The Cradle King (25 page)

And did his reign from pole to pole extend

Had thought him happier if that Greek had penned

His worthy praise who traced the Trojan sack

Then all his acts that forth his fame did send

Or his triumphant trophies might him make.

Then what am I who on Pegasian back

Does flee amongs the nymphs’ immortal fair

For thou O Maitland does occasion take

Even by my verse to spread my name all where

    For what in barbarous lead I block and frames

    Thou learned in Minerva’s tongue proclaims.
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Despite this, it was reported that ‘His Majesty took little care for the loss of the Chancellor’. Whatever his personal attitude towards Maitland, James seemed to have little taste for the power of the Chancellorship, and was in no hurry to fill the vacant post. As he pointed out, he was damned whoever he appointed: if a nobleman, then the new Chancellor would very quickly ‘be better attended upon than the King himself’; if a commoner, then the new Chancellor would build a faction at court – Maitland, of course, had been a commoner.
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Over the next year the dominant court party emerged from a rare attempt on the part of the royal couple to manage their finances. In 1593, James had appointed a council to sort out his Queen’s accounts, a group that became known as the ‘Octavians’.
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Their endeavours were not in vain, and Anna was so impressed with their work that she recommended them to her husband. At New Year in 1596, she boastfully let James have a view of the 1000 Scottish pounds that the Octavians’ efforts had saved her. Handing over half of it to the King, she pointedly inquired as to when
his
Council would give as much. Stung into action, James dismissed his Treasurer, the Master of Glamis, and other Exchequer officials, and appointed the Octavians to sort out his finances on 9 January, allowing them control of all royal revenues and undertaking not to override their decisions, a tactic that effectively insulated James from any responsibility. This time, however, the Octavians had an impossible job on their hands. They suggested various schemes to reduce expenditure, but James’s hangers-on opposed them at every stage.
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From England, the factionalism at the Scottish court and within the royal marriage was viewed with dismay. Elizabeth wrote to Anna, and sent her messenger with a more important, lengthy verbal message giving the benefit of her opinion on evil counsellors. These evil counsellors were likely to be papists wanting to draw Anna away from her inherited Lutheranism – and it would be better if Elizabeth knew their names. Anna supplied only one name: it was Maitland who had talked her into trying to win back her son, and yes, he had tried to convert her. But now he was dead, and there was no one else; if such a seducer emerged, she would let Elizabeth know immediately.
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Elizabeth’s fears of Anna’s possible conversion to Catholicism were uttered more widely by those alarmed by what appeared to be a new trend towards the faith in James’s government. Although Prince Henry had been placed with the firmly Protestant Earl of Mar, the next three children (Elizabeth, Margaret and Charles) were given to guardians less staunch in their convictions;
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at the same time, Anna had taken as her confidante a known Catholic, Henrietta Gordon, Lady Huntly; and when James welcomed back into Scotland Huntly and Errol in the summer of 1596, there was an inevitable backlash from the Kirk. In September 1596, a delegation of ministers, led by Andrew Melvill and including his nephew James, were granted an audience with the King at Falkland. James Melvill commenced by informing the King that the commissioners of the General Assembly had just met in Cowper – at which point James broke in, angrily charging that such a meeting was held without a warrant, and was therefore seditious. This was too much for Andrew Melvill, who attacked the King ‘in so zealous, powerful and unresistable a manner’ that despite James’s ‘most crabbed and choleric manner’, Melvill ‘bore him down’. Calling him ‘God’s silly vessel’, Melvill took him by the sleeve, and harangued him: ‘Sir, as divers times before, so now again, I mon [must] tell you: there is two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the Kirk, whose subject King James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member!’

Worse was to come from the St Andrews minister David Black, who had become infamous for his attacks on Queen Elizabeth’s religious purity. In a sermon he now denounced the English Queen as an atheist, protesting that religion in England was an empty show, and claiming that the English bishops had persuaded the King of Scots to reintroduce an episcopal government in Scotland, against the terms of the Confession of Faith by which the Kirk was founded. Moreover, he claimed, James had allowed the return of the Catholic earls Errol and Huntly. ‘But what could be expected when Satan ruled in the court and in the Council, when judges and councillors were cormorants and men of no religion, when the Queen of Scotland was a woman for whom, for fashion’s sake, the clergy might pray but from whom no good could be hoped. Were not all kings Devil’s bairns?’ Called before the Privy Council, Black refused their jurisdiction, claiming only an ecclesiastical court could try him; his refusal was disseminated to every presbytery.

James was determined that Black would be punished, and refused to waiver. Edinburgh was soon in a state of crisis, with a campaign from the pulpits that ‘pressed forward and sounded mightily’ against the King and his counsellors. On 17 December, a sermon at St Giles’ used the story of the foiling of the evil counsellor Haman from the book of Esther to incite the congregation; the crowd became increasingly excited and leapt up shouting ‘Save yourselves! Armour, armour! Bills and axes!’ Running from the church, they seized arms, some going to the King in the Tolbooth, some to defend the ministers, shouting ‘Bring forth the wicked Haman!’ Through the intervention of the Provost, the riot quickly subsided, but James was furious. The following day the court moved to Linlithgow, from where the Privy Council declared that the riot had been an act of treason. James levied a force of Borders men, and forced Edinburgh to hand over 20,000 marks to keep the peace.
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The riots provided a neat excuse for James to impose new regulations on the Kirk. He gave himself the power to influence the location of General Assemblies, deliberately chose locations such as Perth, Montrose and Aberdeen, knowing that northern ministers were less supportive of Melvill than those in his strongholds of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Difficult ministers were called into James’s own cabinet and subjected to a barrage of threats, promises and bribes: James Melvill lamented, ‘Alas, where Christ guided before, the court began then to govern all.’ Concessions came from the General Assemblies in Perth and Dundee in early 1597: ministers would avoid political themes and attacks on the King in their sermons, unless he was informed first in private; presybteries would deal only with ecclesiastical affairs. In exchange, a commission was set up to advise the King on matters ecclesiastical, to the great suspicion of some Kirk men: James Melvill sneered that they were ‘the King’s led horse, and usurped boldly the power of the General Assemblies. They were as a wedge taken out of the Kirk to rend her with her own forces, and the very needle which drew in the thread of the bishops.’
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The commission did, however, propose that the Kirk should be directly represented in Parliament, instead of being a vociferous lobbying group. James compromised by suggesting that ministers could be appointed to vacant bishoprics, and that these new bishops might sit in Parliament, thus allowing the Kirk parliamentary representation while restoring the episcopacy. Calderwood was disgusted: this was ‘nothing better than that which the Grecians used for the overthrow of the ancient city and town of Troy: busking up a brave horse and … persuading them … to receive that in their honour and welfare which served for their utter wreck and destruction.’ Or as one old minister put it, ‘Busk, busk, busk him as bonnily as ye can, and bring him in as fairly as ye will, we see him well enough: we see the horns of his mitre.’
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James got his way, and the first three so-called ‘parliamentary bishops’ – of Ross, Caithness and Aberdeen – entered Parliament in 1600. The Kirk, sticking to their anti-episcopal line, refused to recognise them as bishops, and treated them as ministers instead.
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*   *   *

In the late 1590s, James set about consolidating his status as a learned king. The poetic experimentation that had preoccupied him in the early 1580s had now dwindled to a trickle of occasional pieces; the flush of religious commentary later in the decade had receded. Instead, he concentrated now on issues of greater political import. In 1597, his
Daemonologie,
probably composed around 1591, was finally published.
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Then, in 1598, he published his two most significant political prose works:
The Trew Law of Free Monarchies
and the
Basilikon Doron.

The Trew Law of Free Monarchies
was published anonymously but by the King’s printer Robert Waldegrave; it was quickly recognised as James’s work.
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The tract called for political principles, ‘true grounds’ with which to avoid the ‘endless calamities, miseries and confusions’ that Scotland had suffered. He had no intention, he declared, of ‘refuting the adversaries’, such as ‘seditious preachers in these days of whatsoever religion’. Instead to support his analysis of ‘the reciproc [sic] and mutual duty betwixt a free King and his natural subjects’, James turned to history, reason and above all scripture.
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One paragraph drawing on the Scriptures in particular lays out the basis of much of his belief-system and behaviour as King:

Kings are called Gods by the prophetical King David, because they sit upon God’s throne in the earth, and have the count of their administration to give unto him. Their office is
to minister justice and judgement to the people,
as the same David saith:
to advance the good, and punish the evil,
as he likewise saith:
to establish good laws to his people, and procure obedience to the same
as diverse good kings of Judah did:
to procure the peace of the people,
as the same David saith:
to decide all controversies that can arise among them,
as Solomon did:
to be the minister of God, to take vengeance upon them that do well, and as the minister of God, to take vengeance upon them that do evil,
as St Paul saith. And finally,
as a good pastor, to go out and in before his people,
as is said in the first of Samuel:
that through the prince’s prosperity, the people’s peace may be procured,
as Jeremy saith.
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Over the rest of his life, James was often to think, speak and write of himself as a Solomon or a David – and there were plenty of writers and preachers among his subjects who were willing to support him in the notion.

Basilikon Doron
was a much longer work, subtitled
Or His Maiesties Instrvctions to his Dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince.
Henry was four years old when James composed the tract in 1598; the King’s own, much amended draft survives in the British Library.
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The book’s function is set out in its opening sonnet:

Lo here (my son) a mirror vive and faire,

Which showeth the shadow of a worthy King.

Lo here a book, a pattern doth you bring

Which ye should press to follow mair and mair [more].

This trusty friend, the truth will never spare,

But give a good advice unto you here:

How it should be your chief and princely care,

To follow virtue, vice for to forbear.

And in this book your lesson will ye leare, [learn]

For guiding of your people great and small.

Then (as ye ought) give an attentive ear,

And panse [think] how ye these precepts practise shall.

    Your father bids you study here and read.

How to become a perfit King indeed.
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