The King's Assassin

by Benjamin Woolley

  A combination of hesitancy and shock seemed to pass through the House. Even Christopher Wandesford, the measured, prudent member for Richmond in Yorkshire, and quite probably one of Eliot’s conspirators in drawing up charges against the duke, was caught by surprise. The motion was ‘made too soon’, he advised, giving the excuse that many members were yet to arrive for the session. He also suggested that ‘grave bodies’, meaning sensible ones, ‘must go slowly’.

  Eliot’s motion was discarded, business continuing almost as though nothing had happened. A mood of caution settled on the House, as it contemplated with a mixture of fear and excitement the momentous, possibly disastrous confrontation to come.

  Commenting on the debacle, Amerigo Salvetti, the Florentine agent in London, resorted to a well-known Tuscan saying: ‘The knot draws near the teeth of the comb.’

  Common Fame

  George’s behaviour in the early weeks of the Parliament showed a blissful lack of awareness of the trouble that was brewing. He attended the House of Lords sporadically, his main contribution being a proposal to set up an academy ‘to take care of the breeding and education of the children of the nobility and gentry of worth of this kingdom’. It was an idea that he had first proposed two years before, having secured James’s agreement to call it ‘King James’s Academy, Society Heroic, or College of Honour’. But a lack of money and political backing meant nothing had come of the scheme. His peers probably took it as a sign of social insecurity – an attempt to institutionalize his own dizzying rise in rank, to prove that there was a quick and artificial way of bypassing generations of breeding.

  The proposal may have reflected his continuing struggles to set an acceptable tone for his rare public appearances. Somehow, the lords from the established ancient families seemed able to carry their grandeur with ease. He, on the other hand, had a habit of attracting ridicule. A simple trip, for example, to the house of a local grandee around the time of the opening of the new Parliament turned into a farcical production. He decided to go ‘carried on men’s shoulders’ in a ‘Spanish chair or hand litter’, drawing the taunts of a ‘rabble of boys’, his ostentation ‘much spoken of and thought more than needed’ by polite society.

  There was a similar air of vulgar and reckless bravado surrounding his foreign dealings. Following the expulsion of Henrietta Maria’s entourage, relations with the French had come under severe strain, and he had sent his friend Henry Rich, the Earl of Holland, back to Paris as his envoy to try and patch things up. However, he had also instructed Rich to sound out Anne of Austria’s feelings for him. Holland obliged, reporting back that he had ‘been a careful spy’ of the French queen’s ‘intentions and affections towards you’. The news was not encouraging. ‘I find many things to be feared, and none to be assured of a safe and real welcome’ should the duke try to visit her in France. King Louis ‘continues in his suspects, making (as they say) very often discourses of it, and is willing to hear villains say that she hath infinite affections, you imagine which way’.

  Nevertheless, in a summary garbled by his efforts at discretion, Rich suggested that Anne might be receptive, ready even to ‘do things to destroy her fortune rather than want satisfaction in her mind’ – news which Rich acknowledged would make the duke ‘the most happy unhappy man alive’. As for what action to take, ‘do what you will’, he wrote. ‘I dare not advise you. To come is dangerous. Not to come is unfortunate.’

  Perhaps George’s greatest vulnerability, though, was greed. As with his striving for imperial grandeur and unobtainable women, it seemed to be a symptom of insecurity, a conviction that his status could only be secured by exhibiting a degree of wealth obtainable only through epic borrowing and expropriation. Extravagant gestures of generosity, such as personally paying for the relief of pressed sailors and soldiers, came to be seen by him as the currency of esteem. But it demanded a relentless and addictive quest for money, one that was to begin his undoing.

  One of the bones of contention between the British and the French was the seizure of shipping in the Channel on the pretext of piracy. Among the ships that had been taken by the English was the St Pierre of Le Havre, found to be carrying a haul of gold, silver, cochineal (an expensive scarlet dye) and jewels – assumed to be Spanish goods and therefore subject to confiscation. The capture had caused uproar among merchants, because in reprisal the French had started confiscating English cargo. The Court of the Admiralty responded by ordering that the St Pierre be released and the ship set sail. But George overruled the court, commanding that it be stopped and returned to port, apparently with the aim of confiscating the booty.

  This rash intervention proved to be a serious tactical error. Sir John Eliot had managed to get himself appointed onto a Commons committee investigating merchants’ complaints, and witnesses had presented evidence that the staying of the ship had been ordered by the Lord Admiral on his own authority, rather than the king’s. The Commons was by convention not allowed to enquire into royal matters, but it could investigate private individuals, and it ruled that George had acted in that capacity.

  Eliot seized the opportunity. On 1 March 1626, he boldly demanded that the duke ‘may be sent for as a delinquent’ to be questioned by the House.

  Days passed, and George did not respond.

  On 11 March, members of the king’s Council of War filed into the House of Commons, having been summoned to account for the spending of taxes raised in James’s time. They refused to answer the MPs’ questions, one claiming the king had ‘expressly forbidden them to give any account’. This was taken as an insult to the House, and a mutinous mood set in. Eliot then brought up the matter of the St Pierre, claiming the duke had ‘too slightly apprehended’ the gravity of the problem. ‘This is a great grievance and abuse’ of the people, he proclaimed, and demanded that the House hold a vote on the matter. After lunch, the vote was taken, and Eliot’s motion was only narrowly lost by 127 to 133, following a last-minute intervention by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  Then Dr Samuel Turner got to his feet. He was a physician who had treated Charles’s mother, Anne of Denmark, during her final illness. This was his first term in Parliament, and virtually his maiden speech.

  There is no official record of what he said – it is only thanks to letters and private journals that his speech has been preserved. Whether he had planned to speak that day, or was encouraged by the narrowness of Eliot’s defeat, his intervention would prove momentous.

  Turner announced that it was time for the ‘causa generalissima’ of current woes to be identified, and that ‘common fame’ – in other words public reputation – ‘presents one man to be this cause’: ‘that great man, the Duke of Buckingham’. It was the first time that George had been identified in this way. Turner summarized six areas for which the duke should be called to account: for the recent wranglings over shipping in the ‘Narrow Seas’ or Channel; for squandering taxpayers’ money; for the ‘engrossing of offices of state and trust into his hands; for conferring the same on his kindred’; for fostering Catholicism (notably his mother’s); for selling honours and titles and for the military fiasco in Cádiz.

  The following day, the royal secretary, Sir Edward Conway, wrote in furious indignation to George. The secretary declared Turner a ‘slave’, a ‘vile and base person’, ‘loathesomely offensive’, false, base and, for good measure, vile again. No penalty was sufficient to give the duke ‘satisfaction or revenge’ for what Turner had said about him, nevertheless ‘such offences must not pass unmarked or unpunished’.

  But vilifying Turner, or indeed Eliot, would not help, because – as George had just learned – there was a much more substantial figure hiding in the shadows who, it seems, was behind the sudden outpouring of abuse.

  The Bottomless Bagg

  In early March 1626, George received a letter from Sir James Bagg, the corrupt but wily MP for East Looe in Cornwall, who had volunteered to act as the duke’s agent in the West Country. Bagg, known locally as the ‘
bottomless bag’ for his capacity to take bribes, had long been a jealous rival of John Eliot’s for George’s attention and patronage, and had been quick to exploit the growing antagonism between his fellow Cornish MP and the favourite.

  As part of these efforts, Bagg had been enquiring into the parliamentary attacks against the duke, and in his letter to George he revealed a breakthrough in his investigation. Far from being a spontaneous expression of popular discontent, he had discovered that the campaign was being secretly orchestrated by a powerful cabal, ‘maliciously without cause intending your ruin’. Their leader, according to Bagg, was George’s former champion, occasional ally and now chief rival, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. The late Queen Anne of Denmark had warned Herbert and the other Baynard’s Castle conspirators of George becoming ‘beholden to none but himself’ and a ‘plague’ to those ‘that labour for him’, and Herbert had evidently decided the time had come to do something about it.

  Bagg had learned through one of Pembroke’s deputies in Cornwall how the earl had secretly used his position as the county’s lord lieutenant to get at least five MPs elected to the new Parliament who were prepared to act against George. Not all their names were known, but he was almost certain that Dr Samuel Turner was one of them, having been selected at the last minute for a seat conveniently vacated by a servant of the earl’s. Bagg also implicated Sir John Eliot in the plot, warning George that he had been ‘in a distraction how to divide himself betwixt Your Grace and the Earl of Pembroke’.

  Herbert was Charles’s Lord Chamberlain. He was also considered by many to be the ‘only honest hearted man’ left at court, and had considerable support from other members of the nobility, particularly those ancient families who resented George’s rise to a rank superior to theirs. This made the earl a formidable enemy. Following the advice of his mentor, Francis Bacon, George duly responded by applying the honey rather than the sting. He arranged for the king to promote the earl to Lord Steward, with his brother Philip, the Earl of Montgomery, taking over William’s old post of Lord Chamberlain. This gave the Herberts almost complete control over the royal household.

  Meanwhile, Turner was to receive the sting. On 15 March, four days after the MP’s speech, a letter from the king was read out to the Commons which fulminated at Turner’s ‘seditious’ words against the ‘honour and government’ of the king. ‘This his Majesty says is an example that he can no ways suffer,’ particularly when it impugned the reputation of one ‘so near to him’. Turner must therefore face justice, which will be delivered at the king’s own hands if not by the House.

  As the Commons Journal noted, the letter was met with a ‘long silence’, after which the matter was referred to a committee.

  By the following day, the MPs had recovered their tongues. Turner protested that he had spoken ‘not for any particular ends but out of loyalty and sincerity for the good of his country’. He pointed out that ‘common fame’ had been used as the basis for charging prominent figures before, as in the time of Henry VI, when it had successfully led to an overmighty member of court being brought to justice. In a letter delivered to the House a few days later, Turner further claimed that the accusations he had levelled were just a selection ‘out of many’ expressed by public opinion, and that he had only reported them to stop an endless consideration of ‘grievances in abstractions’ and out of ‘duty and public service to my country’.

  Turner’s talk of public rather than royal service and duty to country rather than king produced a profound sense of unease at court. Could this be evidence that the popular mood had turned hostile to the favourite and, by extension, to the king? In search of reassurance, courtiers began to challenge the Commons’ claim to represent popular grievance. One tract by a ‘plain countryman’, conveniently discovered in the pocket of a ‘paralytic poor man’ found dead on the road to London, declared that ‘we the Commons’ – the real people rather than their supposed silken-tongued representatives filling the benches in Parliament – found the charges against George ludicrous. An anonymous letter circulating court saw the House of Commons as being overrun with a corrupt and unaccountable elite of ‘meddling and busy persons’, ‘covetous landlords’, ‘recusants and papists’, ‘puritans’, ‘malcontents’, ‘king-haters’ and ‘lawyers in general’, whose sole objective was ‘the debasing of this free monarchy’ through ‘the duke’s side’.

  Charles’s response was to summon both Houses of Parliament to a meeting on 29 March. His chosen venue was the Banqueting House, where George had delivered his speech about the ‘Spanish Labyrinth’ following their return from Madrid. The king thanked the Lords for their ‘care’ but, turning to the MPs, was ‘sorry that I may not justly give you the same thanks but that I must tell you that I am come here to show you some errors and, as I may term them, unparliamentary proceedings’.

  The following day, at a joint meeting of the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber in Westminster, George stood up to reply to the accusations made against him. He chose not to use the sort of defensive or scolding tone adopted by Charles, but rather set out in a calm, reasonable, even humble way his responses to the individual charges, and a full account of the military costs of ongoing efforts to win back the Palatinate. Addressing the MPs, he also reminded them of the importance of that international emergency. ‘Gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘it is no time to pick quarrels one with another; we have enemies enough abroad’, making it all the more necessary ‘to be well united at home’.

  But the Commons were not so easily placated. Turner, having provided the fuse, had by now stepped back, leaving Eliot and other more seasoned hands to set it alight. Work began on a ‘remonstrance’ to formally set out the grievances against the duke, while discussions began about a generous supply bill to dissuade Charles from dismissing the House. This effectively put a price of three subsidies and three fifteenths on the duke’s head. Charles’s predictable response was that he would not submit under duress.

  And so the wrangling continued day after day, the MPs persisting with their investigations, Charles maintaining his defence of the duke. However, as Turner’s original charges were debated and adapted, anxiety began to build about the notion of ‘common fame’ as the basis for prosecuting them. George himself had described it as a ‘subtle’ concept, amounting to little more than rumour and gossip. Furthermore, the Lords had ruled it out as grounds for impeachment in 1614, declaring that it provided insufficient grounds for charging one of their members.

  Concerned that the case against the duke was weakening, a committee of twelve members, most of them experienced lawyers, was appointed to ‘consider of the businesses concerning the Duke of Buckingham and to reduce it into form and search and prepare such precedents as they see fit’. A motion was also passed to subject the matter of common fame to a full debate.

  The debate took place the following day, a Friday. The MPs fretted about what common fame meant, what distinguished it from rumour and gossip, some pointing out that it was not considered adequate in cases heard before a grand jury, others arguing that it had been used successfully before, and could be used again. As the arguments continued, the lawyers took over, their speeches scattered with Latin epigrams.

  Eventually, after ‘long debate’, they voted to accept common fame as an adequate basis upon which to proceed, but only after exposing the unsettling weaknesses of using it to bring down such a powerful man. And in a mood of apprehension about the difficulties ahead, they broke for the weekend.

  The Forerunner of Revenge

  On 18 April 1626, Rubens was at his lavishly appointed, Italianate palazzo in Antwerp, working on the paintings George had commissioned in Paris. His assistants had produced a sketch for the equestrian portrait, which had been presented to the duke for approval. It showed George mounted on a rearing horse, dressed in shining armour, with a red velvet cape flapping from his shoulders. Cowering beneath him, among reeds, were a bearded Poseidon, god of the sea, and a sea nymph dressed in pearls. Ov
erhead fluttered the winged figure of Fame, who had removed his trumpet from his mouth to exhale a blast of wind to fill the sails of a fleet of ships moored in the background. Though the rendering of the duke’s face was still rudimentary, a lot of effort had gone into working out the essential elements, notably the composition, the palette, and the appearance of the clothing.

  Rubens decided to take a break from his work and go for a walk down towards the cathedral. Passing through the thriving markets of a city enjoying its golden age, he arrived at the PlantinMoretus house, the workshop of a leading printer and publisher in Antwerp’s book market, which he visited regularly. It had a shop attached, offering books recently produced by the printshop as well as other publishers in the Spanish Netherlands. The shelves were filled with the latest works on religion, war, medicine, exploration and scandal. He liked to pretend that he had little interest in the scandal. Earlier that year he had sent a friend a ‘highly infamous’ and highly sought-after example, not to titillate, but because, he claimed, its rarity was reassuring evidence of such ‘libellous publications’ being hard to come by, which explained why ‘they have very little vogue’.

  As Rubens browsed the titles, two recent publications caught his eye. One, apparently printed in Oxford, was a miscellany of quotes attributed to ‘Mercury’ and Machiavelli, supposedly by an English author called Richard Thunderstruck. The other was a pamphlet with the verbose Latin title: Prodromus Vindictae in Ducem Buckinghamiae, pro virulenta caede potentissimi Magnae Britanniae Regis IACOBI, nec-non Marchionis Hamiltonii, ac aliorum virorum Principum – ‘The Forerunner of Revenge upon the Duke of Buckingham for poisoning the most powerful James, King of Great Britain, as well as the Marquis Hamilton and other nobles’. Intrigued, Rubens bought a copy to find out more about the man he was in the midst of painting. He paid 1 florin and 6 stivers for two copies of each publication.