The Cradle King (21 page)

Scotland was determined to impress her new Queen from the start. James led Anna on to dry land through a ‘trance’, or covered way, covered with tapestry and cloth of gold, designed so ‘that her feet touch not the earth’. Accommodating Anna’s lack of Scots, the first oration of welcome was made by James Elphinstoun, a senator of the College of Justice, in French,
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while great volleys were fired from Edinburgh Castle and the town’s ships. At the church of Leith, James listened to a sermon of thanksgiving by Patrick Galloway, and then the couple retired to their lodgings. Since, despite the forewarning, the elaborate celebrations were not fully ready, the couple had to lodge in the ‘King’s Wark’ while the final preparations were made for Anna’s state entry into Edinburgh. It was therefore five days before the royal couple rode from Leith to Holyroodhouse. Well aware that Scotland lacked a vehicle grand enough to convey its new Queen, Denmark had sent over with their daughter a coach of silver, dressed with cloth of gold and purple velvet, to be drawn by eight white horses; James, Lennox, Bothwell and Lord John Hamilton rode alongside on horseback. When they reached the palace, James took his Queen by the hand and took her through to the Great Hall, and then to the chambers, which had been newly refurbished with cloth of gold and silver.
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Scarcely had he set foot on the soil of his homeland before James was reminded of the rebellious Kirk that he had so happily forgotten during his Scandinavian idyll. Both James and the Danes wanted Anna’s coronation and entry to take place on a Sunday, but some Kirk ministers, led by John Davidson, vehemently opposed this use of the Sabbath, alleging that a Sunday coronation would be unlawful. Even more controversial was James’s wish for Anna to be anointed Queen. He chose Robert Bruce to perform the ceremony, but predictably the Kirk objected to the anointing, which they regarded as ‘popish’. James stood his ground, pointing out that anointing dated back to Old Testament times and that, if they truly objected to Bruce, one of their most prominent brethren, being given the duty, then he could quite easily appoint a bishop to do it. It was a clever tactic. After much soulsearching, the Kirk sanctioned the Sunday coronation, the reasoning being that it was merely a minister’s blessing of ‘a solemn oath passed mutually betwixt the prince and the subjects, and from both to God’. Even the anointing was justified, not as a minister’s duty, but as a ‘civil ceremony’ that a subject might perform at the command of his King, ‘not as a minister, but as a civil person, providing declaration were made by the anointer in time of the action to that sense, that all opinion of superstition be removed’. After much debate, Bruce was allowed to carry out the anointing.
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While James’s own coronation had necessarily been rushed on account of his infancy, Anna was afforded the full ordeal.
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The ceremony, which took place on 17 May at Holyrood’s Abbey Church, lasted all of seven hours, with sermons and speeches in Latin and French as well as Scots, none of which languages Anna understood well. The anointing was the ritual’s centrepiece. The Countess of Mar was selected to open the Queen’s gown, and Bruce poured on her shoulder and breast ‘a bonny quantity of oil’.
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Anna received the sceptre from Lord John Hamilton, and her sword of state from the Earl of Angus, and pronounced the Kirk-friendly oath in which she had been carefully coached:

I, Anna, by the grace of God, Queen of Scotland, profess, and before God and his angels wholly promise, that during the whole course of my life, so far as I can, shall sincerely worship that same eternal God according to his will revealed unto us in the Holy Scriptures, and according to those precepts which are in the same scriptures commanded and directed: That I shall defend the true religion and worship of God, and advance the same, and shall withstand and despise all papistical superstitions, and whatsoever ceremonies and rites contrary to the word of God: And that I shall further and advance justice and equity, and maintain the same, and shall procure peace to the Kirk of God within this kingdom, and to the subjects thereof: so God, the father of all mercies, have mercy upon me.
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The ambassadors expressed their ‘great admiration’ for an oration by Andrew Melvill, and even the King had to acknowledge that Melvill ‘had honoured him and his country that day’. He promised never to forget the sermon, and had it rushed to the printer the very next day to be published as
Stephanischion.
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James, who had been seen to bestow favour on Lennox and Bothwell since his return, diplomatically passed the matrimonial crown to Maitland for placing on Anna’s head, and chose the day for rewarding the Chancellor for all his recent support by creating him Lord Thirlestane.
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The following Tuesday, Anna made her formal entry into Edinburgh, entering in her white coach drawn by eight horses at the West Port, preceded by the Scottish and Danish noblemen, and followed by their ladies. The coach was accompanied by the citizens who held a purple velvet sheet over the coach, and the entire procession was headed by twenty-four youths apparelled in cloth of silver and white taffeta, with golden chains around their necks, legs and arms, and visors covering their faces, the intention apparently to ‘mak[e] them seem Moors’, all ‘very gorgeous to the eye’. At the West Port, Anna was greeted by an oration made by John Russell,
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whose son then appeared from inside a descending globe, which opened to reveal an angel who presented her with keys, a Bible and a Psalm book. As she processed, there were further orations by Hercules Rollock, Master of the Grammar School, and by the young son of the prominent Kirk minister John Craig. On Bow Street, another globe was placed on a table, with a boy sitting representing James, who made an oration. At the Butter Trone, nine women, representing the nine Muses, sang psalms. The Tolbooth presented five boys in women’s clothing representing Peace, Plenty, Policy, Justice, Liberality and Temperance.
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Entering St Giles’, Anna heard Robert Bruce deliver a half-hour sermon, which presumably she could not follow, before emerging again into the town. At the Cross, the Queen was greeted by Bacchus ‘winking, and casting’ wine ‘by cups full upon the people’, to a musical accompaniment, with the Goddess of Corn and Wine crying out in Latin ‘that there should be plenty thereof in her time’, while the Cross itself ‘ran claret wine upon the causeway’ – perhaps a backhanded tribute to the Queen’s bibulous motherland. Moving to the Salt Trone, James’s genealogy was represented, with one king lying at their feet ‘as if he had been sick’: Anna’s presence revived him, to give a Latin oration, while the Nether Bow had been ‘beautified’ with an image of ‘a marriage of a King and his Queen, with all their nobility about them’. A representation of the seven planets was followed by a more tangible treat. ‘There was let down unto her, from the top of the port, in a silk string, a box covered with purple velvet; whereupon was embroidered A. for Anna, her Majesty’s name, set with diamonds and precious stones, esteemed at twenty thousand crowns, which the township gave for a present to her Highness.’ Anna probably did not know the story behind the generous gift. Protocol required that Edinburgh give Anna a gift, but there was no money available. Finally, it was remembered that James, in need of cash, had given to the city a pledge of ‘a tablet of gold in a case with a diamond and an emerald’ in return for a loan of £4,000. And thus, with his blessing, James’s pawned jewels were presented as Edinburgh’s heartfelt gift to their new Queen.
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The Danish retinue was not merely decorative. The wedding settlement still had plenty of creases to be ironed out, and there was fierce bargaining going on behind the ambassadorial smiles. On 12 May, the Danes gained Falkland and parts of Fife (symbolised by a stone and some earth, solemnly handed over); on the 13th Dunfermline; and on the 14th Linlithgow.
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After some final tidying up of the paperwork, the ambassadors were feasted in splendour at Edinburgh’s Coinhouse on the 23rd, and finally took their leave on 26 May.
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Anna was left with only sixteen attendants, instructed by her mother Queen Sophia ‘to attend upon her daughter the Queen of Scots, till she might be acquainted with this country and language’.
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In time the Danes left one by one, being replaced by Scots, although one maid, Anna Roos, was to stay with Anna until the Queen’s death.
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James was concerned that Anna’s household should have a Scottish presence, and sent for Sir James Melville of Halhill, informing him that, to fulfil a promise to Queen Sophia and the Danish Council, he was appointing ‘good and discreet company’ around the Queen. In Melville’s own account, James explained that only one other man had been made privy to the plan but somehow Anna had got wind of it, and supposed that Melville had been placed there to ‘inform her rightly’ of Scottish court etiquette, and instruct her how she should behave towards the King and each nobleman and woman: in short, ‘to be her keeper’. At dinner, in front of the Queen, James talked Melville up, pointing out his long-standing dealings with Denmark, and Queen Sophia’s personal approbation of him, with the purpose ‘to cause her Majesty [to] take the better liking of me’. The strategy failed. When James presented Sir James to the Queen after dinner, telling her that he would be her ‘counsellor and Gentleman of her Chamber’, Anna ‘took coldly’ with Melville. A few days later, she asked him outright ‘if I was ordoned to be her keeper’. Melville handled the situation tactfully, pointing out to the Queen that she was ‘known to be descended of so noble and princely parents, and so well brought up, that she needed no keeper’, only honourable servants. Anna replied Melville had been ‘evil done to’, and that ‘some indiscreet enviers’ had taken advantage of her when ‘she was yet ignorant of every man’s qualities’. Melville assured her that his job was precisely ‘to instruct such indiscreet persons’ and to give them an example of how to behave with the Queen, and ‘to hold them a-back’. In time, Anna appeared ‘well content with my service’, and Sir James struck up a long-standing relationship with the Queen.
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James saw his return to Scotland as a clean start. On Sunday 24 May, attending a sermon by Patrick Galloway at the Great Kirk, he took the opportunity to reinforce his previous promises to ‘prove a loving, faithful and thankful king; to amend his former negligence, and to execute justice without feed or favour, and to see the kirks better provided’. He confessed that ‘many things had been out of order before, partly through the injury of the time, and partly through his youth’; now, however, ‘he had seen more, and being married, he said he would be more staid’. As soon as the Danes had departed, he promised, he would devote all his attentions to proving his promises.
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But, as Calderwood noted tartly, ‘the King soon forgot his promises made in the Great Kirk’.
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At a General Assembly of the Kirk in August, James paid lip service to various Kirk demands, but failed to satisfy any of his hearers. In a last-ditch attempt ‘to please the Assembly’, he started to praise God that he had been ‘born in such a time of the light of the Gospel, to such a place as to be king in such a kirk, the sincerest kirk in the world’. Even Geneva, he alleged, celebrated the papist holidays of Easter and Christmas. As for ‘our neighbour Kirk in England’, they celebrated little more than ‘an evil said mass in English’. He charged his people ‘to stand to your purity’ and proclaimed that ‘I, forsooth, so long as I brook my life and crown, shall maintain the same against all’. The plan worked, prompting the Assembly to a lengthy ‘praising of God’ and a quarter of an hour of prayers for the King.
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It was a rare moment of unity.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Bewitched

W
HILE
A
NNA WAS
establishing her place in Scotland, her countrymen were still raking over the strange circumstances of her failed first attempt to depart. Those who had been responsible for conveying Anna to her new home were busy covering their backs. First in the firing line was the admiral of the flotilla that should have transported her, Peter Munk. To defend himself, Munk blamed Copenhagen’s governor Christoffer Valkendorf for failing in his duties to keep the navy in proper shape, and took his complaint to the
Herredag,
Denmark’s Supreme Court; the
Herredag
found in favour of Valkendorf, laying the blame on the gales. But as Valkendorf pointed out in court, the gales may not have been natural: indeed, trials were even now being held for witchcraft – witchcraft that aimed to stop Anna ever getting to Scotland.
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From the fifteenth century onwards, various parts of Europe were subject to a series of ‘witchhunts’, crazes in which the practice of witchcraft was detected in particular locales, and prosecuted – often with great severity – by the authorities.
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Several writers wrote learned tracts on witches, developing an entire sub-discipline of ‘demonology’ that accepted witchcraft as real. According to these theorists, the individual witch made an arrangement with the Devil, a demonic pact. The witches would renounce their baptism, promise their services and ultimately their soul to the Devil, in return for superhuman powers and riches. At midnight, they would meet with the Devil, who appeared in a physical form, to have sex with him and other diabolic spirits, and to receive his orders.
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In Denmark, witches were frequently accused of causing harm: the fiasco of a Danish naval attempt against Zeeland in 1543, the loss of ships off Visby in 1566, the unexpected death of state councillor Iver Krabbe in 1561 – all these were laid at the witches’ door. Eric XIV of Sweden had even allegedly engaged four witches to help his military campaign against Denmark.
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The witch trials started in May 1590, in Copenhagen, where an alleged witch confessed that sorcery had been responsible for the delay to the fleet; in turn, she named others, and the majority were interrogated, tried and sentenced to death – despite the fact that the supposed witches testified to planning their activities only at Michaelmas, when the ships were already in Norway.
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