Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution Read Online Free PDF Page A

Faith, ‘were both sick and spewing in the lower hall’. Harington concluded that ‘the gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads’ and ‘I ne’er did see such lack of good order, discretion and sobriety, as I have now done’. He yearned for the days of his godmother, the Virgin Queen, when a certain stateliness and severity touched the atmosphere of the court.
    There could be no doubt that the new court differed markedly from its predecessor. The king was known to be devoted to his pleasures rather than what were considered to be his duties. He attended the fights of the Cockpit in Whitehall Palace twice a week, and, like his predecessor, loved to ride or hunt every day. When James rode up to the dead hart he dismounted and cut its throat with dispatch; he then sated the dogs with its blood before wiping his bloodied hands across the faces of his fellow horsemen.
    It soon became clear that he did not enjoy the company of spectators at his sports. Quite unlike his predecessor he disliked and even detested crowds. When the people flocked about him he would swear at them and cry out, ‘What would they have?’ On one occasion he was told that they had come in love and reverence. To which he replied, in a broad Scots accent, ‘God’s wounds, I will pull down my breeches and they shall also see my arse.’ He would bid ‘A pox on you!’ or ‘A plague on you!’ As a result of outbursts of anger such as this he became, in the words of the Venetian ambassador, ‘despised and almost hated’.
    He justified his exertions at the hunt on the grounds that his vigour was ‘the health and welfare of them all’, no doubt meaning both the court and the nation. Let his officers waste away in closets or at the council table. He must be strong and virile. In any case, he said, he could do more business in an hour than his councillors could manage in a day; he spent less time in hunting than other monarchs did in whoring. One day a favourite dog, Jowler, disappeared from the pack. On the following morning it reappeared with a note tied around its neck. ‘Good Mr Jowler we pray you speak to the king (for he hears you every day and so doth he not us) that it will please his majesty to go back to London, for else the country will be undone.’ When eventually James did return to Whitehall he feasted and played cards, at which sport he lost large sums of money.
    James was continually and heavily in debt. He had thought to come into a realm of gold, but soon found his purse to be bare. Or, rather, he emptied it too readily. He bought boots and silk stockings and beaver hats in profusion. Court ceremonial was more lavish with the arrival of ever more ‘gentlemen extraordinary’. There was a vogue at court for ‘golden play’ or gambling. The king loved masques and feasts, which were for him a true sign of regality. He wished to have a masque on the night of Christmas, whereupon he was told that it was not the fashion. ‘What do you tell me of the fashion?’ he enquired. ‘I will make it a fashion.’
    The king also purchased plate and jewels, which he then proceeded to distribute among his followers. It was said that he had given to one or two men more than his predecessor had given to all of her courtiers during the whole of her reign. The earl of Shrewsbury remarked that Elizabeth ‘valued every molehill that she gave … a mountain, which our sovereign now does not’. His generosity to favourites and to courtiers was by the standard of any age in English history exceptional.
    One particular favourite emerged in the spring of 1607. Robert Carr, twenty-one, was a model of affability and deportment; he was also exceptionally handsome. He took part in a tournament in the king’s presence, but he was thrown from his horse and broke his leg. The king was much affected and ordered his own doctor to take charge of the young man; Carr was carried to the hospital at Charing Cross, where the king visited him every day. The