Leanda Lisle - After Elizabeth - The Death of Elizabeth and the Coming of King James

Prince Henry, the first of James and Anna’s children, was born in February 1594 and soon after Anna had discovered that James intended for Henry to be raised at Stirling Castle, as he had been. It meant that if anything happened to James during Henry’s minority the Earl of Mar would become regent of Scotland instead of Anna, which was the norm in Europe. James was once overheard trying to explain to Anna that he was concerned that ‘if some faction got strong enough, she could not hinder his boy being used against him, as he himself had been against his unfortunate mother’. 41 Anna refused to accept this and pleaded with James to change his mind, reminding him how she had ‘left all her dear friends in Denmark to follow him’.

Anna usually got her way but on this James flatly refused to yield; he even gave written orders to Mar that he was to keep Prince Henry until he was eighteen unless he himself instructed otherwise. 42 In 1596 Anna gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, who was sent to be raised by Lord and Lady Livingstone, along with her younger sister, Margaret, who died at the age of two. James and Anna’s second son, Charles, was born in 1600 and subsequently placed with Lord Fyvie. In May 1602 a third son, Robert, followed but died four months later. These sad separations may have served to sour the royal marriage, but it was, above all, Anna’s lasting hatred for the Mar family that explains her reaction to that mysterious episode in Scottish history, the Gowrie affair: an episode that concluded in the destruction of all significant opposition to James and the Mar faction.

By the autumn of 1599 James had become desperately worried that he was about to lose his chance of inheriting Elizabeth’s throne. His principal supporter at Elizabeth’s court, Essex, was under house arrest. Essex’s followers had warned him that Sir Robert Cecil would destroy his claim to the succession once Essex was out of the way, and there was evidence to support their view. In 1598 an English Catholic called Valentine Thomas had hinted in a confession that King James of Scotland had asked him to assassinate the Queen. The 1585 statute precluding those who plotted against Elizabeth from the succession was still extant and James was convinced that Cecil was behind Thomas’s confession, just as Lord Burghley had been behind the statute, which had been aimed at his mother. Elizabeth assured James that she did not believe Thomas, but when she ignored his demands for a public statement of his innocence, James listened to Essex’s supporters in their call for him to raise an army to back plans to overthrow the Queen.

That October James told his parliament that he ‘was not certain how soon he should have to use arms but whenever it should be, he knew his right and would venture crown and all for it’. 43 It had proved difficult, however, to raise the money for such an army. James’s financial situation, which had begun to improve three years earlier, was once again in desperate straits. *

James was forced to raise new taxes and debase the coinage, but there was a danger that the Kirk would move to take advantage of growing public anger. James had infuriated the Kirk with plans to reintroduce episcopacy – an answer to Jesuit accusation that he would introduce a presbytery to England. It had also learnt that his Basilikon Doron raged about the power they had wielded in his youth. In November 1599 the Master of Gray wrote to Cecil that between the anger of the poor and that of the Kirk ‘there was in men’s breasts such a desire of reformation that nothing lacked save one gallant man for uniting grieved minds’. 44 The ministers had already settled on the twenty-two-year-old John Ruthven, third Earl of Gowrie, and the minister Robert Bruce was sent to fetch him from France where he was studying. By this time James appeared to have forgiven the Ruthven family for their role in the attack on his mother during Riccio’s murder and for the exile of his beloved Lennox. Several of the children of the first Earl of Gowrie, who led the Ruthven raid, were now in the royal household and Anna counted three of the sisters of the third Earl amongst her ladies-in-waiting. † She was especially fond of the eldest, Lady Beatrice, and their brother, nineteen-year-old Alexander, was a favourite of both James and Anna’s. Gowrie had, however, willingly agreed to the Kirk’s request, first travelling to England, where he arrived at Elizabeth’s court on 3 April 1600.

The English ambassador to Paris had written a ringing commendation of Gowrie for Cecil. He was ‘exceedingly well affected both to the common cause of religion and particularly to her majesty’, and, ‘one of whom there may be exceedingly good use made’. Gowrie had spent time in secret conferences with both the Queen and Cecil before arriving back in Edinburgh in May 1600. A huge crowd of supporters welcomed him, but James, watching, was overheard making the observation that there had been a still larger crowd for the execution of Gowrie’s father. Within three months Gowrie was dead, slain in his own house by the King’s men.

James’s explanation of these deaths was almost literally unbelievable. He insisted that on 5 August 1600 Alexander Ruthven had lured him from a day’s hunting to Gowrie House in Perth, claiming his brother had captured a man carrying a large amount of foreign gold. As the rest of the hunting party ate their dinner with Gowrie, Alexander had tricked James into following him until he came to a room ‘where a man was, which the King thought had been the man had kept the treasure’. 45 Alexander then grabbed James and drew his dagger saying that James had killed his father and now he would kill him. James pleaded for his life, but Alexander replied that words could not save him and ordered the man in the room to kill him. The man had seemed unwilling and a struggle followed during which James was spotted screaming for help at the window. His men dashed to his aid and killed first Alexander and then Gowrie as he fought to revenge his brother.

James ordered the Kirk’s five Edinburgh ministers to repeat this story to their congregations so that they might thank God for his deliverance, but they refused. Robert Bruce, the minister who had crowned Anna, and fetched Gowrie from France, made it clear he believed James had plotted to kill the brothers, either because of his hatred for the family, or because Anna was having an affair with one of them (there was talk that she had a flirtation with Alexander). James’s reply to these accusations was blunt and compelling: ‘I see Mr Robert,’ he told Bruce, ‘that ye would make me a murderer. It is known very well that I was never blood-thirsty. If I would have taken lives, I had causes enough; I need not to hazard myself so.’ 46 James was certainly not the kind of man to place himself in the middle of a violent situation.

When the ministers persisted in refusing to accept James’s story he had them replaced: four later capitulated and were forced to tour the country offering their humble submission in public places whilst the fifth, Robert Bruce, refused and was sent into exile. The Kirk was informed that thereafter, 5 August was to be celebrated as a national holiday with special services to give thanks for the King’s survival.

At home and abroad, however, people remained unconvinced by James’s version of events. The English ambassador Sir William Bowes thought that James, finding himself alone with Alexander – ‘a learned, sweet and artless young gentleman’ – had made some mention of the boy’s father ‘whereat the youth showed a grieved and expostulatory countenance’. James had taken fright and shouted for help, and after the boy was killed, he made up his story to conceal his embarrassment. 47 More recent theories have suggested that Alexander offered James sexual favours or the cancellation of a debt to lure him from his protectors and kidnap him. When James had realised what was happening he shouted in terror that he was being murdered. The Kirk certainly had strong motives for supporting another kidnap attempt and there was a suggestion at the time that England was involved * . Gowrie’s servants were, however, severely tortured in an effort to uncover a conspiracy and all denied any knowledge of one. The man whom James had seen in the tower swore he had just been told to go there and wait upon events. An explanation for this comes from Gowrie’s tutor, William Rynd, who reported that he had once heard young Gowrie say that the best way for a man to keep a plot secret was to keep its existence to himself. But it is possible that James did indeed plot against the Ruthvens. In London in the winter of 1602 a character named Francis Mowbray appeared claiming that he had evidence of the Ruthvens’ innocence. He was handed over to James that January and died in February 1603 having fallen, it was reported, from the window of his cell in an escape attempt.