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Defender of the Faith

Part I

A Royal Prince

I
Duke of Albany [1]
On Wednesday, 19 November 1600, shortly past midday, in the grim confines of Dunfermline Palace, ‘the fort on the crooked Linn,’ a second son and third living child was born to James VI of Scotland by his Queen, Anne of Denmark. Though the birth of this child was little noticed at the time, he would grow up to become King Charles I, the first King of Great Britain, and to shape the fate of our British Isles forever.


Anne of Denmark, James's wife and Charles's mother.

His birth was a difficult one, and the boy was not expected to live. Only two years previously, Anne had given birth to a girl, Margaret, who had died earlier that year, and there were fears that such a fate would befall Charles as well, if he even survived that long. He was thus baptised with all due haste, and his midwife, Janet Kinlock, well rewarded for her service to the kingdom. No bonfires were lit in Edinburgh, nor did any bells ring out from the kirks of the kingdom, nor were the streets filled with the sounds of public revelry, but only the customary three-gun salute from Edinburgh Palace. The only record we have of the precise timing of this future king’s birth comes from the writings of an unknown astrologer who, having little hope for the boy’s future, did not even attempt to calculate Charles’s destiny.

On the date of his son’s birth, the king was a day’s ride away in Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth, supervising the dismemberment of the carcasses of the Earl of Gowrie and of his brother, Alexander Ruthven. The two had schemed to murder the king in a tower at Gowrie House near Perth, and it is by the hand of God that he was saved from such a fate. The brothers were duly hung, drawn, and quartered for treason against king and country, and hung on gibbets in Edinburgh, Sterling, and Perth. Few mourned their passing, though the execution did little to heal the rifts that had grown in the marriage between James and his Queen, who had an unusual affection for Alexander Ruthven, whose sister, Beatrix, was one of her ladies-in-waiting. Needless to say, the king was quite pleased when he first learned of his son’s birth. He found the date particularly auspicious, it being the anniversary of the first time he met his wife, on 19 November 1589, when he sailed with a retinue of three hundred men to the coast of Norway, upon hearing that her crossing to Scotland from Copenhagen had been upset by fierce storms in the North Sea. He rewarded John Murray, the bearer of the joyous news of his son’s birth, with £16 in Scottish currency.

At the time of Charles’s birth, James was thirty-four years of age, and had ruled as King of Scots for almost his entire life, having ascended to the throne at the age of thirteen months, following the forced abdication of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots. Since the peace with England in 1560, Scotland had been enjoying greater prosperity than before, but it was still a poor and primitive country by English standards, full of strange traditions and with unsettling ties to the Continent—France in particular (Mary had been married to the King of France), but also the Low Countries and Scandinavia. Scotland did enjoy a considerable export trade, but only in the sale of such goods as fish, wool, hides, linen and livestock. There was a strong tradition in Scotland of violence and hereditary feuds, as shown by the example of the Gowrie Plot, and numerous others besides. However, the religious climate in Scotland was firmly Calvinist, with God rightfully respected and regarded as the ‘terrible revenging judge of the world.’

And yet James had his eyes set on more than just the backwards country over which he ruled. For his great-grandmother was Margaret Tudor, elder sister to King Henry VIII of England and thus the aunt of Elizabeth, then Queen of England. Margaret Tudor married James IV, and upon his death in 1513, their son became King James V. She married again the next year, to the Earl of Angus. Through these two marriages, Margaret was the grandmother of both Mary Queen of Scots and Henry Stewart, the mother and father of King James VI. Thus, James VI was the rightful heir to the throne of England. During Mary’s reign, there were efforts to prevent the possibility of her, as a Catholic, ascending to the English throne, but these had subsided during James’s reign. This was partly due to James’s secret negotiations with Elizabeth’s advisor Robert Cecil to ensure a stable succession, and partly due to the fact that James was clearly her legitimate successor and heir to the throne. When Elizabeth did die, James inherited the English crown and what he called his ‘promised land’, but before we reach that point in this narrative, let us return first to the childhood of the young Charles.

On 23 December, at the age of five weeks, Charles was at last taken from Dunfermline to Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh for his Christening. For the first time in his life, Charles was able to experience the ceremony and glory inherent in the royal personage. The Prince de Rohan, a French Huguenot and one of his godfathers, carried him in a golden robe to the Royal Chapel, where the king awaited. A service followed, in which the Bishop of Ross preached the virtues of obedience to the king as God’s lieutenant on earth. The boy was held by the Countess of Huntley (one of his godmothers) beneath a magnificent silken pall, and baptised by the bishop. King James bestowed upon him the title of Duke of Albany, the traditional title of the second son of the Scottish King. Heralds then proclaimed him Lord of Ardmonoche, Earl of Ross, and Marquis of Ormonde. The sound of cannon and trumpets filled the cold winter air, and the crowd below thundered out their applause and cheers for their new prince. Celebrations and feasting lasted through to Christmas, and James conferred various knighthoods and peerages in his son’s honour. Charles returned to Dunfermline and to the daily routine of life in the nursery, which was to be his home for the next three years.


Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh - site of Charles's Christening.

Charles was placed under the care of Margaret Stewart, Lady Ochiltree, who was to be his governess. He had as his wet nurse Jean Drummond, and as his ‘rocker’ Marion Hepburn, whose duty was to lull the boy to sleep. His nursery was well provisioned, with expensive garments for the boy and generous wages for the nurses. Charles has left no record of his experiences in the nursery, but we can be sure the nurses did not have an easy task with the boy’s upbringing. Charles was a weak and sickly infant, and suffered from rickets from the age of one. In June 1604, he was examined by Dr. Henry Atkins (later to be President of the Royal College of Physicians), who wrote to James that the ‘joints of his knees, hips and ankles being great and loose are not yet closed, and knit together, as it happens to many in their tender years.’ Atkins was more blunt in writing to Sir Robert Cecil, James’s chief advisor, whom he told that ‘The Duke was far out of order.’

Atkins was writing to the king and queen in England, as James had by then ascended to the English throne. Elizabeth had died between two and three on the morning of 24 March 1603, in Richmond Palace. A few hours later, Cecil, who had been Elizabeth’s senior advisor, met with the council, and they proclaimed James VI of Scotland as King of England. It did not take long for this joyous news to reach the ears of this new King of England. For Robert Carey was present during Elizabeth’s last hours, and seeking the favour of the new king, set off at once to alert of the news. This was in disobedience to the will of the council, who sought to keep the Queen’s death a secret until they had announced her successor. Carey did succeed in being the first to relay the tidings to James, on the night of 26 March, and James rewarded his service by appointing him a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. However, his conduct was met with general disapproval, being considered ‘contrary to all decency, good manners and respect’ and he was dismissed from his new post upon James’s arrival in England.


The funeral procession of Elizabeth, Queen of England. James refused to attend her funeral, going hunting that day instead.

So eager James was to claim his new crown that he set off on 3 April, a week and a day after hearing the news, travelling the high road to England alone. He left his family behind; Anne and their eldest children, Henry and Elizabeth, were to follow him in the next month; Charles was to join them when he was deemed strong enough to survive the long journey to England. The day before he left Edinburgh, he appointed his Lord Chancellor, Alexander Seton, Lord Fyvie as Charles’s guardian. James hoped Seton’s Roman Catholic sympathies would serve to placate the Catholics of England. Thankfully, Fyvie did not influence Charles towards popery, although his appointment failed to satisfactorily appease the English Catholics, as will be made well apparent later in this narrative. Still, one can almost feel sympathy for Fyvie, who had to contend with the same problems Lady Ochiltree had to in taking care of Charles, only now with the added complication of a constant stream of letters from James and Anne asking after the health of their son. In April 1604, Fyvie replied to one such letter, stating that Charles was eating, drinking and using his natural functions as would any normal child of his age, and a month later assured them that ‘Duke Charles continues, praises be to God, in good health, good courage and lofty mind, although week in body is beginning to speak some words. He is far better yet of his mind and tongue than of his body and feet.’

Thus by the spring of 1604 James and Anne felt their son was ready to join them, and it was with this in mind that Dr. Atkins was sent to Scotland to examine the boy. Under the doctor’s care, Charles’s health rapidly improved, from being ‘out of order’ to growing daily ‘from one perfection to another’. At the age of three and a half, the boy was able to walk the length of the great hall of Dunfermline Palace unaided, and despite a slight fever, his doctor decided the benefits of being reunited with his family after two years of separation were worth the risks of the journey. ‘He often talks of going to London,’ he told Anne in one of his letters, ‘and desires to see his gracious mother.’

So on 13 July Charles left Dunfermline for the kingdom that was to be his home from then on. Two coaches carried the royal party, including Lord Fyvie and Dr. Atkins, guarded by a small escort under Sergeant Myners. The party proceeded at a leisurely pace out of concern for the health of the boy, and stopping frequently to enjoy the pleasures of being hosted at the residences of various English nobles. On 8 August, they stayed at the Earl of Shrewsbury’s house in Nottinghamshire, where Charles was introduced to hunting, a sport that became a lifelong passion for him, as he saw a buck hunted and killed. It was not until late September that the party reached Easton Neston, near Towcester, where his parents met with him and took him the last seventy miles to Windsor Castle.

With Charles successful reunited with his parents, Fyvie’s duties were finished, and he was thus discharged as guardian, and sent back to Scotland to return to his position as Lord Chancellor of that kingdom, with the king’s thanks for having so ‘carefully and discreetly governed our son.’ James now turned to the problem of finding new English servants to attend to his son. This was more difficult than it sounds out to be, as Robert Carey relates that few wanted such an honour, for ‘when they did see how weak a child he was, and nor likely to live, their hearts were down, and none of them was desirous to take charge of him.’ In the end, James chose Robert’s wife as Charles’s governess, formally appointing her to the position on 8 February 1605. Having the Careys as the prince’s guardians seemed a fitting reward for Carey’s service to the king following his old Queen’s death, as previously related.


King James VI of Scotland and I of England, painted only months before his death.

On 5 January 1605, during that year's Twelfth Night celebrations, Charles was created Duke of York, the customary title of the second son of the English king. This ceremony was used by James to introduce his son to the English high society, and was followed by the annual Twelfth Night masque. Throughout the ceremony, two nobles stood by the boy, apparently in order to catch him should he fall. Charles never fully understood what was going on, asking at one point if he was being made king. Needless to say, Charles had little time to enjoy his new title. For on 3 October of that year, a day that will live forever in infamy, tragedy struck, and Charles was indeed made king before years’ end.

[1] This events that occur in this chapter are the same as in OTL. The POD occurs in the next chapter.
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