Personal relationships of James VI and I

From the age of thirteen until his death, the life of King James VI of Scotland and I of England (1566–1625) was characterised by close relationships with a series of male favourites.

Portraits of James and his favourites, L to R: James VI & I, Esme Stewart, Robert Carr, George Villiers.

The influence James' favourites had on politics, and the resentment at the wealth they acquired, became major political issues during his reign. The extent to which the King's relationships with the men was sexual was a topic of bawdy contemporary speculation.

James VI & I certainly enjoyed the company of handsome young men, sometimes shared his bed with his favourites and was often passionate in his expressions of love for them.[1] James was married to Anne of Denmark, with whom he fathered eight children. He railed fiercely against sodomy.[2]

Today, many historians and commentators affirm that – given the evidence – James's relationships with his favourites clearly were sexual. Others regard the evidence as more ambiguous, and needing to be understood in terms of 17th-century forms of masculinity which were very different to today's.

The question of James' sexuality might be considered of only prurient interest, and certainly less important than the political consequences of the power and status he granted his favourites.[3] However, particularly since the late twentieth century, historical analysis and commentary on James's personal life has raised important questions about how early modern same-sex relationships (whether sexual or friendship-based) were structured and understood, and the extent to which modern categories of sexuality can be applied to historical figures.

Views on James' sexuality

James adopted a severe stance towards sodomy in his book on kingship, Basilikón Dōron, and gave guidance to judges that pardons should not be given to such "horrible crimes." [2] In the late eighteenth century, Jeremy Bentham, in an unpublished manuscript, denounced James as a hypocrite for his crackdown on sodomy: "This must [...] seem rather extraordinary to those who have a notion that a pardon in this case is what he himself, had he been a subject, might have stood in need of."[4]

Views of historians, up to the late twentieth century, were biased by prevailing negative social attitudes towards same-sex relationships.[1] Many historians did not discuss, or discuss only obliquely, the clear fact that James' choice of favourites was rooted, at least in part, in same-sex attraction: for example, the 1885-1900 Dictionary of National Biography refers only (in the context of Carr) to "James's partiality to worthless Scotsmen, if only they were sprightly and active" and to his "inordinate fondness" for Villiers.[5]

By the second half of the twentieth centuries, the issue was discussed more openly though historians were still finding it impossible to shake off disapproving moralistic attitudes: the historian Donaldson wrote in 1971 that James's affair with Esme Stuart had "a physical, but not necessarily gross, side to it." (Donaldson is quoted in M. Young's 2012 account of the historiography in this area).[1] Some historians of this time advanced the surprising view that James's public displays of affection for his favourites were proof that there was not sexual activity in private.[6] Antonia Fraser's 1975 biography of the king takes an opposing and famously pragmatic view:

In sexual matters.. ..it is generally better to assume the obvious unless there is some very good reason to think otherwise.

— Antonia Fraser, 1975[3]

(Less widely cited is Fraser's next sentence, where she affirms that the matter is only of "academic" interest.)[3]

In recent decades, many historians and other commentators, particuarly from the LGBT+ community, have agreed with Fraser that the obvious, logical assumption from the weight of evidence is that the relationshps were sexual and have sought to identify the king as gay, homosexual or bisexual. However another significant group of historians argue that the evidence is more ambiguous and needs to be understood in terms of 17th-century forms of masculinity which were very different to today's.[7]

Relationships with women

Wife: Anne of Denmark
See also: Anne of Denmark § Relationship with James

James married Anne of Denmark in 1589 to establish a strong Protestant alliance in Continental Europe, a policy he continued by marrying his daughter to the future King of Bohemia. James was initially said to be infatuated with his wife and gallantly crossed the North Sea with a royal retinue to collect her after Anne's initial efforts to sail to England were thwarted by storms.[8]

Some years passed after the marriage before James and Anne's first child, Prince Henry, was born in 1594. In July 1592, James Halkerston was suspected of writing verses that suggested King James was homosexual and left his wife a virgin.[9] The claimed extra-marital attachment of the King to Anne Murray (see below) may have been promulgated to scotch such rumours.

The marriage later cooled and was marked by several marital frictions. Queen Anne was particularly upset with James placing the infant Prince Henry in the custody of John Erskine, Earl of Mar at Stirling Castle, in keeping with Scottish royal tradition.[10] In the course of the marriage, Anne's relationship with her husband alternated between affection and estrangement.[8] The two had 8 children with the last being born during 1607 although some sources cite that by 1606, they had already started living in separate establishments.[11] James lost interest in his wife and it was said that she led a sad, reclusive life afterward, appearing at court functions on occasion. Despite his neglect of Anne, James was affected by her death and was moved to compose a poem in her memory.[12]

'Mistress': Anne Murray

Between 1593 and 1595, James was romantically linked with Anne Murray, later Lady Glamis, whom he addressed in verse as "my mistress and my love" in a poem he wrote called Ane dreame on his Mistris the Lady Glammis.[13] She was the daughter of John Murray, 1st Earl of Tullibardine, master of the king's household.[14] Anne also had different names, particularly in official documents such as those that discussed her marriage to Lord Glamis. She was referred to as Agnes and Annas Murray of Tullibardine.[15]

Male favourites

Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox
Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, 1603–1609.

At the age of 13, James made his formal entry into Edinburgh. Upon arriving he met his first cousin, the Franco-Scottish lord Esmé Stewart, 6th Lord d'Aubigny, whom the Puritan leader Sir James Melville described as "of nature, upright, just, and gentle". Having arrived from France, Stewart was an exotic visitor who fascinated the young James.[16] The two became extremely close and it was said by an English observer that "from the time he was 14 years old and no more, that is, when the Lord Stuart came into Scotland [...] even then he began [...] to clasp some one in the embraces of his great love, above all others" and that James became "in such love with him as in the open sight of the people often he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him".

The King first made Aubigny a gentleman of the bedchamber. Later, he appointed him to the Privy Council and created him earl and finally duke of Lennox. In Presbyterian Scotland the thought of a Catholic duke irked many, and Lennox had to make a choice between his Catholic faith or his loyalty to James. In the end, Lennox chose James and the king taught him the doctrines of Calvinism. The Scottish Kirk remained suspicious of Lennox after his public conversion and took alarm when he had the earl of Morton tried and beheaded on charges of treason. The Scottish ministry was also warned that the duke sought to "draw the King to carnal lust".

In response the Scottish nobles plotted to oust Lennox. They did so by luring James to Ruthven Castle as a guest but then kept him as prisoner for ten months. The Lord Enterprisers forced him to banish Lennox. The duke journeyed back to France and kept a secret correspondence with James. Lennox in these letters says he gave up his family "to dedicate myself entirely to you"; he prayed to die for James to prove "the faithfulness which is engraved within my heart, which will last forever." The former duke wrote "Whatever might happen to me, I shall always be your faithful servant... you are alone in this world whom my heart is resolved to serve. And would to God that my breast might be split open so that it might be seen what is engraven therein."[17]

James was devastated by the loss of Lennox.[18] In his return to France, Lennox had met a frosty reception as an apostate Catholic. The Scottish nobles had thought that they would be proven right in their convictions that Lennox's conversion was artificial when he returned to France. Instead the former duke remained Presbyterian and died shortly after, leaving James his embalmed heart.[18] James had repeatedly vouched for Lennox's religious sincerity and memorialized him in a poem called Ane Tragedie of the Phoenix, which likened him to an exotic bird of unique beauty killed by envy.[18]

Richard Preston

Richard was born the third son of Richard Preston of Whitehill in Midlothian, near Edinburgh. His family was gentry of the Edinburgh area and owned Craigmillar Castle in the late 16th and early 17th century. His family placed Richard (the younger) as a page at the King's court in Edinburgh where he is mentioned in that capacity in 1591.[19]

Richard, the page, gained the king's special favour in the 1580s or 1590s after Lennox's departure. When James acceded the English throne as James I in 1603, Richard accompanied him to England and was knighted at the King's coronation in London on 25 July 1603 in the old elaborate ceremony that included the bathing of the new knight.[20] He then was made a groom of the privy chamber.[21] In 1607 Richard was appointed constable of Dingwall Castle in Scotland.[22] He bought the barony of Dingwall and on 8 June 1609 the King created him Lord Dingwall.[23] In London the King met in 1608 Robert Carr who became his favourite and seems to have supplanted Lord Dingwall, as he was now, in that role.

In 1609 Preston attended the Accession day tournament, and presented a pageant of an artificial elephant, designed by Inigo Jones, which made its way slowly around the tiltyard.[24][25]

Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset

A few years later after the controversy over his relationship with Lennox faded away he began a relationship with Robert Carr.[26] In 1607, at a royal jousting contest, the 20-year-old Carr, the son of Sir Thomas Carr or Kerr of Ferniehirst, was knocked from a horse and broke his leg. According to Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, James fell in love with the young man, and as the years progressed showered Carr with gifts.[27] Carr was made a gentleman of the bedchamber and he was noted for his handsome appearance as well as his limited intelligence; he was also made a Knight of the Garter, a Privy Counsellor and Viscount Rochester. His downfall came through Frances Howard, a beautiful young married woman. Upon Rochester's request, James stacked a court of bishops that would allow her to divorce her husband in order to marry Rochester. As a wedding present Rochester was created Earl of Somerset.

In 1615, James fell out with Somerset. In a letter James complained, among other matters, that Somerset had been "creeping back and withdrawing yourself from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary" and that he rebuked James "more sharply and bitterly than ever my master Buchanan durst do".[28]

At this point public scandal erupted when the underkeeper of the tower revealed that Somerset's new wife had poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury, his best friend who had opposed the marriage. Though Somerset refused to admit any guilt, his wife confessed, and both were sentenced to death. The King commuted the sentence. Nevertheless, they were imprisoned in the Tower for seven years, after which they were pardoned and allowed to retire to a country estate.[29]

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

The last of James's favourites was George Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire knight. They had met in 1614, around the same time that the situation with Somerset was deteriorating. Buckingham was described as exceptionally handsome, intelligent and honest. In 1615 James knighted him and 8 years later he was the first commoner in more than a century to be elevated to a dukedom – as Duke of Buckingham – although he had first been raised in sequence as a Knight of the Garter and Viscount Villiers, as Earl of Buckingham then Marquess of Buckingham. Restoration of Apethorpe Hall, undertaken 2004–2008, revealed a previously unknown passage linking the bedchambers of James and Villiers.[30]

The King was blunt and unashamed in his avowal of love for Buckingham and compared it to Jesus' love of John:

I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here, assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.

17th century commentators, such as poet Théophile de Viau wrote plainly about the king's relationship. In his poem, Au marquis du Boukinquan, de Viau wrote: "Apollo with his songs / debauched young Hyacinthus, [...] And it is well known that the king of England / fucks the Duke of Buckingham."[31][32]

Buckingham became good friends with James's wife Anne of Denmark; she addressed him in affectionate letters begging him to be "always true" to her husband. In a letter to James, Buckingham said "sir, all the way hither I entertained myself, your unworthy servant, with this dispute, whether you loved me now... better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog".[17] When James I died in March 1625, Buckingham was in France on a diplomatic mission but news of his death brought him to tears.[33]

References
  1. Young, M. (2012). "James VI and I: Time for a Reconsideration?". Journal of British Studies. 51: 540–567. doi:10.1086/664955.
  2. James singled out sodomy in a letter to Lord Burleigh giving directives that judges were to interpret the law broadly and were not to issue any pardons, saying that "no more colour may be left to judges to work upon their wits in that point."Sharpe, Kevin M. (2000). Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-century England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-66409-8.
  3. Fraser, Antonia (1975). King James VI of Scotland, I of England (biography). Random House. p. 126. In sexual matters, however, it is generally better to assume the obvious unless there is some very good reason to think otherwise. In any case, it is an academic argument, for the degree of their intimacy is less important than its political consequences.
  4. Bentham, Jeremy; Crompton, Louis (1978). "Offences Against One's Self". Journal of Homosexuality. 3 (4): 389–405, continued in v.4:1(1978). doi:10.1300/J082v03n04_07. PMID 353189.
  5. Gardiner, Samuel R. (1892). "James VI and I" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 29. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  6. Discussed in both Fraser (1975) and Young (2012) op. cit.
  7. Timothy Murphy, ed. (2013). Reader's Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies. Taylor & Francis. pp. 314–315. ISBN 978-1135942410.
  8. Croft, Pauline (2003). King James. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 24. ISBN 9780333613962.
  9. Roderick J. Lyall, 'James Halkerston', Julian Goodare & Alasdair A. MacDonald, Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Brill, 2008), p. 247.
  10. Croft, Pauline. King James, p.24, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2003); ISBN 0-333-61395-3
  11. Sanders, Margaret (2009). Intimate Letters of England's Queens. Gloucestershire: Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 9781848682887.
  12. Willson, David Harris (1956). King James VI & I (1963 ed.). London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-60572-0.
  13. Fischlin, Daniel; Fortier, Mark (2002). Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 175. ISBN 0814328776.
  14. . James I, "New poems by James I of England: from a hitherto unpublished manuscript," Edited by Allen F. Westcott, The Columbia University Press, 1911. Pages 78-80. Retrieved March 23, 2011
  15. Shire, Helena (2010). Song, Dance and Poetry of the Court of Scotland Under King James VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 193. ISBN 9780521071819.
  16. A Dictionary of British History, ed. John Ashton Cannon, Oxford University Press, 2009 ISBN 9780199550388
  17. Bergeron, David Moore (1999). King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire. University of Iowa Press. ISBN 978-0-87745-669-8.
  18. Crompton, Louis (2003). Homosexuality & Civilization. Boston: Belknap/Harvard University Press. pp. 381–388. ISBN 978-0-674-01197-7.
  19. Paul 1906, p. 121, line 11. "I. Richard Preston, third son of Richard Preston of Whitehill, was attached to the royal household, and in 1591 is styled 'page'."
  20. Cokayne 1890, p. 128, line 3. "... was made K.B. at his coronation, 25 July 1603 ..."
  21. Crawfurd 1716, p. 92. "He was educated at the Court, and being of an agreeable and winning Deportment, he soon grew into his Majesty's special favour, attaining first the honour of knighthood, and e're long was made one of the Grooms of the Bed Chamber."
  22. Paul 1908, p. 121, line 25. "... had the Constabulary of Dingwall bestowed on him 1607."
  23. Paul 1906, p. [https://archive.org/details/scotspeeragefoun03paul/page/121/.
  24. Butler 2008, p. 172.
  25. Birch & Williams 1848, p. 92. "... a pageant which was an elephant with a castle on its back; and it proved a right partus elephantis for it was long a coming; til the running was well entered into and was then as long a creeping about the tilt-yard, all which time the running was intermitted."
  26. Homosexuality & Civilization By Louis Crompton; p.386
  27. "The first of [his favorites] was Robert Carr, for whom the King acquired a peculiar affection while he was lying wounded from an accident at a tournament. Carr had been his page in Scotland, and the King, feeling a natural interest in him, visited him and fell in love with his beauty. [...] Already before the death of Cecil the presents he received to win the King's favour had made his fortune. His royal lover had made him Earl of Rochester and Knight of the Garter." A History of England By James Franck Bright; p.597
  28. Homosexuality & Civilization By Louis Crompton; p.387
  29. Hyde, H. Montgomery (1970), The Love That Dared not Speak its Name, Boston: Little, Brown, pp. 44, 143
  30. Graham, Fiona (5 June 2008). "To the manor bought". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 24 September 2008.
  31. Gaudiani, Claire Lynn (1981). The Cabaret poetry of Théophile de Viau: Texts and Traditions. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. pp. 103–104. ISBN 978-3-87808-892-9. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
  32. Norton, Rictor (8 January 2000). "Queen James and His Courtiers". Gay History and Literature. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
  33. "Croft, Pauline King James Page 128"

Further reading

  • Murphy, Timothy, ed. (2013). Reader's Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies. Taylor & Francis. pp. 314–15. ISBN 9781135942410., historiography.
  • Young, Michael B. (2000) King James and the History of Homosexuality. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-9693-1
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.