The King's Assassin

by Benjamin Woolley

  He artfully turned the snobbery to his advantage. Seen as harmless, he was able to slip past rivals and by mid-1614 had managed to make his way into the household of one of the most important families in the king’s entourage.

  Sir Roger Aston was one of the king’s closest friends. The illegitimate son of a powerful Cheshire landowner, he had spent most of his life in Scotland, where a combination of sporting prowess, toughness and charm had led to him becoming barber, hunting companion and confidant to James, as well as the husband of Marjory Stuart, one of the king’s cousins and a lady-in-waiting to the queen consort, Anne of Denmark.

  Sir Roger had died unexpectedly in 1612, and his wife soon after, leaving behind considerable wealth and four daughters. The youngest, Ann, was unmarried and a relationship quickly flourished between her and George, and, to the horror of friends of the Aston family and delight of court gossips, they became betrothed.

  If George had hopes that the journey from Leicestershire to London meant leaving the past behind, they were to be dashed. Ann’s guardian and her father’s executor was Sir William Heyricke, an enterprising goldsmith and moneylender. He knew the Villiers family well, having lent considerable sums to George’s spendthrift father, some of it to buy pearls for Mary. So he was in a good position to assess the son’s financial prospects.

  Ann’s older sister, Elizabeth, had recently married one John Grymesdyche, and Heyricke had negotiated the marriage settlement. It allowed for a £2,000 dowry to be paid to the groom’s family, and in return Elizabeth was granted a life interest in Mr Grymesdyche’s extensive Northamptonshire estates. As Heyricke well knew, George, with no inheritance or estates of his own, was in no position to offer a similar deal for an equally eligible bride. Indeed, to Sir William, George’s charm and ‘French garb’ only added to the impression that he was a fortune hunter. So, Sir William set about wrecking the romance by setting terms that George could only interpret as insulting: there was to be no dowry from Ann, and George would have to deposit a hundred marks (£66 6s 8d) – a sum well beyond his personal resources – as a ‘jointure’ or security, which would become Ann’s in the event of his death or their separation.

  Whatever the obstacles, Ann and George seemed set on one another. She insisted that she would proceed with the marriage ‘in despite of all her friends’, while he declared it ‘the height of his ambition’ to be her husband, and that she was the only reason he remained ‘a hanger on upon the court’.

  However, George’s sincerity was about to face a test sterner than any Sir William Heyricke could devise. The argument over the match had brought George’s presence to the attention of Sir John Graham, a senior courtier who had served alongside Ann’s late father as a gentleman of the royal bedchamber. He saw in the young man what the teachers of his courtly manners had seen: a refreshing English charm and attractiveness that James might appreciate – and for which there was a sudden and desperate demand.

  Hailing from the gloriously named ‘debateable lands’, marking the fragile frontier between Scotland and England, the Graham clan had a noble tradition going back to Roman times of patrolling the borders to fight off English incursions. This gave Sir John an appreciation of the ancient rivalry between the two kingdoms, which seemed to have intensified rather than diminished since James had taken over both thrones. ‘The Scottish monopolize his princely person,’ John Holles complained, ‘standing like mountains betwixt the beams of his grace and us’. The result was ‘jealousy, distrust or unworthiness’ among his English subjects. ‘We most humbly beseech his Majesty his Bedchamber may be shared as well to those of our nation as to them,’ Holles had pleaded, and in this curious, charismatic twenty-one-year-old Englishman, Sir John wondered if he might have discovered a candidate capable of redressing the balance.

  So he set about giving George ‘encouragement to woo fortune in court’ rather than with Ann. It was a fortune that, while fraught with danger, would take him into realms of influence and extravagance he could barely imagine, redeeming his family’s ancient line, and setting his beloved mother at the pinnacle of society, where she most manifestly belonged, and from which the failures of so many hapless or useless men had left her excluded.

  ‘O sweet god! O Pleasure! O Fortune! O all thou best of life!’ Malvole’s antagonist, Mendoza, promises in The Malcontent. ‘To be a favourite! A minion!’ This is what George had been groomed for, what his mother, through so many travails, had strived for, and what now seemed to be within grasp, if only he would surrender love for ambition.

  Apethorpe

  King James was a restless spirit. The ‘cradle king’, as he styled himself, had been crowned King of Scotland when he was barely a year old, in the midst of a murderous power struggle between his barons. ‘Nourished in fear’, as he later described it, he had been forced into exile in his own kingdom, kidnapped by his own subjects and throughout his childhood was under constant threat of assassination. As a result, he did not feel safe anywhere, and so would spend the year in ceaseless motion, moving from one location to the next, his court – ministers, nobles, bishops, gentlemen, grooms, clerics, clerks, purveyors, cooks, couriers and pages – forced to follow.

  This restlessness took on a more ritual and formal purpose every summer, when James would embark upon his annual progress, his official tour of the country. Hundreds of carts – as many as 600 in one particularly extravagant year – would form a train that snaked across the kingdom, stopping off at the houses of local nobles along the way, each competing to bankrupt themselves with displays of ostentatious hospitality.

  These progresses came like a plague of locusts to the local economy. An ancient royal prerogative known as ‘purveyance’ allowed the monarch’s officials to requisition provisions for the journey at a price of their choosing. This inevitably resulted in rampant corruption and produced an outpouring of complaints. But the progresses also acted as a way for James’s subjects to behold their king’s grandeur and acknowledge his supremacy. During a trip through Huntingdonshire, for example, the king found himself surrounded by a throng of people calling to him for his help. Sir John Spencer, the fabulously rich alderman whose daughter had married George’s step-uncle Lord Compton, had ‘very uncharitably molested’ local common land, they complained. They pleaded with the king to intercede against a powerful figure, ‘beseeching his Majesty that the commons might be laid open again, for the comfort of the poor inhabiters thereabout; which his Highness most graciously promised should be performed according to their heart’s desire’. Whether or not they would ultimately receive satisfaction, his assurances seemed to relieve the locals’ distress, and, ‘with many benedictions of the comforted people’, the king’s carriage passed on.

  One of James’s favourite places to stay during these progresses was Apethorpe, in neighbouring Northamptonshire, home of the retired diplomat Sir Anthony Mildmay. Mildmay was a man equal to his name, a reluctant ambassador during Elizabeth’s reign, an unassuming MP for his county, who had made little political impact and an ‘honourable fast friend’ who liked to stay at home and read his books or tend to his estate.

  Apethorpe was one of those distinctively English stately homes that managed to combine domestic intimacy with stately grandeur. James had first visited in 1603, as he made his way from Edinburgh to London to take the English throne. Mildmay had greeted the king with a dinner ‘most sumptuously furnished’, the tables resplendent with ‘costly banquets, wherein every thing that was most delicious for taste, proved more delicate, by the art that made it seem beauteous’. To round off proceedings, Mildmay had presented James with ‘a gallant Barbary horse, and a very rich saddle’, gifts well calculated to win the king’s approval.

  Sir Anthony may well have come to regret his hospitality, as James would become a regular and very costly visitor at Apethorpe. The king even insisted that he build an extension, to make it more suitable for his ‘princely recreation’ and ‘commodious entertainment’, as well as a convenient base for his favo
urite pursuit: hunting in the nearby royal forest of Rockingham.

  In July 1614, James was at Hawnes Hall in Bedfordshire, en route to Apethorpe, when news reached him that his brother-in-law, Christian IV, King of Denmark, had turned up unexpectedly at Somerset House, Queen Anne’s London residence. James immediately rode back to London, managing the journey in less than a day.

  The Danish king was infamous for his carousing, even among the rowdier elements of the British court. During a previous visit, one witness of a particularly drunken evening’s revel remarked that ‘the Danes have again conquered the Britons, for I see no man, or woman either, that can now command himself or herself’.

  Christian did not disappoint on this occasion either. The entertainments included a private drinking competition between the two kings, ‘where some dozen or fifteen healths passed to and fro’, followed by a riotous feast in Whitehall’s Banqueting House. A few days later, James escorted Christian back to his ship at Great Yarmouth, and saw him off before hastening back to his progress, ‘overtaking his hounds’ in his eagerness to reach Apethorpe.

  The court, marooned in the Midlands and wondering what to do, erupted with speculation on the reason for the Danish king’s surprise visit. Some suggested Christian was trying to draw James into the military hostilities on the Continent, others insisted it concerned James’s controversial plans to marry off his son Prince Charles to the daughter of the Spanish king. Whatever the purpose, the diversion had left James in an exhausted and crapulent mood, which resulted in a spat with his secretary, Sir Thomas Lake, whose efforts to find out what was going on were interpreted as interference. Sir Thomas was put on half-rations for his pains.

  But once the king was settled at Apethorpe, the mood relaxed.

  It was 4 August, a Thursday evening. In Mildmay’s commodious hall, the tables were once again prepared for costly banquets, including the famously delicious candies prepared by Lady Mildmay, who was considered to be ‘one of the most excellent confectioners in England’. A gallery at one end of the hall provided a place for musicians to play, and for those with suitable permissions to gawp.

  James took his seat at the high table, with his hosts and closest courtiers. As the serving of the evening’s meal commenced, he might have recited some poetry, or terrified a local cleric by inviting him to sit by his side and discourse on theology, or forced a guest to listen to his strong and idiosyncratic opinions on the dangers of witches and tobacco.

  Behind the door of the garderobe, the service room connecting the kitchen to the hall, stood a nervous George Villiers, dressed in new livery chosen by Sir John Graham to flatter the young man’s athletic physique. George had been given the role of ‘extraordinary’ (probationary) cupbearer, an attendant whose job was to serve at the ‘upper end of the board at dinner’ where the king sat, replacing one of James’s usual attendants, who, despite protests, had been demoted to serve at the lower tables.

  What was about to happen was a highly unusual and dangerously presumptuous exploit for all concerned. Graham would have had to call in considerable favours to achieve it. James’s reign had been marked by several attempts on his life, and if he was startled by an unfamiliar face was liable to react with terror or fury. Furthermore, the demands on cupbearers were daunting. These young ganymedes were expected not just to serve wine, but to entertain and delight. Success required an almost impossible alchemy of opposing elements: frailty combined with confidence, innocence with knowingness, masculinity with effeminacy. They had to be coy yet seductive, spontaneous yet calculating, lithe and quick, yet careful and watchful. So, when a gentle push from his patron propelled George into the banqueting hall for the first time, clutching a gilded flagon and an embroidered napkin, it would have been with a sense of trepidation for all concerned.

  First impressions of the royal presence would have been confusing. There was nothing regal about James. The forty-eight-year-old was an unprepossessing, to some even slightly repulsive figure, of ‘middling stature’. He had a snub nose with pronounced bags beneath large eyes, like the awnings of a sail in a slack wind, giving him a doleful look. His red moustache and beard were ‘very thin’ and framed bulging, misshapen lips. As a cupbearer would be only too aware, his tongue was too large for his mouth, causing him to slobber and spill drink and food over his front. His complexion was ‘as soft as taffeta sarsnet’, the most delicate of fabrics, and he was rumoured never to wash his hands, only rubbing his finger ends slightly with the wet end of a napkin. He had a distracted air about him, his gaze roving around continuously, and was constantly fiddling about his codpiece. But he was also good company: erudite, sensitive and clever, eager to be entertained and generous and sincere with his emotions and affections.

  All eyes would have been on George as he approached the king, assessing with minute care the royal reaction. The initial response was promising – a flicker of interest over the rim of the goblet.

  Then, disaster. While carrying a tray of meat to the royal table, George was given a knock by the cupbearer whose position he had taken, causing food to spill over his new clothes. Withdrawing to clean himself up, he returned to the hall soon after and confronted his adversary, giving him a ‘box on the ear’.

  The impetuous act caught the attention of Robert Carr, the irascible and jealous Earl of Somerset, the king’s current favourite and the most powerful of his courtiers. Sitting at the top table, near to James, he had spotted the king’s interest in the newcomer, and, sensing the presence of a potential rival, decided to take action. He demanded that George should face the customary punishment for starting a fight in the royal presence of having his hand cut off. But, to Carr’s consternation, the king intervened, pardoning George, ‘without any satisfaction to the other party’. It was a sensational outcome, reinforcing Carr’s conviction that the upstart must be destroyed.

  George now became the focus of fierce curiosity as the royal progress continued on to Nottingham and Oxford. It was noted that the young man was as ‘inwardly beautiful as he was outwardly’, that he had the sort of elegant frame and ‘sweet’ disposition the king liked; his ‘delicacy and handsome features’ were praised, along with his ‘especially effeminate and curious’ hands and face. One admirer stared at him ‘about half an hour’s space at least’ to try and comprehend his magnetism. Another was simply overwhelmed: ‘From the nails of his fingers, nay, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, there was no blemish in him. And yet his carriage and every stoop of his deportment more than his excellent form were the beauty of his beauty.’

  Thomas Erskine, Lord Fenton, who had known James since he was a boy, noticed the blossoming of a new infatuation. A few weeks after the first encounter, he was reporting to a cousin of this unknown ‘youth’ who ‘begins to be in the favour of his majesty’. It was a measure of George’s obscurity that Erskine assumed he was just a local boy from Northamptonshire.

  In November, after the court had returned to London, a vacancy came up in the royal household for a groom of the bedchamber. It was a junior but nevertheless key position. A staff of twenty or so were responsible for the king’s daily care, the grooms ranking between the pages and the gentlemen. They came into regular and intimate contact with the royal person, attending to him in shifts around the clock, quite often sleeping on a pallet at the bottom of the royal bed. They would wash him, dress him, pamper him, fetch for him, but were also expected to entertain and amuse him. They might even be put in charge of the ‘privy purse’, the king’s own money, as necessity required.

  Sir John Graham, as a gentleman of the bedchamber, seized the opportunity to put George forward as a candidate. The king had evidently enjoyed the young man’s company, and would surely appreciate his presence in the bedchamber. But James turned Sir John down flat, leaving him puzzled and hurt, and George out on a limb.

  The reason for the rebuff emerged in an extraordinary letter the king wrote to his current favourite Robert Carr, complaining of his jealous behaviour during
the summer progress. It ran to several pages, and, while brimming with emotion, was clearly the product of hours of careful drafting. Prompted by the debacle over the young groom’s appointment, it expressed the ‘infinite grief of a deeply wounded heart’ rather than the anger of a disobeyed master.

  James was bewildered by the ‘strange frenzy’ that had overtaken Carr since George’s appearance, ‘so powdered with and mixed with strange streams of unquietness, passion, fury and insolent pride, and (which is worst of all) with a settled kind of induced obstinacy as it chokes and obscures all these excellent and good parts that God hath bestowed on you’. That choking obstinacy had led Carr to appoint, without James’s knowledge or permission, his illegitimate kinsman William Carr to the role Sir John Graham had sought for George. This had forced James into the embarrassing position of having to turn his ‘countenance’ from his faithful old friend Sir John, ‘the like whereof I never did to any man without a known offence’.

  It was all part of a pattern in the favourite’s behaviour, the king complained. He noted Carr’s ‘long creeping back and withdrawing … from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary’.

  Revealing his weakness and dependence, James also sought to reassure Carr. He would never, he promised, ‘suffer any to rise in any degree of my favour except they may acknowledge and thank you as a furtherer of it, and that I may be persuaded that they love and honour you for my sake’.

  Carr’s response to the letter was to become even more difficult and demanding. He even claimed that he no longer felt ‘inward affection’ for the king, but would instead act only as a dutiful servant.