A few days later, George wrote to Bacon, pointing out that his fervent ‘offer of submission’ had ‘battered so the unkindness that I had conceived in my heart for your behaviour towards me in my absence’ that he would let bygones be bygones. And, in a gesture of reconciliation, ‘out of the old sparks of my affection towards you’ he had decided to ‘sound his Majesty’s intention how he means to behave himself towards you’. The king, George admitted, was still in a mood of ‘deep-conceived indignation’ about Sir Francis’s ‘confused and childish’ behaviour, and indeed was nurturing a ‘rigorous resolution’ to ‘put some public exemplary mark upon you’. So George had fallen upon his knees on his old friend’s behalf, ‘to beg of his Majesty that he would put no public act of disgrace upon you’. As a result, James had agreed reluctantly – at least according to George’s account, aimed at demonstrating the lengths to which he had gone to help his mentor – to give a ‘kingly’ but general reprimand to all those privy councillors involved in the affair of Frances Coke’s daughter, without naming anyone in particular.
Weldon noted with admiration the effect of George’s handling of Bacon, observing how his former mentor became ‘so very a slave’ that he ‘durst not deny the command of the meanest’ of George’s kindred, ‘nor oppose any thing’.
Frances was eventually won over to marrying John, if only for the sake of her father. In what was hardly a declaration of love, but a mature and pragmatic acceptance of her position, she also accepted that John was ‘not to be misliked’. The wedding took place at Hampton Court on 29 September 1617, Michaelmas Day, and James gave the bride away.
Sir Edward Coke was given back his place in the Privy Council, and George staged a public reconciliation between his mother and Frances’s at Cecil House. Lady Hatton responded by hosting the Villiers family at Hatton House, her home in Holborn. It was a ‘very magnifical’ occasion, according to John Chamberlain. ‘The King graced her every way, and made four of her creatures knights.’ But, he noted, ‘the principal graces and favours lighted on the Lady Compton’, George’s mother, along with the rest of the family – the ‘country kindred’ so derided when George had first come to court. The king ‘praised and kissed’ them, ‘and blessed all those that wished them well’. This was now his family, and he would do everything in his power to protect them.
Made or Marred
By the late 1610s, the mental condition of George’s eldest brother John had become so alarming their mother had been forced to seek medical help. She took him to see the astrologer-physician Richard Napier, but efforts to find a cure were proving futile. This presented George with an urgent need to find a more suitable heir for his growing portfolio of titles and estates. Courtly expectation was that marriage would be ‘very dangerous’ for the favourite, as the competition for his affection was likely to arouse the king’s jealousy. Nevertheless, with the deterioration of his elder brother’s condition, it became clear that, to secure his legacy, George was in need of a wife to provide him with a son.
Many of the court’s most eligible and beautiful debutantes were eager candidates, but he chose Katherine, daughter of Francis Manners, the sixth Earl of Rutland. Despite her pedigree, she seemed an unlikely choice for such a glamorous and desirable suitor. As even portraits commissioned by George show, Katherine’s lively, intelligent face did not conform with conventional notions of female beauty. There were also financial and religious obstacles. The dowry demanded by George’s mother was considered too high. Katherine was also known to come from a Catholic family, which was bound to arouse controversy among Protestant activists at court and in Parliament.
The greatest obstacle, however, was her father. As one of the great magnates of the English midlands, the thirty-eight-year-old earl had received the Order of the Garter from the king in 1616 at the same time as the twenty-three-year-old George, and he had evidently resented being upstaged by a man he would not in any other circumstances have dignified with his dog, let alone his daughter. So he had obstructed George’s efforts to woo Kate, preventing them from meeting, and attempting to pre-empt George’s efforts by casting around for an alternative partner.
Nevertheless, George had persisted. The Manners family were from the county of his birth. He had spent his childhood in the shadow of their ancestral home, the imposing Belvoir Castle. During their long exile in provincial obscurity, the Villiers family had been forced to pay homage to the earl. Now was a chance to turn the tables.
As with her elder son John, it was George’s mother Mary who, with characteristic decisiveness, broke the deadlock. She paid a visit to Kate at the earl’s London residence, and invited her to supper at her newly acquired mansion in Chelsea. Kate accepted, but the apparently innocent offer of hospitality took on a different complexion when they were joined by George. Kate spent the night at Mary’s house, where, as one gossip scurrilously put it, she was either ‘made or marred’. When Mary returned Kate the following day to her father, he refused to take her in, forcing her to stay with an uncle. Soon after, George received a furious letter from the earl in which he complained that it had never occurred to him that he should ‘advise my daughter to avoid the occasion of ill’ – that is, the sort of predatory abduction that Mary and George had apparently perpetrated. The crime had been compounded by his daughter’s own collusion in surrendering the family honour, in respect of which, the earl wrote pessimistically, ‘I hope I shall arm myself with patience, and not with rage’. George replied in a tone of surprised indignation, explaining to him that he took ‘unkindly’ to the ‘harsh usage of me and your own daughter’, claiming that ‘she had never received any blemish in her honour but that which came by your own tongue’. George therefore decided he would ‘leave off the pursuit’ of Kate, ‘putting it in your free choice to bestow her elsewhere to your best comfort’.
The earl’s bluff was called, and he duly surrendered. They were married in a private ceremony in London, the earl in attendance, having agreed to hand over a dowry of £10,000 in cash and estates worth some £4,000 to £5,000 a year.
Kate proved to be an astute choice of partner. If anything, she succeeded in bringing George closer to the king, who treated her as a daughter rather than a rival. The two developed an affectionate and playful relationship, corresponding frequently and freely, fussing over each other’s and George’s health.
The reason for the king’s enthusiasm is suggested in a portrait of the couple by the Dutch master Van Dyck, probably commissioned by James to celebrate the marriage. Known as ‘Venus and Adonis’, the figures are recognizably George and Kate. But the picture subverts conventional portrayals of its classical subject, making the man the focus of attention and object of desire. He is a magnificent specimen of male potency, with a strong chest and muscular thighs emphasized by a lithe greyhound curled around his leg, eager to lure him to the chase. She, in contrast, is hunched and flat-chested, hooked-nosed and weak-chinned. While he stares adoringly at her, she gazes out of the picture with a shrewd, almost complacent expression, challenging the viewer to make his or her own judgement on the nature of human beauty and desire. It advertised the reason for James’s infatuation for George, and why Kate could be a loyal companion, but never the exclusive object of his desire.
George used the windfall of Kate’s dowry to buy Burley-on-the-Hill, a property neighbouring the earl’s Rutland estates. Burley had romantic associations for George and James, as they had stayed there after the king had first caught sight of the handsome cupbearer at Apethorpe in 1614. James was invited to the housewarming, a lavish event at which, bareheaded (to demonstrate the informality of the occasion), the king toasted the health of his host and openly, perhaps tactlessly, speculated on who loved George the most, his wife, his family or his sovereign. He even wrote some verses, as the king was wont to do for occasions that touched his heart, in which he noted how nature had blessed the occasion with a smile, giving hope of ‘a smiling boy within a while’.
Following the nuptials, Jame
s wrote a letter to his ‘only sweet and dear child, blessing this morning and also his daughter’, trusting that ‘the lord of heaven send you a sweet and bright wakening, all kind of comfort in your sanctified bed, and bless the fruits thereof that I may have sweet bedchamber boys to play me with, and this is my daily prayer, sweet heart’.
For James, the title of ‘dear dad’ now began to shift from one of affection to something more meaningful and, in his mind, literal. When, in 1622, Kate produced their first child, named Mary after George’s mother, James nicknamed her Mal, and referred to her as his grandchild. More children would follow and, as a French diplomat noted, while James ‘never much cared for women’, he was happy to have his court ‘swarming’ with George’s offspring, ‘so that little ones would dance up and down the privy lodgings like fairies’.
And so the rise of the Villiers family continued. Following Bacon’s advice, George cultivated an ever-widening but carefully chosen circle of clients and dependents, magnanimous with those who were loyal and helpful, and, as he had been with Bacon, harsh on those who obstructed him. As a physician who got on the wrong side of George later remarked, ‘his temper was exceeding good, & he could manage his affections … with much serenity & moderation’ but once crossed ‘could not think of anything but a revenge’.
Wickedest Things
In the late 1610s, some copies of a Latin work entitled Corona Regia or ‘Royal Crown’ began furtively circulating through London. It looked like an official publication. According to its frontispiece it was the work of Isaac Casaubon, a respected scholar and historian who had died in 1614, and it carried the London imprint of the royal printer John Bill. It could easily have been mistaken for one of the many ‘panegyrics’ published at the time, lavishing praise on the king. But following its apparently conventional opening, it became clear this was no ordinary work of royal flattery.
For example, a few pages in, it praised James for managing to conceal his ‘natural tendencies under a veil of righteousness and integrity’. ‘If you cannot be good, you should at least be thought so by your subjects,’ wrote the author, who was very obviously not the loyal and deferential Casaubon. ‘To pretend and invite is kingly’, even though the mind ‘takes pleasure in the wickedest things’. As it proceeded, it became increasingly explicit about these wickedest things. In a passage full of phallic imagery, it compared James to the whale, which ‘raises itself like a pillar and violently discharges a deluge’. It noted how the king had enjoyed ‘clandestine nights so full of pleasure’ with partners of both sexes. ‘The words of Christ were “suffer little children to come unto me”. You summon boys – the very fair ones in particular – and appreciate the benefactions and miracles of nature in them.’ It noted the king’s ‘unequalled generosity’, conferring gifts not upon ‘people of any age, but at the attractive prime of life’, not for service to the kingdom, ‘but upon those who serve you well’. As evidence, it produced an impressively well-informed list of James’s favourites since coming to the English throne: John Ramsay, Philip Herbert (who became George’s promoter) and Robert Carr, ‘followed by the incomparably youthful beauty’ of George Villiers, ‘introduced by the queen herself into your chamber’. The writer concluded by seeing this as evidence of the British being ‘acorn eaters’, a euphemism for those who engage in fellatio.
The work was first brought to the government’s attention by an English agent in Brussels, who had found a copy and discovered its ‘highly offensive’ nature. It was already in wide circulation on the Continent, according to the agent, who had seen two Jesuits reading it on a boat, ‘fulsomely praising its style, language and subject matter’. This triggered a command direct from the king for an investigation into who had written and published it. ‘His Majesty expects justice in this matter,’ the king’s secretary wrote to the Brussels agent, and if the authorities there did not provide it, ‘he will retaliate to save his honour from being besmirched in this heinous manner.’ But in the thriving print markets of London and Brussels, efforts to suppress it proved futile.
Simonds D’Ewes recorded his shock at seeing the work, describing it as ‘terrible and wholly against the king himself, accusing him of atheism, sodomy etc.…’ But, as for many, the shock did not necessarily indicate disbelief. A devout Protestant law student freshly down from Cambridge, D’Ewes complained how the ‘wicked city’ of London was rife with corruption at all levels and of all sorts. He wrote to a friend about the ‘true story’ of a French usher who had ‘buggered a knight’s son’ and, despite being arrested and arraigned on what was a capital charge, been freed – at the king’s instigation, ‘’twas thought’.
The gossipy John Chamberlain had noted a similar trend. He observed how some were beginning to ‘tax’ the king – that is, take him to task – for his liberal distribution of largesse among favourite courtiers, particularly George and his family. Scurrilous poems were doing the rounds, one of which Chamberlain quoted:
Above in the skies shall Gemini rise,
And Twins the court shall pester,
George shall call up his brother Jack,
And Jack his brother Kester.
Other, lewder poems began to turn up in the streets. One began as an apparently jolly celebration of the king, but quickly degenerated into a bawdy assault on George and his mother, ‘old Bedlam Buckingame’:
Heaven bless King James our joy,
And Charles his baby
Great George our brave viceroy
And his fair Lady.
Old Bedlam Buckingame,
With her Lord Keeper.
She loves the fucking game
He’s her cunt creeper.
The same poem goes on to list in exhaustive detail the members of the Villiers family who had apparently benefited from George and his mother’s distribution of carnal as well as political favours, including George’s siblings, his stepfather, his sister-in-law, his half-sister by his father’s first marriage, several cousins, a groom of the bedchamber who eloped with a woman betrothed to his brother Kit, and so on, ending with a satirical swipe at the rampant favouritism that had produced their promotion:
These be they, go so gay
In [the] court & city
Would you have an office pray
You must be this witty.
‘You are a new-risen star, and the eyes of all men are upon you,’ Bacon had told George. ‘Let not your own negligence let you fall like a meteor.’ But as the books and poems showed, he was ignoring the advice, and the results were coming to notice. The fall of Carr had revealed deep corruption at the heart of court, and a widespread opinion was forming that it was being perpetuated by and through George.
For example, he had arranged for a distant relation, a grasping ‘projector’ called Sir Giles Mompesson, to receive a royal patent for the licensing of inns. This gave Sir Giles an exclusive right to force any alehouse owner or innkeeper who took guests to buy a licence for £5 or £10. George also backed the appointment of one Sir Robert Naunton to become Secretary of State on condition that Naunton made his brother Kit his heir. He arranged for Kit, who unlike their older brother John had yet to secure a lucrative marriage partner, to be given the monopoly over the trade in gold and silver thread, used extensively (and expensively) in the clothing so crucial to courtly ostentation.
The bounty extended to his feckless half-brother Edward Villiers, who was given a knighthood and quickly set about using his enhanced status to promote a series of dubious deals and enterprises. Sir Edward invested in Kit’s gold and silver thread monopoly and in a patent for licensing Irish alehouses, which he sold on to a friend. When the patent caused unrest and had to be revoked, he negotiated an annuity of £250 in compensation.
Bacon was essential to organizing such deals, and, revelling in the recovery of his influence, forgot his own warnings. He did everything he could to help George, and by the same token took all that was available – the perks of office, the debts of gratitude, the credit for others’ ach
ievements – to support the lavish lifestyle he thought he deserved and certainly craved.
To celebrate his sixtieth birthday, Bacon hosted a banquet in January 1621 at York House, his great medieval mansion on the Strand. His present from the king was the promise of becoming Viscount of St Albans. Ben Jonson, the court’s most popular playwright, wrote a poem to celebrate:
Hail, happy genius of this ancient pile!
How comes it all things so about thee smile?
The fire, the wine, the men! And in the midst,
Thou stand’st as if some mystery thou didst!
Poor George Villiers
That winter, while Bacon and his guests were warmed by the fire, the wine and the men, outside a ‘great frost’ was gripping London and the country. Winds and high tides drove the snow and ice into ‘heaps’ which lay ‘like rocks and mountains’ around the capital, with ‘a strange and hideous aspect’. The Thames froze over for the second time in a year, leaving the watermen who kept the capital supplied and its population moving ‘quite undone’. Food prices soared as shortages spread. Developments on the Continent added to the economic pain. Religious and political tensions had triggered the first skirmishes in what would develop into Europe’s disastrous Thirty Years’ War, creating an economic crisis that was already eroding Britain’s vital trade in cloth, its main export.
A clamour began to grow in the raw winter air for the king to do something, at the very least reduce tariffs and enforce trade agreements. But his options were limited – he had no money.
Since James’s English succession in 1603, the royal exchequer had been in chaos. Being a foreign monarch whose claim to the throne was genealogically distant, and whose Scottish origins were treated with ill-disguised disdain, James had a lot to prove in England, and he saw courtly extravagance as the best way of proving it. He had spent lavishly and relentlessly to bolster his status, on masques, hunts, luxurious clothes, glittering jewels, grand ceremonials and sumptuous progresses.
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