walke was ever circular” and he had a
disconcerting habit of “fidling about his
codpiece”. Upon his arrival at the court in
London, he already had his arm in a sling
thanks to falling from his horse. He later
complained of having been “very ill” with a
heavy cold ever since coming to England.
One eyewitness noted with some distaste
that the king’s tongue seemed too large for
his mouth, which made his already broad
Scottish accent even harder to understand.
It also “made him drinke very uncomely, as
if eating his drinke, which came out into
the cup of each side his mouth”.
Private lives
James’s ‘unmanly’ nature extended to his
private life. Although he had fathered seven
children by Anne of Denmark, their
marriage was one of politics, not passion.
They lived separate lives at court and it
was noted that they did not “converse”
together. The king had long been
rumoured to be a closet homosexual;
throughout his reign – both in Scotland
and in England – he surrounded himself
with a succession of beautiful young men.
Each of these was rapidly promoted to
exalted positions at court and then just as
rapidly dropped when a younger, more
attractive man came along. That the
celebrated Virgin Queen should be
succeeded by a ‘sexual deviant’ was too
much for some of the new subjects to bear.
The Jacobean court also presented a stark
contrast to the culture and refinement of
Elizabeth I’s. There are many lurid accounts
of the drunkenness and debauchery into
which the court entertainments frequently
descended. The absence of a strict
controlling hand, such as Elizabeth I had
provided, led to a general decline in
standards across the court. Lady Anne
Clifford, whose aunt had been one of the
old queen’s closest companions, was
appalled at “how all the ladies about the
Court had gotten such ill names that it was
grown a scandalous place”.
Before long, the people who had
been “very weary of an old woman’s
government” were harking back to the
glory days of Elizabeth I. They began
to grumble that, in sharp contrast to the
late queen, James lacked “great majesty”
and “solemnities”. Although “crafty and
cunning in petty things”, he was naive
in “weighty affairs”, which led one
contemporary to coin the famous
description of him as “the wisest fool
in Christendome”.
Neither did James possess the natural
charm and charisma of the late queen.
In stark contrast to Elizabeth, who had
made public relations an art form with
her frequent progresses and public BRIDGEMAN IMAGESceremonials, James spurned the eager
attentions of his new subjects. When out
hunting early in his reign, he was “driven
out of the field with press of company,
which came to see him” and, shortly
afterwards, ordered a proclamation to
be issued “that none shall presume to
come to him on hunting days”.
Nevertheless, from the very beginning
of his reign, James VI and I promoted
the idea of Britain and a united British
nation, rather than two loosely allied
countries with only a king in common.
In so doing, he invoked hostility on both
sides of the border. It was an issue as
contentious in the early 17th century as
it is in the 21st. Undaunted, James had a
family tree drawn up to demonstrate that
his English blood stretched as far back
as King Alfred and the Saxon kings. In
short, he was at least as English as he
was Scottish.
The new king wasted no time in
summoning the English parliament to pass
legislation for the formal political union of
the two kingdoms. On 19 March 1604, he
gave a speech in which he insisted that
Britain was an entity which had been
artificially divided but which could – andA 20th-century painting
shows James VI and I and
religious leaders at the
Hampton Court
Conference in 1604“The idea of Britain and a British nation
was as contentious an issue in the
early 17th century as it is in the 21st”