The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain
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James’s affection for Villiers provoked some tension between the favourite and Prince Charles. In March 1616 Charles saw a ring on the favourite’s hand, and took it for himself. When Villiers asked for it back the following day, Charles claimed that he could not find it. Villiers was upset and told the King, who sent for his son and ‘used such bitter language to him as forced His Highness to shed tears’. Two months later, when Charles ‘in jest’ turned a waterspout on Villiers in the garden at Greenwich, James, in a rare display of violence, boxed his ears.86 Over the next few months, however, Charles began to emerge from the too-long shadow of his beloved dead brother, Henry. He spent the end of 1617 in the country with his father, and one observer noted that Charles was making inroads into James’s affections, which might be ‘a danger for some other great person’, meaning Villiers.87 In time, though, Charles and Villiers became friends, and, in the summer of 1618, at the Prince’s suggestion held a ‘friends’ feast’ to seal their relationship. From then on the King, the Prince and the favourite became a firm triumvirate, often referring to each other by familiar, and familial, nicknames: Baby Charles, dear Dad.
By rights, if the author of Corona Regia is to be believed, James should have tired of Villiers sometime in 1618, and moved on, as was his wont, to a younger man. Evidently believing this to be likely, the Howards attempted to seize the King’s attention by pushing into his purview a young man named Sir William Monson. As John Chamberlain told the story, the Howards tried ‘to raise and recover their fortunes by setting up this new idol, and took great pains in tricking and pranking him up, besides washing his face every day with posset-curd’, presumably in an attempt to soften his skin. James, perhaps repelled by the olfactory side-effects of this curdled milk and ale concoction, was not taken by Monson, and very soon sent him a message to the effect that ‘the King did not like of his forwardness, and presenting himself continually about him’. In fact, Monson should absent himself from the royal presence – and preferably from the court. According to Chamberlain, this hit home not only with Monson, but with several other young pretenders, who promptly took off to the country: ‘most of our young court gallants are vanished like mushrooms’. It was also a ‘shrewd reprimand and crossblow’ to the Howards,88 but they didn’t give up hope.
The Monson incident was a salutary reminder to Villiers that his preeminence was far from assured,89 but his continued rise suggested otherwise. James appointed him Earl of Buckingham at Whitehall in January 1617, and the following month the new Earl was sworn into the Privy Council. James expressed his feelings for ‘Steenie’ in a speech to the other councillors: ‘I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man, and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John, and I have my George.’90 Although not a frequent attender at the Council table, Buckingham was perhaps preeminent in terms of real influence in the Jacobean court, for, like Somerset before him, he attended on James’s person constantly – which meant, in the summer of 1617, that Buckingham was the man closest to the King when James went home to Scotland.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Salmonlike Instinct
IT WAS NOW thirteen long years since James had proclaimed to his people in Edinburgh in April 1603 that he would visit them ‘every three year at the least, or ofter [more often], as I shall occasion’. He’d written this in the Basilikon Doron, he continued, ‘and it were a shame to me not to perform that thing which I have written.’1 James’s promise to go home had not once been honoured. Scotland had, of course, known that James would be an absentee King, and from the outset James had taken measures to allow the country to function in his absence. James’s signature on a stamp was given to Sir Patrick Murray, and the Privy Council was given special power to take certain actions (such as the granting of passports, and the auditing of Exchequer accounts) that usually required royal approval. A police guard of forty men was raised to keep the peace in the King’s absence. The Scottish Privy Council were given full control of the Borders, both in Scotland and England. A system of postmasters was put in place to ensure the smooth running of the postal system between London and Edinburgh. In his own phrase, James ‘governed by pen’ from London, while leaving much of the daily business in the hands of his chief ministers in Edinburgh, first the Earl of Dunbar (until his death in 1611) and then Lord Chancellor Sir John Seton, Prince Charles’s guardian, who had been raised to become Earl of Dunfermline. The situation was never truly happy, and James was constantly urged to consider a trip home but it was not until April 1616 that his Lord Chancellor, Dunfermline, brought back from England a firm assurance that the King was planning to visit his homeland the following year.2
Within weeks, the Scottish Privy Council had authorised repairs to the King’s palaces at Holyroodhouse, Falkland and Stirling.3 Since ‘the place of his first rendezvous and longest abode during his stay in this kingdom’ would be at Holyroodhouse, it followed naturally that the nobility and his entire retinue ‘mon [must] be lodged within the Burgh of Edinburgh, the Canongate, and suburbs of the said burgh’. Lodgings and stables had to be found for five thousand men, and five thousand horse. A survey was undertaken to ensure that everything was in order for the King’s reception, and, importantly, would prove ‘seemly in the eyes of the many English nobles and gentlemen who will be in his train’. Edinburgh knew that the English were going to be scrutinising her: ‘the strangers and others that are to accompany his Majesty here will be so much the more careful narrowly to remark and espy the carriage and conversation of the inhabitants of the said burgh, the form of their entertainment and lodging.’ Therefore, strangers were to be given priority. Lodgings were to be ‘furnished with honest and clean bedding, and well washin and well smelled napry and other linens, and with a sufficient number and quantity of good vessels, clean and clear, and of sufficient largeness.’ Acts were passed for removing all the cattle in the King’s Park of Holyrood, so that it could be stocked in good time with wethers to be fattened for his arrival. Stables were to be well provided with corn, straw and hay. The streets must be clean, so that ‘no filth nor middens be seen upon the same’. The ‘idle beggars and vagabonds still swarming’ Edinburgh, Canongate and Leith, blithely unaware of the previous acts passed against them, were to be sent back to their own parishes. Since the time they didn’t spend ‘in all kind of riot and filthy and beastly lechery and whoredom to the offence and displeasure of God’, they devoted to importuning the King’s nobility, counsellors and subjects ‘with most shameful exclamations and outcries’, it was to be feared that ‘they will follow his Majesty’s Court, to the great discredit and disgrace of the country’.4 Knowing the bibulous nature of James’s retinue, large amounts of wine were imported from France – although for once afterwards there proved to be a surplus which had to be sold off cheap, much to the anguish of Scottish wine merchants.5
In making James feel at home, hunting was naturally made a matter of priority. It was solemnly proclaimed at the Mercat Cross that, since ‘his Majesty mon [must] sometime have his recreation, exercise, and pastime in the fields’, it was necessary ‘that the moorfowl, partridges, and pouttis [young fowl], within ten miles of the places of his Majesty’s abode here shall be preserved and carefully haynit for his Majesty’s pastime and game’. Therefore, it was now illegal ‘to slay any moorfowl, partridges, or pouttis, within ten miles of the Burgh of Edinburgh and other parts of his Majesty’s abode in this kingdom, during the time of his Majesty’s being within the same’: the heinous crime carried a penalty of one hundred pounds.6 Another proclamation banned ‘the slaying of his Majesty’s bucks’ in Falkland Park, with even greater penalties: an Earl would be liable to a five hundred marks’ fine.7
By the end of
1616 the Scottish Privy Council realised that, as ever, the funds available would not stretch to cover all the grandiose plans. James had to call a convention of estates in Scotland, which met in March 1617 to vote an extra tax the promise of which could be used as security to raise funds immediately.8 But by now suspicions about the King’s reasons for coming north were being openly voiced. Although the English Parliament had scuppered any immediate prospect of Union between England and Scotland, James remained resolved to do what he could to expedite the process. He believed that the single biggest stumbling block was the difference between the Church of England and the Scottish Kirk. Over recent months, he had made certain moves that the Kirk found ominous. When in May 1615 the Archbishop of St Andrews Gledstanes died, for example, James had replaced him with the compliant Archbishop Spottiswoode. Together in England, the King and Spottiswoode planned how the Kirk might be brought into line with Anglican practice. A memorandum, written in Spottiswoode’s hand only a month after Gledstanes’s death, detailed some proposals: these included a new form of service, which would eliminate spontaneous and ‘impertinent’ prayer; a new Confession of Faith ‘agreeing so near as can be with the Confession of the English Church’; the introduction of a new order for choosing archbishops and bishops (and in the meantime, if required, the order used ‘here in England’ should be employed); a uniform order for the electing of ministers; and the alteration of the forms of baptism, communion and marriage, along with the introduction of confirmation. This would have to be ‘advised and agreed upon’, of course, through a General Assembly, but the Assembly ‘must be drawn to the form of a Convocation House here in England’.9 Throughout the memorandum, the dominant theme was enforced compliance with the Anglican model. With Spottiswoode’s forceful guidance, much of this was pushed through at the August 1616 meeting of the General Assembly in Aberdeen, but there remained to be implemented important innovations that James insisted on, namely kneeling while receiving communion; observing some holy days dedicated to Christ (Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension and Whitsunday); episcopal confirmation, or ‘bishoping’; private baptism; and private communion to sick persons – demands which became known as the ‘five articles of Perth’. James agreed to put off the question of the five articles until his visit to Scotland – as a result many believed that his return home was little more than an excuse to force the Kirk into submission.10
To combat the rumours, in December 1616 James wrote to his Privy Council in Scotland outlining the reasoning behind his proposed visit.11 Reminiscent in some ways of his missive to the same Council in 1589, making the case for his imminent departure for Denmark, the letter’s defensive tone reveals much of James’s true concerns about the possibility, whether real or imagined, of attacks on him. He was alarmed, he wrote, that on his arrival in Scotland he would meet with ‘any unwelcome coldness of a number of our good subjects in that country’, deriving from ‘a prejudged opinion in many of our people’s hearts grounded upon false rumours, either maliciously or foolishly spread, anent [concerning] the causes and errands of our intention to repair thither at this time’. He wanted to take this opportunity to present ‘an ingenuous and sincere profession unto you of the motives inducing us to resolve upon our journey’. The ‘main and principal motive’ he declared, ‘we are not ashamed to confess’ was ‘that we have had these many years a great and natural longing to see our native soil and of our birth and breeding. And this salmonlike instinct of our mind restlessly, both when we are awake, and many times in our sleep, so stirred up our thoughts and bended our desires to make a journey thither that we can never rest satisfied till it shall please God we may accomplish it.’ This desire was joined to the practical opportunity to ‘discharge our kingly office the time we are there’ by hearing and resolving suits that required his presence.
Only then did James come to the crux of his letter, concerning fears that he would make ‘alterations or reformations’ of his government ‘either ecclesiastical or civil’. He asked his subjects to ‘have that settled confidence in our honesty and discretion that we will not so much as wish anything to be done there which shall not tend to the glory of God and the weal of that commonwealth and all our good subjects therein’. They should ‘not only for your own parts harbour no prejudged conceit of our intentions upon the grounds of these idle rumours, but also make this our sincere declaration come to the ears of our other good subjects, that we may have comfort of such a joyful meeting there with our people as we for our part shall ever deserve’. Anxious to show their gratitude, the Scottish Privy Council decided that the letter should be placed in the Council’s Register Books, ‘there to remain as a perpetual remembrance of his Majesty’s love, kindness, and affection to this country’.
James and his retinue set out north in mid-March 1617, travelling between ten and twenty-one miles a day, with stops of one or two nights at estates up the east coast.12 Leaving English government largely in the hands of Sir Francis Bacon, now Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, James took with him some of his most trusted servants: the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Arundel, Southampton, Pembroke, Montgomery, and, of course, Buckingham; John Murray of Lochmaben, and Viscount Fenton. The sizeable train included a clutch of bishops and ministers, including the Bishops of Ely, Lincoln and Winchester and the up-and-coming William Laud, on hand to push the King’s ecclesiastical reforms.13 Each venue welcomed the King with the usual celebrations, and provided the requisite hunting ground. There were other occasional treats: an Easter Sunday sermon by Andrewes at Durham Cathedral, a horse race, and a ‘cocking’ (cockfight), where the King ‘appointed four cocks to be put on the pit together, which made his Majesty very merry’. James, in return, performed his kingly duties. On Sunday 30 March, at Lincoln Minster, he reportedly healed fifty people of ‘the King’s Evil’, scrofula, by the laying on of hands, and fifty-three more on Tuesday 1 April at St Catherine’s.14 Despite suffering from a bad back after another riding accident, James was in high good humour, as Buckingham reported back to Bacon in London: ‘his Majesty, God be thanked, is in very good health, and so well pleased with his journey, that I never saw him better, nor merrier.’15
On Tuesday 13 May, James crossed the Tweed and entered his motherland for the first time in over fourteen years.16 Travelling via Dunglass, Seton and Leith, he made his entry into Edinburgh on the afternoon of 16 May to great acclaim. It seemed that his years in England had finally taught him some skills in relating to his people: as David Calderwood noted, ‘he made his entry on horseback, that he might the better be seen by the people; whereas before, he rode in the coach all the way’.17 Seeing their King, John Hay claimed in his speech of welcome, ‘our eyes behold the greatest human felicity our hearts could wish, which is to feed upon the royal countenance of our true Phoenix, the bright star of our northern firmament, the ornament of our age’.18 The somewhat numbing succession of speeches, eulogies, poems and celebrations, in multiple languages, was captured for posterity in a handsome folio memorial volume entitled The Muses’ Welcome.19
Not everyone was impressed by Scotland. One English courtier, Anthony Weldon, summed up his feelings. ‘First, for the country I must confess it is too good for those that possess it, and too bad for others to be at the charge to conquer it. The air might be wholesome but for the stinking people that inhabit it, the ground might be fruitful had they the will to manure it. Their beasts be generally small, women only excepted, of which sort there are none greater in all the world.’ There might well be ‘great store of deer’, Weldon admitted, but he was yet to see any: ‘I confess all the deer I met withal was dear lodgings, dear horsemeat, dear tobacco and English beer.’ The efforts of the Edinburgh magistrates went largely unappreciated by Weldon – ‘there is great store of fowl, as foul houses, foul sheets and shorts, foul linen, foul dishes and pots, foul trenchers and napkins’ – with one exceptional success: ‘corn is reasonable plentiful at this time, for since they heard of the King’s coming, it hath been as unlawful for the com
mon people to eat wheat, as it was in the old time for any but the priests to eat the shew-bread; they prayed much for his coming, and long fasted for his welfare’.20 But another anonymous English courtier was impressed by the Scots’ efforts, as he reported to Bacon in London: ‘The country affords more profit and better contentment than I could even promise myself by reading of it. The King was never more cheerful in both body and mind, never so well pleased; and so are the English of all conditions. The entertainment very honourable, very general, and very full; every day feasts and invitations. I know not who paid for it. They strive, by direction, to give us all fair contentment, that we may know that the country is not so contemptible but that it is worth the cherishing.’21
It was not only the English who were carefully scrutinising the meeting of the two countries. The Scottish ministers were on their guard for signs of James’s intentions towards the Kirk. They did not have to wait for long. On 17 May, according to David Calderwood, by now a leading figure in the Kirk, ‘the English service was begun in the Chapel Royal, with singing of choristers, surplices, and playing on organs’.22 The Whitsun communion service on 8 June at Holyroodhouse, where James was staying, was celebrated according to the English fashion, with most of the bishops and several courtiers following the King’s lead by celebrating communion kneeling. Those who did not follow suit were soon officially ordered to conform, and by the following Tuesday, the Edinburgh minister William Struthers preached in Holyrood chapel before James, ‘and observed the English form in his prayer and behaviour’.23 Shortly after, a scandal was provoked when one of the Guard who had died was buried ‘after the English fashion’ by the Dean of St Paul’s, Valentine Carey. Carey asked all those assembled to recommend with him the soul of their deceased brother unto Almighty God. This, reported the newsgatherer John Chamberlain, ‘was so ill taken, that he was driven to retract it openly, and to confess he did it in a kind of civility rather than according to the perfect rule of divinity’. When the corpse was about to be laid in the ground, William Laud donned a surplice, again causing outrage among the Presbyterians. When it came time for communion, one Scottish bishop, Chamberlain continued, refused to take it while Laud remained kneeling.24 On 13 June, a diocesan synod held at Edinburgh appointed commissioners to declare to James that they ‘could not descend’ to the five articles proposed by the King.25 They stressed the danger to the General Assembly: in England, during Parliament, there was no national Assembly, as there was in Scotland: ‘there meeteth only a certain number of the inferior clergy, who sits below in the House of Convocation, like ciphers, giving naked consent of obedience to these things which are decreed by the bishops in the over house.’26