Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution

by Peter Ackroyd

  The king had been hunting at Royston and, on his return to London at the beginning of November, the letter was shown to him. Instantly he agreed that it suggested ‘some stratagem of fire and powder’. On the afternoon of Monday 4 November, Suffolk and Monteagle began their search on the excuse that they were looking for some property belonging to the king. Guy Fawkes opened the door of the cellar.

  Suffolk: To whom do these coals and faggots belong?

  Fawkes: They belong to Mr Thomas Percy, one of his majesty’s gentlemen pensioners.

  Thomas Percy was of course a known Catholic, at a time when there was some fear of Catholic disaffection. The king now ordered a further and more thorough search. At eleven o’clock that night a Westminster magistrate, Sir Thomas Knyvett, went down to the cellar with certain soldiers. The door was once more opened by Guy Fawkes. Knyvett then began to brush aside the coals and the bundles of wood only to discover the barrels of gunpowder. Fawkes made no attempt at flight or combat. He admitted that he intended to blow up the king and the two houses of parliament on the following morning. It seems that he was prepared to light a slow match and then to make his way to Wapping where he would take boat to Gravelines in France. When he was asked later, in formal questioning by the council, the reason for procuring so much gunpowder he replied that he wanted ‘to blow the Scottish beggars back to their native mountains’. The king was informed of Fawkes’s capture, and gave thanks for his miraculous deliverance.

  It was, perhaps, not a miracle at all. Francis Tresham and Lord Monteagle may have conspired in the production of the letter, as a device to gain the favour of the king. It has also been suggested that Salisbury himself was aware of the conspiracy but allowed it to proceed as a way of catching out the Catholics; this is highly unlikely, but not wholly impossible.

  News of the arrest, and the intended treason, soon spread. Robert Catesby and the other conspirators fled from London, hoping to create the conditions for a Catholic rising; but the Catholic gentlemen were not about to commit suicide. The principal fugitives then took refuge in Holbeche House, on the borders of Staffordshire, where a lighted coal or stray spark ignited the gunpowder they were carrying with them. Two or three were injured, and were inclined to see in the accident a sign of divine displeasure. One of them cried out, ‘Woe worth the time that we have seen this day!’ They then knelt in prayer before a picture of the Virgin. The sheriff of Worcester was on their track; his men surrounded the house and fired on its occupants. Some were killed, while the wounded were taken back to London; Catesby was among those shot dead.

  Other conspirators were found in hiding over the next few days. On 27 January 1606, Guy Fawkes and seven others were brought for trial to Westminster Hall where all but one of them pleaded innocence. They were executed a few days later. The Jesuits, who had condoned if not connived in the plot, were soon enough taken to the scaffold. So ended ‘the powder plot’. Seven years later the study of Robert Cotton, librarian and antiquarian, was found to contain certain sainted relics of the plotters, including a finger, a toe and a piece of a rib.

  The king himself, despite his miraculous survival, was not comforted. The Venetian ambassador reported that ‘the king is in terror, he does not appear nor does he take his meals in public as usual. He lives in the innermost rooms with only Scotsmen about him.’ James seemed subdued and melancholy, occasionally giving vent to his anger against the Catholics. ‘I shall most certainly be obliged to stain my hands with their blood,’ he said, ‘though sorely against my will.’ It did not come to that.

  The members of the Commons had continued their ordinary business on the day they were meant to be destroyed; a committee on Spanish trade was established, and a petition was discussed from a member asking to be excused on account of gout. Yet by the end of May 1606, they had passed an Act ‘for the better discovering and repressing of popish recusants’; one of its provisions was an oath of allegiance, drawn up by Archbishop Bancroft, which acknowledged James to be the lawful king beyond any power of the pope to depose him. Catholics were obliged to attend the services of the established Church and to receive holy communion at least once a year; the penalties included fines or the impropriation of property. No recusant was to come within 10 miles of London, and a statute of the previous reign was revived prohibiting any recusant from travelling further than 5 miles from his or her home. No recusant could practise as an attorney or as a doctor.

  These measures did not bring about the demise of the old faith. The Catholics merely withdrew from political activity during the reign of James and largely remained quiet or quiescent. Most of them were willing to accept the oath of allegiance in order to secure both peace and property; only the Jesuitically inclined were still eager to support the pretensions of the pope. James himself said of the oath that he wished to make a distinction between the doctrinaire Catholics and those ‘who although they were otherwise popishly affected, yet retained in their hearts the print of their natural duty to their sovereign’. The previous sanctions against the puritans had been only hesitantly or partially imposed; the same policy of caution was now pursued against the Catholics. James had no wish to make martyrs out of his subjects. It was in any case far easier, in the early seventeenth century, to make laws than to enforce them.

  The court of James I, its excesses having already become public knowledge, was now notorious for its laxity; drunkenness and dissimulation, venality and promiscuity, were its most significant characteristics. Freedom of manners was the only rule. The earl of Pembroke was believed to have a horror of frogs, so the king put one down his neck. The king himself had an aversion to pigs, and so Pembroke led one into the royal bedchamber. One courtier took into the palace at Whitehall ‘four brawny pigs, piping hot, bitted and harnessed with ropes of sausages, all tied to a monstrous pudding’. The sausages were hurled about the room while the fools and dwarves of the court began leaping on one another’s shoulders.

  In Sejanus, His Fall, a play performed in the first year of the king’s reign, Ben Jonson alluded to courtiers when he wrote that:

  We have no shift of faces, no cleft tongues,

  No soft and glutinous bodies that can stick

  Like snails on painted walls …

  ‘If I were to imitate the conduct of your republic,’ the king told the Venetian ambassador, ‘and begin to punish those who take bribes, I should soon not have a single subject left.’

  When the king of Denmark arrived in the summer of 1606 the courtiers of Whitehall were said by Sir John Harington ‘to wallow in beastly delights’ while the ladies ‘abandon their sobriety and are seen to roll about in intoxication’. A great feast was held for the two sovereigns, in the course of which was shown a representation of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The lady who played the queen carried various gifts to the two kings ‘but forgetting the steps arising to the canopy overset her caskets into his Danish majesty’s lap and fell at his feet … His Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba, but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a bed of state.’ Other actors in the pageant, such as Hope and Faith, ‘were both sick and spewing in the lower hall’. Harington concluded that ‘the gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads’ and ‘I ne’er did see such lack of good order, discretion and sobriety, as I have now done’. He yearned for the days of his godmother, the Virgin Queen, when a certain stateliness and severity touched the atmosphere of the court.

  There could be no doubt that the new court differed markedly from its predecessor. The king was known to be devoted to his pleasures rather than what were considered to be his duties. He attended the fights of the Cockpit in Whitehall Palace twice a week, and, like his predecessor, loved to ride or hunt every day. When James rode up to the dead hart he dismounted and cut its throat with dispatch; he then sated the dogs with its blood before wiping his bloodied hands across the faces of his fellow horsemen.

  It soon became clear that he did not enjoy the comp
any of spectators at his sports. Quite unlike his predecessor he disliked and even detested crowds. When the people flocked about him he would swear at them and cry out, ‘What would they have?’ On one occasion he was told that they had come in love and reverence. To which he replied, in a broad Scots accent, ‘God’s wounds, I will pull down my breeches and they shall also see my arse.’ He would bid ‘A pox on you!’ or ‘A plague on you!’ As a result of outbursts of anger such as this he became, in the words of the Venetian ambassador, ‘despised and almost hated’.

  He justified his exertions at the hunt on the grounds that his vigour was ‘the health and welfare of them all’, no doubt meaning both the court and the nation. Let his officers waste away in closets or at the council table. He must be strong and virile. In any case, he said, he could do more business in an hour than his councillors could manage in a day; he spent less time in hunting than other monarchs did in whoring. One day a favourite dog, Jowler, disappeared from the pack. On the following morning it reappeared with a note tied around its neck. ‘Good Mr Jowler we pray you speak to the king (for he hears you every day and so doth he not us) that it will please his majesty to go back to London, for else the country will be undone.’ When eventually James did return to Whitehall he feasted and played cards, at which sport he lost large sums of money.

  James was continually and heavily in debt. He had thought to come into a realm of gold, but soon found his purse to be bare. Or, rather, he emptied it too readily. He bought boots and silk stockings and beaver hats in profusion. Court ceremonial was more lavish with the arrival of ever more ‘gentlemen extraordinary’. There was a vogue at court for ‘golden play’ or gambling. The king loved masques and feasts, which were for him a true sign of regality. He wished to have a masque on the night of Christmas, whereupon he was told that it was not the fashion. ‘What do you tell me of the fashion?’ he enquired. ‘I will make it a fashion.’

  The king also purchased plate and jewels, which he then proceeded to distribute among his followers. It was said that he had given to one or two men more than his predecessor had given to all of her courtiers during the whole of her reign. The earl of Shrewsbury remarked that Elizabeth ‘valued every molehill that she gave … a mountain, which our sovereign now does not’. His generosity to favourites and to courtiers was by the standard of any age in English history exceptional.

  One particular favourite emerged in the spring of 1607. Robert Carr, twenty-one, was a model of affability and deportment; he was also exceptionally handsome. He took part in a tournament in the king’s presence, but he was thrown from his horse and broke his leg. The king was much affected and ordered his own doctor to take charge of the young man; Carr was carried to the hospital at Charing Cross, where the king visited him every day. The patient was placed on a choice diet and, at the insistence of James, was surrounded by surgeons. It was clear to the courtiers that here was a man worth flattering. ‘Lord!’ one contemporary, Sir Anthony Weldon, wrote, ‘how the great men flocked to see him, and to offer to his shrine in such abundance…’ James had become infatuated with him and, by the end of the year, Carr had been knighted and appointed as a gentleman of the bedchamber. The king decided to educate as well as to promote him. He himself gave Carr lessons in Latin grammar and in the politics of Europe. And of course he lavished gold and jewels upon him. It was observed that the king ‘leaneth on his arm, pinches his cheek, smoothes his ruffled garments…’

  Sir John Harington was still seeking preferment at court after a lifetime of service to Elizabeth. Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk, took him aside and offered some advice. He was told that the king ‘doth wonderfully covet learned discourse’ and ‘doth admire good fashion in cloaths’. He was instructed to ‘get a new jerkin well bordered, and not too short; the king saith, he liketh a flowing garment; be sure it be not all of one sort, but diversely coloured, the collar falling somewhat down, and your ruff well stiffened and bushy’. Eighteen courtiers had already been dismissed for not conforming to the king’s taste in male attire.

  Suffolk suggested to Harington that in his conversation he should not dwell too long on any one subject, and touch only lightly on the topic of religion. Never say that ‘this is good or bad’ but modestly state that ‘if it were your majesty’s good opinion, I myself should think so and so’. Do not ask questions. Do not speak about the character or temperament of anyone else at court. Remember to praise the king’s horse, a roan jennet. You must say that the stars are bright jewels fit for Robert Carr’s ears, and that the roan jennet surpasses Bucephalus and is worthy to be ridden by Alexander.

  Suffolk also advised Harington that ‘silence and discretion should be linked together, like dog and bitch’. The previous sovereign had always spoken of her subjects’ ‘love and good affections’, but James preferred to talk of their ‘fear and subjection’. Why did Harington wish to come to court in the first place? ‘You are not young, you are not handsome, you are not finely.’ So he must rely upon his learning, which the king would admire.

  Soon enough James took Harington aside, and questioned him in his private closet. He quizzed him on Aristotle and other philosophers; he asked him to read out a passage from Ariosto, and praised his elocution. He then posed a series of questions to him. What do you think pure wit is made of? Should a king not be the best clerk [the most learned] in his own country? Do you truly understand why the devil works more with ancient women than with others? He told Harington that the death of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had been foretold and that at the time of her execution a bloody head was seen dancing in the air; he dilated on the powers of prophecy and recommended several books on the matter. The king concluded by discussing ‘the new weed’, tobacco, and declared that ‘it would, by its use, infuse ill qualities on the brain’. So ended the audience. Harington passed through the court ‘amidst the many varlets and lordly servants who stood around’. Yet he had passed the test, and was appointed as tutor to the young Prince Henry.

  Reasons other than favouritism can be adduced for the king’s indebtedness. The steady rise in prices, and the reluctance of landowners to pay further taxation, all contributed to the rise in the expenditure of the court above its income. The cost of an extended royal household, complete with wife and three children, was also very high. Queen Anne was extravagant and devoted to the delights of fashionable London; her husband had proposed that she might confine herself to the 3,000 dresses in the previous queen’s wardrobe, but she did not care for some of the old fashions. She would appear at court in the guise of a goddess or a nymph, an Eastern sultana or an Arab princess.

  James was perpetually surprised by his debts, and continually promised to be more economical; yet it was not in his nature to be thrifty. ‘My only hope that upholds me,’ he told Salisbury, ‘is my good servants, that will sweat and labour for my relief.’ But where was the money to be found? Certain taxes had been levied ‘time out of mind’, or at least since the latter years of the fourteenth century. ‘Tonnage’ was the duty levied on each ‘tun’ or cask of wine; ‘poundage’ was the tax raised on every pound sterling of exported or imported goods. James decided to revise the book of rates, however, and to impose new levies that came to be known as ‘impositions’.

  A merchant by the name of John Bate refused to pay. He drove a cartload of currants from the waterside before the customs officials had the opportunity to tax them; he was brought before the council, where he declared that the ‘imposition’ was illegal. His became a test case before the court of the exchequer which ruled that the king had absolute power in the matter; in all aspects of foreign trade, his prerogative was assured.

  Nevertheless opposition arose in parliament, where there was talk of money being poured into bottomless coffers. In October 1607 James addressed his council on the pressing problems concerning ‘this eating canker of want’. He promised to abide by any ‘cure’ they prescribed and to accept ‘such remedies and antidotes as you are to apply unto my disease’. The case was not an
easy one. Salisbury tried various expedients for raising money, by fining for long-forgotten transgressions or by extorting as many feudal ‘aids’ to the king as he could find.

  Yet the Commons were not impressed by the measures. It was an ancient principle that the sovereign of England should ‘live of his own’; he should maintain his estate, and bear the cost of government, out of his own resources. It was also universally believed that taxation was an extraordinary measure only to be raised in time of war. The first parliament of James I was summoned for five sessions from March 1604 to February 1611, and in that long period it acquired the beginning of a corporate identity largely lacking during the reign of Elizabeth. More business was enacted, and parliament sat for longer. In 1607, for example, the Commons instituted a ‘committee of the whole house’. This committee could elect its own chairman, as opposed to the Speaker chosen by the sovereign, and could debate freely for as long as it wished. It was at the time seen as a remarkable innovation, and might be considered the harbinger of strife between court and parliament.

  A group of disparate and variously inclined parliamentarians was not necessarily on the king’s side. Francis Bacon wrote to the king that ‘that opposition which was, the last parliament, to your majesty’s business, as much as was not ex puris naturalibus but out of party, I conceive to be now much weaker than it was’. This did not yet embody the partisanship of later struggles, or the creation of ‘parties’ in the modern sense, but it suggests a change in national affairs. Some of the disputatious details have been recorded. Sir Edward Herbert ‘plops’ with his mouth at Mr Speaker. John Tey complains that Mr Speaker is ‘clipping him off’ and proceeds to threaten him.