The Cradle King (51 page)

He soon had a chance to win back popular support. James was on his 1618 summer progress when a plea for help reached him from Bohemia. By 1617, the Hapsburg Emperor Matthias, hereditary Archduke of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, and King of Bohemia and Hungary by election, was bedridden with gout, and concerned about his successor. He had persuaded Bohemia and Hungary to accept his cousin and heir apparent, Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, as his successor. But Ferdinand was an ardent Roman Catholic, and Bohemia, a religiously pluralistic state with a sturdy Protestant element, had good reason over time to reconsider her decision. In May 1618, a group of Protestant Bohemian nobles broke into the palace in Prague and threw two leading officials out of the window, violently marking the end of their support for Ferdinand’s claim. Imperial armies were soon despatched to quash the rebellion, but the Bohemians were saved by mercenary forces financed by the Duke of Savoy and by Frederick, Elector Palatine, husband of James’s daughter Elizabeth.

The Bohemians looked to other Protestant princes for military and financial support with less success. They approached James with their grievances, asking for his ‘aid and favour’. But James failed to reply, ‘either by writing or by word’.
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He was tempted instead by an alternative suggestion from King Philip III of Spain that James should ‘interpose himself for the accommodating of the business of Bohemia’,
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that is, function as an intermediary arbitrator. James immediately took a fancy to this new role of international peacemaker. Before long a tract was published entitled
The Peace-Maker: or Great Brittaines Blessing,
which, although anonymous (and probably penned by playwright Thomas Middleton), was directed in a style very like James’s own ‘To all our true loving, and peace-embracing subjects.’ The pamphlet presented England not only as the home of peace – ‘
Insula pacis.
The Land of Peace, under the King of Peace’ – but as the source of all peace. ‘Nay, what Christian kingdom that knows the blessing of peace, has not desired and tasted this our blessing from us? Come they not hither as to the fountain from whence it springs? Here sits Solomon, and hither come the tribes for judgements: oh happy moderator, blessed father, not father of thy country alone, but father of all thy neighbour countries about thee.’ In making its case for peace as the perfect state, it attacked as unmanly and irrational the current fashion among young English gentlemen for duelling, which it linked to James’s two other
bêtes noires,
witchcraft and tobacco
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– James had already taken action a few years earlier to discourage the voguish bloodsport which he regarded with understandable horror.
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As Gondomar reported, ‘The vanity of the present King of England is so great that he will always think it of great importance that peace should be made by his means, so that his authority will be increased.’ The English envoy in Spain, Francis Cottington, told King Philip that James ‘was resolved to use his utmost endeavours and to interpose his best credit and authority for compounding the difference, if he should find the same disposition and inclination’ in Philip.
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In England, Buckingham assured Gondomar that James would ‘do all that he can and that lies in his power, and to finish the business peaceably and quietly, if the Bohemians will listen to him, and are willing to have his advice’. But should the Bohemians prove ‘obstinate and pertinacious’ he would persuade his son-in-law and the other German princes to refrain from giving them any aid.
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Historians have long derided James for his arrogance and naivety in this matter. ‘The Spanish suggestion was, of course, a bit of trickery,’ writes D.H. Willson, typically. ‘The King accepted it so quickly, without caution or reservation, that he all but invited the Spaniards to cheat him.’
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But, in truth, the battle lines were not well drawn. Spain by no means immediately committed herself to the embattled Austrians. As Cottington reported, when news first reached Madrid of the rebellion the Spaniards were ‘not a little troubled’, not least for financial reasons: they ‘already groan under the excessive charge and expense which they are daily at for the subsistence of those Princes of Austria, and especially this King of Bohemia’, Matthias.
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Moreover, the Twelve Years’ Truce between the Spanish and the Dutch had only three years to run: once that expired, and if they were to engage in this new conflict, Spain could very easily find herself fighting in both Bohemia and the Low Countries. James still withheld his reply from the Bohemians, instead allowing Buckingham to act on his behalf. Buckingham’s ascent had continued unabated. After his successes in Scotland, he was created Marquis of Buckingham on New Year’s Day 1618, and the following day the new Marquis threw a great feast for James and Charles in the Cockpit at Whitehall. While supper was still in progress, James stood up and took his son by the hand. Walking to the other table, he toasted Buckingham. ‘My lords, I drink to you all and I know we are all welcome to my George. And he that doth not pledge it with all his heart, I would the Devil had him for my part.’
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Now the personal favour was translated directly into political influence on the international stage.

Buckingham forwarded the Bohemians’ declaration of grievances to Madrid, to ascertain Philip’s verdict. At the same time, he told the English ambassador in Spain, Cottington, James was ‘very glad that the winter is so far advanced that there is hope that both parties may be hindered from engaging with one another any further by way of arms’.
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The Venetian ambassador in London commented wisely that although James loved to pass himself off as ‘the chief of a great union in Europe’, the English were likely to ‘resolve upon nothing, and by offering a league as they have so often done, wish to bind others without binding themselves, or with little idea of carrying it into effect’.
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But as winter drew on, peace seemed less possible. Cottington reported from Madrid that 200,000 ducats had finally been sent from Spain to support Matthias’s troops in Bohemia, and provision made for the future payment of the army there; he also expressed concern at reports that ‘the Prince Palatine doth therein no good offices’ and Philip ‘was much assured he observed not the orders given him’ by James.
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For the first time in his lengthy reign, James was dangerously implicated in what promised to be a major international crisis, but his attention was suddenly absorbed by matters closer to home. On 2 March 1619 Queen Anna died at Hampton Court after a lengthy illness. On her instructions, her faithful Danish maid Anna Roos had refused to let anyone visit her until her final hours, when the Queen lost her sight, and Roos called Charles to be with his mother as she died. An inquest found the Queen to be ‘much wasted within, specially her liver’. James was not with his wife in her final days nor did he attend her funeral, which was postponed for several weeks due, it was rumoured, to the King’s unwillingness to commit the necessary cash. But the image of a callous, indifferent husband is misplaced. As Anna lay dying, James was himself sick at Newmarket with a combination of arthritis, gout and ‘a shrewd fit of the stone’.
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The news of his wife’s death sent him spiralling down into a serious melancholy. After the Queen’s death, his physician Theodore de Mayerne observed ‘pain in his joints and nephritis with thick sand’. Moving to Royston, James suffered from ‘continued fever, bilious diarrhoea, watery and profuse throughout the illness. Hiccoughs for several days. Aphthae all over mouth and fauces, and even the oesophagus. Fermentation of bitter humours boiling in his stomach which, effervescing by froth out of his mouth, led to ulceration of his lips and chin. Fainting, sighing, dread, incredible sadness, intermittent pulse’ – this last a frequent symptom in the King – and a continuation of nephritis ‘from which, without any remedy having been administered, he execreted a friable calculus, as was his wont. The force of this, the most dangerous illness the King ever had, lasted for eight days.’ In the process he had voided three stones, and the pain had caused such violent vomiting that his life seemed to be in danger.
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Charles, Buckingham and the leading Privy Councillors were summoned from London to hear James’s deathbed speech. According to John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, there was ‘not a syllable in all the same, but deserves to be written in letters of gold. How powerfully did he charge him with the care of religion and justice, the two pillars (as he termed them) of his future throne? How did he recommend unto his love, the nobility, the clergy, and the commonalty in the general? How did he thrust, as it were into his inward bosom, his bishops, his judges, his near servants; and that disciple of his whom he so loved in particular?’ In Williams’s account, James was still looking forward to a great Catholic marriage for his heir, concluding ‘with that heavenly advice, to his son, concerning that great act of his future marriage, to marry like himself, and marry where he would. But if he did marry the daughter of that King, he should marry her person, but he should not marry her religion.’
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More practically, James recommended to Charles that when he became king he should take as his principal counsellors Lennox, Arundel, Pembroke and especially Hamilton and Buckingham. But the good advice was not needed: within days James began to recover, although he remained extremely weak for some time to come. In April he moved to Theobalds, borne in a litter and in a portable chair carried on his men’s shoulders; arriving at his favourite estate, ‘weak and weary as he was’, he ‘would not settle within doors till he had his deer brought to make a muster before him’.
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Still too frail to attend his wife’s funeral on 13 May, it was not until June that James felt strong enough to make a solemn entry into Whitehall.
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Later in the summer he was observed trying one of his own cures: ‘On Saturday last the King killed a buck in Eltham Park and so soon as it was opened stood in the belly of it and bathed his bare feet and legs with the warm blood; since which time he has been so nimble that he thinketh this the only remedy for the gout.’
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The King’s return to health, celebrated in sermons up and down the country, provided only a momentary boost to his waning popularity at home. By the time an English embassy of a hundred and fifty men, headed by James Hay, now Viscount Doncaster, left for Bohemia in April 1619, Emperor Matthias was already dead. Londoners were abuzz with the possibilities of what they called these German ‘combustions’: it was even rumoured (on no grounds whatsoever) that Matthias would be succeeded as Emperor by the Elector Frederick.
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In August, Archduke Ferdinand was elected Emperor at Frankfurt; in Prague, at the same time, the Bohemians deposed Ferdinand as their King and offered the throne of Bohemia instead to the Elector Frederick. Frederick, unsure what to do, sent to James for advice, and his wife Elizabeth wrote to Buckingham to point out that her father ‘hath now a good occasion to manifest to the world the love he hath ever professed to the Prince here. I earnestly entreat you to use your best means in persuading his Majesty to show himself now, in his helping of the Prince here, a true loving father to us both.’
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The King’s answer was not immediately forthcoming. To James, the fact that Frederick could keep the Bohemian throne Protestant was irrelevant: this was not a matter of religion, but of kingship. ‘What hath religion to do to decrown a king?’ he asked. ‘Leave that opinion to the Devil and to the Jesuits, authors of it and brands of sedition. For may subjects rebel against their prince in quarrel of religion? Christ came into the world to teach subjects obedience to the king, and not rebellion!’
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But by the time James’s response, urging caution, was delivered to his son-in-law’s hands, Frederick had already accepted the throne. ‘He wrote to me to know my mind if he should take that crown,’ James later complained, ‘but within three days after; and before I could return answer, he put it on.’
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It was said that it was Elizabeth who had persuaded Frederick: she wrote to him that as God directed all things, He had undoubtedly sent this; if Frederick felt it advisable to accept, she would be ready to follow the divine call, to suffer whatever God should ordain – if necessary to pledge her jewels and whatever else she had in the world.
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Frederick and Elizabeth entered Prague in late October 1619 to scenes of unalloyed joy. Then eight months pregnant, Elizabeth had insisted (against general advice) on accompanying her husband on his journey. The royal couple’s popularity was only enhanced when Elizabeth gave birth to another son, Rupert, in December, who was immediately proclaimed as Duke of Lusatia. Britain shared in the popular rejoicing, which soon transmuted into a widespread call for action against Spain, on the streets and in the pulpits, as the Archbishop of Canterbury preached that the Book of Revelation was about to be realised as Roman Catholic power was toppled. Prince Charles wrote to assure the Elector Palatine that ‘I will be glad not only to assist him with my countenance but also with my person, if the King my father would give me leave’,
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a formulation that suggests only too clearly how James and Charles were not in agreement on this point. At the Privy Council table, a hawkish pro-war faction emerged, headed by Buckingham. With Buckingham aboard, surely now the King would fall into line? The Earl of Pembroke seemed sure enough. ‘It is true that the King will be very unwilling to be engaged in a war,’ he admitted. ‘And yet I am confident, when the necessity of the cause of religion, his son’s preservation, and his own honour call upon him, that he will perform whatsoever belongs to the Defender of the Faith, a kind father-in-law, and one careful of that honour which I must confess by a kind of misfortune hath long lain in suspense.’
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