The Cradle King (26 page)

Who could he dedicate the book to, he asks Henry, except the person to whom it most justly appertained, his dearest son? As his natural father, he was responsible for Henry’s ‘godly and virtuous education’; as a king, he had to ‘provide for your training up in all the points of a King’s Office’.
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This is meant to be a manual reflecting his hands-on experience: as a king, he continues, ‘it became me best … having learned both the theorick and practick thereof, more plainly to expres, than any simple schoolmen, that only knows matters of kingdoms by contemplation’. James goes on to insist that the book was not ‘ordained for the institution of a prince in general’ but rather to contain ‘particular precepts to my son in special’, containing specific discussions of ‘the particular diseases of this kingdom, with the best remedies for the same’, making the book of personal relevance to Henry as future King.
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Indeed, James was later to claim that it was
Basilikon Doron’
s specificity to the situation in Scotland that led to its misinterpretation in England.

James could not be with his son at Stirling, but the existence of the book facilitated a new educational possibility. He cast
Basilikon Doron
as a textual ‘preceptor and counsellor’, a ‘resident faithful admonisher’, that could replace the all too flesh-and-blood tutor James had suffered as a child. Unlike a counsellor though,
Basilikon Doron
lacked human failings: ‘ye will find it a just and impartial counsellor; neither flattering you in any vice, nor importuning you at unmeet times. It will not come uncalled, neither speak unspeered at [unquestioned]’.
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It is tempting to think that James must have had in mind the book that he was given in 1579, Buchanan’s
De jure regni ad Scotos,
which his schoolmaster presented to him ‘not merely as a guide, but also as an importunate critic – one even lacking, at times, in respect’ which would not only ‘show you the way’, but ‘check you and draw you back if you would stray’.
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Whereas Buchanan saw the role of his book as a rudely importunate critic, James presented
Basilikon Doron
as a respectful, silent tutor or counsellor, available when needed, and easy to access – he thoughtfully divided the short tract into three sections.

Basilikon Doron
is an intriguing document, stuffed with advice gleaned from James’s fairly conventional reading of the classics and scripture, but with occasional examples drawn from nearer home. On marriage, for example, James instructs Henry to ‘keep inviolably your promise to God in your marriage’, and to avoid ‘the filthy vice of adultery’. ‘Have the King my grandfather’s example before your eyes,’ he suggests, ‘who by his adultery, bred the wrack of his lawful daughter and heir [Mary]; in begetting that bastard, who unnaturally rebelled [Moray], and procured the ruin of his own sovereign and sister. And what good her posterity hath gotten sensyne [since], of some of that unlawful generation, Bothwell his treacherous attempts can bear witness.’
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Henry should be ‘well versed in authentic histories, and in the chronicles of all nations, but specially in our own histories the example whereof most nearly concerns you’, but James qualifies that instruction: ‘I mean not of such infamous invectives as Buchanan’s or Knox’s Chronicles: and if any of these infamous libels remain until your days, use the Law upon the keepers thereof.’
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The strongest condemnation is reserved for the Kirk. The Protestants in Scotland, James writes, were ‘clogged with their own passions’, so that the Reformation did not progress properly as it did in Denmark, England or some parts of Germany. Some ‘fiery spirited men in the ministry’ got carried away with their ‘guiding of the people’, and began to ‘fantasie to themselves a democratic form of government’. This notion, ‘overwell baited upon the wrack, first of my grandmother, and next of mine own mother, and after usurping the liberty of the time in my long minority’, led to them casting themselves as tribunes of the people, ‘and so in a popular government by leading the people by the nose’ – one of James’s favourite images – ‘to bear the sway of all the rule’. These ministers were the cause of all Scotland’s problems, James continued. All the factions of his childhood and ever since made sure to court the ‘unruly spirits among the ministry’, as a result of which ‘I was ofttimes calumniated in their popular sermons, not for any evil or vice in me, but because I was a King, which they thought the highest evil’.
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Basilikon Doron
was first secretly printed, in an anglicised version, by Robert Waldegrave in a tiny 1599 edition of seven copies, for private circulation. Somehow Andrew Melvill got hold of a copy, even before the book was through the press. Not surprisingly, he found much to criticise, especially in James’s comments about the Kirk. At the Synod of Fife in September of that year, Melvill’s criticisms to
Basilikon Doron
were presented by John Dykes, lambasting what he saw as its pro-English, pro-episcopalian, pro-Catholic tendencies, ingeniously dubbed its ‘Anglo-pisco-papistical conclusions’.
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The Synod did not have time formally to censure the book before James had ordered the arrest of Dykes, who fled instead into England.
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But in time his complaints were drowned out by the overwhelming success of the book. Over the next few years,
Basilikon Doron
appeared in multiple editions that have been estimated at totalling as many as 16,000 copies: James had written one of the runaway bestsellers of the Renaissance.
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CHAPTER TEN

A Wild Unruly Colt

O
N
6 A
UGUST
1600, Edinburgh awoke to some very strange news. A series of letters arrived telling how, on the previous day, the Earl of Gowrie had sent his brother Alexander, the Master of Ruthven, to the King as he was hunting in Falkland Park. Alexander confided that his brother had found a great treasure in an old tower in his house at St Johnstone – a treasure that might be of help to the King, if he came over to see it that day, without fanfare. James continued hunting for a while, but, after a drink, took a fresh horse and rode on with Alexander, dismissing Lennox and Mar, and taking just a few servants. Despite orders, Lennox and Mar followed the King, and en route met the Lord of Inchaffray, who joined the train. At St Johnstone, James was greeted by Gowrie, who took him into his house and gave him a good dinner, before going into dinner with Lennox and the rest of the King’s men.
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While they were dining, Alexander persuaded the King to go quietly with him to see the treasure. James dismissed his company, and followed Alexander from chamber to chamber, whose doors the young man locked as they progressed. Finally, they came to a chamber containing a man – the man, so the King thought, who had found the treasure. But suddenly Alexander took hold of the King and drew his dagger, exclaiming that he had killed his father, and now he would kill him. James tried to dissuade him, pointing out that he had been very young when Gowrie was executed, and was therefore innocent of the death. Had he not made amends by restoring Alexander’s brother to a greater status than he had previously? If Alexander killed him now, he would not escape, nor would he be Gowrie’s heir; he was sure that Alexander had learned more divinity than to kill his prince; and he assured and promised him that if he stopped this enterprise he would keep it secret and forgive him. Alexander retorted that his preaching would not help him, and that he should die, and then struck out at the King. James and Alexander fell to the ground, and Alexander called on the other man to kill the King, but his accomplice answered that, though he was a courageous man, he had neither heart nor hand to do it. Despite being unarmed, in his hunting clothes with only his horn, James defended himself against Ruthven, and managed to struggle to the window to shout ‘Treason!’ His cries were heard by Sir Thomas Erskine, Lord Herries and John Ramsay, who ran up the stairs to him, but found the doors locked. Ramsay, however, discovered another way in: when the King saw him, he shouted out that he was slain, and Ramsay drew his rapier and killed the Master of Ruthven. Gowrie had told Lennox, Mar and the others that the King had left by a main gate, but when they ran out, there was no sign. Gowrie said he would go back and locate the King, and ran up the stairs with eight men, a steel bonnet and two rapiers; he was met by Ramsay, Erskine and Herries, who between them killed the Earl, both Erskine and Herries being injured in the process. Outside, Gowrie’s friends and the local townsmen demanded to know where the Earl was. Lennox and Mar were sent to the magistrates to pacify the situation, and the King and his company got away, James thanking God for his deliverance.

An hour after the news of the attack reached Edinburgh, a letter from the King arrived, outlining the story told above, and the ministers were summoned to appear before the Council. There, James’s letter was read out, and the ministers were ordered to ‘go to the kirk, convene the people, ring bells, and give praise to God’ for the King’s deliverance. But the ministers were not about to obey the King’s orders without considering the case more carefully. Meeting in the East Kirk, they concluded that they could not speak of treason, since the King had not mentioned it, and the reports by various courtiers were contradictory. They announced to Chancellor Montrose that they could not mention treason, but were happy to say ‘in general’ that James had been ‘delivered from a great danger’. The lords objected that all they had to do was read the King’s letter, but the ministers said it was better not to read it, in case they doubted it.
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At that moment, the minister David Lindsay entered, and told the story first hand. The situation seemed to be saved: Robert Bruce averred that if Lindsay was speaking the truth ‘as he would [be] answerable to God’, then he ‘was well content’. Lindsay went with the lords to the Mercat Cross, and delivered the story to the people, who bared their heads and praised God. And then came the usual celebrations: bells, cannon shot and bonfires.
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But soon it became clear that the ministers were not the only men suspicious of the King’s story. The doubts gave rise to superstitions. Just before the murders, it was said, the sea, which was at low tide, suddenly ‘ran up above the sea mark, higher nor [than] at any stream tide, athort [across] all the coast side of Fife, and in an instant retired again to almost a low water’.
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On the first Sabbath after the event, the shapes of men were seen in the murder room, ‘opening and closing the windows with great flaffing [fluttering, flapping], coming to the windows, looking over, and wringing their hands’. The next day, Monday the 11th, ‘such mourning’ was heard in the air ‘that the people about were terrified’. That afternoon, as James sailed from Clanesse (near East Burntisland) across to Leith, it was noticed ‘that there was ebbing and flowing three times at that tide; that the water betwixt Leith and Brunitland was blackish; that the ships in Leith haven were troubled with the swelling of the water’.
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All these were taken as signs that an unnatural act had taken place, that the deaths of the Ruthvens were murderous. James paid no attention. He was greeted at Leith with the usual great bombast of cannon and harquebuses, ‘as if he had been new born’, remarked Calderwood sardonically. Thanks were given in church for his deliverance, but James notably failed to respond to the preacher David Lindsay’s hope that now the King would carry out the vows he had made previously to ensure ‘performance of justice’; instead, Calderwood noted that James merely ‘smiled, and talked with these that were about him, after his unreverent manner of behaviour at sermons’.
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Despite his apparent nonchalance, James realised that he needed to make good the unlikely story he had told of events at St Johnstone. ‘Because many doubted of the report that was made by the King and courtiers,’ wrote Calderwood, ‘many means were used to make good the report, with presumptions and testimonies which were gathered out of the depositions of some persons which were examined.’
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In this spirit, James processed with several noblemen from the church to the Mercat Cross, which had been draped with tapestry for the occasion, while Patrick Galloway delivered a sermon on Psalm 124, David being freed from the great danger of his deadly enemies, and James himself gave a speech supporting the notion that the Ruthvens had conspired to kill him, and had been slain as they attempted to put their plan into action, the two speeches lasting over an hour.
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Galloway took the opportunity to untangle a potential embarrassment to the Kirk. The dead Gowrie had been a notably staunch Protestant, but the preacher refused that interpretation: ‘let none think, that by this traiterous fact of his, our religion has received any blot: for one of our religion was he not, but a deep dissimulate hypocrite, a profound atheist, and an incarnate devil in the coat of an angel.’ Galloway cited objects and books which had been discovered since the Earl’s death, ‘which prove him plainly to have been a studier of magic, and conjurer of devils, and to have had so many at his command’. Gowrie had suspiciously lived outside the country, ‘haunting with Papists; yea, the Pope himself’ with whom the Earl had made ‘convenants and bonds’. Since returning to Scotland Gowrie had ‘travailed most earnestly with the King, and his Majesty has received from him the hardest assault that ever he did; from him, I say, to revolt from religion; at least, in inward sincerity to entertain purpose with the Pope’.
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