The King's Assassin

by Benjamin Woolley

  But the identification game got more complicated with other characters. Who was the White Queen? James’s wife, Anne of Denmark, had been dead for five years. Could this be Elizabeth, Charles’s sister, the ‘Winter Queen’ exiled in the Hague with her German husband Frederick? Someone thought mention of a ‘lost piece’ could refer to the Palatinate, the lands seized from Frederick by Catholic forces.

  Then the Black Knight, describing himself as ‘the master-piece of the play’, decides he will ‘entrap the White Knight with false allurements’ and ‘entice him to our black House’ – further hints that the play, in part at least, is about Charles’s escapade in Madrid. In which case, the references to a ‘universal monarchy’ must be to Spanish ambitions to conquer all Europe for the Habsburgs and Catholicism.

  Even more sensational was the character of the White King’s Pawn, whose doublet is snatched away to reveal black beneath. Who was this? An English traitor? Speculation focused on Lionel Cranfield, deposed as Lord Treasurer earlier that year. Others, though, wondered if the Pawn might be John Digby, England’s ambassador suspected of going native in Madrid.

  ‘This vulgar pasquin,’ the scandalized MP Sir John Holles called the play in a letter to the disgraced Robert Carr, James’s former favourite, now exiled to Hertfordshire, ‘already thrice acted with extraordinary applause.’ He claimed to have been ‘invited’ by someone else to go – he would not normally attend such ‘facetious’ comedies. So he rowed to the playhouse, and found it to be ‘so thronged’ that ‘by scores’ members of the public were being turned away ‘for want of place’.

  Squeezing into his seat, Holles joined in the guessing game, identifying ‘a representation of all our Spanish traffic, where Gondomar his litter, his open chair for the ease of that fistulated part, Spalato appeared on stage’. The message, as far as he was concerned, was that ‘all the Christian world’ was going to be brought ‘under Rome’ when it came to religious confession, and under Spain when it came to worldly rule.

  However he also noted specific references to Charles’s Madrid adventure, pointing out how the prince made ‘full discovery’ of all the ‘knaveries’ of Gondomar and Olivares, which were ‘by the prince pitched into the bag, and so the play ends’. It was, Holles concluded, ‘more wittily penned than wisely staged’.

  Tumbling out of the Globe into the stews and brothels of Southwark, heads would have been light and spinning with the seditiousness of it all. It was hard to imagine how such a play had even been staged – a play about kings and dukes, religion and foreign policy, supposedly prohibited subjects for the public theatres. In 1620, James had issued a proclamation forbidding ‘men to speak of matters of state, either of this kingdom or any other place, upon pain of his majesty’s high displeasure’. This production was flagrantly dealing with such matters, yet must have been passed by the official censors. It was all, as one of the characters in the play acknowledges, ‘immeasurably politic’.

  Some speculated that the ‘gamesters’ must have the protection of a senior government figure, otherwise surely they would not have dared ‘charge thus princes’ actions, ministers’, nay their intents’. As a correspondent writing to William Trumbull, the English agent in Brussels, pointed out, if such a play had been staged a year before, ‘then had everyman been hanged for it’. How had the King’s Men, James’s own acting company, got away with it? ‘Not without leave from the higher powers, I mean the P and D’ – the prince and the duke, Charles and George. The two had seen the play, and even though it suggested they had been duped by the Spanish, they had ‘by report laughed heartily at it’.

  Humiliatingly, James’s ‘first notice’ of the play came nine days after it had opened, when Hinojosa and Coloma, the Spanish ambassadors, had come to him to complain about the lampooning of their distinguished predecessor Gondomar. How could this have happened, the king wanted to know, ‘while so many ministers of his own are thereabouts and cannot but have heard of it?’ A messenger was sent to summon Middleton, but the playwright did not appear, nor did he three days later when the ‘principal actors’ were interrogated. Furious that they had managed to stage such a ‘scandalous comedy’, the king demanded to see the ‘perfect copy’ of the play script carrying the endorsement of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels, who acted as the royal censor. Wrong-footed by the actors presenting confirmation that the play had been ‘allowed’ by Herbert, all James could do was deliver a ‘round and sharp reproof’ of his ‘high displeasure’ and instruct them to close the production down immediately.

  Hobgoblins

  Life for the Spanish embassy staff was miserable. As well as having to endure mockery and even physical attacks, their mission had stalled. Serious negotiations over the match had all but ceased, access to James had become limited, and well-paid informants and supporters, scared off by the growing mood of hostility, had begun to slope away.

  Yet, despite the setbacks and provocations, they had not only refused to break off relations, but had increased their diplomatic activity.

  For what the British had not realized was that Spain was terrified of war. Philip’s treasury was in an even more parlous state than James’s. Expert as well as popular opinion imagined that the royal coffers were bursting with bullion, annually replenished by an inexhaustible stream of silver coming from the New World. But working depleted mines, administering unruly colonies and protecting the fabled flota, or treasure fleet, was proving to be increasingly costly, while inflation was eating away at the value of the bounty. As a result, the annual amount delivered from South America to Cádiz had more than halved in value since the beginning of the century to below 1 million ducats, and was continuing to fall. Meanwhile, the annual cost of maintaining the opulence that had so impressed George and Charles in Madrid had risen to as much as 9 million ducats.

  So, the embassy staff were under strict orders to keep the talks with James going. In the game of diplomatic chess, they needed to secure not checkmate so much as stalemate. And to do that it became clear that they needed to remove one particular piece from the board: the White Duke, George Villiers.

  Their first attempt had come soon after Parliament had been summoned in the spring of 1624. Despite efforts by Charles and George to limit the Spaniards’ access to the king, they managed to slip him a note. It requested a private audience with the latest member of the embassy staff, François de Carondelet. Known to the English as Don Francesco, Carondelet was Archdeacon of Cambrai, a well-known outpost of English Catholic agitation. A man of great charm as well as guile, he had been brought in by the Spanish as a special envoy specifically to turn James against the favourite.

  Don Francesco was invited to Theobalds while Charles and George were distracted by the parliamentary negotiations in London. The envoy arrived late in the evening on the appointed day, but James, fearful of staff loyal to the prince and duke getting wind of the meeting, would not receive him, and he was told to spend the night in the guest quarters.

  A Catholic servant woke Francesco at dawn the following day, before the rest of the staff had risen, and escorted him via the back passages of the mansion to James’s apartment. There he was received by the king’s ever-loyal Scottish servant Thomas Erskine, who showed him into the royal bedchamber, then took up position outside the door to prevent eavesdropping.

  Given the risk both were running in meeting in secret, James was expecting Francesco to deliver generous new terms that would confound his critics and revive hopes for the match. He had heard that Gondomar’s former confessor, Friar Diego Lafuente, known as ‘Father Maestro’, had arrived in London a few days earlier direct from Rome carrying, it was assumed, a new dispensation from the pope. But Francesco had to confess he was empty-handed. Father Maestro had been attacked in France en route to England, and all his papers stolen, allegedly by men suspected of working for George. Had those papers arrived, Francesco told James, then he might have been able to report on ‘several matters which would have pleased and interested’ the
king.

  Instead, he was there to inform him of a plot by a cabal within James’s own government to put an end to the Spanish match by marrying Charles to the French princess Henrietta Maria. When James denied that the French had even been engaged in official negotiations, Francesco informed him that a proposal of marriage had already been sent on George’s authority. Noting James’s confusion, the envoy pressed the point that this was yet another example of the duke exceeding his authority. The king had become a captive of his favourite, he boldly suggested, pointedly comparing him to John II and Francis I, two French monarchs who had found themselves imprisoned by their own subjects. Parliament, he said, was meeting for the sole purpose of serving the duke’s interests, noting that the MPs who spoke most viciously about James’s foreign dealings seemed to be those closest to the duke. ‘The only thing one heard was that the king had grown old, and that it would be a great happiness if the prince reigned instead,’ Francesco claimed. The duke had talked openly of Charles taking the throne, with James being forced to retire from royal duties to one of his country houses.

  According to Francesco’s own report on the meeting, James’s response to these sensational charges was at first bewilderment, then an outburst of fury, directed not at Francesco, but at George. He told the Spaniard that he had suspected the duke of wanting to make himself ‘popular’ – one of the worst charges he could level – and pledged that if he discovered what Francesco had said was true, George would lose his head over it.

  Two days later, with Charles and George still preoccupied by the new session of Parliament, Father Maestro himself arrived at Theobalds and was secretly shown to the royal apartments. His presence was noted by a royal secretary, who was known to act as George’s ‘sentinel’, but the secretary was sent away while the king held a three-hour private meeting with his visitor.

  Maestro continued the denunciation of George, and was encouraged to see that James’s attitude continued to harden. If any of this was true, the king told the envoy, then ‘Buckingham was the greatest villain in the world, a greater traitor than Judas, for Judas had only had charge of the purse, while he had trusted Buckingham with his life and honour’.

  While the envoys worked on the king, damaging reports began to leak out about George’s behaviour while he was in Spain: his insolent manner, his engaging in ‘obscene things’ and ‘immodest gesticulations and wanton tricks’; his lying to Olivares and using ‘frequent threatenings’ against the pope’s representatives.

  The most specific and scandalous charge, which became the ‘table talk in all England’, was that he had ‘attempted the chastity’ of Olivares’s wife, and ‘cheated with a diseased strumpet laid in his bed’. The allegations were as plausible as they were thrilling, drawing on the duke’s powerful erotic charge and wayward reputation.

  At around the same time, a courtier noticed the sudden reappearance among the king’s entourage of a comely young gallant called Arthur Brett. In 1622, Brett had been appointed one of James’s grooms of the bedchamber. Noting the king’s interest in the young man, and fearing the emergence of a rival just as he was preparing to leave for Madrid with the prince, George had moved quickly to have Brett exiled to France. Now he was back ‘without the Duke of Buckingham’s consent’, and was attempting to find his way into the king’s favour.

  Brett’s brother-in-law and patron was Lionel Cranfield, Lord Treasurer since 1621 and the figure later suspected of being represented by the pawn in A Game at Chess. Cranfield was a leading member of the pro-Spanish clique and a powerful critic of Parliament’s growing enthusiasm for war. The connection was enough to persuade George to take action. While James was secretly receiving Spanish envoys in Theobalds, Cranfield found himself under investigation in Westminster for his ‘late conduct in Parliament’. The campaign intensified over the coming weeks, and, despite James’s half-hearted efforts to save his embattled treasurer, and Cranfield’s own vigorous defence of himself, it soon became apparent that he was going to sink the same way as Francis Bacon: impeached by his own peers.

  ‘Gnawn with perplexity’ by the swirling rumours and loss of his Lord Treasurer, James’s feelings finally erupted on Friday 23 April, St George’s Day – the day the king awarded the ancient chivalric Order of the Garter, but also the anniversary of his making the young, vigorous, charming cupbearer George Villiers a knight.

  A royal carriage waited at the gatehouse of St James’s Palace to take the king, accompanied by Charles and George, to Windsor, where the Garter ceremony was to take place. But just as they were about to depart, James instructed George to perform a ‘slight errand’, which meant he would be unable to accompany them. Sensing a snub, George asked what was wrong, at which point James burst into tears and declared himself the unhappiest man alive, treated with ingratitude by those dearest to him.

  With the scene unfolding in public, in front of servants and lords shifting uneasily in their livery and robes, George stood at the carriage door and began to weep. He protested his innocence and demanded to know the charges made against him. But the king closed the door on him and commanded his coachman to drive off, leaving George to watch the carriage disappear into St James’s Park.

  The dejected duke walked to nearby Wallingford House, where he took to his bedchamber and refused to talk to anybody.

  Later that day, he was visited by John Williams, the slippery Lord Keeper and leading member of the pro-Spanish clique. The duke having browbeaten him into offering his support earlier in the year, the Lord Keeper had come as a friend to give him some advice.

  Williams was initially rebuffed, but after ‘much ado’, managed to gain admittance to George’s room. The dejected duke was lying on a couch ‘in that immovable posture, that he would neither rise up, nor speak’. Williams, who was also Bishop of Lincoln, might have been expected to say some words of religious consolation. But the Lord Keeper was there to give George a sermon. The snub he had just received from the king was ‘God’s direct hand’ stirring him ‘at this pinch of extremity’ into rescuing his relationship with the king, which was close to collapse. It was vital he act quickly, Williams claimed, before the breach became permanent. ‘For the danger was that some would thrust themselves in, to push on his majesty to break utterly with the Parliament, and the next degree of their hope was upon that dissolution to see his grace committed to the Tower, and then God knows what would follow.’ He would not say who was trying to ‘thrust themselves in’, only urged George into action. ‘Make haste for Windsor,’ the Lord Keeper said. Show himself to the king ‘before supper was ended’, lavish his royal highness ‘with all amiable addresses’ and stay by his side night or day.

  The speech apparently had its intended effect. According to the dubiously self-serving account Williams gave his biographer, George roused himself, raced off to Windsor to be with the king, and stayed by James’s side ‘as inseparable as his shadow’.

  A few days later, Charles came to Williams, and thanked him for giving George the ‘warning for his safety’. But the prince promised the Lord Keeper ‘greater thanks’ if he would ‘spread open this black contrivance’ to which he had alluded when he had been with George. Who was plotting to lure his father into breaking with Parliament and imprisoning the duke?

  Williams trod carefully. He claimed only to know that ‘some in the Spanish ambassador’s house have been preparing mischief’. Otherwise, the ‘curtain of privacy is drawn before the picture that I cannot guess the colours’. Charles was unconvinced by the noncommittal reply. ‘No counsellor in this kingdom’ was better acquainted with the Spanish than the Lord Keeper, the prince pointed out. Williams tried to hide behind his own imagery, claiming not to know ‘what misshapen creature’ was being drawn, and that it was impossible to find out because the prince and duke had ‘made it a crime’ to visit the artists’ studio, the Spanish embassy. Charles’s tone became more threatening. ‘Before we part,’ he said – and he did not mean just for the day – Williams should ‘keep not from
me how you came to know or imagine’ the ‘high misdemeanours or perhaps disloyalty’ the Spanish agents claimed the duke had committed against the king. ‘I would hear you to that point,’ the prince insisted with sinister courtesy, ‘that I may compare it with other parcels of my intelligence.’

  Fearful of suffering the same fate as his fallen colleague Lord Treasurer Cranfield, Williams relented. He admitted that he and the Spanish envoy Don Francesco had become ‘pleasant together’, and would regularly meet in a tavern in Mark Lane, an area near the Tower of London known for its alehouses and brothels. There, the envoy had met one of ‘our English Beauties’, a thoughtful woman who demanded to be ‘courted with news and occurrences at home and abroad, as well as with gifts’. Williams claimed that all he had done was bribe her to tell him all that the ‘paramour’ Francesco had said to her. That was the ‘dark lantern’ that had brought these deeds to light, and – artfully diverting the issue from one of loyalty to one of piety – if there was any imputation that by consorting with a prostitute he had committed a sin, then he was ‘not ashamed to enquire of a Delilah to resolve a riddle’.

  Charles enquired no more into the matter, but sensing he was in danger, Williams decided he would make further efforts to find out what the Spaniards were up to and inform on them to the prince.

  Thanks to his conversations with Don Francesco in the taverns of Mark Lane, Williams had learned of an English Catholic priest ‘who was dearer to Francesco than his own confessor’. So he hired a ‘pursuivant’, or kidnapper, one Captain Toothbie, and instructed him to snatch Francesco’s friend from his lodgings in Drury Lane and hold him in hiding. Francesco went ‘wild’ when he heard that the priest had been taken. With anti-Catholic sentiment running so high during the sitting of Parliament, he knew ‘how hard it would be to save his life’. So he sent a note to Williams, begging for help. ‘With a seeming unwillingness,’ the Lord Keeper agreed to receive him, telling him to come to his house at eleven that night by the back door of his garden ‘where a servant should receive him’.