How Elizabeth cultivated young James VI of Scotland as her heir

Arran now proceeded to brutally suppress all opposition to the king. The earl quickly became deeply unpopular with the nobility, save for a few lickspittles who would always support James. Even their patience was tested, however, when James decided to punish the Church of Scotland for its failure to protest against his imprisonment during the Ruthven Raid – indeed some historians argue that the Kirk had endorsed the king’s captivity because of the rumours about his links to Catholic powers.

At that point, the leading figure in the Church of Scotland was the brilliant scholar and radical Presbyterian Andrew Melville who many Protestants think was the real founder of the Kirk. A principal at both Glasgow and St Andrews universities, he had been elected Moderator of the General Assembly for a second time in 1582 and had himself appointed to a commission which drew up a petition that he personally put to the king. His main cause was to proclaim that the church was not subject to the laws of the state, and he had no hesitation in telling James VI, the great believer in the divine right of kings, that he was head of just one of two kingdoms, the other being the church.

Big mistake. In February 1584, Melville was put before the Privy Council to answer a charge of treason in that he had preached a seditious sermon at St Andrews. Melville prudently fled south to England and was there when James summoned a parliament in May. Melville’s supporters were “discouraged” from attending by Arran’s bully boys.

At the insistence of James and Arran, Parliament promptly passed legislation which became known as the Black Acts. These laws proclaimed James VI as head of the Kirk as well as the state, confirmed the authority of royal-appointed bishops within the Kirk, and effectively banned any criticism by ministers of the king or his family.

James also banned the books of his former tutor George Buchanan, who had died in 1582. It was stunning revenge by the teenaged king and Melville stayed down south as Arran enforced the king’s laws.

Yet the chancellor’s time in charge was to be limited. He exceeded the rights given to him as the main power behind James’s throne and began to negotiate a Protestant league with England. This rebounded on him as the nobility rose up against Arran, who effectively sealed his own fate when he killed an English noble, Sir Francis Russell, the son of the Earl of Bedford, at a meeting on the Border.

READ MORE: The ordinary Scots soldier who made it to highest rank of the army and society

Using the killing as an excuse to topple Arran, the Lords Enterprisers returned en masse from Newcastle in late 1585 to besiege the king and his chancellor at Stirling Castle.

Ever the master of realpolitik, the king reached an accord with the Lords. Arran knew the game was up and, bereft of his title and his chancellorship, he left James’s court. Although he and the king stayed in touch, Arran lived out his life as Captain James Stewart until he was murdered in 1595 by Sir James Douglas, nephew of Regent Morton, in revenge for his part in the execution of Morton.

One of the Lords who returned to Scotland was John Erskine, the Earl of Mar, who had been James’s childhood companion but had turned against him. He was now reconciled with the king and it was he who seems to have persuaded James to get rid of Arran, Mar swiftly becoming a major influence at court.

James also increasingly relied on the political services of John Maitland of Thirlestane, brother of Mary’s doomed secretary William Maitland of Lethington. John Maitland had become secretary of state in May 1584 and after the fall of Arran he also became lord chancellor and in this capacity was heavily involved in the multiple negotiations that took place to find James VI a suitable wife.

It was at this point that Sir Peter Young, James VI’s nicer, younger tutor, proved himself invaluable. The multilingual Young had been an adviser to the king from the start of his reign and acted as ambassador to Denmark for James while also becoming a member of his privy council in 1586. In that year, James turned 20 and his growing obsession was to find himself a bride, with Young being trusted to vet possible candidates such as Catherine, sister of King Henri III of Navarre.

Now he and John Maitland became the prime movers in the campaign for James to marry a daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark – Protestants, as James insisted. It was apparently Young who discovered that the beautiful eldest daughter Elizabeth was already promised to then powerful Duke of Brunswick and that left the second eldest daughter, Anne.

The negotiations lasted almost two years before James and his princess were betrothed. She was tall and graceful even at the age of just 14 when her father died and her mother Queen Sophie, decided her future, sealing Anne’s betrothal to James in July 1589.

Young, Maitland and James himself had chosen wisely, for Anne would go on to become a real power behind James’s thrones in both Scotland and England.

The couple were married in Denmark by proxy on August 20, and 10 days later Anne set out for Scotland with a small escort of ships to accompany her.

They were almost shipwrecked in a violent storm and had to take refuge in Oslo, where Admiral Peter Munk of the Danish Fleet blamed the storm on a curse that had been laid upon him by a woman.

Soon five women confessed under torture to encouraging the devil to sink the ships, and two were promptly burned at the stake. Interestingly, this gave James a powerful boost to his already existing paranoia about witchcraft and led to the infamous North Berwick witch trials.

James himself went into action by writing a stream of poems and songs to his wife across the water who had written to him saying the voyage would be postponed until spring. James wasn’t having it and in a grand romantic gesture he crossed the North Sea to Flekkefjord and travelled overland to marry his bride properly in Oslo on November 23, 1589.

After much celebrating, it took until the following May for James to bring his queen safely home where she was crowned in the first Protestant coronation in Scotland.

However, James grew to resent Anne’s independence of mind. We will see next week what happened between James and Anne, as well as Maitland and Mar, but now I must turn to the other woman behind James, and it may well surprise you to learn that it was none other than Queen Elizabeth of England.

That’s right, Gloriana herself, who by early 1585 was 51 and had accepted that she would not bear an heir. She had been on the throne since November, 1558, and had always taken an interest in the young King of Scots, communicating with him through ambassadors after his rule began at the age of just 12.

ames VI found the Protestant bride he wanted in Anne of Denmark (above)

Although she had never explicitly stated that James would be her heir, there was not a lot of choice around given her most earnest demand – that whoever should succeed her should be a confirmed Protestant.

James had a solid claim to succeed her via his mother and father and Elizabeth therefore supported and advised him, via letters to and from the two monarchs when he was just 19.

These are truly remarkable documents, preserved in the British Library with digital copies available on the internet. Historians have studied them for centuries and drawn various and often disparate conclusions. Regular readers will know I like to quote original documents, so you can make your own judgment on what was happening between the King of Scotland and Queen of England.

It is clear Elizabeth wanted a friendship with James, and she wrote to him: “Your gladsome acceptance of my offered amity, together with the desire you seem to have engraven in your mind to make merits correspondent, makes me in full opinion that some enemies to our goodwill shall lose much travail ... And so assure yourself I mean and vow to do with this request, that you will afford me the reciproque.”

In a clever piece of psychology, Elizabeth wrote to James in late 1585 deploring the tactics of those who deposed Arran: “I beseech you trust my actions according the measure of my former dealings for your safety and answerable to the rule of reason ... Judge of me therefore as of a king that carries no abject nature and think this of me, that rather than your danger I will venture mine.

“To come to my groundwork, only natural affection ab incunabulis (from the cradle) stirred me to save you from the murderers of your father and the peril that their complices might breed you ... I pray God you may use your best choice to your surest good.”

Elizabeth was as good as her word, and in 1586, according to Professor JD Mackie: “A formal league for mutual defence was made and Elizabeth promised to pay James a pension of £4000 a year.”

Elizabeth would not sign a document promising James her throne when she died but made it clear he was her choice: “Who should doubt performance of a king’s offer? What dishonour may that be deemed?... I will, as long as you with evil desert alter not your course, take care for your safety, help your need, and shun all acts that may damnify you in any sort either in present or future time. This I hope may stand you in as much assurance as my name in parchment, and no less for both our honours.”

Knowledgeable readers will be aware that Elizabeth’s growing support for James took place at the time when his mother Mary was a prisoner in England.

Much has been made of James’s reluctance to invade England to rescue his mother, but the context muddles the king’s situation – he had no memory of his father or mother, had been conditioned to think of Mary as the murderer of Darnley, and her devout Roman Catholic faith was anathema to him.

Most of all, however, he wanted the English crown.

Yet he did make an effort to save Mary after she was condemned for her role, albeit peripheral, in the Babington Plot to topple Elizabeth.

James pleaded with Elizabeth: “What thing, madame, can greatlier touch me in honour that is a king and a son than that my nearest neighbour, being in straitest friendship with me, shall rigorously put to death a free sovereign prince and my natural mother, alike in estate and sex to her that so uses her, albeit subject to a harder fortune, and touching her nearly in proximity of blood?… Honour were it to you to spare when it is least looked for.”

Elizabeth ignored that strong plea and signed Mary’s execution order. The Queen of Scots was duly beheaded at Fotheringhay on February 8, 1587.

Gloriana always maintained that she hadn’t meant to kill Mary and wrote to James calling the execution “that miserable accident, which far contrary to my meaning hath befallen.”

The king wrote back addressing her as “Madame and dearest sister”. His mother gone, James was now free to make his full play to succeed Elizabeth.