After Elizabeth Read online

  The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, escorted James around the sights: the Armory, the Wardrobe, the artillery, and the church. Afterward James walked in the garden and then rested for the night. The Duke of Stettin described the bedchambers as having “many fine bedsteads, gilt all over, used when visitors of high rank arrive; costly cushions of all colours and golden stuff, but especially two bedsteads, one covered with large pearls and granites, the other covered with beaten gold.” But he warned that they were “not very soft to lie upon.” 69 It was therefore after a possibly uncomfortable night that James faced the business of the day. 38 Among those prisoners who had remained in the Tower was Valentine Thomas, the Catholic who had claimed that James had ordered him to assassinate the Queen. Elizabeth had stayed his trial in 1598, hoping to save James from embarrassment, but James would now order it to go ahead and within a fortnight, on 4 June, Thomas was hung, drawn and quartered.

  There was also bad news from Scotland, where the difficult issue of the Earl of Mar having care of Prince Henry had flared up once more. The nine-year-old prince had been thoroughly confused by the events of April. One day an Englishman had arrived at Stirling Castle carrying a letter from his father telling him of the “great occasion” of his accession to the crown of England. It explained that he was leaving Scotland, but “by God’s grace” Henry would follow shortly and live with him in England. The letter concluded:

  Let not this news make you proud or insolent, for a king’s son ye were, and no more are you yet . . . Look upon all Englishmen that come to visit you as your loving subjects, not with ceremonious[ness] as towards strangers, but with that heartiness which they at this time deserve . . . Farewell, Your loving father, James R.70

  Henry had dutifully composed congratulations in Latin (a language with which he struggled) but all he had really understood from his father’s letter was that he was going far away. When his surrogate father, the Earl of Mar, left to join James, Henry feared he had been abandoned and he did something he knew he could be punished for. He wrote to his mother, whom he had not seen for five years, pleading that without his father’s visits he needed her care, which I have the more just cause to crave, that I have wanted it so long, to my great grief and displeasure; to the end that your Majesty by sight may have, as I hope, the great matter to love me, and I likewise may be encouraged to go forward in well doing, and to honour your Majesty with all due reverence, as appertains to me, who is your Majesty’s most obedient and truthful son, Henry.71

  No woman with an ounce of maternal feeling could have ignored such a letter—certainly not Anna, who was keen to avenge herself on Mar. She immediately contacted courtiers she could rely on and on 7 May rode to Stirling with a large group of armed men including the Earl of Glencairne, the Master of Orkney, the Earl of Linlithgow and Lord Elphinstone. When they arrived Lady Mar refused them entry. Only the Queen and her usual officers and attendants were allowed through the gates, but they also were armed and once inside Anna demanded to see her son. Lady Mar refused. Anna threatened to use force and swords were drawn, but the redoubtable Lady Mar quickly produced James’s instructions on keeping the prince in their care until he was eighteen. No one dared disobey the royal warrant and Anna’s men backed down. Humiliated and grief-stricken, Anna became hysterical, and according to a later report from the Venetian ambassador, she started beating her pregnant belly. 39 She was carried to a bedchamber and the Countess of Mar immediately wrote to the King to tell him what had happened.

  James was concerned for Anna’s health—she was now four months pregnant—but he also feared her actions could stir up a hornet’s nest. There were many Scots who would have liked to have Prince Henry remain in Scotland and he sent Mar north with instructions to discover who had ridden with his wife. In the meantime James created his first English nobles. They included four barons, three of whom— Sir William Knollys, Sir Robert Sidney and Sir Edward Wotton—had been close to Essex. From the opposite faction, Sir Robert Cecil was made Baron Cecil of Essendon in recognition of his role in James’s accession; Cecil’s authority in the Council was reinforced by the addition of his brother Lord Burghley and Lord Zouche, who was a close ally.72 Cecil had persuaded James not to add more Scots names to the Council, but James’s hopes for the Union were reflected in his new Privy Chamber. It was to consist of twenty-four English and twenty-four Scots divided into groups of four, each on duty for three months. Cromwell and Bromley were among those named.

  James’s Bedchamber was to be entirely Scottish. Its members included Sir John Ramsay, the page who had killed Alexander Ruthven; Lennox’s younger brother Esmé Stuart, Lord Aubigny; James’s Master Huntsman, Sir Roger Aston; and his Scottish Treasurer, Sir George Home. Robert Carey had lost the post so hard won on the road from Richmond to Edinburgh—and the decision on the Bedchamber was a serious one for the entire English court. The rules of entrée to James’s presence remained as they had been under Elizabeth, making the Scots gatekeepers to the King of England. The reaction was predictable, with English courtiers telling the Venetian Scaramelli that the government was charged with having sold England to the Scots, for no Englishman, whatever his rank, can enter the Presence Chamber without being summoned, whereas the Scottish Lords have free entrée of the Privy Chamber, and more especially at the toilette; at which time they discuss proposals which, after dinner are submitted to the Council, in so high and mighty a fashion that no one has the courage to oppose them.73

  Even Cecil, often seen closeted alone with James for hours at a time, would find with time that he could see the King only in formal audiences. The Scots entourage would do extraordinarily well from their exclusive access to the King. Of the twenty-nine individuals who received 75 percent of all crown patronage between 1588 (the year of the Armada) and 1641 (during the reign of Charles I), ten were gentlemen of James’s Bedchamber. Of the nine individuals who took 45 percent, six were in his Bedchamber. They made at least £40,000 a year, excluding grants of land and James’s periodic payment of their vast debts.74 The gravy train, set in motion with the sale of knighthoods during the progress south, would now pick up considerable speed, inspiring the following verse, among many similar ones:

  Hark! Hark!

  The dogs do bark,

  The beggars have come to town.

  Some in rags,

  And some in tags

  And some in velvet gowns.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “THE BEGGARS HAVE COME TO TOWN” Plague and Plot in London, May–June 1603

  The Venetian ambassador had his first audience with James at Greenwich Palace on 18 May. He disembarked from his barge at the great gatehouse where Elizabeth used to watch naval displays on the Thames and military reviews in the park. It was a favorite palace in the summer months and was full of mementoes of Essex. Rooms were hung with Chinese silk tapestries he had given her and even his portrait remained on display.1 Scaramelli was astonished by the size of the crowds hoping to get just a glimpse of James: “I never saw the like even at Constantinople in time of peace. There were upwards of ten or twelve thousand persons . . . All the efforts of the guards hardly enabled me to reach the first, let alone the inner chamber.”2

  When Scaramelli reached the Presence Chamber he found it had more than eighty feet of windows and the brilliant light illuminated a bizarre tableau. James stood on a raised platform by his throne. He wore a chain of diamonds around his neck and a huge diamond in his hat, but his suit was a simple one of gray satin worn with a black cloak, lined with scarlet, and his arm was still in a sling from the hunting accident at Exton. Scaramelli felt he “could have been taken for the meanest among the courtiers” if he were not surrounded by his Councilors “and an infinity of other Lords almost in attitude of adoration.”3 Scaramelli was convinced that left to himself James would have continued with “the modest habit of life which he pursued in Scotland where he barely lived like a private gentleman, let alone a sovereign,” but Elizabeth’s court was determined to retain the Tudo
r magnificence they were used to. Scaramelli was instructed to greet James with the same deference he would use toward the King of Spain and he was invited to return to the Presence Chamber later in the week to watch James dine in state.

  Three days later the Venetian duly returned. His dispatch to the Senate observed that James was used to sitting with his friends, “waited on by rough servants, who did not even remove their hats.” Now he sat alone, his food served to him by kneeling noblemen following the strict rituals of the Tudor court. It was, Scaramelli admitted, “a splendid and unwonted sight.”4 But James would not always play the part of Renaissance monarch as well as people would have liked. Too often he proved to be full of coarse bonhomie when dignity was required, and icily arrogant when he was expected to display warmth. The Catholic Sir Griffin Markham, who was at court still angling for an audience, told his friends that James drank in an uncouth manner. His disabilities made it difficult for him to sip and Sir Griffin’s comments may have referred to the way wine could pour from the corners of his mouth, but there was also a suggestion that James drank too much.

  The court was used to the moderate habits of an old spinster and James came from a heavier-drinking culture. Essex’s secretary in Ireland, Fynes Moryson, once claimed he would accept invitations in Scotland only if his hosts promised to protect him from the “large drinking” he feared he would be drawn into.5 Excessive drinking is also a problem associated with ADHD and James may have inherited a susceptibility to alcohol from his father. Certainly Anna was already very worried about James’s drinking and the following year she was predicting that it would eventually either kill him or turn him into an imbecile. 6 There were other examples of self-indulgence, and even worse in the minds of some courtiers was James’s coldness toward his ordinary subjects. One wrote to a friend from Greenwich complaining James was rarely in Council since he spent most of his days hunting “in fields and parks”; local people came out to see their new king but were treated so dismissively that they were soon calling for “some more of that generous affability which their good old Queen did afford them.”7

  At best James ignored the knots of people at the roadsides and at worst he insulted them. In one infamous incident that took place later in the summer he responded to a request to acknowledge a small crowd of onlookers by crying out in Scots: “By God’s wounds! I will pull down my breeches and they shall also see my arse!”8 Meanwhile resentment against the Scots was growing. The price being demanded for a knighthood was dropping rapidly as the Scots sold it ever more widely. The courtier Sir Philip Gawdy, who had hoped that the King regretted making so many knights on his progress from Scotland, now wrote to his brother complaining that “all gentlemen of worth make a ridiculous jest of them that bought them so dearly.” 9 He was still more dismayed to report that James was placing Scots “in all offices . . . and put out many English, meaning to make us all under the name of ancient Britons.”10

  The King’s intentions for the Union had been formally announced by proclamation on 19 May and hardly a day seemed to pass without one of his Scots favorites receiving lands and office. Lord Home was made Governor of Berwick in place of Sir John Carey, who also lost the lease on Ampthill Park to Sir Thomas Erskine. In addition Erskine was made Steward of the Manor of Woking and Keeper of the Park. Sir Robert Carey, having lost his post in the Bedchamber, also lost the wardenry of the Middle Marches and Norham Castle to Lord Home, and Home was granted Carey’s estates in North Durham for good measure. Carey was lucky to be offered £6,000 compensation for them. Sir George Home, meanwhile, having been granted Sir John Fortescue’s post at the Treasury, also took his posts as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Master of the Great Wardrobe—this last decision smacking of vengeance for Fortescue’s earlier refusal to allow Elizabeth’s possessions to be transported to Anna in Scotland.11

  In the years ahead, when Elizabeth’s fabulous costumes disappeared, Sir George Home—by then the Earl of Dunbar—would be accused of destroying the nation’s heritage for personal gain by “wickedly transporting them into the Low Countries” and selling them “for above one hundred thousand pounds.”12 In fact Anna would cut up many of them as costumes for her masques and give away others. But there remained something totemic about Elizabeth’s clothes, and handing them to a Scot was an insult the English never forgave. Dunbar had remained the closest of all James’s servants and was hated by the English court in like degree. They described him to a Venetian ambassador in 1607 as a man of “weak character in every respect, ungracious, ungrateful to his friends, incapable of winning friends, lacking in all the qualities that make a man beloved.” 13 The strain between the English and the Scots was already such that many violent quarrels had broken out and on 26 May Scaramelli dispatched to the Senate the news that “the ill will between English and Scots goes on rising rapidly. It serves nothing that the King declares his resolve to extinguish both names, and that both people shall pass under the common name of Britons and be governed by one and the same law.” In one incident a Scot killed Northumberland’s page with a dagger; in another a Scot struck an Englishman in the Presence Chamber, and Scaramelli warned: “The English, who were at first divided amongst themselves, begin now to make common cause against the Scots.”14

  The radical Catholics were moving quickly to take advantage of the developing situation. Anthony Dutton, who had been sent to Valladolid to gain support for an invasion, was to be followed by a long-serving soldier in the Catholic cause in Flanders—the now infamous Yorkshireman Guy Fawkes. The future gunpowder plotter met a mysterious gentleman in Brussels in early June. This gentleman had traveled from England with papers describing the latest news from court and hoped to pass them to the Archduke Albert; having discovered that the Archduke wanted peace with England, he begged Fawkes to take his intelligence on to Spain. The most recent speculation suggests that this gentleman was none other than the spy Anthony Rivers, otherwise known as William Sterrell, secretary to the Earl of Worcester—one of James’s four most trusted Englishmen (the others being Lords Henry and Thomas Howard and Robert Cecil). 40 The papers Fawkes was asked to carry included letters from “a leading personage at court” and “one who has charge of the letters to Spain.” There was also one written and one verbal message, as well as a copy of the petition for toleration that the “factious” priest Thomas Hill had given James in York. The general thrust of these messages was that the English Catholics had asked for toleration but had been denied it, that James was unpopular with everyone except the Scots and that with some military help he could easily be overthrown.

  The latest disappointment to Catholics was the requirement that Catholic MPs take the Oath of Supremacy at the next Parliament and thereby recognize the King as head of the Church in England. But they had also learned that, despite James’s repeated promises that he would end recusancy fines, those that had fallen due in April were to be collected after all. The verbal message Fawkes delivered to Spain added some intriguing details about the reaction to this at court. It described the Earl of Northumberland as being deeply disillusioned. He had been rewarded for his loyalty to James with a place on the Privy Council and with the prestigious post of Captain of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, but his role as a champion of toleration for Catholics had been conveniently ignored. On 18 May he had been instructed to tell the Pensioners that they must take the Oath of Supremacy. It was a severe blow to his honor and he later refused to ask his Catholic kinsman Thomas Percy to take the oath—an act of defiance that would land him in the Tower in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot (in which Percy was certainly involved, and possibly Northumberland—though his part has never been proven).

  The message also mentioned other names. It claimed that along with Northumberland, the Earls of Worcester, Cumberland and Shrewsbury did not want “to plan peace [with Spain] unless it is under the condition of liberty of conscience.”15 Worcester was a Catholic and Shrewsbury had a Catholic wife, but on the face of it Cumberland was a more surpr
ising name. Cumberland was Elizabeth’s last champion and one of the greatest privateers of his age— certainly no friend to the Spanish. James had also shown him favor by making him Governor of the Scottish Borders on 8 June. Cumberland’s daughter, however, tells us that he felt undervalued. The then thirteen-year-old Lady Anne Clifford recalled that the adults around her hoped for mountains from James but found only molehills and that they were envious of the success of Cecil and the Howards. Cumberland also detested the Scots and favored toleration for Catholics. State papers from the Netherlands reveal that Cumberland was already in contact with the Archduke’s agent, Dr. Taylor, as to how the cause might be advanced.16 This strongly suggests that his well-advertised opposition to peace with Spain had indeed more to it than a wish to continue his piracy, as contemporaries such as Bishop Goodman assumed.

  The message went on to describe the anti-Scots feeling at court and to express concern that some anti-Spanish Catholics were now on the point of rebelling. The fear was that if such a revolt failed it would lead to reprisals against all Catholics, and if it succeeded it would preempt a Spanish-backed invasion. The Jesuits were therefore desperately urging Catholics in England to show restraint. They also attended a secret meeting in London on 13 May with all the main Catholic parties in order to work out a common policy on how to confront James’s attitude to toleration. The Jesuit position was represented by the Archpriest Blackwell, that of the seculars by two Appellant priests called Mush and Colleton, and there was also a leading representative of the laity—a recusant Catholic gentleman called Robert Tempest. The result was a statement under which the parties agreed to work together to pressure the King into a change of course. But the meeting was concealed from the cross-eyed priest William Watson, who was now as loud in his condemnation of the King as he had once been of the Jesuits.