The Murder of King James I

by Alastair Bellany, Thomas Cogswell

A year after the death of James I in 1625, a sensational pamphlet accused the Duke of Buckingham of murdering the king. It was an allegation that would haunt English politics for nearly forty years. In this exhaustively researched new book, two leading scholars of the era, Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell, uncover the untold story of how a secret history of courtly poisoning shaped and reflected the political conflicts that would eventually plunge the British Isles into civil war and revolution. Illuminating many hitherto obscure aspects of early modern political culture, this eagerly anticipated work is both a fascinating story of political intrigue and a major exploration of the forces that destroyed the Stuart monarchy.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

656 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2015

About the author

Alastair Bellany is associate professor of history at Rutgers University and the author of The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England. Thomas Cogswell is professor of history at UC Riverside. His books include The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624.

Reviews

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The plaster and the powder...

Following the death of James VI and I in 1625, rumours abounded that he had been done away with by his favourite, George Villiers, by then Duke of Buckingham. Over the intervening period these rumours have been dismissed by historians, partly on the grounds of lack of real evidence and partly as a result of developments in the field of forensic medicine, which suggest other, natural causes for his death. In this book, the authors' position is that whether James was or wasn't murdered is not the point. They argue that it is how and why the allegations were made that matters, and how they were spread, perceived by contemporary society, and altered over time to suit the end purposes of various factions. They set out to prove that the allegations played a major role in the downfall of Charles I, and were still exerting a political influence many decades after the event, all through the period of Cromwell's Protectorate, through the Restoration, and on to the final demise of the Stuart dynasty.

The authors start by examining the relationship between James, his son Charles, and Buckingham, favourite of both Royals. They show how Buckingham had worked his way up on the basis of favours granted by James to a position of extraordinary power and influence, a position which his contemporaries felt he abused. Through marriage and patronage, Buckingham had advanced many of his family and friends and this was thoroughly resented. Buckingham was also close to Charles and, by the time of James' death, he was seen as exerting too much influence over the new King.

The authors then go into the actual circumstances of James' death in great detail. They use an interesting technique, to examine the same event or period from a variety of different perspectives. So they look at the medical practices in place at the time, the medical protocols put in place by the King's chief physician, letters written by a courtier giving the layman's view of events in the sickroom. Then they discuss the aftermath – how the King's death was immediately mythologised as a 'good' death – i.e., that he died sure in his Protestant faith, and how this view was spread to the populace. They look at the evidence, and subsequent rumours, relating to Buckingham's behaviour in the sickroom, when he apparently gave the king a 'plaster' – some kind of poultice – and a potion, without the full sanction of James' doctors. And they look at how this was the period when the practice of autopsies was in its infancy and how that played into the rumours.

This approach of coming at the thing from various angles gives a slow and thorough build-up to an extremely detailed picture, and it's the approach they take with each section of the book. The other main participant in the 'story' is George Eglisham, who put in print the rumour that Buckingham had in fact poisoned James, in his pamphlet The Forerunner of Revenge. Starting with a biography of Eglisham, they circle through printing and distribution methods, the growing use of propaganda on both sides of the religious divide, how this division has to be seen in a European rather than simply British context, and so on. They then follow the journey of the pamphlet, arguing that it and the rumours it contained played a crucial role in the failed Parliament of 1626, a role not given due weight by more recent historians. And they suggest that the pamphlet maintained its important influence throughout Charles's reign and beyond, with his defence of Buckingham's role making Charles seem complicit in his father's murder in many eyes. This, they suggest, helped to define the public attitude to the Stuart dynasty through the rest of the century, and they show how the pamphlet was frequently re-edited and re-produced to further the schemes of various factions, with Eglisham being represented as everything from the disaffected Catholic that he actually was through to being some kind of Protestant hero when it suited.

As anyone who has read any of my reviews will know, I am a bit of a history and politics geek, and I found the story the authors told fascinating. However, I will say this book is much more academic in style than most of the history I've reviewed, therefore a tougher read. It is a brick, coming in at about 550 pages plus notes, and goes into a great depth of detail, including extensive quoting from sources – I've barely touched on the ground it covers. It is very well written, though - thoroughly explained and convincingly argued, and free of academic jargon, so still quite accessible to the general reader. Personally I found it an immersive experience, at some points feeling that I knew the players and politics of the period of and just after the 'murder' better than I do the contemporary political scene. Although I'd say it's perhaps geared more towards an academic than a general audience, it certainly isn't necessary to have an existing knowledge of the period going in – my knowledge of the Stuart era could be described as sketchy at best, and I found the authors gave me all the information I required to understand the background to the events they describe. In fact, as well as the specific arguments of the book, I feel I now have a thorough grounding on the general political history of the period. The book is also extensively illustrated throughout, particularly with the frontispieces of the various books and pamphlets to which the text refers, which is extremely helpful in understanding the authors' explanations of their symbolic features. So, with the proviso that it's not what I'd think of as a light, casual read, highly recommended.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Yale University Press.

P.S. I forgave the authors for the book title since in the first line of the introduction they give him his proper title of King James VI and I. ;)

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[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The central thesis of this book is that the 'secret history' and rumours of the murder of James I by Buckingham/Charles had a much more profound impact on the political history of the seventeenth century than previous scholars have credited it with. They have looked at libels and some political documents to provide evidence for this view, drawing in aspects of the cultural turn and post-modernist history, to construct a narrative that is interesting if not compelling.

Aside from the fact that post-modernism is not my bag, I have a number of issues with the argument. Firstly, the use of evidence is overly selective - there is no analysis of the wider documentation or context of popular history in the early- to mid-seventeenth century: some rough percentages of the print and manuscript cultures would show how important the libels, etc, actually were in the general scheme of things, i.e. what proportion mentioned the 'murder'. Quantity of material instead seems to be glossed over by quoting ad infinitum from particular tracts, which, at best, seems unnecessary and, after a while, rather dull. It seems almost as if they are practising the psychological technique of looking for everything of a certain colour in a room in order to say how much of that colour there is in the world, instead of taking in the wider picture. There is also a reasonable amount of what I can only describe as grasping at straws: there is a distortion of certain events and fact. For instance, it seems rather poor to say that the rumours played a central part in the trial of Charles when they weren't even mentioned in the charges (ch. 21). The authors have tried to explain it away but I can see no other reason for excluding them than that the Rump knew they were on dodgy ground. Likewise, tying rumours into the awful time Charles II had in Scotland in 1650-1 is not really feasible. Charles II was made to renounce both his mother and father as there was no other way, psychologically or politically, that the Scottish could countenance taking up arms against one king while supporting his son.

As a mark of respect to Cogswell and Bellany, I will assume that they have overplayed the rumours as a rhetorical device to draw attention to the fact that some people believed Buckingham and/or Charles capable of murder and that it therefore deserves inclusion within the overall 'high road to civil war'.

[Siri Olsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Murder of King James I provides probably the most comprehensive overview and interpretation of the rumours surrounding the death of James I in 1625. Starting with an indepth look at the various accounts of the king's death, the second and third parts of the book largely follow the conception, publication, and evolution in content and use of one of the first political pamphlets. While this is a long read which goes into a lot of detail, the book does not only provide a masterful introduction to the political climate leading up to the English Civil War, but also reflects on the important influence of the advent of written political propaganda and its dissemination into the wider populace. The authors' characterisation of the broader masses is overall quite cynical, but in this day and age, it's difficult not to agree with them. All in all, the book is a disturbing insight into the political climate that ultimately led to civil war with chilling parallels to our present day. My recommendation: take the time to read this book instead of The King's Assassin.

[Brackman1066 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly an exhaustive study of the narrative, told for several decades and by various factions, that King James was poisoned. The book covers fascinating material, although it is a bit of a marathon to get through.

[Janice]

Note: My star system means:

Unrated: Either DNF'ed - generally because the writing at some point made me angry and I lost faith in the author - or F'ed but resentfully so.
*: The author delivered the bare minimum for me to finish the book
**: Good enough to hold my attention on a subway ride or, for non-fiction, interesting ideas told in a mediocre way
***: Maybe there were some issues with the writing but still totally absorbing/interesting
****: Either a book where the writing wasn't the best but I inhaled it anyway or the reverse, where the writing was fantastic though maybe it was a bit slow-going in parts
*****: I loved the writing and was totally inhaled by the book period

This nonfiction history book which both is and isn't (mostly isn't) about the murder of James I is admittedly significantly off my beaten genre path, so bear that in mind as you read this review. I'm noting this because, while I DNF'ed like 50% in, this is an absolutely really well-written intensive deep dive history and if you're into that kind of thing then you might really love it. I'm not into that kind of thing but even so I liked it for a while before getting crazy bored. When I say the book both is and isn't about the murder of James I (and to show you how little I know about English history, I barely knew of his existence let alone that there was a suspicion of murder around his death), what I mean is this: the authors are uninterested in whether or not James I was murdered; rather they're interested in how this small underground publication by one of James' doctors called, in the somewhat bizarrely incomprehensible manner of pamphlet titles of that era, "The Forerunner of Revenge" encapsulated the larger social history of the time and persisted long after everyone involved had been forgotten. The authors have a thesis around what this pamphlet meant, how it fit into a larger world of the religious power tussles of the time as well as in the context of libel law and underground publications in general, plus the overarching political context. The writing is clear but super dense. It's names and dates and quotes in old(er) English pretty much nonstop. What kept me hooked for a while though is that the authors approach the subject matter, as best they can, from the mindset of the people of that era. For example, there's an entire completely awesome section of the blow-by-blow medical analysis of the days leading up to James' death - only the medicine of the day was the four humors (melancholia, bile, etc.) and the authors don't judge it or try to translate it into modern medicine but rather let it play out like CSI: 1600s. I found reading that section to be totally riveting because of the way the authors portrayed it, i.e. without judgment of the science of the day but trying to help us, the reader, see it the way the doctors of that era did. It's what kept me reading; I kept hoping there'd be another section that grabbed me the way that one did. But there wasn't; it was the same sort of writing in which you're seeing events through the lens and meaning of the people of the time, but it was in areas I couldn't click with (like political minutiae and Parliament etc.). Look, the book is clearly well-written and if you're a history buff, especially of that era, and love all the names, dates, and details, you will likely inhale this book and perhaps have a strong opinion on the authors' approach. It wasn't for me, but the quality was there so this is definitely a personal taste thing and not a pan of the book itself.

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