tamaranth | 2026/063: Queen James

2026/063: Queen James — Gareth Russell

...given how obvious James’s affection was in public, nobody at court doubted what was happening in private. George [Villiers]’s contemporary Sir Henry Rich allegedly turned down an advantageous post in the King’s Household because he did not want anybody to assume he owed his position to his looks or an intimate relationship with the King. [loc. 5901]

A biography that doesn't shy away from James' homosexuality, but treats it as an integral part of his character. Becoming King of Scotland at the age of 13 months, his childhood was full of trauma: he was kidnapped several times, was served (or 'served') by four regents of varying calibres, beaten by his tutor, and endured the deaths of many close to him , including his mother, who he likely had no memory of: they'd been separated when he was a year old. The violence and death didn't stop when he was proclaimed ruler, at the age of 13: he was imprisoned by a faction who felt he was becoming too close to Esmé Stewart, a Catholic-turned-Protestant, who may have been the first man he fell in love with.

Russell documents James' life, with copious references and a sufficiency of political context: from reigning in Scotland, to becoming Queen Elizabeth's heir; marriage to Anna of Denmark, who sounds absolutely splendid; James' persecution of witches; the Gunpowder Plot; matters of religion (his Bible; the oppression of Catholics); his determination to avoid war -- with Spain, with the Hapsburg Empire... And woven through it all, his 'favourites', with whom (Russell argues) he was certainly having sexual relations of some kind -- though he wrote of sodomy as ‘a sin which ye are bound in conscience never to forgive’, so it's not clear what his own definition of sodomy might have been.

Russell is also at pains to show us the private man: the author of Daemonology, Basilikon Doron and A Counterblast to Tobacco, the avid hunter, the king who was happiest 'reading in his rooms, responding to letters, playing chess with Robert, taking care of his new pet armadillo'. I admired his wife immensely: well aware that he had male lovers, she supported George Villiers' ambition to become the next favourite. It was a political marriage but there is evidence of affection between James and Anna -- they produced seven children, though only three (Prince Henry, Elizabeth of Bohemia and Charles I) survived the first two years of life -- and she was also a noted patron of the arts, and a keen dancer.

A very readable biography of a complex man. I came away with a more nuanced impression of James than I'd had before reading: a man who was paranoid, but not without cause; bisexual, with a strong preference for men; a pacifist who smoothed over internal conflicts and balanced political factions; and, as Russell remarks, 'the first reign in centuries during which there had not been an invasion by, or of, England'.