James Made Even Stranger (review of King James VI of Scotland; I of England, by Antonia Fraser)

Having bracketed the fascinating figure of James I in previous biographies of his mother, the Queen of Scots, and of Cromwell, the nemesis and executioner of his son, Antonia Fraser seemed destined to write about him. And this she has done—but strangely. She finds James an abler king than is commonly portrayed—Trevelyan, who is typical, calls him “comic.” But she has written a cameo, a sketch, which in its elegant way features the unusual and has the perverse effect of rendering James a stranger figure than he was. And he was quite strange.

James, while in some ways sympathetic, lacked qualities usually deemed essential to a prince. He was a coward, a physical wreck, and a man of unorthodox sexual predilections. At the age of 13 he fell madly in love with a male French cousin, Esmé Stuart, sent to his court as emissary of the Guise family. Years later, by now Queen Elizabeth’s successor on the English throne, his unseemly mooning over the royal favorite, Buckingham, stirred the ridicule of the court. But he could always explain—he had a penchant for explanations: “Jesus Christ,” he told the Privy Council one day in 1617, “did the same and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John and I have my George.” Lady Antonia believes, in fact, that James’s aberrations stemmed, like those of his descendant George III, from porphyria. But contemporary glimpses were not so sympathetic. According to one, written by Anthony Weldon, his tongue was too big for his mouth; his skin “as soft as taffeta sarsnet”; he never washed his hands, and he walked only with the support of others, “his fingers ever in that walk fiddling about his codpiece.”

EY

About the Author

Edwin M. Yoder Jr.

Having bracketed the fascinating figure of James I in previous biographies of his mother, the Queen of Scots, and of Cromwell, the nemesis and executioner of his son, Antonia Fraser seemed destined to write about him. And this she has done—but strangely. She finds James an abler king than is commonly portrayed—Trevelyan, who is typical, calls him “comic.” But she has written a cameo, a sketch, which in its elegant way features the unusual and has the perverse effect of rendering James a stranger figure than he was. And he was quite strange.

James, while in some ways sympathetic, lacked qualities usually deemed essential to a prince. He was a coward, a physical wreck, and a man of unorthodox sexual predilections. At the age of 13 he fell madly in love with a male French cousin, Esmé Stuart, sent to his court as emissary of the Guise family. Years later, by now Queen Elizabeth’s successor on the English throne, his unseemly mooning over the royal favorite, Buckingham, stirred the ridicule of the court. But he could always explain—he had a penchant for explanations: “Jesus Christ,” he told the Privy Council one day in 1617, “did the same and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had his John and I have my George.” Lady Antonia believes, in fact, that James’s aberrations stemmed, like those of his descendant George III, from porphyria. But contemporary glimpses were not so sympathetic. According to one, written by Anthony Weldon, his tongue was too big for his mouth; his skin “as soft as taffeta sarsnet”; he never washed his hands, and he walked only with the support of others, “his fingers ever in that walk fiddling about his codpiece.”