The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain (22 page)

Chapter 10

James VI and I (1567–1625): The King as Survivor

On the ceiling of the banqueting hall in the Palace of Whitehall, Rubens depicted James VI and I as the ‘British Solomon’ dispensing justice amidst swirling Baroque clouds. Though the most successful of the Stuarts, he has more often attracted ridicule than admiration; the Duc de Sully, chief minister of his cousin Henry IV of France, called him ‘the wisest fool in Christendom’. His mother Mary has never lacked devotees. Nor has his son Charles. Their deaths on the scaffold, and the manner in which they met them, lend their memory a nobility their lives frequently lacked. James died, in ordinary and inglorious fashion, in his bed. Highly intelligent, a scholar and poet, he was an unusual man to find on a throne, perhaps the only king of either Scotland or England who may reasonably be styled an intellectual. He liked to call himself ‘the great schoolmaster of the realm’, and it is easy to imagine him as a university don.

If posterity has found it hard to grant him respect, it is partly because of the picture of him drawn by a malicious court gossip, Sir Anthony Weldon, in his unreliable memoirs.
¹
It was Weldon who told how the King’s clothes were ludicrously padded to guard against dagger-thrusts, how he fiddled continually with his codpiece, how a weakness in his legs gave him an unsteady gait, how he fawned over his handsome favourites Robert Ker (or Carr), whom he made Earl of Somerset, and George Villiers, who was created Duke of Buckingham, how he lacked dignity and majesty of person, rarely washed, made unsuitable jokes, and was frequently in liquor.

Moreover, his reign in England has generally been compared unfavourably with the fabled glories of the Elizabethan age. Some of his subjects indeed made such a comparison. But many of the problems James faced first appeared in Elizabeth’s last years, and were inherited by him unresolved. Much of what is styled Elizabethan is also Jacobean. It was in James’s reign and under his patronage that the Church of England came to its rich maturity, and it was James himself who commanded the making and publication of the Authorised Version of the Bible. If not its begetter, he was its patron and inspiration, and the King James Bible is his richest legacy, a work such as Elizabeth never contemplated, and the great storehouse of the English language.

He became King of Scots when less than a year old, and was crowned in the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling. John Knox preached the sermon, and the Bishop of Orkney, consecrated according to the Roman Catholic rite but now an energetic reformer, anointed the infant. Then while the little boy’s guardian, John Erskine, Earl of Mar, held the crown over James’s head (for it weighed three and a half pounds and the baby could scarcely be expected to wear it), the nobles present approached and touched the symbol of kingship in homage. The oath was taken on his behalf in the absence in France of the regent Moray by James Douglas, Earl of Morton, one of the accomplices in his father’s murder. It was necessary to do all in order, and in conformity with precedent, since the child was king only because of the
coup d’état
which had resulted in his mother’s deposition, the first time this had happened in Scotland since Malcolm III’s son Edgar supplanted his uncle Donald Bane in 1097. A good many of those who had joined the confederacy against Bothwell were by no means ready to approve of Mary’s imprisonment, her forced abdication, the appointment of Moray as regent and the coronation of the little King. Indeed, the attendance at the coronation was exiguous. Many hesitated to commit themselves to the new regime till they saw how things worked out. Others, Maitland of Lethington among them, reverted to their former loyalty and became Mary’s partisans. Her party grew in numbers and for the first six years of James’s reign there was intermittent civil war. It was a time of great disorder, of murders, skirmishes, running battles in the streets of Edinburgh and Stirling. ‘All natural ties,’ wrote Scott in his
Tales of a Grandfather
, ‘were forgotten in the distinction of Kingsmen and Queensmen; and, as neither party gave quarter to their opponents, the civil war assumed a most horrible aspect. Fathers, and sons, and brothers, took opposite sides, and fought against each other.’

In 1570 Moray was assassinated in Linlithgow, shot in the street from a window by one Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh. This Hamilton had been sentenced to death in 1568 after being taken prisoner at Langside, where he had fought in the Queen’s army. He had been reprieved, but his estate had been declared forfeit. His wife was turned out of the house she had brought him as her dowry, and it was given to one of Moray’s dependants. Hamilton vowed to be ravenged on the regent, whom he held responsible for his misfortunes. He waited patiently for an opportunity, and when he had fired his carbine, calmly mounted his horse and rode away. A few days later he escaped to France.

Buchanan, in his
History of Scotland
, hailed Moray as the best man of his age, the inspiration and standard-bearer of the Protestant cause, a partisan sentiment. He was succeeded as regent by Darnley’s father, the Earl of Lennox. Dumbarton Castle, where Mary’s supporters had been holding out, was captured and the last Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews, James Hamilton, was hanged in his episcopal robes on a gibbet in Stirling. Less than a year later, in 1571, Lennox himself was murdered in the same town, and James, not yet five, saw his grandfather’s bleeding corpse carried into the castle. The next regent, James’s guardian, the Earl of Mar, died within a few weeks of his appointment, remarkably of natural causes, and was replaced by Morton, a leader of the gang who had murdered David Rizzio, who thus crowned a career of treachery, violence and murder by assuming the government of Scotland. For all his faults Morton was a man of some ability as well as fierce determination. He came down hard on Mary’s remaining supporters, fewer in number as their cause weakened in the years of her imprisonment in England. At last, in 1573, only Edinburgh Castle remained in their hands. Morton called for assistance from England and was sent a fine siege-train with which he battered the castle walls. The garrison, short of supplies and seeing no hope of relief, surrendered on a promise of pardon. The promise was not kept. The commander, Kirkcaldy of Grange, was hanged. Maitland of Lethington, who in his last years had been as ardent for Mary as he had previously been energetic in opposition to her, committed suicide in prison.

Such was the happy state of Scotland in the boyhood of King James.

His own upbringing was miserable, harsh and often frightening. His father was dead, his mother a prisoner in England, himself in effect an orphan. Buchanan, now rising seventy, was made his tutor. In one respect he did his work well. James was taught Latin before he could write English, and learned his lessons thoroughly, becoming a notable scholar. He learned Greek too, and as an adult would be able to converse in French, Italian and Spanish. But Buchanan was a harsh master, ruling his charge by fear and thrashing him when displeased. In later life James would acknowledge the debt he owed him, while also, by his own account, trembling once at the approach of a man who resembled his old tutor. Buchanan’s magisterial methods may be considered disgraceful, but worse still perhaps, in his savage partisanship he taught James that his mother was a wicked woman, an adulteress guilty of his father’s murder. It would be years before James could free his mind of the poisonous version of his family tragedy that Buchanan had given him.

The boy was starved of affection. It is a common observation that those denied love in their youth will grow up either harsh and incapable of giving love themselves or conspicuously tender. James, to his credit, was the latter. The fondness he lavished on his favourites, the maudlin sentimentality he displayed in old age, were a consequence of his lonely and loveless childhood, a compensation for its miseries. The experiences of childhood and youth had another result: they bred him to caution.

When he assumed control of the government he would move carefully to achieve his ends, displaying none of the recklessness and indifference to the opinion and personal interests of the nobility that had characterised several of his predecessors and led James I and James V to push their policies beyond what was tolerable. He might be as determined as they had been to assert the rights of the Crown and extend its power, but unlike them, he knew when to compromise, even when to yield. His caution was represented by many as timidity. He was said to have a horror of violence. Some have attributed this to his pre-natal experience when his pregnant mother saw Rizzio stabbed to death in her presence and was herself threatened with being ‘cut into collops’. This may of course be true, but actually James didn’t lack physical courage – he was a daring rider in the hunting field – and the history of his rule in Scotland at least offers plenty of evidence that he was possessed of an unusual degree of moral courage.

A French visitor to his court, by name Fontenay, gave this description of James when he was eighteen:

Three qualities of the mind he possesses in perfection: he understands clearly, judges wisely and has a retentive memory. His questions are keen and penetrating, and his replies are sound. In any argument, whatever it is about, he maintains the view that seems to him most just, and I have heard him support Catholic against Protestant opinions. He is well instructed in languages, affairs of state, better, I dare say, than anyone else in his kingdom. In short, he has a remarkable intelligence, as well as lofty and virtuous ideals and a high opinion of himself.

I have remarked in him three defects that may prove injurious to his estate and government: he does not estimate correctly his poverty and insignificance but is over-confident of his strength and scornful of other princes; his love for favourites is indiscreet and wilful and takes no account of the feeling of his people; he is too lazy and indifferent about affairs, too given to pleasure, allowing all business to be conducted by others.

He dislikes dancing and music, and the little affectations of court life such as amorous discourse or curiosities of dress, and has a special aversion for ear-rings. In speaking and eating, in his dress and in his sports, in his conversation in the presence of women, his manners are crude and uncivil and display a lack of proper instruction. He is never still in one place but walks constantly up and down, though his gait is erratic and wandering, and he tramps about even in his own chamber. His voice is loud and his words grave and sententious. He loves the chase above all other pleasures, and will hunt for six hours without interruption, galloping over hill and dale with a loosened bridle. His body is feeble and yet he is no delicate. In a word, he is an old young man.

An old young man: the judgement is telling. James never knew the careless exuberance of youth. He was on his guard from the day he was conscious of his position. He had a high sense of the sacred character of kingship, but he could not but be aware that the person of a king might be roughly handled, and his life at risk. Two of his predecessors had been murdered. His mother had been compelled to abdicate, his father assassinated. Mary’s English partisans plotted to kill Elizabeth. In 1584 the leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain, William of Orange, was murdered. In 1587 Mary went to the block. Two years later, James’s cousin, the Duc de Guise, was stabbed in the presence of another cousin, Henry III of France. Within a few months Henry himself fell victim to an assassin’s dagger. Kings might, as James believed, rule by divine right, but dangers surrounded them. If, as the gossip Weldon smirked, fear of assassination led him to wear padded clothes, he had good reason to think this necessary.

His loneliness was relieved in 1579, when he was thirteen, by the arrival from France of a glittering cousin, Esmé Stewart, Seigneur d’Aubigny. He was in fact Darnley’s first cousin and, with the exception of an elderly great-uncle (old Lennox’s brother), James’s nearest living relative on his father’s side. Esmé Stewart was a man of about thirty, an accomplished horseman and fencer, and he brought a breath of French sophistication to Presbyterian Scotland. James was dazzled by him and made a hero of him. Others too could see his value. He became a focus for the opposition to Morton, who was arrested in the last days of 1580 and charged with complicity in Darnley’s murder, which had for more than a dozen years cast a dark shadow over the public life of Scotland. When Morton was executed a few weeks later, almost all those who had been involved one way or another in the conspiracy against Darnley were dead.

James created Esmé Earl of Lennox, the title being vacant since the death of his uncle Charles, Darnley’s younger brother, in 1576. But Lennox, reared a Catholic in France, was suspected of favouring a Spanish alliance against England, and so provoked the opposition of the pro-English Protestant party. They responded in traditional style, seizing the person of the King while he was hunting near Perth, and consigning him to the care of the Earl of Gowrie, son of another of Rizzio’s murderers. Meanwhile Lennox was exiled or perhaps thought it prudent to exile himself. James escaped from his captors, found support in the Catholic north from the earls of Huntly, Crawford and Argyll, and turned the tables. Gowrie was arrested, charged with treason, and executed. James was still only sixteen.

To be sixteen was, however, to be of age. His minority was over. He was ready to rule as well as reign. With the help of an able chief minister, Sir James Maitland of Thirlestane (a connection of Lethington’s), he would govern Scotland efficiently for twenty years, pursuing always his mother’s dream of the English succession. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that establishing himself as Elizabeth’s heir dominated his mind and determined his policy.

It also informed his attitude to his mother. He had little filial feeling, and this can be no surprise. He had no memory of Mary and he had been taught that she was guilty of his father’s murder. Even when she was about to be put on trial for her life, he contented himself with asking that she should be kept in prison. He had already written to her that he could do nothing for her because she was ‘a captive in a desert’. Now he declined to play the one card that might have saved her, never threatening to break the treaty of alliance between Scotland and England, which he had signed in 1585 and which, he believed, came close to assuring him that he would indeed be Elizabeth’s successor. When Mary was sentenced to death, he protested, but mildly, and he asked the ministers of the Kirk to remember his mother in their prayers, requesting ‘that it might please God to illuminate her with the light of His truth, and save her from the apparent danger in which she is cast’. That was as far as he went, but even that was too far for the Kirk. The ministers of Edinburgh refused to do as he asked on the grounds that such prayers implied a belief in Mary’s innocence and a condemnation of Elizabeth’s conduct.