The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain

by Неизвестный

  Heaven bless King James our joy,

  And Charles his baby

  Great George our brave viceroy,

  And his fair lady.67

  Compared to the passion and violence of James’s relations with Somerset, his love for Buckingham was a gentle, fulfilling thing indeed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Of Jack, and Tom

  BY 1622, JAMES had been negotiating with Spain for eight years to win Charles his bride. Now he had to balance his desire to see the Infanta married to his son with the popular English call for aid to the Palatinate, but how? Philip III had died in 1620, to be succeeded by his son, the young Philip IV. Through the year, negotiations continued as usual, constantly crippled by rumours and false starts. The Infanta was about to be handed over, it was said; Lord Admiral Buckingham was raising funds to build a suitably grand fleet to go and collect her the next spring, accompanied by the Prince of Wales. In October, Endymion Porter, a Buckingham protégé and Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles, was sent to Spain to push affairs along. But the impatient bridegroom had other ideas. When Porter returned from Spain in December, Charles stepped up his campaign, demanding that Secretary of State Sir George Calvert, accelerate negotiations with Spain and the Pope. He pestered James’s current ambassador in Madrid, Sir John Digby, now Earl of Bristol, as to when it would be acceptable to start sending love letters; he took up Spanish lessons, a nice touch to put his new bride at her ease when she arrived in England. But the language classes had a more immediate purpose, as he had confided to Gondomar as early as May of 1622: once the Spanish ambassador returned to Spain, he should send instructions for Charles to go and place himself in the hands of King Philip, and Charles would make the trip to Madrid ‘incognito and only accompanied by two servants’.1

  Charles later declared that ‘that heroic thought started out of his own brain, to visit the court of Madrid’.2 At some point, the Prince confided in Buckingham, winning his support and, according to their own later testimonies, Buckingham and Charles together then persuaded James to agree: the Prince ‘being of fit age and ripeness for marriage’, recalled James, ‘urged me to know the certainty in a matter of so great weight’. James’s response was to insist on a travelling companion: ‘I only sent the man whom I most trusted, Buckingham, commanding him never to leave him nor to return home without him.’3 But then the King got cold feet, and called in to give his advice Sir Francis Cottington, Charles’s own secretary, and a previous ambassador to Spain. When Cottington argued against the plan, James reportedly ‘threw himself upon his bed’, crying ‘I told you this before’, lamenting passionately ‘that he was undone, and should lose Baby Charles’. Buckingham then attacked Cottington ‘with all possible bitterness of words’ and berated the King, saying that if he did not allow Charles to go nobody could accept his word on anything: ‘It would be such a disobligation upon the Prince, who had set his heart now upon the journey after his Majesty’s approbation, that he could never forget it, nor forgive any man who had been the cause of it.’4

  Buckingham’s vehement support won the day for the Prince, and the plan was put into commission in February 1623. On Monday 17th, Charles and Buckingham were with James at Theobalds. That day, the King departed for Royston, but Charles and Buckingham headed instead for Buckingham’s estate at New Hall. As they took their parting from the King, James said he expected them to ‘be with me upon Friday night’. ‘Sir,’ replied Buckingham, ‘if we should stay a day or two longer I hope your Majesty would pardon us.’ ‘Well, well,’ replied James. The little exchange was for the benefit of onlookers, because the King was well aware of their plans. After a night at New Hall, Charles and Buckingham rode to Gravesend calling themselves Thomas and John, or Tom and Jack Smith, accompanied only by Buckingham’s Gentleman of the Horse, Richard Greames.5

  Despite his reservations, and his very real concern for the wellbeing of his son and favourite, James could not help but be struck by the romance of the plot. In his many letters written and sent during the time of the escapade, Charles and Buckingham became ‘My sweet boys and dear venturous knights, worthy to be put in a new romance.’6 He was even struck with the Muse long enough to pen an eight-stanza poem entitled ‘Of Jack, and Tom’ that saw the quest for the Infanta as an echo of his grandfather’s and his own advances to French and Danish princesses:

  Love is a world of many Spains,

  Where coldest hills, and hottest plains

  With barren rocks, and fertile fields,

  By turn despair, and comfort yields.

  But who can doubt of prosperous luck

  Where love, and fortune, doth conduct?

  Thy grandsire great, thy father too

  Were thine examples, this to do;

  Whose brave attempts, in heat of love,

  Both France and Denmark, did approve.

  So Jack and Tom do nothing new

  When love and fortune they pursue.

  Kind shepherds, that have loved them long

  Be not so rash, in censuring wrong

  Correct your fears, leave off to mourn,

  The heavens will favour their return.

  Remit the care, to royal Pan

  Of Jack his son, and Tom, his man.7

  But as chivalric heroes, Tom and Jack were almost farcically inept. Their choice of supposed disguise, ‘fair riding coats and false beards’ immediately ‘gave suspicion they were no such manner of men’. While they were crossing the Thames at Gravesend, one of their beards fell off, and, to make matters worse, they used a gold piece to pay the ferryman who within minutes had raised the town officers, forcing them to escape by some energetic riding. Their bad luck continued. Near Rochester, they bumped into the train of the ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor, finishing its long journey to London – and, to avoid it, leapt over a hedge into the fields. Sir Lewis Lewkener, in attendance on the ambassador, took the two ‘for suspicious persons’ and sent word to the Mayor of Canterbury. They managed to evade capture at Rochester, but a horseman was despatched to follow them, and overtook them near Sittingbourne. By the time they reached Canterbury, the Mayor was waiting for these two antic men, and Buckingham was forced to reveal his identity, and claim that he was paying a secret visit to the fleet in his capacity as Lord Admiral before they were allowed to proceed. Even at Dover they were stopped again until they gave ‘some secret satisfaction’. In Dover, Endymion Porter, Sir Francis Cottington, James Leviston (one of the Prince’s Bedchamber) and a Scot named Kirk joined them, and they set sail for Dieppe on Wednesday morning.8

  The same day, news of their flight broke, and was soon, according to John Chamberlain, ‘in every man’s mouth, but few believed it at first, because they could not apprehend the reasons of so strange a resolution as being a mystery of state beyond common capacities’. On Thursday, James wrote to the Privy Council explaining that he had not told them because ‘secrecy was the life of the business’. It was ‘the Prince’s own desire’, he continued, and Buckingham ‘had no hand in it but only by his [the King’s] commandment’. ‘The world talks somewhat freely,’ reported Chamberlain, ‘as if it were done’, that the Prince was planning to be married at a Catholic Mass in Madrid, to avoid the trouble it would cause at home. Whatever the cause, Chamberlain concluded, ‘all concur that it is a very costly and hazardous experiment’.9

  Although James was undoubtedly privy to the planning of the posting to Spain, it is less certain to what extent Buckingham and Charles involved him from the moment they left France. It seems that they did not write to him until they had passed the border into Spain, so presumably James was dependent on the same news networks that informed the likes of John Chamberlain, who marvelled that messengers between Madrid and London ‘go up and down like a well with two buckets’. Yet even Chamberlain admitted on 8 March that ‘we have little certainty of the Prince’s journey’. On the Sunday after their flight, St Paul’s Cross had been packed, in expectation of news during the sermon, but the preacher merely prayed
‘for the Prince’s prosperous journey and safe return’. After landing on French soil on Wednesday, Charles and Buckingham arrived in Paris on Friday, and left again on Sunday: some had it that in Paris ‘they saw the King at supper, and the Queen practising a ball with divers other ladies’, but others pointed out that this was unlikely on the first Saturday in Lent. Word had it that they had been stopped again, or had passed Bayonne, or that Gondomar and Digby were waiting for them at the border. Now, others were planning to join them, following a list left by the Prince, with the addition (by James) of physician Dr John Craig, and two chaplains, Leonard Mawe and Matthew Wren ‘that were forgotten’.10

  The sweet boys’ letters home to Dad were determinedly upbeat. Crossing the border into Spain, they met Walsingham Gresley, bearing the post from James’s ambassador Digby to London, and ‘saucily opened’ the letters directed to King James, discovering ‘your business so slowly advanced, that we think ourselves happy that we have begun it so soon’; it appeared that no marriage articles had been concluded, since the negotiators were waiting until a papal dispensation arrived, ‘which may be God knows when’.11 This lack of progress, neatly if tacitly ascribed to Digby, would make their unexpected arrival all the more welcome. Arriving in Madrid, Buckingham made sure James knew ‘how we like your daughter, his wife, and my lady mistress’, that is, the Infanta, ‘without flattery, I think there is not a sweeter creature in the world. Baby Charles himself is so touched at the heart, that he confesses all he ever yet saw, is nothing to her, and swears if that he want her, there shall be blows. I shall lose no time in hastening their conjunction.’ He also vouched for the ‘kind carefulness’ shown by his opposite number, King Philip’s chief counsellor the Condé de Olivares, towards Charles.12

  They had hoped to keep secret Charles’s presence in Madrid, but they were soon forced to change plans; Buckingham knew that with so many posts ‘making such haste after us’, Charles could not be kept hidden. In Buckingham’s narrative, their reception in Madrid was remarkably smooth. He sent for Gondomar, who went to Olivares, who obtained for Buckingham a private audience with the King; Olivares properly insisted on saluting the Prince in Philip’s name. The next day, sitting in ‘an invisible coach’, they were treated to ‘a private visit of the King, the Queen, the Infanta, Don Carlos, and the Cardinal’ as they passed by three times. Then Olivares came into their coach and took them to their lodgings, telling them that King Philip ‘longed and died for want of a nearer sight of our wooer’. Olivares and Buckingham encountered Philip ‘walking in the streets, with his cloak thrown over his face, and a sword and buckler by his side’; the King leapt into their coach, and was brought to meet Charles; ‘much kindness and compliment’ passed between the two young men. ‘You may judge by this,’ Buckingham assured James, ‘how sensible this King is of your son’s journey; and if we can either judge by outward shows, or general speeches, we have reason to condemn your ambassadors for rather writing too sparingly than too much.’ He urged James to write ‘the kindest letter of thanks and acknowledgment you can’ to Olivares, and concluded by quoting Olivares’s latest come-on: ‘he said no later unto us than this morning, that if the Pope would not give a dispensation for a wife, they would give the Infanta to thy son’s Baby, as his wench.’ While the Spaniards were open, the Pope’s nuncio ‘works as maliciously, and as actively as he can against us, but receives such rude answers, that he hopes he will be soon weary on’t’. Charles and Buckingham inferred from this that the Pope was unlikely to grant a dispensation, and therefore asked for James’s directions as to ‘how far we may engage you in the acknowledgement of the Pope’s spiritual power, for we almost find, if you will be contented to acknowledge the Pope, chief head under Christ, that the match will be made without him’.13

  This negative account of the papal nuncio was squeezed into the last paragraph of the letter, but James was not fooled, and singled out Buckingham’s ‘cooling card’ concerning ‘the nuncio’s averseness to this business’ for special attention. It was for this very reason that he had sent two of Charles’s chaplains ‘fittest for this purpose’, Leonard Mawe and Matthew Wren. He had, he wrote, fully instructed the clerics so that their ‘behaviour and service’ should at once conform to the ‘purity of the primitive [Anglican] church’ while getting ‘as near the Roman form as can lawfully be done, for it hath ever been my way to go with the Church of Rome usque ad aras’, literally, even unto the altars.14 But in truth James had very firm ideas about just how far he would go. He reminded Buckingham that Spain had never raised the possibility that the dispensation would not be granted; that Spain had set down the spiritual conditions, which he had then signed, and Spain had sent them to Rome, where the consulto opined that ‘the Pope might, nay ought, for the weal of Christendom grant a dispensation upon these conditions’. But, he continued, ‘I know not what ye mean by my acknowledging the Pope’s spiritual supremacy. I am sure ye would not have me to renounce my religion for all the world. But all I can guess at your meaning is that it may be ye have an allusion to a passage in my book against Bellarmine’ (his 1609 Monitory-Preface) ‘where I offer, if the Pope would quit his godhead and usurping over kings, to acknowledge him for the chief bishop, to whom all appeals of churchmen ought to lie en dernier resort’. In case Buckingham and Charles did not have his complete works to hand, he enclosed a copy of ‘the very words’. That, he concluded, ‘is the furthest that my conscience will permit me to go upon this point; for I am not a monsieur who can shift his religion as easily as he can shift his shirt when he cometh from tennis’ – a sly dig at the once Huguenot, then Catholic Henri IV of France.15 Charles and Buckingham hurriedly wrote to James ‘to assure you, that neither in spiritual nor temporal things, there is any thing pressed upon us more than is already agreed upon’. Although the Spanish had tried to capitalise on their friendly relations, the Englishmen had outmanoeuvred them with ‘many forcible arguments’. The Spanish were also, they revealed, ‘in hope of a conversion of us both, but now excuses are more studied than reasons for it, though the[y] say their loves shall ever make them wish it. To conclude: we never saw the business in a better way than now it is. Therefore we humbly beseech you, lose no time in hastening the ships…’16

  Buckingham’s confident assertion that the Spaniards realised that their conversion to the Roman Catholic faith was unlikely to happen was completely disingenuous. Even as he wrote the letter, he and Charles were under immense pressure to consider the possibility, and during Holy Week in April Buckingham agreed to a discussion with Father Francisco de Jesus at the monastery of San Geronimo. Later in the month, Charles submitted to a similar session with Philip IV’s confessor, and was apparently shaken by his arguments for papal supremacy – much to Buckingham’s annoyance: the Marquis was seen to leave, and go ‘down to a place where he could be alone, in order to show his extreme indignation, going so far as to pull off his hat and to trample it under feet’. Buckingham forbade any future sessions.17

  On 27 April, the Prince and the favourite reported that the papal dispensation had arrived ‘clogged’ with conditions that were forwarded for James to consider; the boys urged the King to comfort himself with the thought that it ‘will not be long before we get forth of this labyrinth, wherein we have been entangled these many years’. Assuring him they would ‘yield to nothing’, they begged James to keep the conditions secret: ‘if you should not keep them so, it will beget disputes, censures, and conclusions there to our prejudice.’18 But it became clear that they could not afford to wait for James’s authority to clear every little detail, and Charles asked his father for a formal written commitment to support whatever Charles agreed to in his name. ‘I confess that this is an ample trust that I desire,’ wrote the Prince, ‘and if it were not mere necessity I should not be so bold. Yet I hope your Majesty shall never repent you of any trust ye put upon your Majesty’s humble and obedient son and servant.’ On 11 May, James forwarded his commitment: ‘I now send you, my baby, here enclosed the
power you desire. It were a strange trust that I would refuse to put upon my only son and upon my best servant. I know such two as ye are will never promise in my name but what may stand with my conscience, honour, and safety, and all these I do fully trust with any one of you two.’19 As if to prove his trust, on 18 May James made Buckingham a Duke, raising him above all other English peers except the Duke of Lennox, who was now also created Duke of Richmond.20

  As one problem was solved, another appeared. Now it transpired that the dispensation could not be delivered until Philip had sworn an oath that James and Charles would carry out the new conditions of the marriage treaty. The ‘conditions’ turned out to be a demand that James, subsequently endorsed by the Privy Council and Parliament, would allow English Catholics to worship freely and openly, and that the Spaniards would continue their attempts at conversion – in support of which the Pope wrote himself to James, arguing that even the fact of these current marriage negotiations was the silent word of the Holy Spirit telling him that he was right to embrace his mother’s faith.21 The result was another round of talks in early May to thrash out the new amendments, and especially the matter of allowing English Catholics to worship freely. Worship was one thing – Charles quite promptly gave his father’s word that laws against recusants would be suspended and their repeal put before Parliament – but free worship was quite another. James would tolerate private Roman worship in the worshippers’ own houses, and even secret worship at the Infanta’s chapel, but he would never agree to the public toleration of open worship at the chapel.22