The Cradle King (29 page)

Thus was born a secret correspondence. The true identities of the correspondents were concealed: letters from James were often closed by the seals of other Scottish figures with whom Cecil might legitimately be corresponding; letters from England appear to have been received as being from the Duc de Bohan.
⁶⁰
Cecil was almost neurotically concerned to keep the correspondence privy: when Edward Bruce once wrote saying he thought a packet had been lost, Howard made sure that Cecil didn’t read the news: ‘if Cecil had seen [the clause], I protest to God all the course of convoy and intelligence had been ruined for ever … upon the multiplicity of doubts his mind would never have been at rest, nor he would have eaten or slept quietly; for nothing makes him confident, but experience of secret trust, and security of intelligence.’
⁶¹

Cecil advised James that the best approach would be to employ ‘clear and temperate courses’ to win over Elizabeth, who was naturally adverse to ‘needless expostulations, or overly much curiosity in her own actions’. He advised him to confine himself to ‘a choice election of a few in the present, will be of more use than any general acclamation of many’, and he should ignore those who urged him to be ‘too busy, to prepare the vulgar beforehand’.
⁶²
‘No!’ James snorted contemptuously. He was not ‘so evil [poorly] acquainted with the histories of all ages and nations’ that he was ignorant of ‘what a rotten reed
mobile vulgus
is to lean unto’ – although some of Cecil’s countrymen had recently learned that lesson the hard way. He would never give Elizabeth ‘any just cause of jealousy, through my too busy behaviour’.
⁶³

As Cecil pointed out, ‘the subject itself is so perilous to touch amongst us, as it setteth a mark upon his head forever that hatcheth such a bird’. But, then again, James should be reassured that ‘on the faith I owe to God, that there is never a prince or state in Europe with whom either mediate or immediate her Majesty hath entered into speech these twelve years of that subject’.
⁶⁴
Sir Robert was pleased that ‘if it should happen that the veil of secrecy were taken off by error or by destiny, the Queen herself (who were likest to resort to jealousy) should (notwithstanding) still discern clearly, that whatsoever hath passed in this correspondency hath wholly tended to her own repose and safety, without any incroachment upon other liberty than such as divers good physicians do take when they deceive an indisposed patient by giving
salutaria pro soporiferis
’.
⁶⁵
To James there was soon no ‘so worthy, so wise, and so provident a friend as 10 is’, not even his childhood friend: ‘I trust no more in the fidelity of 20 [Mar] that of a child was brought up with me, than I do in you.’
⁶⁶
By the autumn and winter of 1602, paranoid secrecy about the succession was beginning to wane.
⁶⁷
In October of that year, Cecil let the French ambassador know that he supported James as successor to Elizabeth, a move that was noted by other foreign ambassadors.
⁶⁸
A young Scottish gentleman named Indernyty, passing through England, reported to James on 9 February 1603 ‘that wherever I passed and lodged they think your Majesty their young lord, which within few years so man durst [dared] speak’.
⁶⁹
For James’s part, he looked forward to the day he could ride south: ‘St George surely rides upon a towardly riding horse, where I am daily burstin [burst] in daunting a wild unruly colt.’
⁷⁰
He did not have much longer to wait. Early in the morning of Thursday 24 March 1603, Elizabeth I died. Eight hours later in London, James was proclaimed King of England.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Betwixt Both

A
S
J
AMES LOOKED
south to his future, he did not forget his past. Making his last ‘harangue’ to Edinburgh on Sunday 3 April 1603, he made it clear that what was uppermost in his mind was unity between his two realms. ‘As my right is united in my person,’ he declaimed, ‘so my marshes are united by land, and not by sea, so that there is no difference betwixt them. There is no more difference betwixt London and Edinburgh, yea, not so much, as betwixt Inverness or Aberdeen and Edinburgh; for all our marshes are dry, and there be ferries betixt them. But my course must be betwixt both, to establish peace, and religion, and wealth, betwixt both the countries. And as God has joined the right of both the kingdoms in my person, so ye may joined in wealth, in religion, in hearts, and affections.’ He assured them that he could not forget Scotland. ‘Ye mister [must] not doubt, but as I have a body as able as any king in Europe, whereby I am able to travel, so I shall vissie [visit] you every three year at the least, or ofter [more often], as I shall occasion; for so I have written in my book directed to my son, and it were a shame to me not to perform that thing which I have written. Think not of me, as a king going from one part to another; but as a king lawfully called, going from one part of the isle to the other, that so your comfort may be the greater.’
¹

It had been decided that the royal family should stagger their entry into England. James would be the first to go, followed by Anna with Prince Charles and Princess Elizabeth on 14 May.
²
Prince Henry, now nine years old, would stay at Stirling for the time being. With no time to visit his heir before leaving for England, James wrote a letter to Henry. Although many of the sentiments are banal, James’s excitement at his new challenge is palpable:

My son, That I see you not before my parting impute it to this great occasion, wherein time is so precious, but that shall, by God’s grace, be recompensed by your coming to me shortly, and continual residence with me ever after; let not this news make you proud or insolent, a King’s son and heir was ye before, and no more are ye yet; the augmentation that is hereby like to fall unto you, is but in cares and heavy burdens; be therefore merry but not insolent; keep a greatness but
sine fastu
[without pride]; be resolute, but not wilful; keep your kindness, but in honourable sort; choose none to be your playfellows but them that are well born; and, above all things, give never good countenance to any but according as ye shall be informed that they are in estimation with me; look upon all Englishmen that shall come to visit you as upon your loving subjects, not with that ceremony as towards strangers, and yet with such heartiness as at this time they deserve …

With the letter he sent a copy of his
Basilikon Doron
‘lately printed’. ‘Study and profit in it as ye would deserve my blessing,’ he instructed his son. On matters where the book laid down no specific advice, Henry should weigh the advice of his counsellors against James’s general rules, ‘mistrusting and frowning upon them that advises you to the contrare. Be diligent and earnest in your studies,’ he urged, ‘that at your meeting with me, I may praise you for your progress in learning.’
³

On 4 April 1603, James set off for his new throne, travelling down England through Berwick, Withrington, Newcastle, Durham, York, Doncaster, Newark, Burley, Royston and Theobalds – the journey deliberately filling a whole month so that the formal sadness of Elizabeth’s funeral on 28 April could be forgotten by the time he reached London. Each city and town welcomed their new King with fireworks, bonfires, orations, feasting and gifts. In return, James gave a performance of regal generosity: on his command, the gaols were opened, and prisoners set at liberty – excepting those accused of treason, murder, or ‘Romish disloyalty’.
⁴
More controversially, James started to hand out knighthoods to the chief gentlemen of each county, on the recommendation of his Scottish favourites; soon it was rumoured that these favourites were taking bribes from would-be knights in exchange for their support, and the English lawyer Roger Wilbraham noted disapprovingly that ‘it grew a public speech that English had the blows and Scottish the crowns’.
⁵

James reached the Cecils’ estate of Theobalds on 3 May, meeting for the first time his long-time correspondent Sir Robert Cecil, and there too he attended his first English Privy Council meeting.
⁶
Four days later, as he approached London, James was met at Stamford Hill by the capital’s Lord Mayor, its Aldermen and five hundred citizens all in chains of gold, with outpourings of loyalty and gladness. As he made his way to London, James was mobbed. The crowds of people, one observer reported, ‘in the highways, fields, meadows, closes, and on trees was so great that they covered the beauty of the fields; and so greedy were they to behold the King that they injured and hurt one another’.
⁷
With a reputed 40,000 trying to attend court, and some 100,000 extra bodies in London, James was ‘swarmed’ by well-wishers and suitors ‘at every back gate and privy door, to his great offence’, reported Wilbraham.
⁸

While James was being welcomed in London, Anna was at Stirling for the first time in five years. She knew that the Earl of Mar, Henry’s guardian, was riding south with the King: without his opposition, she believed that she could do what she had failed to do eight years earlier – bring her eldest son away with her. But Mar’s wife and son easily guessed what the Queen planned. When James entrusted Henry to Mar’s care he had specified that, even if he died, Mar was to ‘see that neither for the Queen nor Estates their pleasure you deliver him till he be eighteen years of age, and that he command you himself’.
⁹
Accordingly, the Mars flatly refused to let Henry go out. But Anna was not to be easily swayed. Soon she was joined at Stirling by a small group of nobles, all of them ‘well supported’
¹⁰
– armed and manned – and perhaps Anna believed that she could use them to take Henry by force. But once again, sticking to the rules of the house, the Mars would not allow anyone in with more than two followers. The Venetian ambassador reported that Anna flew into a violent fury, and four months gone with child as she was, she beat her own belly, so that they say she is in manifest danger of miscarriage and death’.
¹¹
It seems that indeed she did miscarry: according to David Calderwood’s account, the Queen ‘went to bed in an anger, and parted with child the tenth of May’.
¹²

The Earl of Mar arrived back at Stirling two days later, carrying orders from James that the Queen was to join her husband in England. The Queen decided not to allow him to convey the King’s commands, not deigning even to ‘look upon him’, and instead demanding to be given the letters sent from James. Mar refused, saying that he would only do so if she would grant him access to her presence ‘to discharge his secret commission’. Once again, Anna and Mar reached an impasse. They both sent letters posthaste to James, Anna accusing her husband of listening to scurrilous rumours about her involvement in Catholic and Spanish plots, of not loving her, and of only marrying her because of her high birth. James responded by sending the Duke of Lennox to mediate, and wrote to Anna protesting ‘upon the peril of my salvation and damnation, that neither the Earl of Mar nor any flesh living ever informed me that ye was upon any papish or Spanish course’. ‘I say over again,’ he pleaded, in a rare moment of apparent emotion towards his wife,

leave these froward womanly apprehensions, for, I thank God, I carry that love and respect unto you which by the law of God and nature I ought to do my wife and mother of my children, but not for ye are a king’s daughter, for whether ye were a king’s or a cook’s daughter ye must be all alike to me, being once my wife. For the respect of your honourable birth and descent I married you, but the love and respect I now bear you is because that ye are my married wife, and so partaker of my honour as of my other fortunes. I beseech you excuse my rude plainness in this; for casting up of your birth is a needless impertinent argument to me. God is my witness, I ever preferred you to all my bairns [children], much more than to any subject …
¹³

Lennox arrived at Stirling on 19 May with what was phrased as a compromise, but was in effect a climb-down on the King’s part. Mar, his mother and his friends ‘had done good service to the King’, Lennox declared, but now he had been ordered ‘to transport both the Queen and the Prince’ into England. The handing over of the Prince was a delicate business. The Council convened in Stirling and barred the Queen’s posse of noblemen from coming within ten miles of Henry; instead, Mar would deliver the Prince to Lennox, and Lennox would hand him over to the Council. The Council then, ‘to pleasure the Queen’, delivered Henry to Anna and Lennox, who would take him to the King, with a retinue of noblemen from which Mar was excluded, ‘to pleasure the Queen’.
¹⁴