James, however, found that Anna had a warm and generous temperament and the early years of the marriage were happy ones, with Anna joining him hunting and he indulging her love of fashion and jewelry. In January 1603 her wardrobe included gold-on-peach gowns with silver sleeves and her hair was habitually adorned with Scottish pearls strung on coronets worn on the back of the head. Every New Year, James added new jewels to the collection of “my dearest bedfellow”: necklaces fringed with diamond drops, jeweled flower and butterfly brooches and a large number of diamond ciphers. Her favorite was “A” for Anna—the name she always used, although James preferred to call her “my Annie.”35 She quickly learned to write as well as speak Scots and by the time she was eighteen she was also politically active. A member of the Mar family later complained that Anna’s friends “generally happened to be of a contrary party to those whom the King thought his faithfulest friends.” James, however, recognized that she was uniquely placed to intercede for those who felt cut off from royal favor and he demonstrated that he appreciated her role by listening to, if not always agreeing with, her opinions.36
Gradually it was noticed that Anna had become close to her French-educated courtiers: she had depended on them for conversation before she learned Scots and she appreciated their refinements, as did James. Many were Catholic and, although Anna had sworn an oath at her coronation to “work against all popish superstition,” she was reported to be leaning toward Catholicism as early as 1593.37 The Countess of Huntly, who gave her a Catholic catechism, was believed to be the main source of influence. The Countess was part of a group that backed the reunification of the Churches and Anna may have been aware that this was an area that interested her husband. In any event the Countess’s conversation doubtless made an attractive contrast to the lectures Anna received at the hands of the Kirk. The turning point in Anna’s religious life came in about 1600 when the chaplain she had brought with her from Denmark became a Calvinist.
Since Anna could not tolerate becoming a Calvinist herself, she sacked her chaplain and turned to her Catholic friends for advice. They smuggled the Jesuit priest Robert Abercrombie into a secret room to give Anna instruction. She duly visited him for three days and on the last she heard mass and received the sacrament as a Catholic. Anna later described to Abercrombie how James confronted her about rumors of her conversion when they were in bed together, asking if it was true that she had “some dealings with a priest.” She had immediately confessed. “Well, wife,” James apparently told her, “if you cannot live without this sort of thing, do your best to keep things as quiet as possible; for, if you don’t, our crown is in danger.”38 James’s response, if accurately reported, seems a remarkably mild one, but he must have been as aware of the potential benefits of his wife’s conversion to his image abroad as he was of its dangers to his popularity at home.
Since the publication of the Jesuit-penned Conference About the Next Succession, James had sought to deflect interest from the candidacy of the Infanta Isabella. He hinted to English Catholics, to the Vatican and to the new King of France, Henri IV, that he would offer toleration of religion in England and that he might even convert. Anna’s own conversion added considerable credence to his claims and according to the Duke of Sully she became “deeply engaged in all the civil factions, not only in Scotland in relation to the Catholics, whom she supported and had even first encouraged, but also in England.”39 Robert Abercrombie was allowed to stay in Scotland until 1602, during which time Anna received the sacrament from him a further nine times. She would come to him early in the morning while the rest of the household slept and he recalled that afterward she would stay and talk with him and that “sometimes she expressed her desire that her husband should be a Catholic, at other times her son should be educated under the direction of the Sovereign Pontiff.”40 It was, however, the Mar family and not Anna who was raising James’s heir—a matter over which she felt deep resentment.
Prince Henry, the first of James and Anna’s children, was born in February 1594 and soon afterward Anna discovered that James intended for Henry to be raised at Stirling Castle, as he had been. It meant that if anything happened to James during Henry’s minority the Earl of Mar would become regent of Scotland instead of the queen, which was the norm in Europe. James was once overheard trying to explain to Anna that he was concerned that “if some faction got strong enough, she could not hinder his boy being used against him, as he himself had been against his unfortunate mother.”41 Anna refused to accept this and pleaded with James to change his mind, reminding him how she had “left all her dear friends in Denmark to follow him.”
Anna usually got her way but on this James flatly refused to yield; he even gave written orders to Mar that he was to keep Prince Henry until he was eighteen unless he himself instructed otherwise.42 In 1596 Anna gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, who was sent to be raised by Lord and Lady Livingstone, along with her younger sister, Margaret, who died at the age of two. James and Anna’s second son, Charles, was born in 1600 and subsequently placed with Lord Fyvie. In May 1602 a third son, Robert, followed but died four months later. These sad separations may have served to sour the royal marriage, but it was above all Anna’s lasting hatred for the Mar family that explains her reaction to that mysterious episode in Scottish history, the Gowrie affair—an episode that concluded in the destruction of all significant opposition to James and the Mar faction.
By the autumn of 1599 James had become desperately worried that he was about to lose his chance of inheriting Elizabeth’s throne. His principal supporter at Elizabeth’s court, Essex, was under house arrest. Essex’s followers had warned him that Sir Robert Cecil would destroy his claim to the succession once Essex was out of the way, and there was evidence to support their view. In 1598 an English Catholic called Valentine Thomas had hinted in a confession that King James of Scotland had asked him to assassinate the Queen. The 1585 statute precluding those who plotted against Elizabeth from the succession was still extant and James was convinced that Cecil was behind Thomas’s confession, just as Lord Burghley had been behind the statute, which had been aimed at his mother. Elizabeth assured James that she did not believe Thomas, but when she ignored his demands for a public statement of his innocence, James listened to Essex’s supporters in their call for him to raise an army to back plans to overthrow the Queen.
That October James told his Parliament that he “was not certain how soon he should have to use arms but whenever it should be, he knew his right and would venture crown and all for it.”43 It had proved difficult, however, to raise the money for such an army. James’s financial situation, which had begun to improve three years earlier, was once again in desperate straits. 14
James was forced to raise new taxes and debase the coinage, but there was a danger that the Kirk would move to take advantage of growing public anger. James had infuriated the Kirk with plans to reintroduce episcopacy—an answer to the Jesuit accusation that he would introduce a presbytery to England. It had also learned that his Basilikon Doron raged about the power it had wielded in his youth. In November 1599 the Master of Gray wrote to Cecil that between the anger of the poor and that of the Kirk “there was in men’s breasts such a desire of reformation that nothing lacked save one gallant man for uniting grieved minds.”44 The ministers had already settled on the twenty-two-year-old John Ruthven, third Earl of Gowrie, and the minister Robert Bruce was sent to fetch him from France, where he was studying. By this time James appeared to have forgiven the Ruthven family for their role in the attack on his mother during Riccio’s murder and for the exile of his beloved Lennox. Several of the children of the first Earl of Gowrie, who led the Ruthven raid, were now in the royal household and Anna counted three of the sisters of the third Earl among her ladies-in-waiting. 15 She was especially fond of the eldest, Lady Beatrice, and their brother, nineteen-year-old Alexander, was a favorite of both James’s and Anna’s. Gowrie had, however, willingly agreed to the Kirk’s request, first traveling to England, where he arri
ved at Elizabeth’s court on 3 April 1600.
The English ambassador to Paris had written a ringing commendation of Gowrie for Cecil. He was “exceedingly well affected both to the common cause of religion and particularly to her majesty” and “one of whom there may be exceedingly good use made.” Gowrie had spent time in secret conferences with both the Queen and Cecil before arriving back in Edinburgh in May 1600. A huge crowd of supporters welcomed him, but James, watching, was overheard making the observation that there had been a still larger crowd for the execution of Gowrie’s father. Within three months Gowrie was dead, slain in his own house by the King’s men.
James’s explanation of these deaths was almost literally unbelievable. He insisted that on 5 August 1600 Alexander Ruthven had lured him from a day’s hunting to Gowrie House in Perth, claiming his brother had captured a man carrying a large amount of foreign gold. As the rest of the hunting party ate their dinner with Gowrie, Alexander had tricked James into following him until he came to a room “where a man was, which the King thought had been the man had kept the treasure.” 45 Alexander then grabbed James and drew his dagger, saying that James had killed his father and now he would kill him. James pleaded for his life, but Alexander replied that words could not save him and ordered the man in the room to kill him. The man had seemed unwilling and a struggle followed, during which James was spotted screaming for help at the window. His men dashed to his aid and killed first Alexander and then Gowrie as he fought to avenge his brother.
James ordered the Kirk’s five Edinburgh ministers to repeat this story to their congregations so that they might thank God for his deliverance, but they refused. Robert Bruce, the minister who had crowned Anna and fetched Gowrie from France, made it clear that he believed James had plotted to kill the brothers, either because of his hatred for the family or because Anna was having an affair with one of them (there was talk that she had a flirtation with Alexander). James’s reply to these accusations was blunt and compelling: “I see Mr Robert,” he told Bruce, “that ye would make me a murderer. It is known very well that I was never blood-thirsty. If I would have taken lives, I had causes enough; I need not to hazard myself so.”46 James was certainly not the kind of man to place himself in the middle of a violent situation.
When the ministers persisted in refusing to accept James’s story he had them replaced: four later capitulated and were forced to tour the country offering their humble submission in public places, while the fifth, Robert Bruce, refused and was sent into exile. The Kirk was informed that thereafter 5 August was to be celebrated as a national holiday with special services to give thanks for the King’s survival.
At home and abroad, however, people remained unconvinced by James’s version of events. The English ambassador, Sir William Bowes, thought that James, finding himself alone with Alexander—“a learned, sweet and artless young gentleman”—had made some mention of the boy’s father, “whereat the youth showed a grieved and expostulatory countenance.” James had taken fright and shouted for help, and after the boy was killed, he made up his story to conceal his embarrassment. 47 More recent theories have suggested that Alexander offered James sexual favors or the cancellation of a debt to lure him from his protectors and kidnap him. When James had realized what was happening he shouted in terror that he was being murdered. The Kirk certainly had strong motives for supporting another kidnap attempt and there was a suggestion at the time that England was involved. 16 Gowrie’s servants were, however, severely tortured in an effort to uncover a conspiracy and all denied any knowledge of one. The man whom James had seen in the tower swore he had just been told to go there and wait upon events. An explanation for this comes from Gowrie’s tutor, William Rynd, who reported that he had once heard young Gowrie say that the best way for a man to keep a plot secret was to keep its existence to himself. But it is possible that James did indeed plot against the Ruthvens. In London in the winter of 1602 a character named Francis Mowbray appeared claiming that he had evidence of the Ruthvens’ innocence. He was handed over to James that January and died in February 1603, having fallen, it was reported, from the window of his cell in an escape attempt.
Whatever the truth behind the Gowrie mystery, the significance of it lies in James’s determination to use the incident to demonstrate that neither Kirk nor nobleman would be able to control him as they had done in the past, and those who tried would suffer for it. His action against the remaining members of the Ruthven family began immediately. As soon as the King’s party returned to Falkland Palace that night he had the three Ruthven sisters thrown out into the driving rain, despite Anna’s protests. She refused to believe the Ruthvens had attempted to kill her husband and saw the event entirely in terms of a triumph for the Mar faction. She stayed in bed for two days afterward, refusing to eat or speak. When she eventually did so she shouted at her husband to beware how he treated her, for she was not the Earl of Gowrie. On another occasion she “hoped that heaven would not visit her family with the vengeance for the sufferings of the Ruthvens.” James, aware that Anna was pregnant, took her abuse without complaint, but he was not deflected from his pursuit of vengeance.
On 6 August a party of men were sent to seize the surviving Ruthven brothers, William and Patrick, who were still only school-boys. They escaped over the border and in June 1602 were said to be hiding in Yorkshire. James complained to Elizabeth and, with some reluctance, she agreed to have them banished. William fled abroad early in 1603, leaving Patrick behind. In Scotland, meanwhile, in the autumn of 1600, the decaying corpses of John and Alexander were tried for treason. They were found guilty; the Ruthven estates and honors were forfeited and their name proscribed. On the day their bodies were being gibbeted, quartered and exposed throughout the country, Anna gave birth to the future Charles I. James hurried to Dunfermline, where she was lying with her child, and in the New Year he presented Anna with a jewel worth 1,333 Scottish pounds. There were those among the Mar faction who wanted her imprisoned for her support for the Ruthvens; James would hear none of it “but . . . does seek by all means to cover her folly,” a witness reported.48
That January 1603 Sir Thomas Erskine, the Captain of the Guard, warned James that Anna had smuggled Beatrice Ruthven into her rooms at Holyrood and talked to her for hours just feet from where he slept. Beatrice left laden with gifts to support her in exile in England. James was shaken and angry but again he refused to punish Anna. He simply ordered workmen to seal up “all dangerous passages for coming near the King’s chamber.” There were other matters to think about than the Ruthvens, as the question of the succession had returned to center stage.
The aftermath to the Gowrie conspiracy had found James’s ally at Elizabeth’s court, the Earl of Essex, still disgraced and Secretary Cecil with total domination over the Privy Council. In December 1600, however, Cecil’s agents made an unexpected gesture of reconciliation. They claimed that “the Earl of Leicester or Sir Francis Walsingham were the only cutters of [Mary Stuart’s] throat.”49 James had ignored them. Aware of the unpopularity of Elizabeth’s government, he was convinced that she would soon be facing an uprising and in February 1601 he sent the Earl of Mar and a diplomat named Edward Bruce to aid Essex in his plans to raise a revolt. 17 But by the time Mar and Bruce arrived in London Essex had already been tried and beheaded.
James’s fear was that Cecil would now use the Essex revolt to achieve what the confession of Valentine Thomas had failed to do, namely, link him directly to a plot against Elizabeth. Fortunately the black bag containing his last letter to Essex, which the Earl wore on the day of the revolt, had disappeared. It was probably destroyed either by Essex himself or by the Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, who soon offered James his loyalty. With no solid evidence against him, James sent instructions for Mar and Bruce to ask the “present guiders” in England to declare that he was untouched by any actions against the Queen. They were to offer his future favor to those courtiers who supported him and his eternal displeasure to those wh
o did not. He was particularly keen for the message to get through to Cecil, who, he observed, “is king there in effect.” With Essex dead, however, the kaleidoscope of faction was shifting once more. Cecil made clear to the envoys that he had every intention of backing the Stuart cause. The rules of primogeniture underpinned the laws of inheritance to which the entire political elite was subject and the majority had never been comfortable with overturning them, still less now when James’s dynastic rivals were particularly weak. Even a foreigner such as the French ambassador, André Hurault, Sieur de Maisse, had observed that “it is certain the English would never again submit to the rule of a woman”; that ruled out James’s cousin Arbella Stuart and the Earl of Derby’s daughter, Lady Anne Stanley. Meanwhile the claim of Lord Beauchamp had been all but destroyed by the Doleman book and his failure to marry someone of suitable status.
Essex was right to believe that Cecil had needed to have a rival candidate to James in the late 1590s. The evidence suggests Cecil had considered marrying Arbella to Beauchamp’s elder son, Edward Seymour, so uniting the lines of Henry VIII’s sisters Margaret and Mary Tudor. His ally, Beauchamp’s father, the Earl of Hertford, had certainly done so and Cecil’s interest in the match may have been behind the rumors in Europe that he wanted to marry Arbella himself. But Elizabeth would never have permitted a Seymour-Stuart union and the sensible thing for Cecil to do now that Essex was dead was to present himself to James as his greatest champion and suggest that Essex had really wanted the crown for himself. This appears to be exactly what he did. Bruce and Mar were delighted to have caught such a fish and tactfully dropped James’s demands for a public statement of his innocence of any plotting against the Queen. Instead they organized a code to enable Cecil to correspond in secret with the Scottish King. Names were to be represented by numbers: James, for example, was 30 and Cecil 10.
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