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Portraits of James and his favourites, L to R: James VI & I, Esme Stewart, Robert Carr, George Villiers.

From the age of thirteen until his death, the life of King James VI of Scotland and I of England (1566–1625) was characterised by close relationships with a series of male favourites.

The influence James' favourites had on politics, and the resentment at the wealth they acquired, became major political issues during his reign. The extent to which the King's relationships with the men was sexual was a topic of bawdy contemporary speculation.

James VI and I certainly enjoyed the company of handsome young men, sometimes shared his bed with his favourites and was often passionate in his expressions of love for them. [1] James was married to Anne of Denmark, with whom he fathered eight children. He railed fiercely against sodomy. [2]: 1073 

Today, many historians and commentators affirm that – given the evidence – James's relationships with his favourites clearly were sexual. Others regard the evidence as more ambiguous, and needing to be understood in terms of 17th-century forms of masculinity which were very different to today's.

The question of James' sexuality might be considered of only prurient interest, and certainly less important than the political consequences of the power and status he granted his favourites. [3] However, particularly since the late twentieth century, historical analysis and commentary on James's personal life has raised important questions about how early modern same-sex relationships (whether sexual or friendship-based) were structured and understood, and the extent to which modern categories of sexuality can be applied to historical figures.

Views on James' sexual behaviour

Insinuations about James's sexual acts with other men followed him throughout his life. [1]: 541  [4] Some of these comments on James's sex life are coloured by various prejudices, and some are part of a literary convention attacking opponents by attributing evils to them; but, according to historian Michael B. Young, while any given comment on James and his favorites is suspect, "their totality is impressive." " [1]: 546 

Until the late twentieth century, historians accounts were often biased by prevailing negative social attitudes towards same-sex relationships, with historians from the 1960s to 80s still often avoiding or "fumbling" the subject of James's sexuality. [1]: 546  By the late twentieth century the consensus was to see the relationships between James and his favourites as sexual. [1]: 542, 546–547  However, in the 1990s a counter - or at least problematising - view arose, with some academics arguing that many of the key points of evidence cited in favour of the relationships being sexual, such as James sharing a bed or exchanging kisses with his favourites, were behaviours that in James' time were widely seen as public tokens of friendship. [5]: 4  Today, most historians do recognise the sexual nature of James' relationships with all or some of his favourites. [6]

Contemporary views

Curtis Perry in a 2000 article on "The Politics of Access and Representations of the Sodomite King in Early Modern England" states that "[S]odomitical images of James I [were] promulgated in manuscript verse libels, mean-spirited memoirs, and political pamphlets written by disgruntled contemporaries". [2] Soon after James's marriage in 1589, [7] verses made reference to rumours about the King's sexual behaviour, calling James "a bougerer [that is, a buggerer], one that left his wife all night intactam [that is, untouched, a virgin]". [4] [8] [9] [10]

When James ascended the English throne in 1603, an epigram circulated in London: "Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen". [4] The Puritan diarist Simonds d'Ewes wrote in 1622 of his concern that 'the sin of sodomy' had become 'a sin in the prince as well as the people'. [11]: 67  The following year, Huguenot poet Théophile de Viau observed from France that "it is well known that the king of England / fucks the Duke of Buckingham". [12] [13] A poem called To Buckinghame references sodomy in its "buck-in-game" pun, [note 1] with one version proclaiming at the end of the poem that the king loves the favourite "Solely, for your looke". [14]

In 1627, Dominick Roche, an alderman of Limerick, said the King of Spain broke off the Spanish match when he discovered James and his son, Charles, committed "unnatural crimes" with Buckingham, [15] with the King of Spain "knowing them to be guilty of so foul a sin". [16]

It's possible comments were also made about the age differences between James and his favourites, Carr and Buckingham - there was at least 20 years between them. For instance, while it cannot be proved without doubt that it referred to James and his favourites, Thomas Carew wrote a masque celebrating the "conjugal affection" between James's son Charles I and Henrietta Maria of France, potentially contrasting it with James and his favourites, saying the example of Charles and Henrietta Maria's marriage inspired Jupiter to ban the love of boys from his heavemly court: "Ganimede is forbidden the Bedchamber. ... The Gods must keepe no Pages, nor Groomes of their Chamber under the age of 25". Michael B. Young comments, "Carr and Villiers, in their early twenties, would have been banished under this rule". [1]: 541 

Ganymede

Two poems that relate James and Buckingham's relationship to Ganymede, a mortal from Greek mythology with whom Zeus falls in love, are the poems that "most explicitly alleged a homosexual relationship between the King and his "Ganymede" favourite". [17] One of the poems, by Alexander Gill the Younger, asks God to save "my sovereign from a Ganymede / Whose Whorish breath hath power to lead / His Majesty which way it lists" [18] - the author rightly commented that the poem expressed what many thought. [19] The other poem depicts the, for the poet, dire consequences of the king's rumoured homosexual relationship with Buckingham through imagery of "the moral and political disorder that plagues the court of Jove, king of the gods, as a result of the King's sexual infatuation with the Trojan boy Ganymede". [20] With the poem's charge of sodomy, the other gods, at war with Jove (who "with Ganymede lies playing", oblivious to the impending punishment for "loving so 'gainst nature" [1]: 544 ) "threaten without mercy / To have him burned / That so hath turned / Love's pleasure arsy versy" [15] (or "arse wise" [1]: 544 ). Another poem portrays parliament as James's loyal wife and the King as her husband who's been unfaithful to her by being a Ganymede – the passive partner – to Buckingham, thereby leaving himself open to being sodomized by Spain and the Popery. [18] [15]

James's condemnation of sodomy

In James' book on kingship, Basilikón Dōron, James listed crimes that were treasonous and warranted death, including sodomy [21]

Alan Bray -in work that has influenced many later academics - argues that the modern concept of homosexuality has clouded understanding of the Renaissance concept of sodomy. [5]: 15  Sodomy may be better understood in modern terms as "debauchery", [5]: 3  representing not just sexual behaviour but a disruption of the social order. [5] In James' time, "friendship between men was understood to be the key public relationship, the very stuff of civility and social order". [2]: 1059  As such, intimate relations between men, which may or may not have involved sexual elements, could be cast positively as friendship or, where they disrupted the social order, negatively as sodomy. In this reading, accusations of sodomy levelled against James arose as a result of the disruptive power that he granted his favourites. [2]: 1056  Meanwhile the King may have seen sex with his favourites as a patriarchal right: [22]: 48  Jonathan Goldberg argues that Basilikon Doron is proof that "sodomy was so fully politicized that no king could possibly apply the term to himself." [21]

In his work, King James and the History of Homosexuality, Young suggests simpler arguments to explain the King's strong rejection of sodomy. James may simply have been a hypocrite on the matter. [22]: 48–49  Alternatively, Young the legal definition of sodomy related only to anal intercourse, and the King may have indulged in other behaviours with men (such as mutual masturbation) that today would be seen as homosexual but would then not have been seen as sodomy.

Views of modern historians

Giving an overview of the views of scholars working from the 1960s to 2012, Michael B. Young said earlier histories about James "fumbled the subject of James's sexuality ... mak[ing] light of it, express[ed] disapproval (even repugnance), or dodged the subject altogether". [1]: 546  Of this type, he cites, for example, David Matthew's James I (1967), Gordon Donaldson's Scotland: James V to James VII (1971). Views were often biased by prevailing negative social attitudes towards same-sex relationships. [1]: 546  Donaldson, for example, wrote that James's affair with Esme Stuart had "a physical, but not necessarily gross, side to it". [1]: 546  Some historians of this time advanced the surprising view that James's public displays of affection for his favourites were proof that there was not sexual activity in private. [22]: 42  [3]

Antonia Fraser's 1975 popular biography of the King took an opposing and famously pragmatic view:

In sexual matters ... it is generally better to assume the obvious unless there is some very good reason to think otherwise. [3]

(Less widely cited is Fraser's next sentence, where she affirms that the matter is only of "academic" interest.) [3]

Maurice Lee Jr (Great Britain's Solomon: James VI and I in His Three Kingdoms (1990)) continued the older habit of giving an "asexual view of James's relationships". [1]: 546 However, by the end of the twentieth century a short-lived consensus formed that "James and his favourites were sexual partners". [1]: 542  Examples Young gives of those making the consensus include Caroline Bingham's James I of England (1981), Roger Lockyer's Buckingham (1981), David M. Bergeron's Royal Family, Royal Lovers (1991), Kevin Sharpe's contribution to the Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain (1996) and Pauline Croft's King James (2003). [1]: 547–549 

The consensus, Young says, was replaced in the late 20th and early 21st century "with renewed equivocation and ambiguity" over the issue, [1]: 542  including by some, like Lockyer, who had previously been unambiguous that James and his favourites had sex. [1]: 550  Young sees as instrumental in this shift a "misguided desire to protect [James's] reputation" and the influence of Alan Bray's essay 'Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England' (1990) [1]: 567  which argued sodomy did not align with the modern concept of homosexuality (see above) and identified that behaviours that would now be seen as sexual (such as sharing a bed) were at the time taken as signs of friendship. [5]

In 2017, social historian Emma Dabiri stated that "few [historians and biographers] now doubt that [James] was either gay or bisexual". [6] John Matusiak's 2015 biography James I: Scotland's King of England views James as "homosexual", [23] although is unsure about the "precise extent of the king's sexual involvement with Lennox". [24] Keith Coleman's 2023 biography James VI and I: The King Who United Scotland and England see James's relationships with Somerset and Buckingham as sexual, adding that his relationship with Lennox probably also was. [8] Steven Veerapen, author of 2023's The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, also views James's relationships with his favourites as sexual, describing the king as, in modern terms, bisexual, [25] [26] [27] [28] with a "strong preference for men". [29]: 130  Reviewing James's letters and poems and focusing on desire rather than actions, David Bergeron see James's relationships with Lennox, Somerset and Buckingham comprising a "special intimacy, including, but not restricted to, homoerotic desire", [30]: vii–viii  with James's letters to his male favouites as "signs of erotic desire [and] same-sex love". [30]: 30 

Relationships with women

Wife: Anne of Denmark

James married Anne of Denmark in 1589 to establish a strong Protestant alliance in Continental Europe, a policy he continued by marrying his daughter to the future King of Bohemia. James was initially said to be infatuated with his wife and gallantly crossed the North Sea with a royal retinue to collect her after Anne's initial efforts to sail to England were thwarted by storms. [31]: 24 

Some years passed after the marriage before James and Anne's first child, Prince Henry, was born in 1594. In July 1592, James Halkerston was suspected of writing verses that suggested King James was homosexual and left his wife a virgin. [9] The claimed extra-marital attachment of the King to Anne Murray (see below) may have been promulgated to scotch such rumours. [4]

The marriage later cooled and was marked by several marital frictions. Queen Anne was particularly upset with James placing the infant Prince Henry in the custody of John Erskine, Earl of Mar at Stirling Castle, in keeping with Scottish royal tradition. [31]: 24  In the course of the marriage, Anne's relationship with her husband alternated between affection and estrangement. [31]: 24  The two had eight children, with the last being born during 1607, although some sources cite that by 1606 they had already started living in separate establishments. [32]: 87  James lost interest in his wife and it was said that she led a sad, reclusive life afterward, appearing at court functions on occasion. Despite his neglect of Anne, James was affected by her death and was moved to compose a poem in her memory. [33] [34]: 179 

'Mistress': Anne Murray

There is little evidence of a relationship between James and Anne Murray, later Lady Glamis. [35] [36] The evidence comprises a letter, dated 10 May 1595, to Lord Burghley, in which Sir John Carey wrote of a "fair mistress Anne Murray, the king's mistress", [36] and a poem composed by James entitled A Dream on his Mistress my Ladie Glammes, which is thought to be about Murray, [35] [37] [38] [39] in which James calls Glamis "my mistress and my love". [31]: 24 

Anne was the daughter of John Murray, 1st Earl of Tullibardine, master of the king's household. [38]: 78–80  [35] Pauline Croft dates a romantic relationship between the king and Murray between 1593 and 1595. [31]: 24 

Based on the "sparse though tantilising evidence", [36] some historians, like Coleman [35] and Matusiak, find it "difficult to avoid the impression" that James had "at least one extra-marital excursion with a member of the opposite sex". [36] For Allan F. Westcott, the paucity of evidence reflects that the relationship was a simply a "conventional, half literary, flirtation". [38]: 80  Another possibility is that the king's mistress was "an exercise in political spin" to deflect rumours that James was a "buggerer": Murray arrived at around the same time rumours were circulating that the king had not conceived a child with his wife because he was attracted to men rather than to women. [4]

Male favourites

... his persistent, foolhardy habit of falling head over heels for beautiful, arrogant, and reckless favourites ...

— Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, "James VI and I", Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (2022) [40]

Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox

Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, 1603–1609.

At the age of 13, James made his formal entry into Edinburgh. Upon arriving he met his first cousin, the Franco-Scottish lord Esmé Stewart, about 24 years older than James, [1]: 541  whom the Puritan leader Sir James Melville described as "of nature, upright, just, and gentle". Having arrived from France, Stewart was an exotic visitor who fascinated the young James. [41] The two became extremely close and it was said by an English observer that "from the time he was 14 years old and no more, that is, when the Lord Stuart came into Scotland [...] even then he began [...] to clasp some one in the embraces of his great love, above all others" and that James became "in such love with him as in the open sight of the people often he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him".

The King first made Aubigny a gentleman of the bedchamber. Later, he appointed him to the Privy Council and created him earl and finally duke of Lennox. In Presbyterian Scotland the thought of a Catholic duke irked many, and Lennox had to make a choice between his Catholic faith or his loyalty to James. In the end, Lennox chose James and the king taught him the doctrines of Calvinism. The Scottish Kirk remained suspicious of Lennox after his public conversion and took alarm when he had the Earl of Morton tried and beheaded on charges of treason. The Scottish ministry was also warned that the duke sought to "draw the King to carnal lust".

In response the Scottish nobles plotted to oust Lennox. They did so by luring James to Ruthven Castle as a guest but then kept him as prisoner for ten months. The Lord Enterprisers forced him to banish Lennox. The duke journeyed back to France and kept a secret correspondence with James. Lennox in these letters says he gave up his family "to dedicate myself entirely to you"; he prayed to die for James to prove "the faithfulness which is engraved within my heart, which will last forever." The former duke wrote "Whatever might happen to me, I shall always be your faithful servant... you are alone in this world whom my heart is resolved to serve. And would to God that my breast might be split open so that it might be seen what is engraven therein." [30]: 49 

James was devastated by the loss of Lennox. [42]Crompton, Louis (2003). Homosexuality and Civilization. Boston: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN  978-0-674-01197-7.</ref>: 384  On his return to France, Lennox had met a frosty reception as an apostate Catholic. The Scottish nobles had thought that they would be proven right in their convictions that Lennox's conversion was artificial when he returned to France. Instead the former duke remained Presbyterian and died shortly after, leaving James his embalmed heart. [42]: 384  James had repeatedly vouched for Lennox's religious sincerity and memorialized him in a poem called Ane Tragedie of the Phoenix, which likened him to an exotic bird of unique beauty killed by envy. [42]: 384 

Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond

Richard was born the third son of Richard Preston of Whitehill in Midlothian, near Edinburgh. His family was gentry of the Edinburgh area and owned Craigmillar Castle in the late 16th and early 17th century. His family placed Richard (the younger) as a page at the King's court in Edinburgh where he is mentioned in that capacity in 1591. [43]

Richard, the page, gained the king's special favour in the 1580s or 1590s after Lennox's departure. When James acceded the English throne as James I in 1603, Richard accompanied him to England and was knighted at the King's coronation in London on 25 July 1603 in the old elaborate ceremony that included the bathing of the new knight. [44] He then was made a groom of the privy chamber. [45] In 1607 Richard was appointed constable of Dingwall Castle in Scotland. [43] He bought the barony of Dingwall and on 8 June 1609 the King created him Lord Dingwall. [43] In London the King met in 1608 Robert Carr who became his favourite and seems to have supplanted Lord Dingwall, as he was now, in that role.

In 1609 Preston attended the Accession day tournament, and presented a pageant of an artificial elephant, designed by Inigo Jones, which made its way slowly around the tiltyard. [46]

Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset

A few years later after the controversy over his relationship with Lennox faded away he began a relationship with Robert Carr. [42]: 386  In 1607, at a royal jousting contest, the 20-year-old Carr, the son of Sir Thomas Carr or Kerr of Ferniehirst, was knocked from a horse and broke his leg. According to Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, James fell in love with the young man, and as the years progressed showered Carr with gifts. [47] James was 20 years older than Carr. [1]: 541  Carr was made a gentleman of the bedchamber and he was noted for his handsome appearance as well as his limited intelligence; he was also made a Knight of the Garter, a Privy Counsellor and Viscount Rochester. His downfall came through Frances Howard, a beautiful young married woman. Upon Rochester's request, James stacked a court of bishops that would allow her to divorce her husband in order to marry Rochester. As a wedding present Rochester was created Earl of Somerset.

In 1615, James fell out with Somerset. In a letter James complained, among other matters, that Somerset had been "creeping back and withdrawing yourself from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary" and that he rebuked James "more sharply and bitterly than ever my master Buchanan durst do". [42]: 387 

At this point public scandal erupted when the underkeeper of the tower revealed that Somerset's new wife had poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury, his best friend who had opposed the marriage. Though Somerset refused to admit any guilt, his wife confessed, and both were sentenced to death. The King commuted the sentence. Nevertheless, they were imprisoned in the Tower for seven years, after which they were pardoned and allowed to retire to a country estate. [48]

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

The last of James's favourites was George Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire knight. They had met in 1614, around the same time that the situation with Somerset was deteriorating. Buckingham, 22 years old to James' 48, [1]: 541  was described as exceptionally handsome, intelligent and honest. In 1615 James knighted him and 8 years later he was the first commoner in more than a century to be elevated to a dukedom – as Duke of Buckingham – although he had first been raised in sequence as a Knight of the Garter and Viscount Villiers, as Earl of Buckingham then Marquess of Buckingham. Restoration of Apethorpe Hall, undertaken 2004–2008, revealed a previously unknown passage linking the bedchambers of James and Villiers. [49]

The King was blunt and unashamed in his avowal of love for Buckingham and compared it to Jesus' love of John:

I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here, assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.

17th century commentators, such as poet Théophile de Viau wrote plainly about the king's relationship. In his poem, Au marquis du Boukinquan, de Viau wrote: " Apollo with his songs / debauched young Hyacinthus, [...] And it is well known that the king of England / fucks the Duke of Buckingham." [12] [13]

Buckingham became good friends with James's wife Anne of Denmark; she addressed him in affectionate letters begging him to be "always true" to her husband. In a letter to James, Buckingham said "sir, all the way hither I entertained myself, your unworthy servant, with this dispute, whether you loved me now... better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog". [30]: 179  When James I died in March 1625, Buckingham was in France on a diplomatic mission but news of his death brought him to tears. [31]: 128 

Notes

  1. ^ Early Stuart Libels says there are "hints of sodomy" in the pun; [14] Jonathan Healey calls it a "fairly explicit reference to anal sex". [11]: 66 

References

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Further reading

External links