After Elizabeth: The Death of Elizabeth and the Coming of King James. Leanda Lisle de

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СКАЧАТЬ noblemen demanding vengeance, James immediately cut all contact with England. South of the border, meanwhile, Elizabeth went into mourning; Burghley was banned from her presence and Sir William Davison, who had delivered the death warrant, was thrown into the Tower. Elizabeth then sent her cousin Sir Robert Carey to Scotland with a letter in which she swore that she had signed Mary’s death warrant only on the understanding that it would be put into effect in the event of the arrival of an invasion force. But Carey was stopped at the Scottish border and was forced to wait for days before James agreed to see him.

      The storm did pass, however, as Elizabeth and James knew it would. James accepted Elizabeth’s story, with English money sweetening the pill. Elizabeth for her part forgave Burghley, but not Davison, whom she made the scapegoat for what had occurred.

      James seized the opportunity offered by Mary’s death to heal the divisions in Scotland. Thereafter he had rewarded and protected his mother’s servants and in the Basilikon Doron James advised his son that he had found those who served his mother amongst his most loyal subjects.²⁸ It was a lesson he would carry with him to England.

      James had chosen the future Queen of Scots and England with care. In 1589 Anna was a Protestant princess, with a generous dowry comprising £150,000 and various territories including the Orkney and Shetland Isles pawned to Scotland in the previous century. A miniature had also shown the fourteen-year-old to be very pretty, with fair hair and ivory skin. There had been an exchange of letters in French during which the lonely James fell so in love with his future companion that when the ship bringing her to Scotland was caught in storms and forced to head to Norway, he set sail to fetch her, committing ‘himself and his hopes Leander-like to the waves of the ocean, all for his beloved Hero’s sake’.

      As soon as he arrived in Norway, James had made his way along the coast by ship and horse until he reached Oslo and the bishop’s palace. There he dashed to see Anna ‘with boots and all’. The minister David Lindsay, who was with James, declared her ‘a princess both godly and beautiful’. Anna was tall for her age with a determined set to her chin, and James was immediately ‘minded to give the Queen a kiss after the Scottish fashion, which the Queen refused as not being the form of her country; but after a few words privily spoken between his majesty and her, familiarity ensued’.²⁹ The royal couple were married the following Sunday before travelling to Denmark to enjoy a second wedding and several months of honeymooning amongst Anna’s relatives. It was here, amidst the rich and sophisticated Danish court, that James was introduced to the modish European theories on witchcraft he later expounded in his Daemonologie, a treatise he published in support of the persecution of witches.

      The Danish admiral who had escorted Anna to Norway had blamed the storms on the wife of a Copenhagen burgess with whom he had quarrelled. She confessed under torture that she was a witch and was burnt alive in September 1590 along with several others whom she had named. The Kirk had long been obsessed with witchcraft, but they had been unable to persuade James to take an interest in it until he returned from Denmark. Investigations however, now lead to the unmasking of a coven in Berwick which, it was claimed, had plotted to kill the King. James attended the trials and was astonished to hear the accused witches describe what he believed to be private conversations he had had with Anna in Norway. The first of the great waves of witch killing in Scotland had soon followed.

      Anna had also found herself subject to the Kirk’s disapproval, with her Lutheran faith proving to be an early source of friction. Even her coronation as Queen of Scotland proved a controversial affair. James’s coronation had been the first Protestant coronation in Scotland, but it was rushed and had kept many Catholic features. Anna’s offered an opportunity to design a more purely Protestant ceremony and the ministers of the Kirk were anxious to get rid of the anointing, which they condemned as a ‘Jewish’ ritual. James was equally determined to keep it since it reflected his view that kings drew their rights from God and not the people. When he threatened to ask one of his remaining bishops to carry it out they gave way, but tensions remained when the coronation took place in the Abbey church of Holyrood on 17 May 1590.

      The ceremony began with a grand procession of trumpeters and nobles. James followed, dressed in deep red, with five earls carrying his long train. Behind them came Anna. She joined James on a throne placed on a raised platform. Hymns were sung and, later, after a short oration by the minister Robert Bruce, the moment came for the anointing.³⁰ A witness recorded that ‘the Countess of Mar went up to the queen and bared a little of the queens right arm and shoulder. Robert Bruce immediately poured the queen’s oil onto her bare arm and shoulder’. Anna was then taken away and dressed in new robes of red velvet and white Spanish taffeta before being returned to her seat. ‘Silence was called for. Then his majesty had the crown delivered to her … Immediately afterwards his majesty delivered the sceptre to Robert Bruce that he might pass it to the queen.’ As he did so he acknowledged Anna as queen and pledged obedience, but his speech concluded, ‘we crave from your majesty the confession of the faith and religion which we profess’. Anna had been promised the free exercise of her Lutheran faith, but from that moment it was apparent that she would be pressured into accepting the lower church Protestantism of Scottish Calvinism.³¹ Anna, however, proved to be very much her own woman.

The Duc de Sully described Anna’s character as ‘quite the reverse of her husband’s; she was naturally bold and enterprising; she loved pomp and grandeur, tumult and intrigue’.³² Even at just fifteen and unable to speak Scots,^* Anna had made her presence felt. She had been raised in one of the most prestigious kingdoms in Europe and she encouraged a new formality at James’s court. ‘Things are beginning to be strangely altered,’ it was reported; ‘Our Queen carries a marvellous gravity, which, with the reserve of her national manners, contrary to the humour of our people, has banished all our ladies clean from her.’³³ Anna also made it plain that she enjoyed traditional courtly pursuits and she quickly earned herself the sobriquet the ‘dancing queen’, as well as the anger of the Kirk, who condemned her ‘night waking and balling’.³⁴

      James, however, found that Anna had a warm and generous temperament and the early years of the marriage were happy ones, with Anna joining him hunting and him indulging her love of fashion and jewellery. In January 1603, her wardrobe included gold on peach gowns with silver sleeves and her hair was habitually adorned with Scottish pearls strung on coronets worn on the back of the head. Every New Year, James added new jewels to the collection of ‘my dearest bedfellow’: necklaces fringed with diamond drops, jewelled flower and butterfly brooches and a large number of diamond ciphers. Her favourite was A for Anna – the name she always used, although James preferred to call her ‘my Annie’.³⁵ She quickly learned to write as well as speak Scots and by the time she was eighteen she was also politically active. A member of the Mar family later complained that Anna’s friends ‘generally happened to be of a contrary party to those whom the King thought his faithfulest friends’. James, however, recognised that she was uniquely placed to intercede for those who felt cut off from royal favour and he demonstrated that he appreciated her role by listening to, if not always agreeing with, her opinions.³⁶

      Gradually it was noticed that Anna had become close to her French-educated courtiers: she had depended on them for conversation before she learnt Scots and she appreciated their refinements, as did James. Many were Catholic and, although Anna had sworn an oath at her coronation to ‘work against all popish superstition’, she was reported to be leaning towards Catholicism as early 1593.³⁷ СКАЧАТЬ