamber was given several names, and had apparently disappeared, or been killed; that the mortally wounded Thomas Cranston had signed a declaration clearing the Ruthvens; that Alexander Ruthven was wearing only a silk cut doublet, and that he was unarmed, or found with his dagger still sheathed; that the Earl of Gowrie was found to have no arms on him ‘save a rapier or two with him’. ‘The matter,’ concluded Nicolson, ‘is judged to be otherways than the King reports.’ The increasing suspicion could only be curbed, he suggested, if the King would give some of the conspirators ‘out of his hands to the town and ministers to be tried and examined for the confessing and clearing of the matter to them and the people upon the scaffold at their execution’. If this failed to happen, ‘a hard and dangerous conceit will enter and remain in the hearts of the people and of great ones (how fair soever they carried it to the King) of him and his dealings in this matter’.13 By the end of August, according to Sir Henry Brouncker, ‘the suspicion of the King’s plot upon this poor Earl increases daily’.14 Why would the Ruthvens invite the King to their house to murder him – where they would be held responsible? Why did the King not allow someone else to check out the pot of gold story? Why didn’t they go immediately to the treasure? If the King suspected treason, why did he go with Alexander? If the Earl knew the King was coming to dine, why did he go to dinner before the King came? Why was there not a better welcome prepared? Why did the King go unarmed, if Alexander had a sword? How could James have pulled Alexander ‘that was thrice as strong’ to the window, bring him out of the study, and drive him back to the door of the turnpike? (A miracle, admitted Galloway.) Why was Alexander not kept alive? He could have been taken after the first blow.15
The Privy Council was offended by the ministers’ reluctance to toe the line, and reported ‘hardly of them’ to the King.16 On 12 August, the ministers appeared before James, who demanded that they explain why they had disobeyed his orders. The ministers replied that they could not speak about the particulars about the dangers the King had been in, because they had no proof of them. ‘How are ye yet persuaded?’ the King asked Robert Bruce. ‘Ye have heard me, ye have heard my minister, ye have heard my Council, ye have heard the Earl of Mar touching the report of this treason: whether are ye yet fully persuaded or not?’
‘Surely, sir,’ replied Bruce, ‘I would have farther light, before I preached it, to persuade the people. If I were but a private subject, not a pastor, I could rest upon your Majesty’s report, as other do.’
‘Are ye fully persuaded?’ demanded the King, turning to James Balfour.
‘I shall speak nothing to the contrary, sir,’ Balfour replied.
‘But are ye not persuaded?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
William Watson made the same answer, and Walter Balcalquall said that ‘he would affirm all that Mr David Lindsay preached in pulpit, in presence of his Majesty’, which was founded on James’s own report. James was not satisfied. ‘Think ye that Mr David doubted of my report?’ Lindsay was sent for, and confirmed that he was ‘persuaded in conscience’ of this treason. Was this enough to persuade Balcalquall, James demanded? ‘Sir, I would further time and light,’ the minister replied.
‘Are ye fully persuaded?’ James asked John Hall. ‘I would have the civil trial going before, sir, that I may be persuaded,’ replied Hall. Peter Hewatt claimed that ‘I suspect not your proclamation’. But do you believe it, James persisted? ‘The President heard what I said the last Sabbath’, replied Hewatt, but James had to hear with his own ears. ‘Sir, I believe it,’ said Hewatt at last.
Thanks
to their answers, Hewatt and George Robertson were spared censure. The other ministers were forbidden to preach anywhere in Scotland, required to quit Edinburgh within forty-eight hours and to keep a distance of ten miles from the city, all under pain of death.17 In time, four of them capitulated, and were allowed to return to Edinburgh, but only after suffering the humiliation of travelling around the country and giving repeated public performances of their submission. Finally, only Robert Bruce – the only Kirk man that James had trusted enough to place on his Privy Council during his sojourn in Scandinavia – stood firm, and that stand led to his permanent banishment from Scotland on pain of death. ‘I see, Mr Robert,’ said the King, ‘that ye would make me a murderer. It is known very well that I was never bloodthirsty,’ he claimed. ‘If I would have taken their lives, I had causes enough. I needed not to hazard myself so.’18
Against all odds, James turned the bizarre Gowrie incident into his most successful attack on the Kirk. As even Calderwood had to acknowledge, ‘This occasion was gripped at to overthrow the minister at Edinburgh’ because the Kirk had ‘crossed the court in all their evil proceedings, and was a terror to the session, nobility, and others of the land.’ Now, after 5 August, ‘the King and Council usurped the place and authority of the Kirk’. To James Melvill, it was ‘a sacrilegious sentence’ that ‘usurping Christ and his Kirk’s place and authority, deposit [deprived] them from preaching the Gospel within his country for ever; which was a hundred times war nor [worse than] if by form of civil process he had hanged them’.19