The Cradle King: The Life of James VI and I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain
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Ralegh’s alleged co-conspirators, William Watson, George Brooke, Lords Cobham and Grey, were tried and condemned to death. Ralegh himself was due to be executed on 11 December, but the day before Ralegh, Cobham and Grey were reprieved, and sent back to the Tower, where Ralegh was to spend the next fourteen years of his life. According to a published letter, ‘written from Master T.M. near Salisbury, to Master H.A. at London, concerning the proceeding at Winchester’ but bearing the traces of James’s personal involvement, the reprieve was a brilliant coup de théâtre, designed to show his kingly clemency. During the trial, James allegedly called fourteen or fifteen Privy Councillors to the nearby estate of Wilton, where he was staying. Warrants for execution were signed, but James secretly wrote a warrant of reprieve in his cabinet, and appointed a Groom of his Bedchamber to deliver it ‘even at the instant when the axe should be laid to the tree’s roots’ – a forgivable dramatisation of the actual event. The letter likened this trick to ‘some ancient history, expressed in a well-acted comedy’ and applauded ‘so many lively figures of justice and mercy in a king, of terror and penitence in offenders, and of so great admiration and applause in all others, as appeared in this action, carried only and wholly by his Majesty’s own direction’.14
This time, however, James was in no mood to show mercy, even for the sake of his public image. Fawkes had confessed ‘that there was no cause moving him or them, but merely and only religion’, namely his Roman Catholic faith. What did it mean, asked James, that ‘Christian men, at least so called, English, born within the country … should practise the destruction of their King, his posterity, their country and all?’ On the one hand, it did not follow ‘that all professing that Romish religion were guilty of the same’. On the other, ‘it is true, that no other sect of heretics, not excepting Turk, Jew, nor Pagan, no not even those of Calicut, who adore the Devil, did ever maintain by their grounds of their religion, that it was lawful, or rather meritorious (as the Roman Catholics call it) to murder princes of people for quarrel of Religion’.15
Parliament reacted at the end of May 1606 by passing ‘An Act for the better discovering and repressing of Popish Recusants passing tougher laws against Catholic recusants’ which included what it termed the Oath of Allegiance. An English Catholic could now be commanded to swear this Oath, which acknowledged James as lawful king, denied the power of the Pope to depose him, and went on to condemn as ‘impious and heretical’ the ‘damnable doctrine’ that a sovereign excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church could lawfully be deposed and murdered.16 In practice, many lay Catholics chose to take the Oath, justifying it to themselves on the ground that it did not insist that they abjure their faith; Jesuits and priests who refused to take it, however, were banished from the realm.
James’s move attracted international opposition. While he saw the Oath as a civil matter, concerning the allegiance of subjects to their sovereign, Rome inevitably viewed it as a matter of spiritual concern that denied papal supremacy, and was thus de facto heretical; this disagreement was made more intense by the death, in 1605, of Clement VIII and his succession by the more hard-line Paul V. The subsequent breakdown of relations with Rome depressed the King. In early 1606, the Venetian ambassador reported, ‘His Majesty on Sunday last while at chapel and afterwards at dinner, appeared very subdued and melancholy; he did not speak at all, though those in attendance gave him occasion. This is unlike his usual manner. After dinner, however, he broke out with great violence, “I have dispatches from Rome informing me that the Pope intends to excommunicate me; the Catholics threaten to dethrone me and to take my life unless I grant them liberty of conscience. I shall most certainly be obliged to stain my hands with their blood, though sorely against my will. But they shall not think they can frighten me, for they shall taste of the agony first. I do not know upon what they found this cursed doctrine that they are permitted to plot against the lives of princes. Sometimes I am amazed that when I see that the princes of Christendom are so blinded that they do not perceive the great injury inflicted on them by so false a doctrine.” He continued for a whole hour to talk in a similar strain, and those in attendance praised and approved.’17
James’s newfound passion for debating the false doctrine soon found itself a public form of expression. Paul V put forth two breves, or papal letters (the first on 12 September 1606, the second on 13 August 1607), asserting that English Catholics could not take the Oath ‘with safety of their salvation’. Then in September 1607, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine wrote to the English Archpriest George Blackwell, reproving him for taking the Oath, which he claimed was tantamount to abjuring allegiance to the Vicar of Christ. He wrote of how the papacy had the right to take action against secular princes it regarded as heretical. According to his later editor, the cleric and scholar James Montagu, James decided that such challenges must not pass unchallenged, and set about to demonstrate to his Catholic subjects ‘that the taking of this oath was so far from endangering their souls, as that it intended nothing but civil obedience, and without touching any point of their conscience, made the State secure of their Allegiance’.18 He decided to write a formal response to Bellarmine’s letter.
What began as an intellectual pastime soon became an obsession. The Venetian ambassador observed that ‘The King as a most learned prince embarks right willingly on this subject and shows a kind of rivalry with the Cardinal [Bellarmine], who has here the reputation of being the most learned champion on the papal side.’19 James set himself merely to sketch out directions for the argument, and appointed Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, to undertake the writing, but soon got carried away. ‘I know not how it came to pass; but it fell out true,’ recalled Montagu, ‘the King’s pen ran so fast, that in the compass of six days, his Majesty had accomplished that, which he now calleth his Apologie.’ Passing it to Bancroft, now Archbishop of Canterbury, and Andrewes, now Bishop of Ely, the story continues, as ‘brief notes’ to be expanded, the clerics agreed that James’s writing was ‘so sufficient an answer both to the Pope and Cardinal’, that no further work was needed. James was persuaded to put it in print ‘but was pleased to conceal his name’.20
In truth, the process was less speedy. James, in the country at Royston and Newmarket, spent most of the winter of 1607–8 cooped up with his books, appearing only at mealtimes. His only reading companions, according to the French ambassador, were Montagu and ‘a minister whom he called specially from the city to furnish him with memory and material’.21 Montagu read out to James all four volumes of Bellarmine’s ecclesiastical writings, while the King ‘weighed the objections and answers of that subtle author and sent often to the libraries in Cambridge for books to examine his quotations’.22 By February 1608, the Apologie was finished, and promptly published as Triplici nodo, triplex cuneus. Or An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance with translations in Latin and French, for international consumption. James boasted proudly that he had given Bellarmine a sound thrashing. Others were less sanguine: Northampton and Salisbury, it was said, ‘wished that he had not printed’ the book, and were relieved to be able to dissuade him from another planned book responding to the Jesuit Robert Parsons, who had attacked both James and Salisbury in print.23 James, well aware that the Apologie was bound to elicit a response, resolved that if the Pope and Bellarmine ‘would not rest in his answer, and sit down by it’, acknowledging the Oath in the spirit it was intended, as ‘a point of allegiance and civil obedience’, then he would be forced to publish the Apologie again, but this time ‘in his own name with a preface to all the princes in Christendom; wherein he would publish such a Confession of his Faith, persuade the princes so to invindicate their own power, discover so much of the mystery of iniquity unto them; as the Pope’s bulls should pull in their horns, and himself wish he had never meddled with this matter’.24 Preparing to rebuff the inevitable response, James continued to read and write constantly. The French ambassador de la Boderie wrote in March 1608 of how the King was stockpiling ammunition so he could
respond promptly to the criticism he knew his book would receive. ‘That will only put the author in his element,’ de la Boderie mused, ‘for this is the science of which he knows the most and in which he most delights.’25
True to form, Bellarmine and Parsons responded enthusiastically, mocking James’s efforts and subjecting him to the full blast of their immense learning, Bellarmine in a Latin Responsio under the pseudonym of Matthaeus Tortus (one of his chaplains); and Parsons in an English piece entitled Judgement of a Catholicke Englishman.26 The King, reported de la Boderie, was ‘extremely irritated’;27 to Henri IV of France, James claimed the books ‘were filled with a thousand injuries against my book, but also do not spare my own person’.28 But he was most irked by that fact that he had been wrongfooted: Bellarmine had included in his Responsio something very damaging: a description of a letter ostensibly written in 1599 from James in Scotland to Pope Clement VIII, in which the King suggested that he could still be converted to the Roman Catholic faith.29
Although the letter was genuine, a scapegoat was required to clear the King from this heinous imputation, and he chose his Scottish secretary James Elphinstoun, now Lord Balmerino. Balmerino was summoned to Royston, and over the course of two interviews with the King (and, although Balmerino didn’t know it, in the presence of concealed witnesses), he admitted, first, that he had himself drawn up the letter but with James’s knowledge, and, later, that he had drawn up the letter himself without James’s knowledge. The Privy Council were now called in to clear up the only remaining mystery – how the royal signature came to be on the letter. James left nothing to chance in clearing his name. As he protested to Salisbury, ‘I pray you to think that never thing in this world touched me nearlier than this doth. God knows I am and ever was upright and innocent. But how the world may know it I look to hear your advice after his examination.’ He provided the councillors with the right questions and pleaded with them to come up with the right answer: ‘Though ye were born strangers to the country where this were done, yet are ye no strangers to the King thereof, and ye know if the King of Scotland prove a knave the King of England can never be an honest man; work therefore in this as having interest in your King’s reputation.’ Finally, Balmerino swore before God and the angels that he had thrust the letters in front of James just as he was about to go out hunting, and the King had signed without knowing what it was. The scenario seemed probable enough: many a Privy Councillor had been forced to do the same. When informed of Balmerino’s statement, James suddenly remembered how nine years ago, as he was about to go hunting, papers had indeed been pressed on him to sign. His memory was a miracle, he declared. ‘For my part, I may justly say that the name given me of James included a prophetical mystery of my fortune, for’ – punning on ‘James’ as ‘Jacobus’ in Latin – ‘as a Jacob I wrestled with my arms upon the 5 of August for my life [the Gowrie Plot] and overcame; on the 5 of November I wrestled and overcame with my wit [the Gunpowder Plot]; and now in a case ten times dearer to me than my life (I mean my reputation) I have wrestled and overcome with my memory.’30 And so James satisfied himself that, while his signature was on a letter to the Pope, he himself had never written to the Pope. The sacrificial Balmerino was sent to be tried in Scotland and sentenced to death, but through a secret leniency deal was allowed to die shortly after in peaceful retirement.31
James was clear-headed enough to realise that he required assistance for his next foray into religious controversy, even with the mountain of material he had compiled. Officially suppressing Bellarmine’s book until his reply was ready for public view, James called on his bishops for assistance, and embarked on a nine-month period of collaborative intellectual endeavour. Lancelot Andrewes compiled a weighty Responsio ad apologiam cardinalis Bellarmini. William Barlow parried Parsons with Answer to a Catholike Englishman (so by himself entituled) (Parsons’ response did not come into print until after his death). John Barclay was to prepare an edition of his father William Barclay’s unpublished manuscript De potestate papae on the power of the papacy: Barclay senior had been a Catholic, but his tract argued that the Pope should limit himself to a spiritual jurisdiction, and abandon his claims to temporal power, which were damaging the Church, an argument that was music to James’s ears.32 As for James himself, Montagu writes of how he once again, ‘with the like celerity, in the compass of one week, wrote his Monitory-Preface’.33 Certainly, by November 1608 James had reportedly finished a draft of his response, and passed it on to Andrewes to lard with supporting evidence from the Church Fathers.34 But the King could not leave Andrewes alone, and the Bishop’s work turned into a Penelope’s web, according to the French ambassador: no sooner had Andrewes finished a portion and shown it to the King, than ‘so much is found that must be rewritten that the poor Bishop has more difficulty in making corrections than he had in writing his composition in the first place’.35 Working on the treatise ‘from morning to night’,36 James gradually called in more churchmen and academics for their advice, and he was still redrafting, revising and checking as the work went to the printers in early 1609.
James’s apparent perfectionism was all for nought. When the book finally appeared, on 1 April, it was riddled with every kind of error. James, ‘infuriated’, called for the printer’s blood;37 calming down, he had all copies of the book called back in, by a royal proclamation that blamed the printers for being over-hasty. James now devoted all his attention to the revision of the book, working simultaneously on the Latin, French and Italian translations (the Italian never came to fruition). Four bishops were called in, alongside Sir Henry Savile, the Warden of Merton College, Oxford, Thomas Wilson, the Keeper of State Papers, and John Barclay. As John Chamberlain reported, the King was uncharacteristically ‘so wholly possessed and over-careful about his book that till that be finished to his liking he can brook no other sport nor business’.38 Finally, the revised book appeared in May 1609, but hopes that the ‘correcting’ of the text would moderate its violence were soon dashed.
The new Monitory Preface was in fact longer than the Apologie it prefaced. Dedicated to Rudolf II ‘and to all other right high and mighty kings, and right excellent free princes and states of Christendom’,39 it aimed to draw the attention of Christian secular rulers to the dangers posed by the temporal power of the papacy. Some of it was temperate enough, reiterating James’s willingness to see the Pope as the first priest among priests. But, as ever with James, too much was brought down to the personal level, with a slew of autobiographical references earnestly making the case for his orthodoxy. Elsewhere, though, earnestness was swapped for a mocking, dangerously irreverent humour. James couldn’t believe that the Blessed Virgin ‘hath no other thing to do in heaven, than to hear every idle man’s suit and busy herself in their errands; whiles requesting, whiles commanding her son, whiles coming down to kiss and make love to priests, and whiles disputing and brawling with devils’. Turning to images, he inquires how could we paint God’s face, ‘when Moses (the man that ever was most familiar with God) never saw but his back parts?’ He leaves the question of whether purgatory exists for others – ‘how many chambers and anti-chambers the Devil hath, they can best tell that go to him’ – but just in case, asks Bellarmine to let him know, whether ‘that fair green meadow that is in purgatory have a brook running through it’, so that ‘in case I come there, I may have hawking upon it’.40
James proudly bound his books in velvet and cornered them with gold for delivery to his European brother-kings. But no amount of velvet could muffle the book’s shrill carping tone. The Pope, naturally enough, issued a public edict outlawing James’s book. The Inquisition of Venice prohibited its publishing there, causing a ‘great fray’ between the authorities and James’s ambassador to Venice.41 The Duke of Savoy refused to receive his copy; the Grand Duke of Florence gave his to his confessor, who burned it; Count Fuentes had it cut into pieces; and one Italian prince was quoted as exclaiming, ‘Vade retro Satana, di tal farina non mangio io pane’ (Get thee be
hind me, Satan, I shall eat no bread of that flour). Even Henri IV of France, once an ally of the King of Scots, dismissed it, throwing his copy on to a table and protesting that bookwriting was no occupation for a king, and James would have better spent his time doing something else.42 But James had no intention of doing anything else. As late as November 1611 the great scholar Isaac Casaubon, now resident in England, was complaining that ‘The King is now so entirely taken up with one sort of book that he keeps his own mind and the minds of all about him occupied exclusively on the one topic. Hardly a day passes on which some new pamphlet is not brought before him, mostly written by Jesuits, some on the martyrdom of Saint Garnett, the sufferings of the English Catholics, or matters of that description. All these things,’ he concluded dismally, ‘I have to read and give my opinion upon.’43
James was no doubt stung by the criticism of his fellow princes, but he continued to debate and write. In February 1617 he brought out a collected edition of his Workes, proudly bringing together his political and ecclesiastical works – and even a few pieces he had not written but which redounded to his honour. It would be too easy to dismiss James’s writings. In the years following his death, he was not without his admirers: Thomas Hobbes called him ‘our most wise’ King James, and John Locke saw James as ‘that learned King who well understood the notions of things’.44 If nothing else, while often embarrassingly personal, they are for the most part sincere attempts at rationalising the bizarre and unparalleled position James occupied in the world.