After Elizabeth

by Leanda de Lisle

  Persons warned that the Spanish and the Vatican were unmoved by complaints “about the preferring of Scottishmen. [They] say that this was a matter to be expected, and that the English are well served that would admit a stranger and nation to their government without any condition of capitulation at all.” It was now too late to prevent James becoming king. He had taken possession of the country and would be very difficult to remove. There would be no invasion before September and no papal support for a rising. Persons suggested that Catholics now proceed with the utmost care. He drew attention to the fact that ambassadors were queuing up, “to seek [James’s] friendship according to their need or interest.” The best they could do was to ensure that Spain did not make peace without a provision for toleration of religion. The ambassador, who had yet to arrive, was to be persuaded that without toleration the English government would continue to aid the Dutch surreptitiously and that English Catholics would turn to France for help. In the meantime, Persons warned, “Catholics must take heed lest some passion break out.” The discovery of further plots could only lead to further oppression, “which is the reason why his Holiness has ordained now sundry times how to advertise thither that all such rash attempts be avoided.”14

  Unfortunately, now that the Jesuits only hoped for toleration, as the seculars long had, they would discover just how difficult this was going to be to achieve.

  On 20 July the Venetian ambassador was granted a royal audience at Hampton Court. He arrived with the satisfaction of knowing that William Piers was now under lock and key. The pirate’s luck had turned against him in Tunis, where a number of his crew had deserted after the booty was sold, forcing him to put to sea shorthanded. There being no honor among thieves, a friend and fellow pirate called William Cunliffe had seized the opportunity to board his ship and steal his plunder. Cunliffe had then sailed back to England with Piers in hot pursuit. As soon as Cunliffe reached shore he was clapped in irons and Piers met the same fate when he was recognized while attempting to flee London for Portsmouth.

  Piers had been brought to Scaramelli’s house on 7 July, “like a murderer,” with a mob in pursuit. He proved to be “under twenty five years of age, squarely built and bold looking.”15 When Scaramelli questioned him he told a stream of lies and so the Venetian put him in “a prison that he merits, loaded with all the irons and chains that he can carry.” He intended to torture Piers until he revealed where he had kept his treasure, assuring the Senate that the young man’s courage was a mere façade and he would quickly crack. Within a week, however, he was informed that Piers was spending four ducats a day on good food and sweetened wine. Scaramelli chose to interpret this as the consequence of his having fallen “prey to despair and the dread of death.” 16 There was, however, the niggling concern that Piers might somehow have planned to escape execution and Scaramelli wanted James to give him assurances that Piers would not be set free.

  Hampton Court, with its forest of turrets and gilded weather vanes, made a deep impression on the ambassador. It was “far larger than the other seven palaces belonging to the crown,” he reported: “They say Hampton Court has one thousand eight hundred inhabitable rooms, or at least all of them with doors that lock. The furnishings of the royal apartments are the richest that the crown possesses.” This magnificence was, however, seated amid death and disease. In the tents around the palace two or three of the court’s hangers-on were dying every day from plague.

  Scaramelli entered the royal presence “midst a babble of voices discussing the plot(s).” He was aware that two of the Bye conspirators were “priests, of a kind,” but as far as he could see, the causes of the conspiracies had more to do with frustrated ambition and hatred of Elizabeth’s Councilors than religion: “both nobles and people thought that the advent of the new King would mean the downfall of certain members of the Council, instead of which those persons have managed things so cleverly that they are in greater authority than ever,” he observed, accurately enough. He was convinced that James would soon be facing more problems since the Scots courtiers were only interested in making money and the King himself appeared “lost in bliss,” pursuing his stags.

  James gave Scaramelli his word that Piers would stay in prison and talked cheerfully to the Venetian until the new Chamberlain, Lord Thomas Howard, told Scaramelli that the Queen was waiting for him in her apartments. He knew the competition for Anna’s favor was almost as ferocious as it was for that of James. The Earl of Worcester was soon bemoaning that “the plotting and malice amongst these ladies is so great, that I think envy hath tied an invisible snake around their necks, to sting each other to death.” 17 Frances Pranell, the beautiful wife of the Earl of Hertford, was Anna’s latest favorite. She had run off and married a poor vintner’s son for her first husband and taken the opposite course with the second, marrying the aged Earl for his money and in the process breaking the heart of the young knight, Sir George Rodney, to whom she was promised. The wretched man had written a suicide note to her in his own blood before falling on his sword.

  When Anna saw Scaramelli she rose with a bow. Scaramelli mounted the steps to Anna’s throne and kissed her hand. “She remained standing, all grace and fairness, of a fine height and moderately fine presence.” He was told to speak French, as she did not speak Italian. He paid her some formal compliments and said, “No other Prince had a higher esteem for her Majesty than the Republic, for reasons too long to relate. At that she laughed fancying that I alluded to her being a Catholic, and returned thanks. After a brief reply I again kissed her hand and took my leave.” 18 Scaramelli was unable to see the royal children at Hampton Court, as they were being installed at Oat-lands Palace in Surrey with their own Households, but he visited them later in the month. He found Prince Henry “little of body and quick of spirit,” but also ceremonious beyond his years. He had put his hat on during the interview and gravely asked Scaramelli to do the same. He then gave “a long discourse on his exercises, dancing, tennis, the chase” before escorting Scaramelli down a flight of steps and up another to see his little sister, whom Scaramelli found surrounded by her servants under a canopy of state.19 Cobham’s wife, Lady Kildare, had fallen from grace and Lucy Bedford’s mother, Lady Harington of Exton, had been given charge of the care of the Princess Elizabeth in her place. 46 Her husband, meanwhile, had been raised to the peerage on 21 July along with ten others, including Anna’s host at Althorp, Sir Roger Spencer, and two Catholics: Lord Thomas Howard, who became Earl of Suffolk, and the recusant Sir John Petre, who became Lord Petre of Writtle. The following three days leading up to the coronation had seen other celebrations. On the twenty-second the Earl of Worcester was made Earl Marshal (senior officer of the peerage in England), and on 23 July James knighted 300 individuals in the gardens at Whitehall. James’s sale of the honor had become increasingly outrageous. Francis Bacon called it “this almost prostituted title” and the courtier Philip Gawdy described recent recipients of the honor as “a scum of such as it would make a man sick to think of them.” They included the sons of London pedlars and a clapped-out lawyer who bought the honor for under £8.20

  The twenty-fourth of July, the eve of the coronation, was the only time a king could create Knights of the Bath, but this was strictly for individuals of some rank. The ceremony began with the sixty-two men James had chosen riding from St. James’s to the court at Whitehall, where they “made show with their squires and pages about the tiltyard, and after went into the park of St James, and there lighted all from their horses, and went up to the King’s Majesty’s presence in the gallery.”21 Those who received the honor included Oliver Cromwell of Hinchingbrooke and James Hay, a Scot whom de Rosni had brought over from France and whom even the English found charming. Cecil was particularly pleased with the choice of Hay; he considered him “an excellent good instrument to conserve his Majesty’s good opinions” and pressed for him to be added to the Bedchamber along with Sir Philip Herbert, the younger brother of the Earl of Pembroke. 22 According to the roya
list historian Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Herbert “pretended to no other qualification than to understand horses and dogs very well,” but since James spent so much time with horses and dogs that was not such a bad recommendation. He was also rather pretty and it appears that if Cecil was unaware of James’s sexuality before he came to England, he knew something of his tastes by now, and with Herbert he had picked well. As Clarendon records, he was “the first who drew the King’s eyes towards him with affection” and the only Englishman promoted to the Bedchamber before the appearance of the beautiful George Villiers.

  By ancient tradition the coronation was held on a holy day. James’s choice, 25 July, was the feast day of his namesake, St. James, and an eminently suitable choice. The hotter sort of Protestant disapproved of holy days, but the commemoration of the life of an apostle was less offensive than that of an ordinary saint. The only difficulty with the date was that it fell during the height of summer, when the plague spread fastest, and the current epidemic was proving the worst in living memory.

  A proclamation issued on 6 July had announced that James’s formal entry into London would be abandoned until the winter, leaving the crafted wooden triumphal archways under which James would pass to rot where they stood. (In the event the plague was so bad that his formal entry could not take place until the following March.) A further proclamation on 11 July had limited the numbers of noblemen and gentlemen who could attend the coronation and canceled the St. James’s Fair, traditionally held in Westminster on 25 July. The area around St. Paul’s grew quiet in the brief lull that followed before people flooded back into London for the coronation, stubbornly ignoring the mounting death toll. About a thousand people were now dying each week, “in every house grief striking up an alarum: servants crying out for masters: wives for husbands, parents for children, children for their mothers,” Dekker recalled. At night it was like being boarded up “in a vast silent charnel house . . . hung (to make it more hideous) with lamps dimly and slowly burning, in hollow and glimmering corners.”23

  When the great day of the coronation finally arrived low clouds hung over London and the streets reeked of the rosemary and other herbs used to ward off infection. In Newgate, a terrified Catholic prisoner wrote to a friend describing how they were waiting in desperation for the expected royal pardon: “We are in great danger of the sickness. The bell of St Sepulchres parish never ceasing day nor night. The common jail on the other side of us is diversely affected, many of them being now sick and others buried of the plague. . . .” The prisoner had heard rumors that Catholics were to be excluded from the pardon and was so certain he could not survive that he asked his friend if he would to divide his possessions after his death.24 The rumors were correct. Catholics and those accused of witchcraft were indeed to be excluded, along with the Bye and Main plotters.

  Sir John Harington also remained under lock and key. New bars had been put on his windows and he was checked hourly to ensure that he could not escape the prison or his debts. But there was good news for Piers the pirate. Despite James’s promises to Scaramelli, he was released. Too many powerful men still had a vested interest in piracy.

  As the crowds began to gather, the authorities did their best to keep them away from Westminster. This was not only out of fear of disease. There was the possibility of riots against the new king. Catholic feeling had inspired some of the dissent: ordinary people were also counted among the ranks of recusants and instead of losing land and wealth to fines they lost more immediate things such as the beds they slept on and the cow whose milk fed their children. But trade had also been badly disrupted by the plague and many people were going hungry. Guards were placed at the City gates to keep people from the roads and Scaramelli heard that the death penalty had been decreed for anyone bringing boats up the Thames. James’s subjects, however, refused to be intimidated. Boats filled the river that morning and their occupants proved well placed to see the King and Queen.

  Instead of the customary ride from the Tower through the City, James and Anna traveled the short distance between Whitehall Stairs and the Privy Stairs of Westminster in a gilded barge. The crowds saw they were dressed in red velvet and ermine and crowned with large golden coronets. Anna’s pale blond hair hung over her shoulders in a symbol of modesty and chastity, its bright color shining in the spitting rain. James remained as stiff as always, but Anna played to the gallery and a witness records that “she so mildly saluted her new subjects, that the women, weeping, cried out with one voice, ‘God bless the royal queen! Welcome to England, long to live and continue!’ ” 25 At ten o’clock the royal couple disembarked from the barge for the short walk toward the Abbey. The buildings on the route were hung with white cloth and the side streets with violet cloth, which was stripped down as soon as the procession passed by and divided among the crowd.

  The first sight of the procession was of twelve heralds carrying wands and dressed in cloth of gold with open tabards displaying the arms of the four kingdoms. They were followed by the merchant companies and city officers, the Mayor of London coming last. “All wore long gowns of red cloth with sleeves,” Scaramelli reported. Two drummers and ten trumpeters came next, then twenty-five judges and the Lord Chief Justice wearing “a broad gold chain, as wide as the collar of the order.” This was the collar of SS, which started life as the Lancastrian livery collar. Behind the judge came the Knights of the Bath dressed in long purplish-red robes, “reaching half to the knee,” and carrying white plumed hats and gilded swords with a “leather belt and tassels; no other device.” The peers came next: about thirty barons, then about fifteen earls, each dressed more richly than the last; the barons in scarlet cloth and ermine, carrying plumed hats, the earls in scarlet velvet and ermine, carrying “a cap of crimson velvet with fillet of ermine and a small crown of plain gold, with a small thin sceptre in their hands.”

  The coronation of the Kings and Queens of England had been held in the Abbey since it was built by Edward the Confessor and although this was to be a Protestant ceremony only the most modest changes had been made to the pre-Reformation ritual.26 Archbishop Whitgift belonged to a school of thought that believed the Anglican Church to be a purified Catholic Church directly descended from the primitive Christian church. He was anxious that the coronation be a visible demonstration of religious continuity and Scaramelli reported that James was equally keen to “have the full ceremony so as not to lose his prerogative.” It would emphasize that he drew his rights from God rather than man. The changes planned for the service were characterized chiefly by a literal translation of the service into English and the offering of communion in both kinds—a privilege the Catholic Church usually restricted to the Kings of France or those crowned in Rome.27 This was enough, however, to keep many Catholic ambassadors away. Aremberg, who had been embarrassed by the Main plot and was desperate to demonstrate his good intentions, was one of the few Catholic ambassadors to attend. Scaramelli’s dispatch was based on reports of the service.

  The procession entered the Abbey at the west door. Three earls walked abreast carrying swords embodying three aspects of the sword of state. The first sword was the pointless Curtana, the sword of mercy; the second represented justice for churchmen, the third justice for the laity. 47 The Constable of England, the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal also walked abreast. The honor of carrying the crown of St. Edward the Confessor went to Lord Buckhurst, who bore it on a velvet cushion: James later explained to Prince Charles in his “Pattern for a King’s Inauguration” that it was a symbol of his people’s love. Other relics included the scepter of St. Edward, the hard-stone chalice of St. Edward with its paten or communion plate, the royal spurs and another scepter surmounted with a dove.

  Trumpets blew as James entered the Abbey. He walked under a canopy of cloth of gold supported by four silvered staves hung with a silver bell and carried by the barons of the Cinque Ports of Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich. The Bishop of Durham, Tobie Matthew, and the Bishop of Lon
don, Richard Bancroft, had the honor of greeting him. It was a mark of the dignity of the reformed Church, their submission to the King and the importance of episcopacy—a message to the Puritans in the congregation. “The King was followed by the gentlemen of his court, with vests of crimson velvet, reaching to the knees. Then one hundred and fifty halberdiers of the guard, in the ordinary crimson livery but with extra gold embroidery, which covered the breast and back.” The choir sang as the bishops accompanied James to the railed dais between the choir and the high altar. It was covered with tapestries and scarlet velvet, and two octagonal pedestals, each six steps high and covered with embroidered taffeta, were erected on it about seven feet apart; the one for James was set a little higher than the one for Anna. On each was a chair covered in silver brocade, with a seat and cushion in crimson silk.

  Two other chairs were set at the base of the thrones for James and Anna to sit on before they were crowned. All four faced the altar. Between the dais and the altar was the wood and gesso chair of St. Edward containing the Stone of Scone, taken from the Scots by Edward I—the chair on which James would be crowned. 48 According to a “prophetical fancy” quoted by the seventeenth-century century historian Arthur Wilson,

  Fate hath designed

  That wherefore this Stone

  The Scots shall find

  There they shall hold the throne.28

  As James took his place, Anna was processed into the Abbey under a canopy like the King’s, accompanied by Arbella Stuart; both wore dresses that bared their bosom. Behind walked the countesses in plain robes of crimson velvet lined with ermine, their hair worn up and their coronets carried under their left arm. When Anna reached the dais she and James faced the altar from the seats below the thrones. The altar in front of them, decked with gold brocade and flowered yellow silk, was covered with basins, flagons and cups in the Protestant fashion. The Archbishop, supported by the Admiral and the Chancellor and led by the Earl Marshal, walked to the four corners of the dais and the herald cried: “Listen, listen, listen!” He then formally presented the King to the people, “calling on any who denied James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England to be legitimate King of England to say so now, otherwise he would be held a traitor.” It was a novel addition to the ceremony and some may have reflected that it supported the contention of the Bye plotters Watson and Clark that there could be no treason before the King was crowned. No one, however, spoke against James. The Archbishop announced that he was about to crown His Majesty in the confidence that he would govern his people well and with prayers to God to grant him long life. The congregation shouted in response: “Yea, yea, God save the King!”