Disgrace And Favour

by Jeremy Potter

  Carr had behaved with discretion under Overbury’s influence. The triumph of his marriage to Frances Howard made him arrogant and the government unpopular. The expenses of the wedding had not eased the problems of the Exchequer. Parliament had to be summoned, proved contumacious and was dismissed. Carr affected indifference but the King took fright. For opposite reasons, Northampton and Southampton had both plotted that the Commons should vote him no money. Northampton’s dealings were, as ever, deep and devious, but Carey fathomed them with a secret informant’s aid. Parliament failing him, only one source of revenue would remain open to the King - a Spanish dowry, to be paid when Prince Charles married the Infanta. England would thus become allied to the Hapsburgs and the Catholic cause.

  Northampton played his cards with skill. Carr was his advocate with the King, Lord Roxburgh with the Prince. In the face of protests, James assumed his role of peacemaker. He denied any intention of deserting Protestantism for the Pope: the marriage of his son to a Catholic princess would do no more than balance the marriage of his daughter to the Protestant Elector.

  Sir John Digby was the English ambassador in Madrid. Carey wrote to him on behalf of the Protestant opposition. Sir John replied that he was under instructions to advance the alliance. While he could do nothing openly to oppose it, he had information for the King which he feared to send lest it were intercepted by the Council. A sealed letter was enclosed, addressed to the King in the ambassador’s own hand. Would Carey himself deliver it and trust no intermediary?

  That week the King lay at Beaulieu. As Carey made the journey in his coach, he thought with sorrow of the vigour with which he would once have leapt into the saddle. The wildness of the New Forest reminded him of the Border, and it occurred to him to wonder, not for the first time, whether a life in disgrace was not preferable to one in favour. Hardships mellowed in the memory and court life suited women more than men.

  On arrival he showed the letter to the Earl of Southampton and was forced to restrain him from opening it. In the evening, the Earl sought a private audience with the King and obtained permission for Carey to be received.

  James was lolling in a chair, fuddled with drink. He made a show of fear when Carey entered the room, demanding that Southampton search him for hidden arms. Carey was bidden not to approach the royal presence on pain of instant arrest, but to hand the letter to the Earl who would pass it to the King. This Carey refused to do, protesting his loyalty and long years of service to James and his family. On what a craven head had the crown of England descended! In his audiences with Queen Elizabeth Carey had done the trembling. Now it was being done by the King - a fine heir to the Normans and Plantage-nets.

  ‘My lord of Somerset bids me not trust you, Sir Robert.’ James rebuked him with one dirty finger held up unsteadily. The words were thick and slurred and barely comprehensible. Surely, thought Carey, the throne will soon be vacant.

  ‘Your lord of Somerset is mistaken,’ he replied firmly. ‘I love him as dearly as I love your very Majesty, but he loves not me since I hanged Geordie Bourne against his cousin’s will.’

  ‘Of all those wild men on the marches, you were the most savage. You assaulted my warden, Lord Roxburgh, with your own bare fists.’

  ‘In defence of my honour and my wife’s.’

  At the mention of Lady Carey the King’s sullen stupor lifted like a mist dispersing. ‘Your wife’s a good woman,’ he mumbled. ‘What favour you have from me you owe to her. But for her, Baby Charles would be dead.’

  ‘Has your Majesty forgotten my ride to Edinburgh?’ Carey spoke more bitterly than he intended and the King cringed back in his chair, looking to Southampton for protection.

  ‘That was your own folly,’ he muttered. ‘You turned Cecil and the Council against you. Then, when I would have favoured you despite them, you plotted with my son Henry against me. Now you come to try me with some new trick. Give me the letter, man, and then stand your distance.’

  He leaned forward and snatched it from Carey’s hand. When he had torn it open his eyes had difficulty in focusing. ‘Sweet Jesu,’ he breathed when he had screwed them up and contrived to start reading. When he had finished he swore a different oath. ‘Shatansh arsh!’ he cried.

  Snivelling like a child, he let the letter fall. Southampton picked it up and read it without asking leave. He passed it to Carey. From a spy in the royal palace in Madrid the ambassador had obtained a list of Spanish pensioners in England, those who since James’s accession had received regular payments from the King of Spain to forward Spanish interests. They included Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury; Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton; Frances Howard’s mother, Lady Suffolk; and Mistress Jane Drummond, principal Lady of the Queen’s Bedchamber, now Lady Roxburgh. Amounts and dates of payment were specified. It was the biggest revelation of a Catholic conspiracy since the Gunpowder Plot.

  Carey withdrew, glad to leave the King to his drunken grief. The blow was one which even Northampton would find difficulty in countering. Bribery was too common and Spain too powerful for charges of treason to be brought, but fear would inevitably drive James back into the arms of Protestant advisers. This was Carey’s prediction to his wife when he returned to London, and so it proved. Within a month the office of Principal Secretary of State, vacant since Cecil’s death, was filled by the appointment of Sir Ralph Winwood, staunchest of Protestants.

  The few weeks’ delay was caused by a hard-fought struggle for the royal favourite’s consent. Since his name had not appeared among the pensioners, Carr stood higher than ever in the King’s trust and no appointment could be made except on his advice. The Howards pulled him one way, his knowledge of the King’s inclination the other. As always, a bribe proved decisive, this time a Protestant one. The Dutch were fighting for their independence against Spanish rule in the Netherlands, and a friendly government in England would close the narrow seas to Spanish reinforcements. They paid Carr seven thousand pounds and Winwood was appointed. He had been English ambassador in The Hague and was said to be more Dutch than the Dutch themselves in his hatred of Spain.

  Carey’s part in events leading to the appointment had become known. ‘The cobra will strike now,’ Southampton warned him, and he prepared to defend himself against calumny and assassins alike. On one side of his great bed in St James’s Palace he prayed to his God, while on the other his wife prayed to hers.

  The joint prayers were swiftly answered. A tumour on his thigh troubled Northampton and had been cut by a surgeon’s knife. The incision was shallow and there appeared to be no risk, but the knife was unclean and caused gangrene in the flesh. The doctors had no cure, and knowing that he was about to die, Northampton drove out in his state coach in a final display of splendour. He came from his vast mansion in Greenwich along the riverside and through the city of London, attended by forty mounted and liveried servants. His father and elder brother had died on the scaffold, but he was about to die in his own bed. The people could gape at him for the last time. In Northampton House at Charing Cross he spent his last hours conspiring to the end. He wrote to Carr, urging that his enemies must not be allowed to succeed to his various offices, and he left precise instructions to the family advising them how to secure the continuing supremacy of the Howards. When the pain could no longer be borne, his pen slipped from his hand and he was carried to bed insensible. But his last labour had not been in vain. After his death two of his final wishes were granted. The Earl of Suffolk, his nephew and Frances Howard’s father, took the post of Lord Treasurer, and Carr appropriated for himself the appointment of Lord Chamberlain, the post nearest to his sovereign’s person.

  With Winwood in Cecil’s office and Northampton dead, Essex began to chafe abroad and Southampton at home, both for decisive action. The time was ripe for Carr and the remaining Howards - and the ever-scheming Spanish ambassador - to be sent packing. If the King would not do it, others should act in his name or, if he would not lend it, in the Prince’s.

  Carey counselled pat
ience. Carr without Northampton, he argued, would be like Carr without Overbury: rudderless. His wife would lead him into folly; already quarrels between King and favourite were growing more frequent. If the Protestant party would heed Overbury’s last advice, Carey told them, there was a better and surer path to power than the hazards of insurrection.

  On a visit to Newmarket with the Prince, he found by chance what he had been seeking since Overbury’s death. A young man lounging gracefully at the race-course caught his eye. Dark where Carr was fair, tall where Carr was slight, young in limb when Carr was coarsening with age, he possessed the soft eyes and smooth face of a girl. His expression was no longer innocent but flawed with a tempting glint of lust akin to Frances Howard’s. On acquaintance he proved to excel at dancing and sports, running and jumping like a champion. He was the son of an impoverished but impeccably Protestant gentleman, and his name was George Villiers.

  Carey brought him to London in the Prince’s train and one by one the Protestant earls covertly inspected him. After consultation they cautiously decided to make a trial before adopting him as their candidate for the King’s bed. He was beautiful enough and high-spirited, his body well-built, but with James ailing and crotchety there could be no anticipating the royal preference.

  When the King paid a state visit to the university at Cambridge, the young man was allotted a small part in an undergraduate play and held the stage alone for a brief moment, spectacularly dressed. Special messengers rode to London to report the flicker of interest on the King’s face. The earls voted unanimously to adopt the candidate, but the Archbishop of Canterbury solemnly advised one further trial.

  Accordingly a presentation was arranged at a country house in Northamptonshire, where the King had moved on from Cambridge. The Archbishop hurried north for the occasion. Suitably coached, the young man performed to perfection. The bowed head was humble but inviting. Surely such beauty was irresistible? Carey held his breath until the King broke the hushed spell by rising from his seat and raising the boy from his knees. He seized his hand and seemed reluctant to release it. In his excitement Carey moved to where he would be unobserved and threw his cap in the air. The Archbishop followed him, his eyes raised to Heaven and his lips moving in thanksgiving.

  No time was to be wasted. Back in London, a meeting was called at Baynard’s Castle, the grey riverside fortress which had become the city palace of the Herberts, the brother earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. The heads of other great and discontented families attended, Seymours and Russells among them, as well as the Archbishop, the Lord Chancellor and his Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State. The forces of Nemesis had gathered.

  Carey came with Southampton, who on the way ordered his footman to throw dirt in the face of a picture of Carr displayed in a shop in Fleet Street. Word of this spread and they were followed. Outside the castle a crowd assembled to cheer the English earls and cry death to the Scotsmen surrounding the King.

  Inside, an inflammatory message from the Earl of Essex was read and a subtler one from Ralegh reported, but talk of force was brushed aside. The new-found boy would be weapon enough. Tutored by the Earl of Montgomery, himself James’s first English favourite, Master Villiers would demonstrate his prowess as an athlete by leaping into the King’s embrace and from there higher than any man in England.

  ‘He can jump to a dukedom for all I care,’ said Southampton, ‘if only he saves us from the Howards’ rapacity and from Spain and the Inquisition.’

  When all were agreed, the company dispersed in high spirits and on the journey home more dirt was thrown in the face of Carr’s likeness until it was unrecognizable. The first move was to be the establishment of George Villiers at court, and this was accomplished by his appointment as one of the royal cupbearers. In serving at table he conducted himself so becomingly that the King was delighted and Carr seized with ungovernable jealousy.

  When James felt obliged to chide his Robin for behaving like a spoilt child, his Robin retaliated by ordering a servant to spill a bowl of soup over the new and richly dressed Ganymede. Stung to anger by the insult and the ruin of his finery, Villiers drew his sword. In the precincts of the palace this was a punishable offence. As Lord Chamberlain, Carr instantly demanded to be allowed to exercise the prerogative of his office and lop off the offender’s right hand. After an uneasy silence James stammered a hasty pardon, pishing and tushing with vexation. As a man of peace he liked his superannuated favourites to take a hint, behave in a seemly fashion and, well rewarded, fade away without fuss.

  The next move of the Protestant pawn required the Queen’s connivance. The Archbishop called at Denmark House one day when, by arrangement, Carey and his wife were in attendance in the privy chamber.

  ‘My lord of Somerset grows daily more perverse,’ he complained. ‘Even to the King himself he is rude and quarrelsome. Never will he yield an inch of place: he has told the Council so in plain words. Measures must be taken for his removal.’

  The Queen was seated with her feet on a high stool. She nodded her head in agreement. Although common knowledge at court, her Popery was secret. Openly she worshipped according to the rites of the English Church and acknowledged the Archbishop’s supremacy under her divinely-inspired husband.

  ‘His Majesty can blame no one but himself,’ she exclaimed. ‘He is too indulgent with his creatures. How long has that Duke of Lennox been discarded, and yet remains a Councillor? When they have served their purpose they should be dismissed from court or sent to the Tower like Thomas Overbury. What would I not give to see Carr there!’

  ‘That is not the King’s way,’ the Archbishop reminded her. ‘He feels gratitude towards Carr and is fond of him still. He seeks never to quarrel with those he has loved, as your Majesty well knows.’

  ‘Is it true what they say - that since his marriage Carr has refused to sleep in the King’s bedchamber? Your Grace has ears and eyes everywhere.’

  ‘Certainly it is reported so. The Countess has declared that she will not permit it; that she does not intend to be a virgin wife again; that after her enforced chastity she requires as much satisfaction as her husband is capable of supplying. I trust that his Majesty now repents of the wicked annulment of her previous union contrary to God’s law. There is a vacancy in his bedchamber now and the time has come for it to be filled.’

  ‘You would urge the claims of this new young man? Does he not have a wife?’

  ‘He has suffered a disappointment in love and is unmarried. Tomorrow is St George’s Day, the name-day of his saint. It would please the King to mark the occasion by conferring a knighthood on Master Villiers, and this would make him eligible for further advancement. His Majesty, as ever, wishes to grant preferment to his favourites only at your request. It suits his notion of what is fitting and stops the wagging of too many tongues. He values greatly his reputation in the courts of Europe.’

  ‘So you come at his Majesty’s command?’

  ‘At his command and the urging of certain lords of the Council.’

  ‘Will your Grace explain to me why we should exchange one creature for another? Once he is beyond your control, my lord Archbishop, this one will prove no better than the last. Indeed if he is cleverer - and how can he not be? - the mischief he causes will be all the greater.’

  ‘That is a risk we must take, your Majesty, for the sake of the government of the realm.’

  The Queen regarded him with suspicion. ‘I am told by the Spanish ambassador that you intend using Master Villiers as a means of preventing the marriage of my son with the Infanta, the greatest heiress in the world.’

  Carey, speaking for the first time, came to the Archbishop’s aid. ‘I learn from Madrid,’ he said, ‘that the King of Spain means to marry his daughter in France. The proposed alliance with the Duke of York is a pretence.’

  ‘The Prince is but fourteen,’ said Lady Carey. ‘It is surely too early for him to marry. Let him wait and make his own choice.’

  ‘Would Your Majesty not
wish to see Sir Walter Ralegh released?’ added Carey. ‘Then we might have Carr imprisoned in his place.’

  ‘Nothing would give me more joy. Had it been permitted, Sir Walter would have saved my Henry’s life.’

  ‘This is the only means,’ Carey told her, and the Archbishop announced with all the authority of his office that it was also the will of God.

  ‘Very well,’ the Queen conceded. ‘If my gout permits, I will go to Whitehall tomorrow and do as you wish. There are some debts of mine outstanding, money owed to Master Heriot, my goldsmith. If I oblige his Majesty in this matter, pray assure me that he will oblige me in mine.’

  The assurance obtained, a meeting was contrived at Whitehall the next day. Carey brought Prince Charles to pay respects to his father, and Lady Carey attended the Queen, who had at first refused to make the journey, complaining of the pain in her feet. The Archbishop came with the King, who looked nervous and was twitching with apprehension. When George Villiers was summoned, the Queen stared at him with such disfavour that Carey again thought their plans would be wrecked.

  Prompted by Lady Carey, however, she brought herself to make the request with a bad grace. ‘How is it that such a gallant is not knighted?’ she demanded sarcastically of the King. ‘Not to bestow your favours in such a quarter is unlike your Majesty. I beg you with all my heart to remedy the omission without delay.’

  So saying, she unsheathed the Prince’s sword and thrust it with malice at the King, well knowing his cowardice in the face of steel. He recoiled in terror, crying to her loudly to have a care.

  Carey stepped swiftly forward and took the weapon. He turned it and put the handle in the King’s hand, while the Archbishop pushed Villiers without ceremony to his knees. With his eyes closed to avoid the terrifying sight of the naked blade, the King made to dub his cupbearer on the shoulder but missed his aim. Villiers was forced to demonstrate his agility in order to preserve an eye. He ducked his head quickly to one side and suffered nothing worse than a rough shave above the ear. A snigger burst from the normally solemn Prince, unable to restrain himself.