The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain
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As the likelihood increased that Mary would be executed, Scotland was in uproar. It had been generally thought that Mary would simply be imprisoned more securely, and her secretaries – her route to the outside world – taken from her.27 ‘The King nor no man ever believed the matter would have gone so far,’ wrote Gray from Holyroodhouse to Archibald Douglas in London. ‘I never saw all the people so willing to concur in anything as in this same … They that hated most her prosperity regret her adversity.’28 In late November the French ambassador Courcelles had an audience with a rather lachrymose James. ‘His mother’s cause was the strangest that ever was heard of,’ he said. Had Courcelles ever read of a sovereign prince that had been detained prisoner for such a long time without a cause, by a neighbour prince, who in the end would put her to death? His mother had just cause to say, as she had at her arraignment, that she had never had a good day since his birth. But, he said, brightening, he didn’t believe Elizabeth would put her hands in Mary’s blood.29
These thoughts were uppermost in James’s mind when he wrote a letter to Keith in London, evidently intending that Keith should show the letter to Elizabeth.
I perceive by your last letter the Queen my mother still continueth in that miserable strait that the pretended condemnation of that Parliament has put her in. A strange example indeed, and so very rare, as for my part I never read nor heard of the like practice in such a case. I am sorry that beyond my expectation, the Queen hath suffered this to proceed to my dishonour, and so contrary to her good fame, as by subjects’ mouth to condemn a sovereign prince descended of all hands of the best blood in Europe. King Henry VIII’s reputation was never prejudged in anything but in the beheading of his bedfellow, but yet that tragedy was far inferior to this, if it should proceed as seemeth to be intended; which I can never believe, since I know it is the nature of noble princes at that time chiefly to spare when it is most concluded in all men’s minds that they will strike … Fail not but let her see all this letter: and would God she might see the inward parts of my heart where she should see a great jewel of honesty towards her, locked up in a coffer of perplexity, she only having the key which by her good behaviour in this case may open the same. Guess ye in what strait my honour will be in, this unhap being perfected; since, before God, I already dare scarce go abroad for crying out of the whole people; and what is spoken by them of the Queen of England, it grieves me to hear, and yet dare not find fault with it except I would dethrone myself, so is whole Scotland incensed with this matter.30
When the letter was read by Elizabeth on 6 December, according to Douglas, the Queen flew into such a ‘passion as it was a great deal of work to us all … to appease her’. It was the King of Scots’ reference to her parents, Henry VIII and his ‘bedfellow’, Anne Boleyn (whom he executed), that most upset her. Elizabeth let Keith know that if he ‘had not delivered unto Her Majesty so strange and unseasonable a message as did directly touch her noble father and herself’, she would have agreed to Keith’s request to delay Mary’s execution until two Scots noblemen had arrived and pleaded for her. Now, however, not only would she not promise to delay the execution but she would not receive two noblemen, but two commoners instead – to whom, it was implied, she would not have to pay so much respect or attention.31
James found two commoners in Sir Robert Melville of Murdocairnie and the Master of Gray (who though a senior counsellor was technically not a peer), and they were promptly despatched. His instructions to Gray were designed to map out a new situation in which Mary might be allowed to survive without constituting a threat to Elizabeth. If none of James’s suggestions appealed, then Gray and Melville were to press Elizabeth to propose some ‘form of security’ that suited them.32 But James was playing a double if not a triple game. While Gray and Melville laid out the ‘official’ Scottish line on Mary’s dilemma, James wrote simultaneously to the Earl of Leicester, one of Elizabeth’s senior councillors, severing his ties with his mother. He denied having had any contact with his mother since the previous autumn – before the treaty with England was concluded. ‘I am honest,’ he insisted, ‘no changer of course, altogether in all things as I profess to be.’ If he ever supported his mother’s claim to the throne, then men could judge him ‘fond and inconstant’. ‘My religion ever moved me to hate her course although my honour constrains me to insist for her life.’33 Douglas interpreted the letter more bluntly for Leicester’s benefit: James would not sever diplomatic relations if Mary were executed.
Gray and Melville were received by Elizabeth at a social occasion on 6 January 1587. They reported that the English Queen was infuriatingly vague about Mary’s fate, claiming she had no idea whether Mary were still alive or not. An embassy member named George Young wrote to Secretary Maitland in Scotland on 10 January that Elizabeth ‘directed out the warrant long ago and wished not to be made privy to the day of execution. Since then all our intelligence assures us she is gone. We are in a despair to do any good in the errand we came for, all things dishearting us on every side, and every hour giving us new advertisement that we deal for a dead lady.’34 Two days later, Gray and Melville made a last-ditch attempt to persuade Elizabeth to save Mary’s life. They asked for a reprieve of fifteen days, eight days – ‘Not for an hour!’ exclaimed the Queen. She ended their audience with an instruction: ‘Tell your King what good I have done for him in holding the crown on his head since he was born; and that I mind to keep the league that stands now between us, and if he break, it shall be a double fault.’ Gray wrote miserably to James: ‘Your Majesty sees we have delivered all we had for offers. But all is nothing, for she and her Council has laid a determination that they mind to follow forth.’35 Perhaps the reasons for their apparent failure lay in another messenger from Scotland. Alexander Stewart, who had been sent as part of the Gray/Melville embassy but ‘with more express and secret charge than they had’, told Elizabeth from James that he had sent formal ambassadors only because he couldn’t be seen to ‘neglect his mother, and the duties he owes her’; Elizabeth should not take it ‘in ill part’. But then Stewart added a message, perhaps of his own devising: that if Mary died and James ‘at first showed himself not contented therewith’, the English ‘might easily satisfy him, in sending him dogs and deer’. Hearing of this, James was allegedly furious, and raged that when Stewart returned he would ‘hang him before he put off his boots, and if the Queen meddled with his mother’s life, she should know, he would follow somewhat else than dogs and deer’.36 Despite the rhetoric, it is perhaps instructive as to James’s true state of mind that he didn’t punish Stewart at all.
Intelligence came from Douglas that Elizabeth no longer trusted James, and that her Council had advised her to resort to threats: that she would deprive him of the succession by Act of Parliament on the grounds that he had assisted ‘one that sought her death’, and look instead at one of the Earl of Hertford’s sons as her successor. James pronounced himself unimpressed. He should have little courage, he declared, if he were intimidated by an old woman, illbeloved by her own subjects, weary of her government, in perpetual fear of her own servants – even more than James, who was so fearful himself, he joked, that he had his beard shaved with burning coals, ‘fearing lest the barber should cut his throat’. Whenever Elizabeth saw anyone she did not recognise, ‘she runs away like one undone’. This must be a great scourge and torment to her. Though he was a mean king with small ability, he protested, he would not change fortunes with her: he’d rather live ‘surely among his subjects’ than, as she did, seeking the blood of his own people just because they happened to have a contrary religion.37
Though James blustered against Elizabeth, she had good reason to be wary of him as a successor. A contemporary memorandum in the Salisbury papers at Hatfield House gives a vivid idea of the ‘reasons for which the King of Scots is unacceptable to the people of England’. It lists ‘many horrible, detestable, and cruel facts committed in Scotland since the reign of this King, which hath so far alienated men’s hea
rts in England from him that were well bent unto him, which by all just, reasonable and convenient means must be repaired, or that credit which he had will never be recovered, either by league, letters, or fair promises’. The heinous deeds piled up. First, the death of his own father, committed by his mother, with Bothwell and supporters who now were ‘of counsel and near about the King’s self’. Second, the murder of Regent Moray, ‘many yet living and accessory’ to the fact. Third, the slaying of Regent Lennox, his grandfather: ‘few or none executed for the same.’ Fourth, the unjust execution of Morton through the false accusations of Captain James Stewart, who was then raised to be Earl of Arran. Fifth, the death of the Earl of Gowrie and other innocent men, again through Arran’s accusations. Last, ‘that which most concerneth and grieveth all Englishmen, was the murder of the Earl of Bedford [in fact, the Earl’s son] upon the Borders, at a day of true [truce], against all law, justice, and honour, to the perpetual shame of that whole nation, if extreme justice be not ministered upon the offender’. That was not to mention the bullets fired into Randolph’s window, and the appalling treatment of the embassy of Secretary Walsingham, ‘a blot into that country so long as the memory thereof remaineth’. All these things taken together, it concluded, ‘bear such show of an inward mind full of cruelty and mortal hatred to all those of this nation that bear goodwill to England, as, without great show of an altered mind appear in him, the hearts of all honest men in England will never be recovered as beforetime he had them’.38 James would have his work cut out to win England over.
The embassy of Gray and Melville seems to have ended in some confusion. One source has it that they had to leave because a trumped-up charge of plotting against the Queen’s life was threatened.39 Certainly they were back in Scotland by 8 February 1587, when the Council made them a formal vote of thanks. The Council did not know that on the same morning, in the Great Hall at Fotheringay Castle, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded.
CHAPTER SIX
Sole King
WITH THE QUEEN of Scots finally dead, all eyes turned north to see how her son would react. James heard the news on 14 February 1587, six days after the event. Each report of James’s reaction tended to reflect what the writer wanted to see. According to David Moysie, James received the news ‘in great displeasure and went to bed without supper’, riding off to Dalkeith the following morning, ‘desiring to be solitaire’.1 One English source reported that James took the news ‘very grievously and offensively, but also gave out in secret speeches that he could not digest the same or leave it unrevenged, as should appear by such goods as they [the English] should receive at his hands’.2 But Ogilvy of Powrie wrote that ‘the King never moved his countenance at the rehearsal of his mother’s execution, nor leaves not his pastime and hunting more than of before’.3 The Kirk chronicler David Calderwood, noting how ‘outwardly he seemed to be sorrowful’, perversely interpreted that as a sign of ‘inward joy. Yea,’ he continued, Maitland ‘was so ashamed of his behaviour that night, that he caused ish the chamber [made the courtiers void the chamber], that there might be few or no spectators. He said that night to some few that were beside him, “I am now sole king.’”4 But according to Moysie, when he was given a vivid description of Mary’s very bloody execution by one of the court ladies, he ‘was very sad and pensive all that day and would not sup that night’.5
For the benefit of his Scottish audience, James maintained a cold and absolute silence towards England. All communication with England was cut off. Even Elizabeth’s personal ambassador, her kinsman Sir Robert Carey, was halted at the border. George Young, Clerk of the Privy Council, was sent to declare to him on 22 February that if the King’s mother were alive, and Carey could assure him of it, then Carey ‘should be right welcome, and he would be glad to hearken to any accord’; if Mary were dead, on the other hand, Carey could go home and tell his Queen that she should stick at doing him that one injury, rather than seeking to do another ‘in bringing him to accord with the price of his mother’s blood’. It was, like most of James’s posturing, an act, but one he maintained, uncharacteristically, for several weeks. In private, however, James could not help remarking privately to Courcelles that he was impressed by Elizabeth’s choice of messenger, whom he ‘esteemed and loved well’, ‘being furnished with diverse gentlemanly qualities’ whom he had previously met during Walsingham’s embassy: indeed, he had requested Carey as a resident ambassador, but Elizabeth had ‘sent him only old doting Randall [Randolph]’. Courcelles, sensing that the King was weakening, urged him to stand firm: James ‘could not but blemish his honour greatly, by treating with those, whose hands were yet red with his mother’s blood as was likely’; Elizabeth had sent a messenger ‘whom she knew he had a liking of’ so that the news might be softened somewhat.6
Finally, on 4 March, via Archibald Douglas, the Scottish court received a full and gory written account of Mary’s execution. According to Courcelles, ‘the King would not abide to hear [it] read out’, and ‘would not seem to believe it’ until he received news from Carey. When Young returned with official confirmation of the execution the following day, James sent him back immediately to fetch Elizabeth’s letters, and retired to Dalkeith, ‘with very small company, greatly grieved with the death of his mother, which he taketh infinitely at heart’, in Courcelles’ words. After a hasty trip to Edinburgh to pass on Carey’s confirmation of the fact, Young returned to Berwick to tell Carey that James ‘was not to receive any strangers at this time, but if he had any letter from her Majesty’, he would accept it passed through his courtiers. Carey, however, had instructions to hand over the letters only directly to the King.7 He sent an agent to Scotland who reported that ‘as yet the King would receive no ambassador, partly by reason of his heaviness and sorrowing for his mother, and also for that he is not resolved that the Queen is as sorry for his mother’s death as he was informed she was’. Moreover, the agent reported, James claimed he would be unable to control the vengeful instincts of the Scottish people, who were ‘wickedly bent and evilly given’.8 When cries of protest came from England, James denied that he had refused to receive Elizabeth’s letter, for it would be against equity and law, he added barbedly, to ‘refuse to admit a trial’ or to ‘condemn a person unheard’. ‘As for any proofs she has given of her innocency yet,’ he continued, ‘we remit it to her own judgement whether she has yet satisfied the world to her honour in that matter, or not.’9
Eventually, a meeting with Carey was fixed at Foulden, near Berwick, on 14 March, with Sir Robert Melville representing James. Carey presented Elizabeth’s letter, now a month old. The Queen wrote of ‘the extreme dolor that overwhelmeth my mind for that miserable accident which far contrary to my meaning hath been befallen’. She claimed ‘how innocent I am in this case … if I had bidden do it I would have abiden by it.’ She was ‘not so base-minded’ to deny something she had done. ‘I am not of so base a lineage nor carry so vile a mind; but as not to disguise fits most a king, so will I never dissemble my actions, but cause them show even as I mean them.’10 Carey was left to make Elizabeth’s excuses: that, despite the ‘daily persuasions of her Council’, she had ‘never thought to put the Queen your mother to death’. However, she had ‘news every day both out of Spain and France, of ships and men preparing for the overthrow of her Majesty and the delivery of your mother’; rumours in her own court of men landing in various parts of the realm, followed by reports that Fotheringay had been ‘broken open and the Queen escaped away’. All these ‘bred jealousy in her Majesty’s head’ and led her ‘to suspect the worse’. So she ordered a warrant to be made, sealed and delivered and handed it to her Secretary, Francis Davison; but Davison showed it to some others who ‘without more questions asking, called the whole Council together, straight determined her death, and sent present expedition for the performing of it’. Davison was now in the Tower of London ‘and will hardly escape her high displeasure’. Carey reported all this is writing, ‘which if I could declare unto your Majesty so wel
l, and set it down so lively as I heard her speak it with so heavy a heart, and so discontented a countenance, I think verily you would rather pity her unpleasant life (which ever since she hath endured) than blame her for the fact, which she never consented unto’.11