After Elizabeth: The Death of Elizabeth and the Coming of King James

I long to see the execution of the last edict against [the priests], not that thereby I wish to have their heads divided from their bodies but that I would be glad to have both their heads and their bodies separated from this whole land, and safely transported beyond the seas, where they may freely glut themselves on their imagined Gods.

James explained that he was not interested in ‘the distinction in their ranks, I mean betwixt the Jesuits and the secular priests’. Both were subject to the Pope, he pointed out, arguing that if the secular priests appeared harmless it actually made them more dangerous.80

On 20 January 1603 the Spanish Council finally submitted their recommendations on the succession issue to Philip III. They suggested that an English candidate should be chosen because it would satisfy the ‘universal desire of all men to have a King of their own nation … whilst the King of France will have reason to be satisfied, and to refrain from helping the King of Scotland, as it cannot suit him for Scotland and England to be reunited’. The Marquis de Poza added that if the English could not agree on a Catholic candidate ‘it would be better to have any heretic there rather than the King of Scotland’. The Count de Olivares agreed:

the worst solution of the question for us may be regarded as the succession of the King of Scotland. He is not only personally to be distrusted, but the union of two kingdoms, and above all the increment of England … with the naval forces she possesses, would be a standing danger to your Majesty in a vital point, namely the navigation to both Indies. To this must be added the hatred which has always existed between the crowns of Spain and Scotland and the old friendship of the latter with France.

The Council noted that there was a faction within the curia that believed James might be converted. It recommended that English Catholics might be informed that the truth was otherwise. They pointed out that James was notoriously dishonest and Henri IV’s ambassador was complaining that it was being made difficult for him to hear mass in Edinburgh. Furthermore: ‘There is a strong belief that he consented to the killing of his mother, and at least he manifested no sorrow or resentment at it.’81 They advised that their new candidate should support religious toleration for Protestants and observed that Catholics and Protestants shared ‘a common ground of agreement … their hatred of the Scottish domination’, and concluded that ‘the greatest aid to success will be … the liberal promises made to Catholics and heretics, almost without distinction, particularly to other claimants and their principal supporters, who should be given estates, incomes, offices, grants, privileges, and exemptions, almost, indeed, sharing the crown amongst them’ – as James was already doing.

The Council then emphasised to Philip that the means of approaching France had to be decided immediately, ‘in case the Queen dies before we are fully prepared. If this should happen we should not only be confronted with the evils already set forth, but the Catholics, who have placed their trust in your Majesty, will be handed over to the hangman and religion will receive its death blow’.82 Orders were made ‘that the building and fitting out of high ships should be continued with high speed, and also that the [military] efforts already recommended to be made in Flanders should proceed …’

News of a build-up of Spanish forces had already reached England. On 17 January, an English courtier wrote to a friend that a former prisoner in Spain had described military preparations and that the Queen’s ships had captured several vessels heading to Spain laden ‘with arms and munitions’.83

There was also shocking news about Arbella Stuart emerging at court. That Christmas she had at last attempted to escape from her grandmother’s house, Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. It was said that she had planned a marriage with Edward Seymour, the senior grandson of the Earl of Hertford and Catherine Grey. Hertford had betrayed her plan and Cecil had tried to assure James that, as far as he knew, Arbella was no Catholic, just a lonely spinster. Courtiers in England now anxiously prepared for whatever violence lay ahead. Northumberland added fifty-three war horses to his stables. The Earl of Hertford reinforced the gateways to his house and erected defensive structures. Bess of Hardwick’s elder son, Henry Cavendish, began stocking Chatsworth with new pikes and other arms.84 Cecil, meanwhile, busily began shoring up his personal financial position. Even the prospect of a peaceful Stuart inheritance did not make his future secure. James might sack or demote him after he had served his purpose and if that occurred he would be brought down by the weight of his debts. The building of his new grandiose palace on the Strand had almost bankrupt him. Harington had heard a rumour in the summer that Cecil was being forced to sell Theobalds, the fabulous palace in Hertfordshire that his father had left him. Cecil denied it, but the Secretary of State was in a delicate position and the easiest way for him to make money was to take it from the crown.

Cecil had never been above making money from Elizabeth in morally dubious ways: when he offered his ship the True Love for an official expedition to the Azores in 1597 he had charged the Queen twice for the victuals. He now sold her his unprofitable estates for £5,200 and acquired the valuable royal Great and Little Parks of Brigstock in Northamptonshire behind the back of Elizabeth’s cousin and Lord Chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, the lessee. His action, he hoped, would offer some security of income, whatever lay ahead.

As James looked on watchfully from Scotland the final duel between Cecil and Persons for the English crown was about to begin.

* The Treaty of Berwick, signed in July 1586, entitled James to an annual pension of £4,000; James seems to have interpreted it as recognition of his claim to the English throne.

* The dialect of northern English spoken in the south and north-east of Scotland. This was not the uneducated brogue some English appeared to think, but rather the language of some of the most beautiful poetry of the day.

* The improvement followed the employment of a committee of eight Exchequer auditors known as the Octavians. They had taken control of all areas of royal finance and reduced James’s handouts to courtiers. A group of disappointed courtiers had, unsurprisingly, united in determination to get rid of them and James had eventually done so – but for a price. The legislation he had sought to encourage the resolution of feuds through the royal courts was passed in June 1598 and with it the tradition of the feud began to die out.

† John Gowrie’s elder brother, James, the second Earl, died in 1588.

* It is notable that one of Gowrie’s first actions in Scotland had been to oppose James’s proposal to raise the taxes to pay for an army in the Scots parliament.

* The latter was to be made Lord of Kinloss on 22 February 1603, a mark of his continued importance.

* The origin of Shrewsbury and Stanhope’s enmity was a long-running dispute over whether the Stanhopes had a right to build a weir on the River Trent. Such questions were considered matters of honour as they reflected on a family’s status within their county and the argument had run to bloodshed on more than one occasion. The most recent incident had taken place in 1599. Stanhope and a band of twenty armed and mounted men had attacked Mary Shrewsbury’s favourite brother, Charles Cavendish, his two attendants and his page. Cavendish and his men had fought off Stanhope’s party, killing two or three of their assailants and wounding two others, but Cavendish had been left injured with a bullet in the thigh. Even in Elizabethan England, where duels and brawls were commonplace, such an incident was scandalous, but the hatred it created clearly had its uses to Cecil.