Elizabeth Southwell recalled that when they named Lord Beauchamp, Elizabeth croaked: “I will have no rascal’s son in my seat but one worthy to be a king.”68 These are the last words Elizabeth is said to have spoken. There are differences of opinion about what then occurred. Southwell claims the Council named “the King of France and the King of Scotland at which she never stirred.” Carey, on the other hand, tells us that Elizabeth put “her hand to her head when the King of Scots was named to succeed her.” A similar story was repeated by the court servant John Clapham, who wrote that Elizabeth turned her hand “in the form of a circle,” but he added the skeptical rider, “These reports, whether they were true indeed or give out of purpose by such as would have them so to be believed it is hard to say. Sure I am they did no hurt.”
The Council was set on James and the course of Elizabeth’s life suggests she would have supported his candidature. As Cecil wrote to one of his Scots contacts in January, although Elizabeth took “no pleasure in [James’s] rising, yet she would be sorry of his perishing.” 69
At six o’clock on Wednesday night the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, and Elizabeth’s other chaplains went to pray with the dying queen. “I went with them,” Carey recalled, “and sat upon my knees full of tears to see that heavy sight.” Elizabeth was lying on her back with one arm hanging out of the bed. The Archbishop told her that although she had been a great queen on earth, she now had to yield her account to the King of Kings. Then he prayed. Hours later, exhausted, he blessed her and rose to leave. She gestured for Whitgift to stay, which he did for a further half hour, whereupon the scene was repeated. “By this time it grew late and everyone departed; all but the women that attended her.” As Carey left he told a servant at the Palace that he wanted to be called when Elizabeth died and he gave the porter a coin saying he must let him through the gate when he returned from his lodgings. Between one and two in the morning on the eve of the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin the servant arrived at Carey’s lodgings with the message that the Queen was dead.
Parry, Elizabeth’s chaplain, told his friend John Manningham she had “departed this life, mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree.” There was, however, little peace for the living that March morning. Carey went straight to the gate of Richmond Palace to see his sister and collect James’s blue ring. The porter, despite his bribe, refused to admit him, saying that the Council had “commanded him that none should go in or out, but by warrant from them.” At that moment Sir Edward Wotton, the Comptroller of the Household, who had kept the court in such good spirits over Christmas, appeared at the gate. He offered to let Carey in. Carey asked him how the Queen was. “Pretty well,” Wotton lied. Carey retorted, “Good night!” and turned on his heel. Wotton quickly tried another tack, promising Carey that if he came in he would let him out of the gate whenever he wanted. Carey remained suspicious, but he followed Wotton inside.
Carey was taken to his sister in one of the household rooms, where he found “all the ladies weeping bitterly.” Lady Scrope was unable to pass him the ring under Wotton’s gaze but they exchanged a few quiet words before he was led on to the Privy Chamber, where most of the Council was assembled. It was apparent that they were aware of Carey’s intentions and he was “caught hold of and assured I should not go to Scotland until their pleasures were further known.” The Councilors then made their way to Cecil’s chamber to give him the news of the Queen’s death. As they walked they ordered the porters that no one should leave the palace save the servants who were to prepare their coaches and horses for London. Carey trailed behind until he was out of sight and then headed off to wake his brother, Lord Hunsdon. The old peer was seriously ill—he would die in September— but loyally he got up, dressed quickly and dashed after the Council’s servants to the gate.
The porter, recognizing Hunsdon as the Lord Chamberlain, let him out, but when Carey pressed after him the porter stopped him. Hunsdon shouted angrily at the porter, “Let him out, I will answer for him,” and to Carey’s great relief the porter let him go. Carey’s sister Lady Scrope had by now left her weeping companions and was watching the scene from a room above the gate. She tossed down the sapphire ring that James had asked to be returned on Elizabeth’s death and Carey snatched it up. With the ring in his pocket he rode at speed to the lodging of his friend the Knight Marshal at Charing Cross and waited for the Councilors to arrive at Whitehall to proclaim James king. He hoped now that he had the ring they would accept his role as messenger as a fait accompli and give official approval to his journey.
At nine o’clock the Councilors arrived at Whitehall and Carey asked the Knight Marshal to tell them he awaited their instructions. Carey’s friend found them very relieved that Carey had not yet left for Scotland and he was told that yes, he should tell Carey they would immediately dispatch him to Scotland with the necessary papers. But as Sir Arthur Savage rode off to send for Carey, another of Elizabeth’s cousins, Sir William Knollys, whispered a warning to the Knight Marshal that if Carey arrived, they would hold him and send their own choice of messenger. He promptly made some excuse and left. Carey was almost at Whitehall when he spotted his friend on the road. He pulled up his horse to greet him. His friend quickly relayed what had happened and advised him to leave immediately for Scotland. Carey did not hesitate. Within the hour he was mounted on a fresh horse and galloping north. 70
At around ten o’clock the Councilors emerged from Whitehall onto the green opposite the tiltyard where Essex used to joust for the Queen. The diminutive figure of Cecil was carrying the proclamation that would name James king. He had sent a copy of the proclamation to Scotland for approval several days earlier. James read it that very morning, and declared to those near him that the music of its words sounded so sweetly in his ears that he could not alter one note “in so agreeable a harmony.” It had been signed and approved by representative peers, gentry, and Councilors, a novel procedure that is followed to this day.
The signatories included the Lord Mayor, Robert Lee; the Treasurer, Lord Buckhurst; Admiral Nottingham; his brother-in-law Lord Scrope; the young Lord Grey of Wilton (the son of the soldier-butcher of Smerwick Fort); Arbella’s uncle, the Earl of Shrewsbury; his enemy Sir John Stanhope; Carey’s cousin Sir William Knollys; the Comptroller, Sir Edward Wotton; the Earl of Worcester, who was both a stiff papist and a good subject; Sir Robert Cecil; Lord Cobham; the Earl of Northumberland, and twenty-six other peers, gentry and Privy Councilors. Ralegh’s name, however, was absent: he was still hurriedly making his way to court from the West Country.71
As a crowd gathered Cecil began to read from the document the news of Elizabeth’s death and the accession of the King of Scots:
Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God to call to his mercy out of the transitory life our Sovereign Lady, the High and Mighty Prince, Elizabeth late Queen of England, France and Ireland, by whose death and dissolution, the Imperial Crown of these two realms aforesaid are now absolutely and solely come to the High and Mighty Prince, James VI of Scotland, who is lineally and lawfully descended from the body of Margaret, daughter to the High and Renowned Prince, Henry the seventh King of England, France and Ireland . . . We therefore the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this realm, being here assembled, united, and assisted with those of her late Majesty’s Privy Council, and with great numbers of other principal gentlemen of quality in the kingdom, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and citizens of London, and a multitude of other good subjects and commons of this realm do now hereby with one voice and consent of tongue and heart, publish and proclaim, that the High and Mighty Prince, James VI King of Scotland is now by the death of our late sovereign, Queen of England of famous memory, become also our only, lawful, lineal and rightful Liege James the first, King of England, France and Ireland, defender of the faith.72
The justification of James’s right as coming entirely through descent from Henry VII’s eldest daughter, Margaret, of course ignored the problem of James’s forei
gn birth. When Elizabeth was first Queen she had been greeted in a sermon at York as “born mere English amongst us and therefore most natural unto us.” Cecil was using the argument of the Jesuit-inspired Doleman book that a king should have outstanding qualities. James was welcomed as having “the rarest gifts of mind” and, rather inaccurately, “of body.” No one on the green at Whitehall was certain how the people would react and the proclamation forcefully reminded officials of their duty to prevent “any disorderly assemblies” or attempts on James’s right.
When Cecil finished reading the nervous Councilors took their places in procession behind the Garter and heralds. They walked down the Strand past the great palaces on the Thames: Durham House, which Elizabeth had leased to Ralegh in the 1580s, Cecil House, newly built at such expense that it had nearly bankrupted him, and Essex House, now rented by the Earl of Northumberland. They passed on to Fleet Street, the same route that Essex had taken on the day of his revolt. The gathering crowds hummed with the news of Elizabeth’s death and the proclamation of James’s accession. They were struck by how the Queen, “born on the eve of the Nativity of the . . . Blessed Virgin,” had died on the eve of the Annunciation. The Lord Mayor, Robert Lee, represented another pleasing coincidence: he had the same name as his predecessor at the time of Elizabeth’s accession. Manningham recalled a joke about him: three things that made other men poor had made the Mayor rich, namely, “wine, women and dice; [for] he was fortunate in marrying rich wives, lucky in great gaming at dice, and prosperous in sale of his wines.”73
At Ludgate the procession found the gates and portcullis shut. The Mayor stood on the other side alongside his aldermen and announced that the gates would not be opened unless James was declared king. Lord Buckhurst took off the image of St. George that formed part of the insignia of his Order of the Garter and pushed it through the gate together with the parchment of the proclamation. The Lord Mayor accepted it and allowed the procession through, into the City. In contrast to the formal palaces on the river, the City was a huddle of tall, narrow timber and clay houses, five or six stories high. Many had been divided into several dwellings—a practice that had been made illegal in the previous summer in an attempt to ameliorate overcrowding.74
At eleven o’clock the procession stopped at the west side of the High Cross at Cheapside. John Manningham found “an extraordinary and unexpected number of gallant knights and brave gentlemen of note well mounted, besides the huge number of common persons.” Like many foreign visitors, the Duke of Stettin was struck by the good looks of the English, “the most beautiful people, men as well as women, of good proportion, and of a healthy natural colour.” Even ordinary citizens in the crowds were dressed well “in splendid silken stuffs . . . Nothing is too expensive for them, and the ladies especially look very clean with their linen and frills all starched in blue.”75 They listened intently as Cecil reread the proclamation “distinctly and audibly.” When he had finished they cried, “God save the King!” but with little enthusiasm. One witness described the mood as “flat” and the Venetian Scaramelli deduced “that there was evidently neither sorrow for the death of the queen, nor joy for the succession of the king.” The playwright Thomas Dekker ascribed this to shock:
Having brought up (even under her wing) a nation that was almost begotten and born under her; that never shouted any other Ave but for her name, never saw the face of any Prince but herself, never understood what that strange outlandish word “change” signified: how was it possible, but that her sickness should throw abroad a universal fear, and her death an astonishment?76
People were frightened that they were now on the cusp of the long-feared civil war. As the news of Elizabeth’s death spread the price of meal rose, quadrupling by the end of the day.77 When night fell, however, Manningham noted in his diary that there was “no tumult, no contradiction, no disorder in the city; everyman went about his business as readily as peaceably, as securely as if there had been no change, nor any news ever heard of competitors.” Celebratory bonfires sprang up across the city, and London was once more filled with the sound of bells. The French ambassador expressed his dismay at the apparent absence of mourning, but as one court official observed: “Such is the condition of great princes more unhappy in this respect than their own subjects, in that, while they live, they are followed by all men, and at their death lamented of none.”78
The sun had finally set on the faded brilliance of Gloriana and a new era was about to dawn. Manningham caught the mood of the evening: “The people is full of great expectation, and great with hope of [the King’s] worthiness, of our nation’s future greatness; everyone promises himself a share in some famous action to be hereafter performed, for his Prince and Country.”79
CHAPTER FOUR
“LOTS WERE CAST UPON OUR LAND” The Coming of Arthur, March–April 1603
On the morning of Friday 25 March, Elizabeth’s Privy Councilors and a number of other prominent individuals met at Admiral Nottingham’s house in Chelsea.1 Ralegh was among them. He had arrived at Richmond within hours of Elizabeth’s death. Everyone was acutely aware that the Council was about to hand the crown to the King of Scots and that Cecil must have been allied to James’s cause for some time. Diaries, memoirs and seventeenth-century histories give us only flashes of what occurred, but it seems tensions were running high between those who had hopes that they would gain personally from James’s accession and those who feared they would not.
At the top of the agenda was the wording of the messages the Council was to send to James. Cecil produced a note written by the Earl of Essex that suggested “to some private friends, that when the time came the King of Scots might be accepted with some conditions.” It would have been possible, for example, to refuse James the power to give the Scots offices in England, but to say so was to risk his future disfavor. It was classic Cecil. “Here is the rope,” his action said, “now who will take it?” He may have warned some of his friends to keep their mouths shut. Prompted by Cecil’s action, the elderly Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Fortescue, asked “very moderately and mildly . . . whether any conditions should be proposed to the King.”2 The young and hot-tempered Lord Grey of Wilton immediately answered “like a zealous patriot” and “desired that articles might be sent to the King for the preservation of the liberties and fundamental laws of the kingdom.” 3
Grey of Wilton was a deadly enemy of Essex’s friend Southampton. The bitterness dated back to an incident in Ireland in May 1599. There was a skirmish in which Southampton had advanced “in most soldier like order, with a small troop of horse and foot,” pushing back 200 rebels into the bogs and woods. Wilton, however, “being carried to the rebel by heat of valour,” had recklessly charged the enemy contrary to his commander’s orders.4 Essex punished him with a night’s imprisonment and Wilton never forgave the insult. The following year he had attacked Southampton in a London street. The Queen had been furious and he had left shortly afterward to fight on the Continent. When Cecil intervened on his behalf Cobham and Ralegh used the excuse of passing on the good news for their secretive trip to Ostend that summer. Grey returned to England to exact his final revenge by leading Elizabeth’s troops against the Essex rebels in 1601, something that was bound to sit uneasily with the new regime.
Fortescue, who was a cousin of Elizabeth’s and unlikely to be particularly favored by James, supported Wilton’s motion, as did Cobham and Ralegh. They had guessed that it would be a struggle for them to gain favor under James and Ralegh had taken steps to pass his Dorset estate on to his son, thus protecting the boy’s inheritance from attainder if he were ever to be accused of treason. No one else, however, was prepared to risk James’s wrath by supporting Wilton’s motion.
Cecil then suggested that Ralegh resign his post of Captain of the Guard to make way for James’s existing Captain, Sir Thomas Erskine of Gogar.5 London was rife with the gossip over the next few days that this triggered a huge row between Cecil and Lord Cobham. 6 The quarrel may als
o have prompted the outburst John Aubrey later described, in which Ralegh “declared his opinion, ’twas the wisest way for them to keep the government in their own hands and set up a Commonwealth, and not to be subject to a needy beggardly nation.” In any event Northumberland put an end to the arguments, turning on Ralegh, Cobham, Fortescue and Grey with “a protestation, that if any man should offer to make any proposition to the King, he should instantly raise an army against him.”7 He then addressed the Council, declaring that with the Queen dead they had no legal authority and that the nobility had been treated with contempt for too long and would tolerate it no longer: it was up to them to take charge.
The Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton, attempted to calm Northumberland by proposing that all those who were not peers should resign their seats at the table to the lords. Admiral Nottingham and the other non-peers declined the invitation, but a more moderate line was now taken. Ralegh was instructed to keep his post of Captain of the Guard until James’s will was known, and was invited to sign the copy of the proclamation that was to be sent to Scotland. 8
Northumberland’s brother, Sir Charles Percy, and the Earl of Worcester’s son, Thomas Somerset, were picked as the Council’s official messengers and left with the Council’s papers late that morning. Percy and Somerset were a full day’s ride behind Sir Robert Carey, who had reached Doncaster on Thursday, rested for the night, collected a fresh horse and set off again. Post horses were established every ten miles between London and Berwick and they were renowned for being strong and fast. Those on unofficial business could usually rent them for around threepence a mile, Percy and Somerset half a penny less. Another threepence would pay for a guide and his horse, but Carey knew the route too well to need them.9 As a young man he had once won a wager of £2,000 that he could walk to Berwick from London in twelve days.10 He was now in his early forties and not quite as fit as he once was, but by Friday night Carey had reached his home at Widdrington Castle in Northumberland.
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