Burdened by the cares of state and suffering from increasingly frequent bouts of ill health, James spent ever more time away from court on hunting expeditions or in the company of his favourites. Foremost among these was George Villiers, later Duke of Buckingham. My characterisation of him is inspired by contemporary descriptions. One of the most charismatic, sexually promiscuous and ruthless men of the age, his villainy was more real than imagined.
The second son of a sheep farmer and his beautiful but penniless wife Mary (with whom Buckingham had a close but stormy relationship), Buckingham enjoyed a meteoric rise to fortune thanks to the patronage of Sir John Graham, a gentleman of the King’s privy chamber. Upon being introduced to the King at Apethorpe in August 1614, he made an immediate impression. Soon after their first meeting, James appointed Buckingham his cupbearer, which gave the new favourite frequent access to the royal presence. In April 1615, he was made gentleman of the bedchamber, knighted and given an annual pension of £1,000 (equivalent to around £135,000 today).
The flirtation between the King and Buckingham almost certainly developed into a sexual relationship – one that would dominate the rest of the reign. During the 1615 summer progress, they caused a scandal by sharing a bed. Although this did not necessarily imply physical intimacy, it was obvious to everyone that their relationship had entered a new phase and that Robert Carr had been supplanted as royal favourite.
In 1616, Carr and his wife Frances were arrested upon suspicion of having Carr’s former servant, Sir Thomas Overbury poisoned. They were swiftly convicted and imprisoned in the Tower for the next six years. Although Buckingham appeared to play no part in it, he took full advantage of his rival’s absence. He was always quick to capitalise upon the misfortune of others, even erstwhile allies such as Sir Francis Bacon.
Despite being passionately attached to Buckingham, the King expected him to take a wife, as all his high-ranking courtiers did. He had little cause for jealousy in his favourite’s choice: Katherine Manners, a rather plain young woman whose attraction lay solely in the fact that she was heiress to the Earl of Rutland. Far from creating a rift between James and ‘Steenie’, the marriage made them even closer and the King doted upon the couple’s four children.
Katherine gave every appearance of an adoring wife, and Buckingham seemed to love her, in his way. But, as I describe in the novel, his father-in-law, Lord Rutland, strongly opposed the match, and there is evidence that his youngest son died by Buckingham hand – or at least at his orders. Certainly, Buckingham had most to gain by the boy’s death, given that the Rutland fortune subsequently passed to his wife Katherine. Joan Flower and her two daughters (known as the ‘Belvoir witches’) were convicted for bewitching both of Lord Rutland’s sons to death. Joan died on her way to captivity in Lincoln, and Margaret and Philippa were hanged there in 1619.
Buckingham’s protégé, the notorious astrologer-physician, John Lambe, was said to have used sorcery to further his patron’s ambitions. Buckingham’s favour with the King helped protect Lambe from conviction for witchcraft. He had narrowly escaped such a conviction in 1608, when he had been arrested for bewitching a Worcestershire gentleman. Within two weeks of his trial, forty people who had been present in the courtroom were dead. The true cause was probably gaol fever, but such was Lambe’s reputation that he was transferred to London’s King’s Bench prison. It was during his time there that he met and became a protégé of Buckingham. Thereafter he was commonly known as ‘the Duke’s devil’. Lambe was also consulted by Buckingham’s mother about her son’s fate. He was said to have shown Mary in a glass the figure of a large man with a dagger who would murder her son.
In June 1623, Lambe was indicted for the rape of an eleven year old girl, but was pardoned and released a year later. Further charges of sorcery were raised against him in 1627, and in the same year he was examined by the College of Physicians and found to be ignorant of the practice of medicine. On 13 June 1628, Lambe was ambushed by an angry mob of Londoners, who stoned and clubbed him into unconsciousness. He died the following day.
Amidst all this villainy, there was a need for more sympathetic characters. Foremost among them is Sir Francis Bacon, the greatest philosopher and statesman of the age. He rose to prominence during the later years of Elizabeth I’s reign but did not receive the hoped-for promotions until James came to the throne. He was immediately knighted and later made Lord Keeper, Attorney General and Lord High Chancellor. But Bacon’s literary and philosophical genius was largely lost on the King, who made no attempt to defend him when he was charged with corruption in 1621 and thrown out of office. I have woven in as many details of Bacon’s life and works into the narrative as possible, although the latter were so prolific that it was impossible to do justice to them all. As I have hinted, he may have been gay. He and his much younger wife Alice had no children and it was rumoured that she was unfaithful to him.
The other dominant character of both the Elizabethan and Jacobean age was Sir Walter Raleigh. A prisoner in the Tower since the early days of James’s reign, he was released in 1616 to embark upon an expedition to Venezuela in search of the fabled El Dorado, City of Gold. His fleet finally set sail in June 1617 and after an arduous voyage it reached Guiana in November. During the expedition, a detachment of Raleigh’s men attacked the Spanish outpost of St Thomé. This was against Raleigh’s explicit orders and those of King James, who had made it a condition of Raleigh’s release that he should avoid any hostilities against Spanish colonies or shipping. The notion that Raleigh plotted to ally with Spain and force James from the throne is fiction.
Upon Raleigh’s return to England, the Spanish ambassador, Count Gondomar, demanded that Raleigh’s death sentence be reinstated. James, who had never liked the famous adventurer, had no qualms about agreeing. Raleigh was arrested a few weeks earlier than I have it in the narrative, but his date of entry to the Tower was 10 August, as given. The scene of his execution is drawn from eyewitness accounts.
The period covered by this novel witnessed another notable death: that of Queen Anne. James and his wife had lived as virtual strangers after the birth of their short-lived last child, Sophia, in 1607. Anne spent most of her time at Greenwich Palace and Somerset House, which she renamed Denmark House after her native country. Her health deteriorated steadily and in late 1618, she fell seriously ill with consumption and dropsy while staying at Hampton Court Palace. Her devoted son Charles had his bed moved to an adjoining room and was by her side when she died on 2 March the following year. Anne was buried in Westminster Abbey, but her husband chose not to erect a tomb in her memory. Her jewels, which she bequeathed to Charles, were indeed worth a fortune, and it was rumoured that some of them were stolen by one of her ladies after her death.
Anne’s son Charles continued to honour his mother’s memory. As the sole surviving male heir, he was closely guarded and his activities strictly controlled. On 3 November 1616 he was created Prince of Wales in a lavish ceremony at Whitehall Palace. Naturally shy and physically weak since childhood, he nevertheless showed greater discernment than he is often given credit for. He seemed to be as in thrall to Buckingham as the King and signed his letters ‘your constant, loving friend’. But there is evidence that he was not quite so beguiled as he appeared. The incident I refer to when the prince played a trick on Buckingham by soaking him with a jet of water from a fountain in Greenwich Park actually happened, much to the fury of both James and his favourite.