Bringing Them Up Royal: How the Royals Raised their Children from 1066 to the Present Day

by David Cohen

  James managed to hand over a functioning kingdom when he died. He is also a fascinating subject, because his childhood should have made him bitter and vengeful. Once his mother was forced into exile in England, he had four different Regents and three died violent deaths.

  James’s first Regent, The Earl of Moray, was killed in January 1570. The following year, his new Regent – James’s paternal grandfather, Matthew Stuart – was wounded during a raid by Mary’s supporters and soon died. The next Regent was the Earl of Mar, who fared little better than his predecessors, though at least he did not die in battle but after a banquet, where he mayor may not have been poisoned; forensic science was not very accurate in the 1570s. The Earl of Morton then became James’s Regent.

  In Schiller’s great play, Mary and Elizabeth met, but, in truth, Elizabeth always refused to meet her unvirginal cousin. Mary was involved in a number of plots against her, and Elizabeth was wary that James himself might conspire to seize her throne. She insisted her ambassador in Edinburgh, Henry Killigrew, provide regular reports on the young King. When James was eight, Killigrew wrote that the boy was ‘well grown’, which was flattering, as James was weak, but, more to the point, that he was already an impressive scholar and ‘was able extempore which he did before me to read a chapter of the Bible out of Latin into French and out of French into English as well as few men could have added anything to his translation’. The performance could not have been rehearsed because James’s teacher, George Buchanan, allowed the ambassador to choose any portion of the Bible that he wished. The boy scholar rounded off his performance by doing a dance for Killigrew and then, conscious of his manners, asked him to convey his best wishes to Elizabeth.

  Buchanan remained as James’s tutor when the boy’s fourth Regent, the Earl of Morton, was jailed and charged with murdering James’s father, Darnley. Morton, was executed on 2 June 1581. By then, the fourteen-year-old King had suffered enough life events for, well, a lifetime: he had seen his mother exiled, his father murdered and two of his Regents murdered and one executed. There was one constant presence in his life, though: his tutor, Buchanan. Most royal tutors have been teachers or clergymen, who were flattered when asked to teach a prince. Buchanan was in his own right a Member of the Scottish Parliament, a theologian of some repute and well-respected. He thought himself more than the equal of any of the Regents who kept on being killed. Not remotely deferential, he was determined to beat discipline and fear of God into the boy. This was not sadism, but duty: Buchanan wanted to make sure James became a good Protestant King.

  The tutor also had a nice line in repartee. When James was twelve and fighting with one of his friends, Buchanan became so angry he yelled at the boys to ‘hold your tongues or I shall come down and whip your breeks for you!’ In their 1938 biography of James, the Steeholms tell the story not just with gusto, but as if repeating an eyewitness account.

  ‘Come on,’ James challenged his teacher.

  Incensed, Buchanan advanced on the boy and whipped James ‘breeks’ (or breeches) – so hard James that cried out. The royal wails brought Lady Mar rushing into the room. ‘There, there,’ she soothed and took the young King into her arms, ‘Has Master George been hurting you? For shame. How dare you lay hands on the Lord’s Anointed!’

  ‘Madam I have whipped his arse, you can kiss it if you like,’ Buchanan is said to have replied.

  There is a flamboyant comparison to be made between the childhoods of James I and Stalin: both had childhoods marked by extreme violence (both were beaten by priests), both grew up in a time of political turmoil, both were extremely competent in theology, having been taught by priests, and both wrote decent poetry. Stalin became a paranoid monster. James only had Sir Walter Raleigh killed, and that only after something resembling due process.

  Despite his almost gothic childhood, James turned out to be a reasonably successful and stable King. He married Anne of Denmark in 1589, having sailed to Oslo to claim his bride after her passage to Scotland was thwarted by a series of misadventures. The couple had three sons and four daughters. Their eldest, Henry, was born in 1594. His mother was deeply disappointed that she was expected to hand him to the Earl of Mar to be brought up. She told her husband that she wanted to stay with her baby, but the King refused her wish. When a daughter was born, the King let his wife see more of the child and, when another daughter was born, James personally ordered night caps and a cradle for the baby. He also had the sense to order dolls for his eldest daughter so she would not get too jealous of the new arrival. Household accounts from the sixteenth century have occasional entries recording payments for toys. As well as dolls, royal children played with toy soldiers and had pull toys, which they could drag after them.

  Anne and James’s second son was born in November 1600, but Charles was so weak he was not expected to live long. When his parents rode to England in 1603, the boy was left in the charge of Sir Robert and Lady Carey. Carey wrote that Charles ‘was not able to go nor scant stand alone he was so weak in his joints and especially in his ankles as many feared they were out of joint’. Charles was also tongue-tied, which provoked a dispute between Lady Carey and the King. James wanted the tongue string cut for the Prince ‘was so long beginning to speak as he thought would never have spoke, but my wife protested so much against them both as she got the victory and the King was fain to yield’. Charles’s speech impediment stayed with him all his life. Carey and his wife looked after him until he was eleven years old, by which time he had grown ‘in health and strength both of body and mind to the amazement of many that knew his weakness’.

  James’s eldest son, Henry, loved his adoring mother and showed it in a nice way: when he was nine years old, he wrote her a sweet letter of congratulation on giving birth to another child. Henry was also arrogant and lazy, however. James once warned that, if he did not mend his ways, he would leave the crown to Charles instead. The warning seems to have worked. So it was to Henry that James wrote Basilikon Doron, which is far from being a strident justification for the right of a monarch to be tyrannical, as it is often presented. As I read it, I came to admire James not just for his obvious love for his son but also for his style, which includes some well-crafted phrases such as the ‘slipperiness of memory’. At the end of his time in the White House, the outgoing American President leaves a confidential memo for his successor and Basilikon Doron has something of that flavour. The book is a mix of personal history, reflections and political advice. I have quoted from it extensively because it deserves close attention. How many fathers write books for their sons?

  Basilikon Doron – a father’s gift to his son

  James begins with a sonnet in traditional Elizabethan style:

  God gives not Kings the style of Gods in vain,

  For on his Throne his Scepter do they sway:

  And as their subjects ought them to obey,

  So Kings should fear and serve their God again

  If then ye would enjoy a happy reign,

  Observe the Statutes of your heavenly King.

  As Henry’s natural father, James had to ‘be careful for your godly and virtuous education, as my eldest Son, and the first fruits of God’s blessing towards me in thy posterity’. James’s son had to beware ‘failing, which God forbid, of the sadness of your fall, according to the proportion of that height’ and so he had written a treatise to prepare him for the duties that a king owed to God and included some essentials no king should neglect. It was his own duty to keep his son on the straight and narrow, James felt – ‘I ordain to be a resident faithful admonisher of you.’ He charged Henry ‘in the presence of GOD, and by the fatherly authority I have over you, that ye keep it ever with you, as carefully, as Alexander did the Iliads of Homer’. The book would provide ‘just and impartial advice’ and he begged his son to confer with it, ‘when ye are at quiet as ever ye thinks to deserve my Fatherly blessing, to follow and put in practice, as far as lieth in you.’ If Henry ignored his advice, James protested, ‘before tha
t Great GOD, I had rather not be a Father, and childless, then be a Father of wicked children.’ He then begged God to make his son work hard to deserve his ‘blessing, which here from my heart I bestow upon you’.

  The 57-page book was distilled from James’s own experience. He did not think it fitting that it should be made public because this was a manual for a future king written by his father and so he only let seven copies be printed. In some copies there is a Freudian slip and ‘seven’ has become ‘semen’. The Basilikon was a gift, ‘both of the honest integrity of my heart, and of my fatherly affection and our natural care’.

  A sense of grievance about the past is a theme throughout, although James admitted he had made many mistakes. His son should learn from them as well as from the injustices that he himself had suffered. Given his own experiences with his mother, James told his son not to tolerate ‘any unreverent speeches or books against any of his parents or progenitors’. He had noticed that those who were ‘steadfastly true to me in all my troubles [had] constantly kept their allegiance to her in her time’. So his son should not allow ‘any virulent detracting of his predecessors’.

  James knew that ‘a Prince so long as he is young, will be so carried away with some sort of delight or other, that he cannot patiently abide the reading of any large volume.’ Then, once the Prince was older, ‘he would be so busy he would have little time to think and read.’ That was why James restricted himself to fifty-seven pages of advice.

  A king had two obligations to God: ‘First, for that he made you a man; and next, for that he made you a little GOD to sit on his Throne, and rule over other men.’ James put his phrase ‘little God’ in context: Henry should be grateful for his exalted position and strive to deserve it. He should be aware of his faults and not imagine he had a licence to sin because he was a king. A king should ‘shine before their people, in all works of sanctification and righteousness, that their persons as bright lamps of godlinesse and virtue, may, going in and out before their people, give light to all their steps’.

  Knowledge and fear of God would teach Henry all he needed to discharge his duties. James urged his son to read Scripture ‘with a sanctified and chaste heart: and to pray to understand it properly’. He had to concentrate ‘and study carefully to understand those that are somewhat difficile’.

  James recommended the psalms of David, which had, after all, been written by a king. He himself was a sharp controversialist and told Henry so he should not merely parrot prayers out of books nor should he presume unlike many vain Puritans to be too ‘homely’ and talk to God as if He were their next-door neighbour. Prayers had to be for decent things, not for revenge or lust. ‘Above all them, my Son, labour to keep sound this conscience, which many prattle of, but over few feel,’ he advised.

  Once every twenty-four hours, James wrote, ‘when ye are at greatest quiet, to call your self to account of all your last day’s actions, either wherein ye have committed things ye should not, or omitted the things ye should do, either in your Christian or Kingly calling.’ Examining his conscience and behaviour was vital. ‘Censure your self as sharply, as if ye were your own enemy. For if ye judge your self, ye shall not be judged.’

  The Bible contained all that was necessary for salvation, but anything not precisely ordained by Scripture could be changed to cope with the necessities of time. His son should pay close attention when Churchmen claimed something was ordained in the Bible as priests often interpreted the Word of God in ways that suited them. James had plenty of experience of priestly vanity and warned if some ‘deboshed’ – the very word he used – priest ‘or other urge you to embrace any of their fantasies in the place of God’s word’, Henry should point out their vanity to them with all his authority.

  James’s failure to deal with the fantasies of fanatical priests had caused him problems and he begged his son to learn from ‘my over-dear bought experience’. He had hoped that in being gracious he would ‘win all men’s hearts to a loving and willing obedience, I by the contrary found, the disorder of the country, and the loss of my thanks to be all my reward’. He also warned against vain astrologers and necromancers. Horoscopes were heresy and James was adamant that his son should ‘Take no heed to any of your dreams, for all prophecies, visions, and prophetic dreams are accomplished and ceased in Christ’. It is perhaps surprising that he dismissed the role dreams played by those God-inspired interpreters Joseph and Daniel in the Bible.

  In the Old Testament, the King was a judge. In that role, he had to be compassionate but there were some terrible sins he should never forgive, ‘such as Witch-craft, willful murder, Incest, [especially within the degrees of consanguinity], Sodomy, poisoning, and false coin’. When the offence had been ‘against your own person and authority, since the fault concerneth your self, I remit to your own choice to punish or pardon therein, as your heart serveth you, and according to the circumstances of the turn, and the quality of the committer’.

  The king had to rule impartially on questions of property and James urged his son to neither love the rich nor pity the poor. In England, he would often have to deal with the greedy and dishonest, not to mention the bitchiness of the natives and their mania for novelties – the tobacco against which James counter-blasted being one of those.

  James still revered his mother Mary and reminded his son, ‘ye know the command in God’s law, Honour your Father and Mother.’ So the king should not let his parents to ‘be dishonoured by any; especially, since the example also touches your self. For how can they love you, that hated them whom-of ye are come?’ It was monstrous to ‘see a man love the child, and hate the Parents: as on the other part, the infaming and making odious of the parents, is the readiest way to bring the son in contempt’. He reminded Henry again of his own experience – all those who were not faithful to his mother had not been faithful to him.

  James urged his son to be on the side of the oppressed. The King should not spare ‘any pains in your own person, to see their wrongs redressed’. He again reminded him of his own past and urged him to ‘remember of the honourable style given to my grand-father of worthy memory, in being called the poor man’s King’; he was referring to James V of Scotland. A good king, however, should not swing to the other extreme and constantly condemn the nobles. He reminded his son how ‘that error broke the King my grand-fathers heart’. James’s grandfather had been kept prisoner by one of his nobles for three years.

  He then returned to the question of loyalty and urged his son to show ‘your constant love towards them that I loved [and] your constant hatred to them that I hated: I mean, bring not home, nor restore not such, as ye find standing banished or fore-faulted by me.’

  When it came to the question of war, James was cynical. If his son went to war, he should ‘hazard his safety once or twice’ but, once he had acquired ‘the fame of courage’, Henry should be sensible and not expose ‘rashly your person to every peril’.

  Servants had to be watched carefully. James remembered that the first rebellion raised against him ‘compelled me to make a great alteration among my servants’. A king had to be ‘a daily watch-man over your servants’. If he could not ensure they obeyed him, why should the country obey him? The king also had to realise that his actions were constantly under scrutiny by his servants and subjects were always trying ‘to interpret the inward disposition of the mind’ of the monarch.

  A king must choose his wife well

  James warned Henry that if he married someone of a different faith, by which he meant a Catholic, ‘inconvenients were like to ensue’, but there were few Protestant Princesses in Europe. The question of succession was, of course, vital: Henry had to make sure that his bride was able to have children.

  The strict religious education that James had received meant he did not hold with loose morals, on paper at least. As the bride-groom, ‘ye must keep your body clean and unpolluted, till ye give it to your wife, whom-to only it belongeth. For how can ye justly crave to be joined with a pure v
irgin, if your body be polluted? why should the one half be clean, and the other defiled?’ Of course, few kings have followed this moral code. A husband should treat his wife as ‘the half of your self; and to make your body (which then is no more yours, but properly hers) common with none other. I trust I need not to insist here to dissuade you from the filthy vice of adultery.’ He warned Henry to ‘abstain from haunting before your marriage, the idle company of dames, which are nothing else, but irritamenta libidinis’. The sense of the Latin was that dames could provoke an itching of the loins.

  Then again, he referred to his own unhappy family, telling his son to remember James’s own grandfather, ‘who by his adultery, bred the wreck of his lawful daughter and heir in begetting that bastard who unnaturally rebelled, and procured the ruin of his own Sovereign and sister’. The ‘unnatural bastard’ was the Earl of Moray, who had been one of James’s Regents.

  His son would have to be a vigilant father, keeping his children ‘ever in a reverent love and fear of you’. Being a good king did not come naturally, though; it required study but a king could only hope to read in ‘idle hours not interrupting therewith the discharge of your office’. He urged Henry to study the history of England and Scotland.

  Then again James turned personal and counselled his son to be magnanimous – again, in turning ‘empire’ into the verb ‘empiring’, he showed a sweet stylistic touch. The king should treat these enemies as ‘not worthy of your wrath, empiring over your own passion, and triumphing in the commanding your self to forgive’. Forgiving was Christian and kingly. Some attacks were however too serious, so ‘where ye find a notable injury, spare not to give course to the torrents of your wrath’. He ended with a familiar image: ‘The wrath of a King is like to the roaring of a lion.’