Hinchingbrooke stood as a virtual monument to the Reformation. It had once been a small Benedictine nunnery called the Priory of St. James but Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, threw out the nuns during the dissolution of the monasteries and gave the priory to his nephew, Richard Williams, the son of a Welsh brewer who had settled in Putney. Williams adopted his mother’s name of Cromwell in gratitude for Thomas’s generosity. Oliver Cromwell, who was Richard’s grandson, had further improved the family fortunes with his recent marriage to the widow of the financier Sir Horatio Palavicino. A good part of this new wealth had now been used to prepare what was said to be the greatest feast ever provided by a subject for a king. James’s train was offered vast quantities of food, beer and wines “and those not riff raff but ever the best kind.” There were also “many open beer houses erected where there was no want of beef and bread for the comfort of the poorest creatures,” and these stayed open for a fortnight after James left.51
Cromwell’s personal gifts for the King were almost as generous: there was a gold cup, several good horses, “fleet and deep mouthed hounds, divers hawks of excellent wing” and £50 to be distributed among James’s Scottish officers. Other gifts were presented by guests waiting to greet James, among them the heads of the University of Cambridge, clad in their scarlet gowns and corner caps. One gave an oration in Latin and another offered the King several books “published in commendation of our late gracious Queen.”52 But these gifts were politically loaded, for in praising aspects of Elizabeth’s reign they suggested what was and what was not expected of the new monarch. There was approval for the persecution of Catholics, but also condemnation of any proposed union of England and Scotland. The “Memorial” was more supportive on this point—and James assured Cromwell as he left after breakfast on 29 April: “Marry, man, thou hast treated me better than any man since I left Edinburgh.”53 Cromwell would be well rewarded for his tact as well as his generosity in the weeks ahead.
With Elizabeth’s funeral over, the nobility and Privy Councilors were gathering to greet James at Broxborne, the Hertfordshire seat of the Cofferer, Sir Henry Cock. It was a frantic few days as he tried to gather the supplies fit to feed a king and countless hungry peasants, but as Sir Henry observed to Cecil, “better to lack good meat than good company.” James eventually arrived on Monday 2 May, escorted by Sir Edward Denny, the Sheriff of Hertfordshire, and a mounted escort of 150 of the most handsome men in the county. Each was dressed in the Denny colors, with white doublets, blue coats with split sleeves and feathered hats tied with red and yellow bands. Even the horses had new red saddles. But it was James that people wished to see and the crowds had grown immense with “nobility, gentry, citizens, country people, and all,” pressing together and kicking up clouds of dust in an effort to see him.54
The Lord Keeper Egerton, Lord Admiral Nottingham and the Treasurer, Lord Buckhurst, were among those waiting at Broxborne, but Cecil had gone to his own house, Theobalds, to prepare for the King’s much anticipated stay there. It proved to be a wise decision. James complained angrily to Cock about the dust thrown up by the crowds and Sir Henry was obliged to send Cecil a message warning that the King “is desirous to have some private way made for him.” The next day, as James left for Cecil’s great palace, thousands streamed out of London to witness the greatest spectacle of the King’s progress thus far, among them the writer John Savile and two friends. They stopped for a while to sit by an upstairs window at the Bell Inn at Edmonton and counted the numbers who passed by. Within half an hour they saw 309 on horse and 137 on foot, and the landlord assured them that the traffic had been as heavy since four that morning.
James arrived at Theobalds at half past one that afternoon and, “as his Highness was espied,” Savile tells us, “for very joy many ran from their carts, leaving their team of horses to their own unreasonable directions.” Savile and his friends decided to split up and each watch the spectacle from a different spot and then compare notes later. Savile was by the gates, watching as James rode down a long drive lined with ash and elm surrounded by nobles and gentlemen, “observing no place of superiority, all bare headed.” As James approached he saw a palace of red brick and white stone covering over a quarter of a mile rising before him. Innumerable turrets surmounted by golden lions holding golden vanes flashed in the sun; fountains set in huge formal gardens sprayed up almost as high as the roofline. Sir John Harington had called it the “paradise of Theobalds” and so it must have seemed to James, who would one day make Theobalds his own.
As James reached the end of the avenue, he was greeted by a fanfare of trumpets. The courtiers around him dismounted and four noblemen stepped forward and walked on either side of James’s horse with their hands touching its flanks as he rode to the entrance of the forecourt. There a young gentleman stepped forward and handed James yet another petition. It is believed that this was the Poor Man’s Petition, another call for assurance of uniformity in religion and for reform in public life. “A pox take the proud covetous Attorney and merciless lawyer!” its authors cried; “fye upon all close biting knaverie!”55 Sir Walter Ralegh was picked out by name as it condemned the abuse of monopolies. James assured the young man that his petition would be heard and he would receive justice. Cecil then escorted the King through the doorway and the vast crowd cheered and threw their hats in the air.
“We were first led into a beautiful room panelled with chestnut wood, and in many places richly gilt. In the windows were placed the coats of arms of the principal potentates of the world,” the Duke of Stettin’s secretary recorded.
All the other rooms were most magnificently decorated with splendid hangings, and velvet beds and chairs. Especially noteworthy were the three galleries. In the first were representations of the principal emperors and knights of the Golden Fleece, with the most splendid cities in the world and their garments and fashions. In the next, the coats of arms of all the noble families of England . . . the labours of Hercules and the game called billiards on a long cloth covered table. In the third, all England, represented by fifty two trees, each tree representing one province. On the branches and leaves the coats of arms of all the . . . noblemen residing in the county; and between the trees, the towns and boroughs, together with the principal mountains and rivers.56
James rested in his bedchamber for an hour before he was persuaded to show himself to the crowds. He stood by the window for half an hour without speaking and then went for a walk in the gardens, wandering in the cool with “bays, rosemary, and the like overshadowing his walk, to defend him from the heat of the sun, till supper time.”57 The King stayed at Theobalds for four days and we are told that “to speak of Lord Robert’s cost to entertain him, were but to imitate geographers, that set a little round O for a mighty province; words being unable to express what was done there indeed.” James was introduced to Elizabeth’s servants and officers of the Household as well as her Guard. “It was a most stately sight, the glory of that reception, where the nobility and gentry were in exceeding rich equipage,” John Aubrey tells us, but adds that James, far from being pleased, regarded the bejeweled and armed courtiers with a “secret dread . . . and an inward envy.” Sir Walter Ralegh particularly attracted the King’s distrust. Although his long, wavy hair had grown gray and he walked with a limp from a gunshot wound received fighting the Spanish years before, he remained perhaps the most striking figure from Elizabeth’s court. “He had that awfulness and ascendancy in his aspect over other mortals,” Aubrey recalled. His dress was also notoriously extravagant even by the standards of Elizabeth’s court. Ralegh particularly liked pearls and wore them head to toe—from pearl hat bands to large drop earrings, pearl-embroidered suits and even shoes; he once owned a pair worth £6,000.
According to Aubrey, writing decades later, James quipped testily to Ralegh as his name was announced, “O my soul mon, I have heard rawly of thee.” The pun on Ralegh’s name had been used for years, but James had indeed heard badly of him from Howa
rd and Cecil and, as Ralegh had already shown in his misjudged visit to Burghley, he was determined to counter their slanders. Unfortunately, if Aubrey is to be believed, he made another hash of it. At one point James, provoked by the displays of wealth and power around him, boasted anxiously that he could have taken the crown by force of arms if it had proved necessary. Ralegh quickly responded that he wished that James had been forced to fight for his crown, because then he would have seen who his real friends were. The impression on James was exactly the opposite of what Ralegh had intended and Aubrey tells us “that reason of Sir Walter was never forgotten nor forgiven.”58 But is this story true? Captain Millington’s account, written contemporaneously, contradicts Aubrey’s later piece and claims that all the Guard were “courteously received [by James] to their own content.”59 Millington, however, was writing to please the new King and would be rewarded for doing so with Felley Priory in Nottinghamshire. Aubrey, although writing later, was writing more freely. His tales—passed down from people who were either there or knew people who were there—also have a ring of truth: hadn’t Harington told James he would have been able to invade England successfully?
James was certainly aware of the stark contrast between the great finery of Elizabeth’s court and begrimed appearance of his own favorites, which was already attracting a great deal of unfavorable comment. There was a comic story doing the rounds at Theobalds that a religious fanatic dressed like a serving man had managed to sneak into the palace. When the guards caught up with him and asked whom he served he had responded, “The Lord Jehovah,” to which a weary constable replied, “Well let him pass; I believe it is some Scottish Lord or other.”60 Similarly, the Countess of Cumberland and her daughter, the thirteen-year-old Lady Anne Clifford, were horrified to discover that they had caught lice after sitting in Sir Thomas Erskine’s chamber.
James hoped money would solve such problems. He had already started enriching his countrymen by allowing them to sell knighthoods: a further twenty-eight were dubbed at Theobalds, bringing the numbers made on James’s progress thus far to 237, not far short of the number Elizabeth had made in her entire reign—but this was only tinkering. A much deeper and wider distribution of wealth could only be achieved with a Union of the kingdoms and James was anxious to make progress on it.
The Privy Council was now expanded to include Lords Henry and Thomas Howard, Lord Mountjoy, and five Scots, including the Earl of Mar, Duke of Lennox, James Elphinstone, Lord Kinloss and Sir George Home. Plans were laid for Home to replace Sir John Fortescue as Chancellor of the Exchequer and for Kinloss to be made Master of the Rolls in Chancery. The top financial and legal jobs in England were thus to have Scottish seconds in command—and Cecil only narrowly averted having a Scottish partner in the Secretaryship. For the time being James retained his Scottish Bedchamber with its English addition, Sir Robert Carey, but the titles were anglicized. The “Chalmer” became the Bedchamber and the “Varlets” Grooms. A Privy Council committee dominated by Home and Cecil was set up to shape the final settlement, to be announced from the Tower a week later.61 The issue of the reform of corruption was addressed in a royal proclamation. It announced the recall of all monopolies and licenses for consideration, including Ralegh’s monopoly on tin. Lawyers were ordered to desist from charging excessive fees, household officials were warned not to abuse their position in acquiring provisions for the court, and there was a Puritan-inspired Sunday ban on bear- or bull-baiting, listening to music, watching plays or indulging in any other “disordered exercises.”
Having thus addressed matters of business as well as pleasure, James left Theobalds for London on Saturday 7 May. The Lord Mayor, Robert Lee, waited at Stamford Hill, where the pushing, shoving crowds “covered the beauty of the fields; and so greedy were they to behold the countenance of the King, that with much unruliness they injured and hurt one another, some even hazarded to the danger of death.”62 One man made a small fortune renting out his cart to onlookers. Eight people at a time could stand in it and watch the spectacle in safety for fifteen minutes at a cost of a groat a head. Alongside the Mayor they saw the City aldermen dressed in scarlet gowns, heralds, trumpeters and 500 mounted citizens in velvet coats and chains of gold.
When James arrived he was given the usual oration on behalf of the sheriffs, but this proved to be no bland speech of welcome. The speaker warned against the evils of flattery and demanded that the people shall sit under his own olive tree, and anoint himself with the fat thereof, his face not grinded with extorted suits, nor his marrow sucked with most odious and unjust monopolies. Unconscionable lawyers and greedy officers shall no longer spin out the poor man’s cause in length to his undoing and the delay of justice. No more shall bribes blind the eyes of the wise, nor gold be reputed the common measure of a man’s worthiness.
The speech called for an end to the sale of benefices, to the neglect of the nobility and to the promotion of men who “mean to sell the King to his subjects at their own price, and abuse the authority of his Majesty to their private gain and greatness.” It claimed hopes had been raised by the recent publication of James’s Basilikon Doron, “now fresh in every man’s hand,” and as such, it concluded, James was welcome. 63 A pack of hounds was brought out for James and put in pursuit of a carted deer. James hunted as far as Islington where he was to stay at Lord Thomas Howard’s Charterhouse. The children of the nearby Christ’s Hospital had lined themselves up in its garden to sing for the King, but the crowd pushed right through them, scattering the children to left and right, as they threw their hats and shouted out in greeting to the King. 37 James must have been relieved to take refuge inside the Charterhouse. His hostess, the beautiful and rapacious Catherine Howard, was an intimate of Cecil’s—some even claimed she was his mistress—and according to the malicious courtier Anthony Weldon she later proved an expert in finding James “choice young men, whom she daily curled and perfumed.” 64 His host, Lord Thomas—a friend of Harington’s—was fat and genial with a conscience sufficiently flexible to allow him to attend the Protestant divine service on the Sunday despite his Catholic faith. The service proved rather more uncomfortable for James: People hadn’t liked all they read in the Basilikon Doron and Thomas Blague’s sermon suggested disapproval of some of James’s theories of absolutism, warning the King that “he that blows his nose too hard wrings out blood.”65
A number of matters were tidied up at the Charterhouse. Ralegh was brought before the Council to be officially relieved of his post of Captain of the Guard. He was offered £300 compensation and, sensibly, he “most humbly submitted himself.” Arbella was sent an invitation to join the court when it reached Greenwich and James created a further 134 knights, the last being dubbed on the morning of 11 May shortly before he took a carriage to Whitehall. From there he took a barge along the river to the Tower. The journey allowed him to avoid the crowds crammed together in the narrow streets—something that was all the more important now that the weather was growing warmer, for besides his fears of a lurking assassin there was a new threat: plague. An epidemic had been spreading across Europe. It had devastated Lisbon in 1599, Spain in 1601 and the Low Countries in 1602. By January 1603 over 200 people were dying every week in Ostend and English ships had returned home carrying infected rats.
The Catholic spy Anthony Rivers had reported plague deaths in the poor areas of Southwark and Stepney in February, but with the drama of Elizabeth’s death and James’s arrival the rising toll had attracted little comment. Throughout April and May people had poured into London in anticipation of James’s arrival. A courtier had sent a letter to Anne Newdigate in Warwickshire promising that “London streets shall be hanged with cloth of gold when the King comes” and warning that they would never have the opportunity to see the like again.66 Many had responded to such calls, and craftsmen and others hoped to take advantage of the business opportunities offered by the large numbers of gentry and foreign diplomats arriving in the capital. There were smiths, tailors, vintners and tobac
conists. It was said that even “trades that lay dead and rotten started out of their trance.”67
Of the dying and the dead, people reasoned that there was always the odd suspicious death. They dreaded triggering the plague orders under which whole households were shut up, healthy and sick together. But as the sun rose higher in the sky the number of plague victims had also begun to climb. Scaramelli had noted fourteen deaths from plague in London in the week before James arrived at Whitehall; another eleven succumbed in the next three days. The sick began shivering about a week after exposure. Their pulse rates rose and they became lethargic, then violently ill with muscle and backaches, nausea and diarrhea. As the disease progressed they became confused and giddy; bright light became painful and their tongues were coated white. Inflamed lymph nodes, called buboes, filled with pus until the blood vessels broke. They turned black as they dried under the skin, giving the plague its sobriquet of the Black Death. The majority of the victims died within four days.
The Tower cannon fired a noisy salute as James disembarked from his barge accompanied by Lord Thomas Howard and the Earls of Worcester and Nottingham. Most of the Tower’s prisoners had been released to celebrate the occasion of his visit, among them the Jesuit William Weston, who had noticed the bells of London falling silent as Elizabeth was dying; like other priests, he was to be sent into exile. Weston had watched frantic efforts being made to get the Tower into good order: leaking roofs were plugged, while the derelict Great Hall had its walls boarded and a temporary roof built of fir poles covered with canvas. Finally, however, the day came when he was to have his freedom. He had spent five years in the Tower and a total of seventeen in prison. “The hour was after dinner,” he recalled in his memoirs; “a large company followed me. However I was not yet a free person, for a triple guard was to escort us as far as Calais.” 68 No chances were being taken that such an individual should escape.
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