James I’s Tumultuous First Year as King: Plague, Conspiracy and Catholicism

By Ben Norman

This is the story of a crucial year in the history of England, brimming with great political and social upheaval: the year 1603.

1603 was a time of last goodbyes and new beginnings; of waning customs and fresh political and constitutional visions. It saw an aged queen die and a king from the far north rise as sovereign over a foreign nation. It also witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of bubonic plague, which began in London and spread indiscriminately through the provinces, killing up to 30,000 people.

Catholicism was a second major disease doing the rounds in 1603. Its presence would lead to an attempt to dethrone King James I in the very first months of his reign, culminating in a trial staged at Winchester Castle in November. One of the candidates the conspirators had in mind to replace him was the would-be queen Lady Arbella Stuart. Indeed, Arbella would bring her own dramas to an already crowded and politically and socially charged year.

The present work considers the entirety of the year 1603 in England, from January to December. In this same spirit, it also pays attention to the lives of ordinary men and women, as well as the lives of the great and powerful of the land. How aware were so-called common folk of the significant national episodes playing out around them? Did they even care?

The answers are both fascinating and unexpected, and raise important questions about the interrelationship between the ordinary and the extraordinary in seventeenth-century England.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Feb 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9781399057189

Ben Norman

Ben Norman grew up in South Cambridgeshire, in a 700-year-old farmhouse that was supposedly visited by Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century. He has always found the past a fascinating place, with a particular interest in the strange but familiar world of early modern England, and holds a master’s degree in Early Modern History from the University of York, for which he achieved a distinction. When not immersed in history Ben enjoys writing fiction, spending days doing absolutely nothing, and indulging in his favourite science fiction film franchise. He currently lives and works in York.

Book preview

Preface

This book has providentially grown in significance since it was first dreamt up in 2020. For, just as England was grieving for a certain Queen Elizabeth back in 1603, the country is now coming to terms with the loss of another Queen Elizabeth some 420 years later. Both monarchs, Elizabeth Tudor and Elizabeth Windsor, reigned for extraordinarily long periods in their respective lifetimes, presiding over decades of great change and social development. As a consequence, each woman’s eventual death necessarily heralded a new age in England – of hope, of anticipation, of fresh beginnings, but also of strangeness, of disorientation and of uncertainty over the road ahead. ‘The name of king was very strange to them,’ a seventeenth-century chronicler wrote astutely of the English people in 1603, ‘being full fifty years since there was a king in England.’ No doubt there are many in Britain and in the Commonwealth who feel the same in the early 2020s.

History has a curious way of repeating itself.

Introduction

This is the story of 1603 in England.

It was, to be sure, a time of great political and social upheaval for the nation. In this year, the old met the new, the defiant met the revolutionary, the sick met the ailing, and the living – unfortunately – met the dead.

Most significantly, Queen Elizabeth I, the indomitable custodian of the Tudor crown, died in March. Such a mammoth event set off a chain reaction in the country, culminating in the arrival of a Scottish sovereign and his family to London and the uneasy coming together of two very different kingdoms. King James VI of Scotland took on the title of King James I of England almost overnight. Of course, the emergence of a foreign prince in a foreign land brought with it countless complications and disagreements from the very beginning. Perhaps the worst of these early setbacks was to come to light in the summer months, when a plot to dethrone James and to reinstate Catholicism was foiled by the king’s ministers, and the participants imprisoned indefinitely. Theirs was to be a drama that lasted for most of the rest of the year.

On top of the Scottish succession, there was also a very serious outbreak of plague in England in the second half of 1603. While London was hit particularly badly during this epidemic, it would appear that most English counties in fact would suffer the effects of the disease as the summer sun gave way to autumnal and then wintry skies. A combination of modern estimates and contemporary statistics suggest that, in the capital alone, over 30,000 had died of plague by the end of December. The esquire Walter Yonge, resident of Devon, later described the contagion as ‘the greatest pestilence in London that ever was heard of or known by any living man’.¹

This book charts the year 1603 in England from beginning to end, from the earliest days of January through to the quieter, concluding weeks of December. Where it markedly departs from other works is that, as well as following in the footsteps of the great and good of the land, such as members of the royal family and courtiers with significant connections and influence, it also considers the activities and movements of so-called ordinary men and women. As the Stuart succession unfolded and plague ravaged London and the provinces, what were these people doing? Were any of them caught up in the national dramas of 1603, or did they simply carry on leading their ordinary lives, oblivious to it all? Certainly, in the case of plague, it is obvious that everybody was affected to some degree by the disaster, be they rich or poor, distinguished or obscure, noble or common. When it comes to the events of the succession, however, the answer is not quite so clear-cut. As will be discovered over the succeeding pages, there were indeed members of the general population who found themselves involved in King James’s inheritance of the English throne in some form, together with the associated issues that came with it. For countless others, though, it was business as usual across the twelve months.

In short, it is hoped that this work crafts a broader, more inclusive, more reflective narrative of the year 1603, which takes into account the full spectrum of English society. To achieve such a goal, many different primary sources have been consulted capturing a wide range of individuals, from mere beggars wandering the streets to the most prestigious and richest noblemen of the realm. These sources include diaries, letters, annals, court records, parish registers, royal proclamations, state papers, ambassadorial correspondences and both church and household accounts.

Without further ado, let us travel back to the start of this extraordinary, but perhaps for some relatively ordinary, year, to the first few days of January 1603. All was not well in the quiet village of Billingham…

Chapter One

January

‘The badness of the weather’

The year 1603 dawned with a fight in the village of Billingham, County Durham.

On 10 January, three bailiffs, sent out into the cold countryside by the sheriff of Durham, arrived amongst the small collection of smoking, thatched houses to arrest a man named John Bainbrigg for contempt of court. All being well, the sheriff planned to have Bainbrigg safely ferried down to Westminster to answer for his supposed delinquency in time for early February. John Harrison, Christopher Skirrawe and Gregory Mayson, the aforementioned bailiffs, seemed to find the accused with relative ease once they had entered the humble settlement of Billingham, initially arresting their target with little to no resistance. It was only when they informed Bainbrigg that he would be handed over for immediate transportation to London that the sheriff ’s men found themselves in trouble. Local men and women, incensed by the news that their kinsman and neighbour was to be hauled off to the distant capital to face the courts, proceeded to rise up to defend him. In ‘warlike fashion’, they attacked the bailiffs from all sides. A woman by the name of Alice Marshell kicked off the unexpected scuffle by hitting Harrison on the right side of his head with a bunch of keys, drawing blood. She was then joined by her husband, William, and another Bainbrigg, Robert, who together beat Harrison and Skirrawe relentlessly until they could barely stand. Having weakened the bailiffs to the point of endangering their lives, the mob took its chance to rescue John Bainbrigg from his objectionable fate. In no time, the assailing villagers had succeeded in freeing their wanted comrade, allowing John to escape and go on the run.¹

Elsewhere in England, 1603 began rather more mundanely. The court of quarter sessions convened at Chester on 11 January, as it did four times annually to attend to the humdrum business of the local area. A list of orders was presented for information, each one carefully worded and authoritatively crafted, reflecting the encouraging competence of local government in the early seventeenth century. Within these orders, the constables of Chester were instructed to search out and apprehend vagabonds on a weekly basis; uncover the playing of illicit games at suspect addresses, including cards, dice and tables; hunt down and bring to justice those miscreants who feasted at unacceptable hours of the night; and present to the court any who dared to sell their wares on the Sabbath day. If the constables did not perform their roles adequately, they would face imprisonment themselves.²

At Groton Manor in Suffolk, meanwhile, all was routine for the landowner, local official and son of the late Steward of the Clothworkers’ Company of London, Adam Winthrop. On 4 January, he took his horse out on a pleasant New Year’s ride from Groton to Springfield. Two days later, the gentleman dined at Danbury Place in Essex with the aristocrat Humphrey Mildmay, returning home the following day. On the tenth of the month, Winthrop dined out again in the company of an acquaintance called Dr Johanes, this time at his brother Snelling’s.³

Beyond the Scottish border, 103 miles from Durham, 191 miles from the court at Chester, and 316 miles from Groton Manor in Suffolk, King James VI of Scotland was preparing for a duel in early January. Payments were made in Edinburgh at this time for a selection of swords and daggers, which were to be employed by the Scotsman Francis Mowbray and the Italian fencer Daniel Archdeacon – the men who would be fighting each other in a trial by combat at the Palace of Holyroodhouse on 5 January. To that end, the king had also charged his master wright, James Murray, with erecting a stage for the contest to be held on.⁴ The duel in question found its origins in the treasonous intentions of Francis Mowbray. Son to the Laird of Barnbougle Castle near Queensferry, and a frequenter of the court of Isabella Clara Eugenia in Brussels, Francis was accused in October 1602 of plotting to murder the Scottish sovereign. Daniel Archdeacon was his outspoken accuser. The native of Piedmont in Italy was living in London at the time, which allowed the remarkable allegation to quickly come to the attention of England’s incumbent queen, Queen Elizabeth I, and her circle of trusted privy councillors. Both men were eventually sent northwards to Scotland to be dealt with by the law there. Mowbray denied vehemently that he had ever conspired to terminate James’s life, and with little other evidence to act on, save for Archdeacon’s claim, it was decided that the truth of the matter should be attained through the time-honoured use of arms. If Mowbray defeated his opponent at Holyroodhouse, he would at once be cleared of all charges. With swords, daggers and a stage at the ready, the two combatants were perhaps hours away from drawing their weapons on each other before word reached the Scottish court that Mowbray’s guilt could in fact be proven. The duel was therefore called off.⁵

James VI had been king of Scotland for over thirty-five years by the time of Francis Mowbray and Daniel Archdeacon’s aborted encounter in January 1603. He had ascended the throne as an infant, being barely 13 months old on his coronation day at the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling on 29 July 1567. The prematurity of James’s accession came as a result of the forced abdication of his mother, Mary Stuart (more commonly known as Mary, Queen of Scots), on 24 July 1567, in favour of her only son. Mary had become distinctly unpopular in Scotland in the years preceding her removal from the throne, enhanced by a series of political moves that had enraged certain zealous members of the Scottish nobility. Much to the disquiet of many a Scottish Catholic, the queen had chosen to fill her privy council with prominent Protestants upon her return to Scotland from France; however, Mary’s ultimate undoing was her brazen decision to marry the man who was suspected of murdering her first husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

Darnley, father to James VI, died following a succession of reported explosions at Kirk o’ Field in Edinburgh on the night of 10 February 1567, where he had been staying to recover from an illness. Although it is not known whether the detonations themselves were the cause of this young man’s death, what is known for certain is that his body was found in a nearby orchard alongside that of his servant, face up and naked from the waist down, with a hand covering his genitals. The blame for this tragedy was laid firmly on James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, in the days and weeks that followed, though he would later be acquitted of the charge. Queen Mary’s marriage to Bothwell soon afterwards could not be so easily dismissed. Tensions between the sovereign and her nobles became so heightened that Mary and Bothwell resorted to raising an army and marching on their aristocratic foes at Carberry Hill, which ended in the queen’s defeat and imprisonment at Lochleven Castle. In 1568, she escaped the fortress and fled to England.

James was entrusted to the care of the Earl and Countess of Mar as an infant sovereign, within the relatively secure precincts of Stirling Castle, where he was to be brought up a devout Protestant. Four regents governed Scotland during the king’s minority, stretching from 1567 until the proclamation of James’s theoretical ‘acceptance of the government’ on 12 March 1578. The first of these regents, James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, was named so on 22 August 1567. As an illegitimate son of James V of Scotland, he was the Queen of Scots’ half-brother, being appointed by her (though involuntarily, while a prisoner) to rule in her young son’s stead. Stewart’s tenure came to an end abruptly and with bloody fury in January 1570, when he was assassinated in Linlithgow by a supporter of Mary Stuart’s right to rule in Scotland. As a consequence, King James’s paternal grandfather, another Stewart, the 4th Earl of Lennox, assumed the role of regent in his place. This man was also to fall victim to the tide of loyalty being shown to the king’s absent mother in the later sixteenth century. The 5-year-old James lost his second regent during a surprise raid on the town of Stirling in September 1571, orchestrated again by a determined band of the ex-queen’s followers, with Lennox’s body reportedly in a very bad way indeed when it was eventually dragged into the depths of the castle.

The third regent chosen to rule on James’s behalf was his own foster father, John Erskine, 1st Earl of Mar. Erskine appeared to die a natural death on 28 October 1572, apparently suffering from a ‘vehement sickness’ at the time of his decease. Yet a few suspicious minds at the Scottish court were inclined to blame foul play and poison instead. Indeed, one commentator wrote afterwards of the event, ‘some of [Erskine’s] friends and the vulgar people spoke and suspected that he had gotten wrong’.⁶ The man popularly believed to have brought about the demise of this penultimate regent – although he almost certainly did not have a hand in it – was the young king’s fourth and final regent, James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton. Regent Morton’s tenure was considerably longer than those of his three predecessors. Known for being stern and merciless when it came to the execution of power, James Douglas was an aged nobleman who commanded respect from his contemporaries at court, and particularly from the young king himself. He was eventually executed in 1581 by means of an early form of the guillotine, but not before he had made his mark on the political arena of sixteenth-century Scotland.

While his four ill-fated regents, one after the other, entered and exited the national stage, James enjoyed a privileged and uninterrupted education behind closed doors. The king’s senior tutor, George Buchanan, was one of Scotland’s most learned humanists, his great mind bursting with matchless knowledge of classical and modern literature, history and royal protocol. Buchanan had a reputation that extended far beyond the shorelines of Scotland and England, as Sir James Melville was to note with a tone of measured admiration in his memoirs. ‘[He was] a man of notable qualities for his learning and knowledge in Latin poesie,’ he wrote, ‘much made accompt of in other countries, pleasant in company, rehearsing at all occasions moralities short and forceful.’⁷ James clearly acquired a superb knowledge of the world through Buchanan and his three additional tutors: Peter Young, a fresh-faced intellectual who had studied in Geneva under Theodore Beza; and David and Adam Erskine, lay abbots of Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh, who were instructed to train the boy in riding and masculine pursuits. An envoy from England, Henry Killigrew, marvelled at the king’s aptitude for languages in June 1574, especially French and Latin, declaring that overall he was ‘well grown in body and spirit’.⁸ Although Peter Young was said to have handled James sympathetically when it came to his studies, it is widely believed that Buchanan, a much older man suffering from frequent bouts of ill health, could be cruel and violent towards his royal student.

On 23 November 1589, at the age of 23, James married Princess Anna of Denmark, sister to King Christian IV of Denmark and Norway. The ceremony was conducted abroad in Oslo, after Anna had been driven back to Norway following a storm at sea while travelling to Scotland to be wed. By now, the king was entirely free from regents and reigning as a monarch in his own right over his northern dominion. Together, King James and Queen Anna ruled Scotland throughout the 1590s and into the 1600s, during which time the monarchical personalities of each, both on a ceremonial and personal level, developed and solidified in the consciousness of the Scottish people. In 1601, the eminent English diplomat Sir Henry Wotton had much to say about the king when he visited the Scottish court. James, in his view, spoke learnedly and eloquently; had a fondness for discussing theology and literature; was careful to receive wise counsel before making any hasty decisions; showed patience in his governmental duties; and, interestingly, was ‘one of the most secret princes of the world’. He could be hateful on occasion, too, though was known to create peerages liberally to keep his noble courtiers happy. Wotton also regarded the Scottish monarch as admirably chaste, which James had been able to preserve ‘without blemish’ since his marriage to Queen Anna in 1589. This was in stark contrast to several of the king’s predecessors, who had ‘disturbed the kingdom by leaving many bastards’.

Wotton further took it upon himself to describe the king’s physical attributes, which he depicted in a curiously flattering manner considering James was said to have been a sickly child. ‘He is of medium stature and of robust constitution; his shoulders are broad but the rest of his person from the shoulders downward is rather slender,’ the envoy reported. ‘In his eyes and in his outward appearance there is a natural kindliness bordering on modesty.’ He also wore his hair short, like his grandfather King James V.

There was a little to say about the state and peculiarities of James’s court, too. Wotton thought that it was governed ‘more in the French than in the English fashion’. The king allowed people to visit him while he dined, and he even conversed with some of them as he ate; once he had finished with his food, he liked to remain at the dinner table to listen to ‘banter’ and ‘merry jests’. His domestic staff wore caps on their heads, and it was with these trusted individuals that he allowed himself to be most familiar, choosing to assume a graver countenance when interacting with ‘the great lords’. He had nobody to protect him at court in an official capacity, no guard at his chamber door, because he believed his people were the ‘true guardian of princes’, willing to defend him against any insurrection. It was either that philosophy, or James simply could not afford to pay for personal security. Lastly, Wotton harboured the view that there was a territorial edge to the courtiers who kept themselves close to the King of Scots. Any strangers or newcomers to the Scottish court, presumably himself included, were ‘accosted at once’ upon their arrival, and asked to disclose what exactly their business was.⁹

Frances Erskine, a close childhood companion of James’s eldest daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and somebody who had clearly known the king prior to his accession to the English throne, was less favourable in her assessment of his character. In her memoir of the princess, later Queen of Bohemia, she argued:

He was learned, without being wise; and good-natured, without being good; though neither so foolish, nor so bad a man, as some have represented him. He certainly was a kind and generous master, an easy, civil husband, and a fond, indulgent father; though not without some tincture of jealousy of his eldest son, as he approached manhood.

¹⁰

To this appraisal she appended the apparently universal opinion that James was ‘but a bungler in politics, and a pedant in learning’. He was, however, well-read and articulate, Frances conceded, though had neither sense nor ‘beauty in his countenance’. This last remark does not at all match up with the pleasing picture Sir Henry Wotton painted of the king. ‘He had not the least of Majesty in his look or air,’ Princess Elizabeth’s companion concluded.¹¹

The historian F.C. Montague’s verdict on King James is, in places, so extraordinarily damning that it is worth mentioning here. Writing at the end of the Edwardian period in 1907, he concluded without pretence:

He combined some respectable qualities with many grotesque foibles. He was on the whole a well-meaning ruler who desired to use his power for the good of his subjects. He was not a man of blood; he strove to preserve peace; he seldom knowingly perverted justice. On the other hand, he was indolent, weak, and thriftless. Like most men who are vain of their wisdom and jealous of their authority, he was easily led by all who knew how to flatter and amuse him. He was not sensitive to female charms, but any youth who was comely and gracious might hope to sway his councils.

¹²

The final line of this quote appears to make a vague reference to James’s unconfirmed homosexuality, or at the very least his preference for the company of young men. On this complex matter, the jury is still out. Even so, Frances Erskine in her memoir of Princess Elizabeth tiptoed round the rumours when she wrote of Queen Anna’s ‘grievance’ at the ‘little esteem she thought [the king] had for her, though, one would think, she could not but be sensible it was not personal to her, but to the whole sex (whom he was taxed with looking upon, as necessary evils)’. She re-evaluated the situation soon afterwards in her memoir, acknowledging that the king had courted one or two mistresses in Scotland, and that he seemed to ‘love [the queen] better…than princes generally do their wives’.¹³

Indeed, Queen Anna was considered by many to have more than satisfactory good looks. Upon her marriage to James in November 1589, she purportedly boasted fashionably fair skin and pleasing locks of golden hair,being slim,elegant, fittingly regal and agreeable in stature. The Scottish minister David Lindsay was taken by her generally, stating that she was ‘both godly and beautiful, as appeareth by all that know her’. Frances Erskine, however, declared that the new queen’s features were ‘not regular’. Anna was expected to be a positive asset to Scotland, with such a prospect certainly hinted at through the initial happiness and playful nature she inspired in her high-profile husband. Contemporary reports indicated that she had ‘the finest neck that could be seen’, and that in the early days of their long union, James could sometimes be glimpsed kissing it affectionately in public, ‘down to the middle of her shoulders’.¹⁴

Scotland’s Danish consort landed, windswept and dusted with sea spray, in a country that burned bright with long-standing conflicts and court plotting. While Anna appeared to integrate well into the compact world of Scottish affairs and court life, for many she involved herself too successfully. At some point in the first decade of her marriage to James, the queen probably abandoned her Lutheran faith, a hangover of her royal upbringing in Denmark, and converted to Roman Catholicism. Although by the late sixteenth century the Church of Scotland comprised a Protestant blend of Calvinism and Presbyterianism, there existed still a segment of society that devoted itself to the old religion; it was towards this party that Anna evidently drifted. ‘She was of a high and turbulent spirit, and very desirous of governing the State, though she had neither capacity nor knowledge sufficient for it,’ Frances Erskine wrote. Further judgements accused the queen of being careless with money, living extravagantly without thought of consequence, and showing too much interest in ‘shows and diversions’. In fact, Anna rapidly acquired a reputation amongst ministers for impiety and frivolity, as exemplified by her ‘night-waking’ and ‘balling’, together with her ‘want of godly and virtuous exercise among her maids, and spending of all time in vanity’.¹⁵ Nevertheless, James’s new wife was said to possess a kind heart and a generous personality, qualities that could not fail to win the love and respect of her subjects. She also tried to be a good and faithful wife, believing herself to know the king better than anybody else on earth.

By January 1603, Anna had presented her husband with three surviving children: Prince Henry Frederick, born in 1594; Princess Elizabeth, born in 1596; and Prince Charles (later Charles I of England), born in November 1600. The queen loved her children deeply, but she favoured her eldest son. Prince Henry, the prized heir to the Stuart dynasty, gave his parents something that his younger brother and sister simply could not: ‘the greatest hopes of being, one day, one of the greatest and most accomplished princes of his time.’

Unfortunately, Anna’s penchant for Catholicism worked against her in the early years of Henry’s life. The Protestant James worried about the religious influence his wife might have over their impressionable son, and therefore he chose to place the infant in the care of John Erskine, 2nd Earl of Mar, and his mother, Annabell Murray. Annabell, now Dowager Countess of Mar, had looked after James when he himself was a child, so this choice of minders was perfectly natural.

At around the age of 5 or 6, Prince Henry was appointed his own tutor, Adam Newton, a man ‘thoroughly qualified for the office assigned him, both by his genius and his skill in the learned and other languages’. Under such an able teacher, Henry made impressive headway with his studies in a relatively short space of time, just like his father had done. By 1601, the prince had already progressed to ‘active and manly exercises’, including riding, singing, dancing, leaping, shooting with a bow and gun, tossing the pike and using arms. Two years later on his ninth birthday, he was able to write a letter to his father in fluent Latin, in which he further demonstrated his intellectual prowess by listing the books he had recently read: Terence’s Hecyra, the third book of The Fables of Phaedrus, and two books of Cicero’s Select Epistles.¹⁶

Henry’s younger siblings were somewhat cast into shadow by the perceived distinction of their older, much more valuable brother. According to Frances Erskine (and her opinion here is unsurprising), Princess Elizabeth had transformed into a charming youth herself by the beginning of 1603, being ‘the most lovely child of her age, that ever was seen’. It appeared, though, that there were no grudges held between the shunned daughter of the king and queen and the adored heir to the Scottish throne. ‘There was so great a conformity of temper and inclinations between them,’ Erskine commented, ‘that it was no wonder they were remarkably fond of each other.’¹⁷ Prince Charles as a small boy is given only brief consideration by the Queen of Bohemia’s biographer, seeming to be regarded as quite unimportant. Much like his father the king, Charles was a sickly infant who spent a good deal of his childhood out of the public spotlight.

* * *

It was on 5 January, the day of the Scottish duel that never came to pass, that Queen Elizabeth I of England wrote her last ever letter to her ‘very good brother’ King James VI of Scotland. In this letter, she discussed foreign policy, namely England’s alliance with the Dutch rebels, as well as raising some other official matters that required attention. The significance of the exchange found its roots most immediately in the events of 1601, but in reality they extended back much further, to a time when it became obvious to all that Elizabeth would never bear a child of her own.

On 6 March 1601, two ambassadors dispatched by King James arrived at the court of Elizabeth in London from the distant north. The official assignment of the Earl of Mar and Edward Bruce, 1st Lord Kinloss, was to congratulate the queen on her victory over the Earl of Essex, who had conspired with mad determination to