The King's Assassin

by Benjamin Woolley

  Throughout, John Digby had been languishing under house arrest following his recall from Madrid. While recuperating, George had helped draft charges against England’s former ambassador, and the Privy Council had conducted an enquiry, but its conclusions, while critical of Digby, were inconclusive. Digby continued to campaign for an open hearing or trial, and on the day George returned to court, the royal secretaries were still handling his complaints about their foot-dragging. With Parliament suspended, and the king about to embark on his summer progress, and all manner of delaying tactics being used to stall Digby’s case (such as delivering official documents unsigned, making them legally inadmissible), he was becoming frantic. Even a request to visit his sick mother was interpreted as a ruse to solicit support and make trouble, so permission was only granted on condition that he go ‘as privately as conveniently as you may’. By July his position looked so helpless, he was having to contemplate utter defeat and seek a reconciliation with George.

  The other main threat to George’s position, Lionel Cranfield, had been safely confined to prison for the duration of the duke’s illness. The king, who remained supportive of his deposed Lord Treasurer and eager to see him rehabilitated, had agreed to his release, but accepted his exile to beyond ‘the verge’.

  The efforts of Cranfield’s brother-in-law, the pretender Arthur Brett, to win the king’s favour also came to nothing. While George languished in New Hall, Brett made a last, desperate effort to gain James’s attention, presenting himself ‘on the sudden’ while the king was out hunting in Waltham Forest. He reportedly laid a hand on the king’s stirrup, ‘whereat the king was much offended and, spurring away, commanded the Earl of Warwick to forbid his coming any more into his presence’. A few days later, a royal warrant was issued for his arrest, and he found himself thrown into a cell in the Fleet, a wretched prison situated in the City, on the banks of the stinking Fleet River.

  With all immediate threats neutralized if not defeated, George set about re-establishing himself at court. He paid off all his doctors, adding a hefty £50 bonus in thanks for their efforts, and told his staff at Burley-on-the-Hill, a venue with warm memories for George and James, to order in venison, game and fish, and delicacies such as muskmelons and Colchester oysters, in preparation for a feast to celebrate his return to health. His vigour and ambition surging back into his wasted body, he was eager to forge ahead with the political strategy he had put together with Charles, and which during his illness, despite the prince’s efforts, had become stalled by James’s inertia.

  With Spanish ties now decisively if not yet formally broken, the focus switched to sealing a match between Charles and the French princess, Henrietta Maria. George was also wanting to negotiate a military alliance with France to help retake the Palatinate and ultimately challenge the grip of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor and Spanish king over Europe.

  Early signs were encouraging. The current French ambassador, the Comte de Tillières, considered by the British to be ‘too much Jesuited to be a friend or furtherer of this match’, was recalled by King Louis and replaced by the Marquis d’Effiat, a close friend of Cardinal Richelieu with a more pragmatic approach to foreign policy. George went out of his way to give the marquis a warm welcome, arranging for him to be feasted at Windsor and New Hall.

  At Windsor, George took Effiat to one side and told him a secret that was to change the tone of the negotiations. With breathtaking and apparently suicidal candour, he revealed that if the French match were to fail, it would not only have huge ramifications for the balance of European power, it would result in George’s personal ruin. He even asked the ambassador if Louis XIII would offer him protection in that event. Effiat responded sympathetically by suggesting that his future was similarly on the line.

  George’s disclosure might be interpreted as a huge diplomatic blunder, since it made him dependent on Effiat. If the French increased their demands, they would know that any threats from George of withdrawing his support would be empty, because of the personal as well as political consequences. But his frankness had another effect. By taking Effiat into his confidence, he not only established his sincerity, but raised the stakes of the negotiations, suggesting that failure would lead to James breaking decisively with France in favour of Spain, resulting in a potentially overwhelming shift of the European balance of power in favour of the Habsburgs.

  Effiat was among the honoured guests at George’s thanksgiving feast for his return to health, held in late July 1624 at Burley-on-the-Hill. As usual, the banquet was followed by a masque. Written by John Maynard, who had been commissioned the previous year to produce the masque celebrating Charles’s return from Spain, it set a suitably triumphal and optimistic tone for the forthcoming negotiations.

  They proved to be tough. In late June, George received a visit from the secretary of Count Mansfeld, a German mercenary who had been hired to lead a mission to retake the Palatinate. After visiting London earlier in the year to negotiate terms, Mansfeld had gone to Paris to explore the idea of a joint Anglo-French mission, as French involvement would allow easier access to the Palatinate via Lorraine, on France’s eastern border with the German empire. However, his secretary reported to George that the count was being held ‘as half a prisoner’, with the French refusing to make a commitment until the marriage between Charles and Henrietta Maria had been concluded. Apparently the French king did not want to ‘buy war at the price of the princess’.

  At the same time, Louis XIII was eager to show that he could demand similar terms for his sister as the Spanish had for the infanta. He insisted that for the marriage to proceed, James would have to suspend penal laws against English Catholics, the demand that had so infuriated Parliament during the death throes of the Spanish negotiations.

  Despite these setbacks, George, with a combination of doggedness and flair that had been missing from James’s desultory efforts, pushed forward. He certainly managed to win over the French ambassador. Effiat described him to King Louis as ‘the unchallenged ruler of England’, James loving him ‘so deeply that he let him do what he liked and saw everything through his eyes’. Charles, too, ‘looked on him as the sole source of his happiness and contentment’, while members of the government ‘were all Buckingham’s creatures and held their places only during his good pleasure’. Despite George’s scandalous liaison with Louis’s wife, Anne of Austria, the previous year (or perhaps because the true identity of the periwigged interloper had never been discovered), the French king was clearly impressed, and began to write to George directly, addressing him as ‘mon cousin’.

  After a long, hot summer of negotiation, a settlement seemed to be in sight. Though the French refused a formal military alliance with Britain, they volunteered to help pay for Mansfeld’s expeditionary mission to recover the Palatinate. On religion – the marrying of the Protestant Charles to the Catholic Henrietta Maria – a fragile compromise was reached under which James would sign an agreement – the French called it an Ecrit Particulier – promising Catholic toleration, but on the basis that it would remain secret, to avoid provoking parliamentary and public outrage.

  Throughout the negotiations, George maintained a lively correspondence with James, cajoling and reassuring him on a process with which the king was only reluctantly engaged. There are glimpses of the tenderness that had been rekindled during George’s long illness, James lavishing him with gifts of foods such as Barbary melons, pheasant eggs and sugared beans, to help preserve his health. George even started to refer to the king teasingly as his ‘sow’ and ‘sowship’, sensing that his place in James’s heart was so secure that he could safely compare the king to a female pig. At the risk of reprising the charges made by the Spanish ambassadors that he had been plotting for James’s overthrow in favour of Charles, he urged him for his wellbeing to spend more time at Theobalds, where he had ‘new trees to plant, new ridings too make’ as well as hawking, cards and golf to enjoy.

  But George’s letters also hint at a growing impa
tience that his hard work was not being taken seriously. The king’s attitude was evident in a note sent by his own secretary to a councillor, which reported that, despite evidence that the French ‘really desire the match’, James did not want to have further dealings with Effiat as their meetings had already ‘taken up all the time the King can spare from hunting’. At one difficult point during the negotiations James had taunted George about the delays, saying to him, ‘where is your glorious match with France, and your royal frank monsieur?’

  Only one letter during this period addressed more personal issues, referring back to the old business of the mental health of George’s elder brother, John. In October, while the French marriage negotiations were at their most intense, John’s reluctant bride, Frances, the daughter of Lady Hatton, had given birth to a son. At the time the child would have been conceived, Frances had been living away from her husband. James himself had given his blessing to a temporary separation. It had followed an incident two years before when John had broken into a room near Wallingford House and ‘beat down the glass windows with his bare fists and, all bloodied, cried out to the people that passed by that he was a Catholic and would spend his blood in the cause’. It was therefore widely believed that the child was not her husband’s but that of a former suitor, Sir Robert Howard, a member of the powerful pro-Spanish Howard family, which was hostile to George. Frances nevertheless insisted the boy was legitimate, putting George in a difficult position, as John was the duke’s heir, which meant that this bastard scion of the Howard clan was second in line to inherit George’s estates and titles, as he was yet to have a son of his own with Kate.

  As a result of the strain of the situation, John, who had been stable since the incident at Wallingford House, had ‘fallen back to his old bias and worse’, as John Chamberlain put it. An exasperated George confided to James of the ‘witchcraft’ that had taken hold of his beloved brother, and his feeling of an obligation to stay in London because he could not leave him ‘in the midst of his troubles’.

  Despite these family distractions, negotiations continued through the summer and into autumn, and by November 1624 were close to a settlement. From the far-off perspective of Dorchester, the merchant William Whiteway had been following events closely. ‘There was great speech at this time of the marriage of the Prince with the King of France’s sister,’ he had reported in June. In July, he heard that the ‘drum went about London’ as troops were drafted for the fight to restore the Palatinate, and was excited to note in early November that Count Mansfeld had arrived back in England, and had ‘forthwith 12,000 men bound for him in England’, and another 10,000 in Scotland. ‘In our town,’ Whiteway noted, ‘were taken up 14 lusty fellows.’ On the 16th of that month, he had ‘news that the Prince’s match with France was concluded’ as well as a false rumour that ‘the Duke of Buckingham was created Prince of Tipperary, a place in Ireland’. Five days later, ‘the King commanded Bonfires, ringing of bells, discharging of ordinance at London for the conclusion of the French match’, while ‘the Prince of Tipperary’ prepared to fetch the French princess. Prince Charles had also borrowed £35,000 from the City of London to spruce up his palace and wardrobe and John Chamberlain went to St Paul’s to hear the organ play for two hours on its ‘loudest pipes’ – ‘God grant it may prove worth all this noise,’ he added.

  An English agent crossed the North Sea to deliver the news of the match to Charles’s sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth and Frederick, exiled in the Hague. ‘They were exceedingly delighted and it has revived their hopes,’ a local envoy reported. For the first time since Frederick lost his German lands, James appeared ready to take action.

  Not everyone was convinced. ‘The nuptials are already so far advanced that it would seem nothing could hinder them more,’ a newly appointed Venetian ambassador reported. But Rome had yet to deliver its dispensation – an essential condition for the French – ‘and’, he added, switching into coded writing, ‘the king and Parliament could alone urge this pretext for breaking off’.

  The ambassador attached a copy, also in code, of an undertaking signed by Count Mansfeld, which, ‘in consideration of the levies granted by the King of Great Britain under his command’, obliged him to promise to ‘do nothing to harm the king’s friends and allies’, in particular ‘the King of Spain and the Infanta Isabella’ – the Spanish king’s aunt and the governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Instead, James had instructed Mansfeld to employ his troops solely ‘for the recovery of the states of the Prince Palatine’. If he did otherwise, ‘he will justly incur his Majesty’s disfavour and forfeit his position and pay’.

  A formal event was organized for the signing of the treaty for the French match, but James, suffering another attack of gout, claimed that the pain in his fingers was so severe he could not put his hand to it, so it was stamped instead. He absented himself from the subsequent state banquet welcoming the French emissaries, and took to his bed, Charles acting in his place.

  Soon after, George had a meeting with the new Venetian ambassador at which he spilled out his plans and ambitions. Even through the filters of deciphering and translation, his excitement shines through the dispatch sent home, as does his grasp of the huge complexities of European diplomacy and warfare. He beheld the Continent’s mottled map, smudged with so many religions and realms, with a fresh clarity, and wanted to build a broad alliance, a spectrum that stretched from Venice to Sweden, from Catholics to Calvinists, from obscure confederacies such as the Grey League, to the great powers such as Britain and France, that would challenge the German and Spanish empires of the Habsburgs. If everyone played their part, he told the ambassador, their enemies, and in particular Spain – the kingdom that had humiliated him and the prince – would never ‘recover from the blow’.

  The diplomatic wrangling was not yet over, however, and in January 1625, Mansfeld’s army found itself stuck at Dover, detained by ongoing negotiations over how it should be deployed. His men, a ramshackle collection of tramps and convicts pressed into service, became ever more restive as money and supplies began to run short. Soldiers were reported to be plundering surrounding villages and towns ‘as though in an enemy’s country’. Local authorities were having to declare martial law to maintain order. Men found breaking into houses were hanged to set an example.

  Finally, on 31 January 1625, thanks in part to an emergency supply of cash from George’s own pocket, the rampage was quelled and the fleet set sail.

  The original plan was that it would land at Calais. From there, Mansfeld’s army would march south to the French province of Lorraine and turn east towards central Germany, to engage directly with the imperial troops holding the Palatinate lands along the Rhine. But, raising in British eyes ‘strange doubts’ about the French king’s commitment to the project, Louis had abruptly announced that he would not allow Mansfeld’s troops to cross French soil. This was apparently because the French had come to learn of the secret limitations James had set on Mansfeld’s mission, which they took to show a worrying lack of commitment on his part.

  So, Mansfeld was instead forced to head across the North Sea and land his troops in the Dutch Republic. The fleet approached Vlissingen – or Flushing, as the British called it – an inlet marking the border between the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. Its arrival surprised the Dutch, who were unable to garrison the huge influx of troops. As a result, many of the ships were forced to sail further north, where a severe frost prevented them from landing. Disease had by now got hold of the weakened men, and they began to die in their hundreds. Bloated bodies were thrown overboard and began to wash ashore, forcing locals to dig burial pits to dispose of them.

  As James’s secretary put it, the Mansfeld mission had become a ‘perplexed work’. Reports of the debacle were widely circulated back in Britain, and doubts began to spread about the whole enterprise. Dangerous and unpredictable forces had been unleashed. Among the English parliamentarians whose taxes were supposed to pay for the venture,
the braggadocio kindled by George gave way to a more protective, insular mood. ‘If we may live quietly at home, we shall not greatly care how the world goes abroad,’ a glum Chamberlain observed.

  * * *

  The fortified city of Breda lies on the Dutch border with modern Belgium. In 1625, it was an outpost of the Protestant Dutch Republic, which was struggling to retain its independence from the Catholic Spanish Netherlands. The previous year, as part of the same strategic effort that had led to the seizing of the Palatinate, the city had come under attack from a Belgian–Italian force led by the formidable Spanish commander, Ambrogio Spinola. By early 1625 it had come close to surrender – threatening a devastating, even decisive blow to the Dutch, potentially trapping Mansfeld’s army and ending all hopes of retaking the Palatinate. As it was only a few miles from where the remnants of Mansfeld’s bedraggled army had assembled, and as the Dutch were offering supplies and weapons in return for assistance, it made sense to deploy in defence of the weakening city.

  ‘Now is the time to help the good cause,’ Mansfeld wrote to George, urging him to agree to the plan, and to provide more funds.

  While he awaited confirmation, Mansfeld decided to march towards the city. By the time he reached the outskirts, George’s reply had arrived. It was accompanied by orders from James addressed to the six English colonels recruited to lead the British contingent of Mansfeld’s army. It seems both documents were unsealed at the same time. James’s orders forbade his officers from becoming involved in Breda. George told Mansfeld he could go wherever and do whatever ‘in his judgment’ he thought best. Mansfeld and the colonels compared the two apparently contradictory orders, and, ‘not with a little amazement’, noted that they were written on the same date and by the same hand: that of the king’s secretary.