King Charles I

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By Pauline Gregg

University of California Press

Copyright © 1984 Pauline Gregg
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-520-05146-7

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Chapter One

Duke of Albany In the year 1600 the affairs of the royal house of Scotland were of absorbing interest to all concerned in the English succession. Queen Elizabeth I had occupied the throne of England for forty-two years, she was sixty-seven years old and childless. Of possible successors James VI of Scotland was favoured by most of those likely to have any influence in the matter. Nothing was said openly, and Elizabeth would not name her successor, but as the new century dawned an elaborate information service was in operation between Scotland and England in which the ceaseless troubles of the turbulent Scottish Court and the ups and downs of James's marriage featured prominently. Thus on 20 November 1600, George Nicolson, the English Ambassador to Scotland, wrote from Edinburgh to Sir Robert Cecil, the English Secretary of State, with a series of important announcements:

On Monday last the King rode to the Queen to Dunfermline and returned yesternight. They never loved better. This night at 11 of the clock the Queen was delivered of a son and word thereof this night at about 3 hours brought to the King. Whereon the King this morning is gone to the Queen and 3 pieces of ordnance shot by this castle in joy of the same.

The Earl and his brother were yesterday hanged on the gibbet in the Market Place here and after quartered by the hangman.

James VI of Scotland was then in his thirty-fifth year; his wife was Anne of Denmark, aged twenty-five, to whom he had been married for eleven years. The baby, their second son and third surviving child of the four who had been born to them, was the future Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

James's delight was seemingly unfeigned and he found the day of the birth particularly auspicious. 'I first saw my wife', he exclaimed when brought the news, 'on the 19th November on the coast of Norway. She bore my son Henry on the 19th February, my daughter Elizabeth on the 19th August, and now she has given birth at Dunfermline to my second son on the anniversary of the day on which we first saw each other... I myself', he added, was 'born on the 19th June'. John Murray, who brought him the news, was rewarded with £16 of Scots money.

James's relief at the ending of the 'Gowrie conspiracy' may have played some part in his joy, for the quartered carcasses that swung on their gibbets in Edinburgh, Stirling and Perth were those of the Earl of Gowrie and his brother, Alexander Ruthven. Gowrie's so-called 'conspiracy' remains a mystery and the degree of Anne's attachment to Alexander Ruthven is uncertain, though she was certainly fond of his sister, Beatrix, who was one of her ladies-in-waiting. Rumours, however, had persisted and only four days before the birth of Charles it was reported that there was 'no good agreement, but rather an open Diffidence between the King of Scots and his Wife', and that many were 'of opinion, that the Discovery of Some Affection between her and the Earle of Gowry's brother... was the truest Cause and Motife of all that Tragedy'.

Whatever the truth, it was an ugly episode. The brothers had been killed three months previously in an affray at the Earl's own house instigated, it was rumoured, by James himself. Beatrix Ruthven had been removed from the Queen's service and Anne's third child, a little girl of two, had died at about the same time. Expunging the name of Ruthven 'for ever' and quartering the two bodies was ordered by the Scottish Parliament on 18 November, the day before the Queen's delivery. Such pre-natal disturbance added to the normal uncertainty of birth and survival in the seventeenth century; the new baby was weak and sickly and his mother very ill. James's ebullience was out of tune with the reality at Dunfermline Castle as hasty arrangements were made to baptize the child should it die that night.

In the event Anne recovered and it was again reported on 5 December that 'the King and Queen agree exceeding well'. The baby survived to be given a grander christening on Tuesday December 23 by David Lindsay, Bishop of Ross, in the royal chapel at Holyrood House. His godfathers were the Huguenot Prince de Rohan and his brother Monsieur (later Duke of) Soubise, who were visiting the capital; the godmothers were the Countess of Mar and the Countess of Huntley. The Prince, in a gown of lawn and wrapped in cloth of gold, was carried to the chapel by the Prince de Rohan. Behind them Lord Livingstone bore the baby's robe of royal purple velvet lined with damask, and there followed the Prince's Dames of Honour with the Lord President bearing his crown ducal. As trumpets sounded the procession made its way to the chapel where the King awaited them. The baby, who was held during the service by the Countess of Huntley beneath a magnificent silken pall which had been elaborately worked in gold and silver by his grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, was baptized Charles. The King then bestowed on him the title of Duke of Albany, traditionally attached to the second son of the King of Scotland, and the heralds proclaimed him Lord of Ardmonoche, Earl of Ross, and Marquis of Ormonde. Celebrations and feasting continued over Christmas, James conferred knighthoods and peerages in his son's honour, while cannon sounded in salute and £100 was thrown to the populace.

Although the Queen received a handsome gift from the King in the form of a New Year's jewel for his 'dearest bedfellow', she did not attend the official christening of Charles but remained at Dunfermline, nursing her resentment and planning, some said, to punish those who had poisoned the King's mind against her. Beatrix Ruthven was not allowed back to her service, though Anne helped her secretly with clothes and money. Six months later Cecil's intelligence was informing him that the Queen of Scotland was scheming to recall one of the exiled Scottish lords, the Earl of Bothwell, to stir up trouble at home, while correspondents in England were writing that the death of Gowrie would be revenged.

James VI of Scotland was the only child of Mary, Queen of Scots, by Henry Darnley, thus inheriting, in double line, the Tudor blood of Henry VII, for Margaret Tudor was the grandmother of both Mary and Darnley - unless, indeed, as some suggested, his mother's Italian secretary, David Rizzio, was his father. But undoubtedly James inherited through his mother the French blood of the Guises and the Stuart blood of the kings of Scotland, while through Darnley he would have been closely related to the families of Angus, of Lennox, and of Douglas. To this mixed heritage was added the Norse and German lineage of James's Danish Queen. Anne was the youngest daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and Norway and of Sophia of Mecklenberg. Of her two brothers the elder had succeeded to the throne as Christian IV at the age of eleven shortly before her marriage; her younger brother was the Duke of Holst. Anne was not quite fifteen years old when she was brought home to Scotland by James himself, who had been attracted by the fair young beauty whom he saw in a miniature sent from Denmark. The Court and the commercial interests of Scotland favoured the match, for Denmark was a Protestant country, it was not involved in foreign wars or alliances, and its trading connections with Scotland were long-established and beneficial. James's enthusiasm was such that, in somewhat uncharacteristic fashion, he had himself sailed from Scotland to fetch his bride when storms delayed her passage. They were married in Oslo on 23 November 1589, in considerable pomp, but storms again bedevilled their voyage to Scotland. James attributed the inclement weather to black magic, in which at that time he profoundly believed, and the return of the King with his bride in May 1590 was sullied by the trials, torture, and execution of alleged witches.

Anne's Nordic fairness of hair and skin, her slim and graceful figure, gave her a greater beauty in youth than her later portraits imply, and James had her miniature set in one of the green, enamelled heads of his own Order of the Thistle. She was lively and good-natured and at first James and his Court had reason to be pleased with her. But the mounting expenses of her household brought criticism from the Scottish lords, while Anne, a Lutheran, grew tired of Presbyterian austerity. Inevitably she was caught up in the wild and bitter feuding of the Scottish nobility, she was too young to discriminate, and her judgment was not good. It was also inevitable that there should have been rumours, other than those attached to young Ruthven. She 'had a great number of gallants, both in Scotland and England', it was said. But of contemporary stories, apart from the Gowrie affair, the chief is that which concerned the young and bonny Earl of Moray, who was savagely murdered by Huntley in one of the internecine feuds of the Scottish nobility:

He was a braw callant And he rade at the glove; And the bonnie Earl o' Murray, Oh! he was the Queen's luve.

No details of the affair survive. Anne was sixteen at the time, had been in Scotland for only a year and had as yet no children. There is a similarity in the affairs of Moray and Gowrie in that in each case a man, whose name was associated with the Queen, met violent death in circumstances never fully explained. Another story, which can probably be discounted, is the confidential whispering, long after, of Bedy, a Dane, that he was the natural father of Charles. Whether or not there was truth in any of these rumours, James could always be counted on to cover up for his wife. He treated her always with firm and affectionate good sense. Whatever his suspicions he would not have dirty linen washed in public. He had determined to accept Charles as his own son and it cannot be doubted that he was prepared to shield the boy from such indignities as he himself suffered when he was shouted after in Edinburgh streets as 'Jimmy Davidson'.

Against Anne's wishes, but following the custom of the time, their eldest child Henry, a healthy boy born at Stirling Castle on 19 February 1594, had been placed in the care of the family of the Earl of Mar. Elizabeth, another healthy child, was born two years later in Falkland Castle, Fifeshire, and was taken into the family of Lord Livingstone, Earl of Linlithgow. Whatever Anne's intentions with Charles - and she showed much open affection to the sickly little boy - there was an added reason in his very infirmity to put him into the care of a trusted guardian. The people chosen to bring him up were Alexander Seton, Lord Fyvie, later Lord Chancellor of Scotland and Duke of Dunfermline, and his wife. Their Roman Catholic sympathies would, James hoped, act as a counter-balance to the Presbyterianism of Mar, placate Anne, and at the same time conciliate the Catholics in England whose support was necessary if his dreams of the English throne were to come true. Dunfermline Castle, the place of Charles's birth and his mother's favourite residence, was the young prince's home for the first three and a half years of his life. It was somewhat gloomy, it was fifteen miles from Edinburgh, but the air was healthier than in the capital and it was outside the rough-and-tumble of the Court. Dame Margaret Stewart, Lady Ochiltrie, was in direct charge of the baby until he was two years old, his 'rokker' (his nurse) was Marioun Hepburn, while Jeane Drummond, third daughter of Lord Drummond and second wife of Robert Ker, first Earl of Roxburgh, was his first governess.

An apochryphal story told in Dunfermline indicates that the King and Queen were there together one night when Marioun Hepburn was heard screaming. 'Hout! tout! What's the matter w'ye, nursie?', cried James, springing out of bed and rushing into the nursery. An old man had appeared in the baby's room and thrown a dark cloak over the child as he lay sleeping in his cradle: 'I'm feared it was the thing that's na canny', gasped the terrified nurse. James interpreted the incident in his own way. 'Gin he ever be king', he said, 'there'll be nae gude a' his reign. The deil has cusen his cloak ower him already'.

When the momentous news reached Edinburgh that Elizabeth I had died and that the succession had been offered to James VI of Scotland, the King left for England without his family. The Queen was pregnant and the King's haste was such that he could neither wait to make careful arrangements for the journey nor visit his children before he left. But he sent nine-year old Henry a copy of his book, the Basilikon Doron, which had just been given its first public printing, together with a well-expressed warning against pride in his new position as heir to the English throne: 'a King's sonne and heire was ye before, and no maire ar ye yett'. He left on 5 April 1603, after a tender, public parting from his wife. Anne, with her eldest son at Stirling, her daughter at Linlithgow, and little Prince Charles sick of a fever at Dunfermline, was so distraught that she fell ill and miscarried, writing wildly to James that he was paying no regard to her birth as the daughter of a king. James, in spite of his new responsibilities, was all solicitude and replied with dignity: 'I thank God, I carrie that love and respecte unto you, quhich... I ought to do to my wyfe and mother of my children; but not for that ye are a King's daughter for quhither ye waire a King's or a cook's dauchter, ye must be all alike to me, being once my wyfe.' Shortly afterwards he allowed Anne to follow him and she left with Prince Henry on June 2, leaving Elizabeth to follow with her guardians.

Charles had necessarily to stay behind. His general weakness was such that at two-and-a-half he could neither walk nor talk, and his fever persisted. By the end of April, however, Lord Fyvie was able to report to the King and Queen that the fever had abated, though the little boy was still not sleeping well at night. Nevertheless, Lord Fyvie said, 'the greate weaknesse off his bodie, after so lang and hevie seikness, is meikill suppliet be the might and strength off his spirit and minde'. A little later he wrote that the boy 'althocht zit weake in bodie, is beginnand to speik suim words'. He was already wearing coats of white satin, and of yellow satin with white sleeves, he had a scarlet coat and matching hose of French serge, and before he was two he had been given a velvet belt with a dagger at the side. The undersized, delicate little boy, with his mother's pale hair and light complexion, had to rely more even than is usual at two years old upon the help and society of adults, but he played with dolls and soft toys, and he had a rocking horse and a little propelling chair with wheels which helped to strengthen his legs. While rarely alone, it is likely that he was lonely after his family had gone to England.

James was already taking further advice.

Continues...

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Excerpted from King Charles I by Pauline Gregg Copyright © 1984 by Pauline Gregg. Excerpted by permission.
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