The King's Assassin

by Benjamin Woolley

  When the Spaniard arrived at the bishop’s home, he was brought up to the gallery, where Williams awaited him. The Lord Keeper patiently listened as the envoy ‘passionately implored’ him to secure the priest’s freedom. ‘Would you have me run such a hazard to set a priest at liberty, a dead man by our statutes, when the eye of Parliament is so vigilant upon the breach of justice?’ Williams asked. ‘My lord,’ Francesco apparently replied, accenting his words with ‘passionate gesture’, ‘let not this parliament trouble you; I can tell you, if you have not heard it, that it is upon expiration.’ When pressed for details, Francesco finally confessed to Williams his efforts to turn the king against the duke.

  After the envoy had left, Williams ‘retired to his own thoughts, and poured the whole conference out of his memory into his papers, as if Francesco had stood by to dictate every line’. He revealed what the Spanish ambassadors had been trying to do, how they had manipulated James to plant ‘hobgoblins’ of suspicion in his mind. He saw no sleep that night, he claimed, nor stirred out of the room. He emerged at seven the following morning, and woke one of his servants, who made a fair copy, which Williams took to St James’s Palace and presented to a bleary Charles, boasting that he had caught ‘the viper and her brood in a box’.

  Meanwhile, there were signs that the viper’s poison was beginning to have its effect. George’s brief absence from the king’s side during the St George’s Day celebrations had allowed the two most senior Spanish ambassadors, Hinojosa and Coloma, to meet the king privately. Out of ‘zeal & particular care of his person’, they promised James to reveal ‘a very great conjuration against his person and royal dignity’. At the beginning of the Parliament, George had ‘consulted certain lords of the arguments and means which were to be taken touching the breaking and dissolving of the treaties of the Palatinate and the Match’. Apparently George had said to them that if the king could not ‘accommodate himself to their counsels’ he would be given ‘a house of pleasure whither he might retire himself to his sports, in regard that the Prince had now years sufficient to, and parts answerable for the government of the Kingdom’.

  The king’s response to the ambassadors’ revelations was unexpectedly emphatic. He drew up a list of questions or ‘interrogatories’ for his ministers and councillors, including George, to answer under oath. Charles managed to obtain a copy, and sent them to George in advance, reassuring him that he would ‘incur no danger in this’ just as long as he cooperated. ‘My advice to you is,’ the prince wrote to his ‘sweet heart’, ‘that you do not oppose, or show yourself discontented, at the King’s course herein.’

  The interrogations were to take place at Theobalds a week after the emotional confrontation between the king and the favourite on St George’s Day. Taking leave of his wife Kate and mother Mary, George told them he would return either ‘as he was born’ with all his titles and status, all that he had achieved confiscated, ‘or having vanquished his enemies’.

  Accounts of what happened vary wildly. The Spanish ambassadors, presumably eager to portray a man defeated by their efforts, reported to their masters in Madrid that George had been kept on his knees by a furious James for two hours, as the king castigated him for acting so imperiously in his dealings with Parliament. And when Charles came to George’s defence, James slapped him down.

  Other accounts capture a more emotional encounter, the king veering between rancour and despair. Having confronted George with the ambassadors’ charges, he echoed Caesar on the steps of the Senate, saying: ‘Ah, Steenie, Steenie. Wilt thou kill me?’ George retorted that the plot of which he was accused – that he intended to ‘retire’ the king to his hunting grounds in Theobalds so that Charles could rule – would surely be known by the prince, ‘whose filial piety would rise against it’. And even if the prince had not known, then the ‘affection of the people to his Majesty’ would mean they would ‘tear in pieces any who attempted it’. Confronted by George’s emphatic denial, James apparently backed down, saying that had he really believed the ambassadors’ accusations, he would never have mentioned them. But George was not placated. Exercising the principle that attack is the best form of defence, he demanded a full enquiry to exonerate what he had done, and threatened to drag Parliament into the investigation. James, frightened of escalating an issue that had already got out of hand, decided on another course.

  The king summoned the rest of his privy councillors before him and, with a copy of the ambassadors’ testimony to hand, examined them one by one. He then made them swear on the Bible, which he held, to the innocence and loyalty of the duke. This they all did, and in the absence of any solid evidence presented by the ambassadors, the matter appeared to be settled.

  Still, suspicions lurked. The hobgoblins were still at play in the king’s head. They pointed out to him that men who were George’s dependents were bound to acquit their patron, and that to confess that the duke had engaged in treasonable actions raised the issue of why they had not mentioned this before.

  George responded with a written vindication of his actions, in which he poured scorn on the notion that he had exercised overweening power, pointing out that the Madrid escapade had been suggested by Charles and endorsed by the king, and that the summoning of Parliament was the king’s absolute prerogative. He also noted that the privy councillors who had earlier been receptive to Spanish advances had since voted unanimously to reject them, and that the breakdown of relations was not a result of the British being bellicose, but of the Spanish being deceitful.

  The duke also provided a stout defence of a resurgent Parliament, arguing that ‘our greatest and wisest kings’ had long referred treaties, marriages, declarations of war and matter of religion ‘to the consultations of their parliaments’. Those who undervalued this ‘high court do but expose their own judgments to censure and contempt, not knowing that Parliaments, as they are the honour and support, so they are the handmaids and creatures of our kings, inspired, formed and governed by their power’.

  George’s transformation into a vigorous champion and figurehead of Parliament had taken a heavy toll on his relationship with James. They did not talk or write to each other as they had done before. Every political act by the favourite was taken as a slight by the king, while every equivocal action by the king seemed like an attack on the favourite.

  And yet without Steenie, James seemed bereft. Writing in secret code, the Venetian ambassador reported that the ‘exhalation’ of so much ‘extreme passion’ had led to James having ‘perverse’ feelings towards the favourite. ‘His mind is ulcerated and full of poison,’ he wrote.

  Then, in mid-May 1624, George fell ill.

  To Ride Away an Ague

  George’s health had always been fragile. He fell ill regularly and particularly at times of intense strain. He had also inherited his mother’s hypochondriac tendencies, and like her was keen to explore unorthodox medical practices in the hope of finding relief for various chronic and acute ailments.

  On this occasion George was treated by James’s own physician, Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, whose prestige and seniority as a licensed member of London’s College of Physicians disguised his earlier membership of a banned circle of alchemists in Paris. On 10 May 1624, Mayerne attended George at Wallingford House, diagnosing a case of tertian ague (malaria) and jaundice, noting the evacuation of bile the colour of saffron. Mayerne was so alarmed, he reported to the king that he feared for George’s life.

  The onset of the illness was so sudden and serious, rumours quickly spread that the duke had been poisoned. Pustules and blains were said to have broken out all over his body. The finger of suspicion quickly turned towards the Spanish ambassadors, though some speculated that he had been given something while he was in Madrid, ‘which now begins to work upon him’. Reports from Paris suggested that Olivares, George’s Spanish nemesis, had hired an Irish captain to do the deed, a man who was ‘the greatest monster for such ill deeds that ever was in this world’. The Venetian ambassador,
however, was more matter-of-fact, suggesting that recent political attacks on the duke had taken their toll, his illness ‘possibly arising from mental distress’ which ‘may grow worse’.

  By mid-May, George was well enough to be carried by litter to St James’s Palace, Charles’s London residence, for a council meeting. But the constant bloodlettings had made him so weak, he could barely stand, and he was still being described as dangerously ill a week later.

  On 25 May, James came to London to take George with him to Greenwich, the palace on the banks of the Thames downstream of London, in the hope that cleaner air would be restorative. However, no sooner had they arrived than George suffered a serious relapse, and had to be taken back to Wallingford House. A distraught James followed him there, and spent three hours at his side. Over the following days, the king sent him food parcels to build his strength – cherries to start with, then the eyes, tongue and testicles of a deer he had hunted in Eltham Park. The king ‘hath shown great tenderness over him’, one government official noted, sensing that the suddenness and seriousness of the illness had reminded the king that he might lose his favourite, and producing a shift in his feelings for George.

  The duke’s illness did not hold back the press of parliamentary business, and the scrum of MPs, officials and suitors wanting to get access to him became so intense James ordered that a guard be placed around the house. Spanish supporters took this as evidence that the duke had gone mad, like his brother, while the anti-Spanish clique saw it as a sign that the king had placed him under house arrest.

  Confounding both parties, George slipped out of London and headed for New Hall, his house in Essex. From there he wrote a letter to James that was to change everything.

  He had earlier promised the king that he would join him at Theobalds as soon as he was well enough to travel, so he began with an apology for going ‘many miles from you another way, and consequently from myself, all my perfect joys and pleasures chiefly, nay solely, consisting in attending your person’. Writing in an ‘unsteady and weak’ hand, he explained that, despite the extraordinary care and watchful eye the king had placed over him, he had found himself too close to the court at Wallingford House to recuperate. Theobalds was too hot and lacked the facilities to accommodate a sick patient, so he had decided to come to New Hall because the air was as good as any in England ‘to ride away an ague’.

  George candidly noted the recent absence of the king’s favour. But illness had brought them close again, and ‘I find you still one and the same dear and indulgent master you were ever to me.’ Subtly alluding to James’s jealousy of his recent ‘popularity’, he pointed out that he so naturally loved the king, and, upon such good experience and knowledge adored all his other parts, that if all the world was set on one side of a divide, and James alone on another, ‘I should, to obey and please you, displease, nay despise’ the many in favour of the one; ‘and this shall be ever my popularity’.

  No more was needed for all the feelings that James had bottled up to burst forth. A flurry of solicitous missives arrived at New Hall from Theobalds, recalling the fervour and affection of his letters to Madrid.

  ‘Alas, sweet heart,’ James wrote, the letter George had sent caused his ‘heart to bleed’; he could take no pleasure in Theobalds without him. With forlorn expectations, he begged him to come the following night, because it would be a great comfort to him, ‘and thou and thy cunts may see me hunt the buck’, he added, manly vulgarity combining with flirtatious innuendo.

  Of course George was too ill to go, but on the hunting field of James’s imagination he frolicked with his favourite in the letters that followed. ‘Blessing, blessing, blessing’, began one; ‘Blessing, blessing, blessing on thy heart-roots’, began another. He tried to entice George to Theobalds with news of the fine kennel of hounds bred by Tom Badger, the Royal Master of the Dogs, which prompted a tender digression into George’s marital bed, which had yet to produce a son: he and his wife Kate might soon have a well-bred litter of their own, pretty little girls and well-shaped boys, all of them ‘run together in a lump’.

  The letters are full of advice about his health and welfare. James admonishes him for relying too much on the ‘drugs’. George must ‘bid the drugs adieu this day’. He is told to ‘take the air discreetly and peace and peace’. ‘For God’s sake and mine, keep thyself very warm’. He is desperate for George’s company. ‘Put thy park at Beaulieu to an end,’ he implores, referring to New Hall by its historic name, ‘and love me still and still’; the repetition of repetition in the letters becomes like an incantation of solace.

  George responds teasingly, his replies containing hints of heroic forbearance and pathetic vulnerability, each arousing the strange combination of carnal and protective impulses that fired the king’s affections to a higher pitch. James repeatedly tells him not to reply to his letters because it will put too much of a strain on him. But George protests that the strength of his feelings means he cannot stop himself. In one letter, it is ingenuity that enables him to ‘write no answer’ to a recent missive, as he recruits Kate to write it for him, getting her to sign her name alongside Steenie’s. In another, dictated to his secretary, he is compelled to seize the quill and, ignoring his secretary’s protests and James’s orders, demands, perhaps suggestively, that ‘now and then’ he should be allowed to address the king ‘with my own hand’.

  Fluctuations between frailty and recovery increase the anticipation. Despite the ‘highness’ of his urine – its smell, a conventional measure of health – and the yellowness of his skin, the ‘sweet cordial’ of James’s solicitation, as well as the ‘seasonable drawing of blood’, arouses George’s hopes of their reunion on the hunting field. He pledges to get better so he can ride at the king’s side and break a recent run of bad luck chasing the stag, then he ends the letter abruptly, feeling ‘faintish’.

  As George regained his strength, more letters flew in from the king, but fewer replies were sent by return, provoking James’s impatience and fervour. Eventually, a date was set for their reunion at Theobalds. Before setting off, George penned one of his most fulsome and eloquent expressions of love and appreciation. Apologizing for his silence, he explains that ‘a hundred answers’ to the king had been made up in his mind, but none offered an adequate response, ‘for kinder letters never servant received from master’. He was so grateful that the king had shown himself ‘in a style of such good fellowship, with expressions of more care than servants have of masters, than physicians have of their patients (which hath largely appeared to me in sickness and in health), of more tenderness than fathers have of children, of more friendship than between equals, of more affection than between lovers in the best kind, man and wife; what can I return? Nothing but silence.’ His language is unable to describe what he feels, especially considering what he is trying to say, and to whom it must be said. But if he must speak, he would be ‘saucy’ – impertinent, as well as wanton – to say what he owes the man who means so much to him.

  He arouses anticipation of the ending of his self-imposed exile by imagining their imminent reunion. ‘I begin my journey tomorrow,’ he writes. He would ride to Theobalds, where Charles would meet him. The two will spend the day in the park, Charles chasing ‘hinds and does’, George, too weak to hunt, surveying the ‘trees, walks, ponds, and deer’. The next day they would lay themselves at the king’s feet, and ‘there crave your blessing’. They would not discuss controversies – Spanish ambassadors, military preparations, parliamentary popularity – but rather speak of the pleasures of Theobalds Park, ‘to the best of man, though not of the kind of man, yet made by man, more than man, like a man, both artificial man, and my most natural sovereign, who by innumerable favours hath made me’.

  The Price of a Princess

  George made his formal return to court in mid-June 1624, nearly a month after falling ill. Though ‘received and embraced by His Majesty with all good testimonies of welcome’, one courtier noted how ill he looked: ‘much dis
coloured and lean with sickness’.

  The duke returned to find the political world in a curious state of limbo. Having finally passed a subsidy bill into law, Parliament had been suspended by the king on 29 May. James, in captious mood, had airily announced that provisions in the preamble of the subsidy bill had been ‘made without his advice and contrary to his interests’, which he would alter by adding marginal notes – surely, some MPs mumbled, a constitutional violation. The king also ‘slighted the subsidy gift’ by pointing out there was nothing in it for him – meaning the paying off of his personal debts. He hoped that during the next session, expected that winter, he would be remembered. With that, after all the raucousness and passion, the chambers of the Palace of Westminster had been allowed to fall silent.

  The Spanish envoys, meanwhile, were still in their embassy, and, according to the Venetian ambassador, still busy trying to prove George’s treachery to the king. Their latest effort was to present James with books about the dangers of Parliaments deposing kings, and an Italian gazette reporting a story published in Germany apparently confirming their claim that the duke had sabotaged the Spanish match with the aim of marrying his own daughter, Mal, to James’s grandson, Frederick the younger, son of Elizabeth and Frederick, Count Palatine. They clamoured for another audience, but James did not want to put himself or his revived relationship with George under any further strain, so they were rebuffed.

  Hinojosa, the chief ambassador, left England on 26 June, two months after he and Coloma presented to the king their allegations against George. His departure was a humiliating affair. Rather than the usual royal audience and exchange of gifts, he had to slip away in coaches hired using his own money, and was bundled onto a merchant ship flying English colours. He was accused of leaving a ‘foul stink behind him in Exeter House’, according to one jubilant Protestant commentator, ‘which at parting seems he made no more esteem of them than a jakes’ – a lavatory. ‘All the furniture, all the rooms of the house, so beastly abused that we wish him here again with his Spanish troop to thrust their noses into it.’