Kingdom, Power and Glory

Hudson Review, The, Winter 2004 by Simpson, Louis

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS MARRIED A CHARMING YOUNG MAN, Henry Darnley. Mary was pregnant, but in a few months Darnley and Mary were quarreling. Darnley wanted "Matrimonial Crown," that, is for her to share her crown with him. But Mary refused-the charming young man was a drunkard and bully. Someone blew him up when he was lying ill in bed. Mary had a lover, the Earl of Bothwell. It was said that he killed Darnley.

Mary gave birth to a boy. He was next in the line of succession. Before James was a year old, he was titular king of Scotland and heir apparent to the English throne. Mary was Catholic, but England was Protestant-James was handed over to Protestant governors. He never saw his mother again. Adam Nicolson, the author of God's Secretaries,1 says, "As a boy king, [James] had been a trophy in the hands of rival noble factions in Scotland, kidnapped, held, threatened and imprisoned." James's governors were terrifying men whose memory would continue to haunt him all his adult life.

When James was king, he spoke feelingly of his early years: "I was alane, without fader or moder, brither or sister, king of this realme, and heir apperand of England." After such an upbringing, it is not surprising that he wanted peace above everything else. He was a family man with a wife and children. He was "immensely intellectual, speaking Greek before breakfast, Latin before Scots . . . capable on sight of turning any passage of the Bible from Latin to French and then from French to English."

He had a passion for hunting and spent half his time at it. He was a poor shot, so he had the deer rounded up and killed them that way.

Nicolson says that James's hunting was an "escape from realities." Asked why he wasted his time so, he said that he could get more done in an hour than other men in a day. This seems to be true: he killed every deer in the royal park. It had to be restocked from England.

Nicolson says that James's "troubled upbringing had shaped a man with a divided nature," and that "Later history, wanting to see him as a precursor for his son's [Charles's] catastrophe, has chosen only the ridiculous aspects of James: his extravagance, his vanity, his physical ugliness, his weakness for beautiful boys, his self-inflation, his selfcongratulatory argumentativeness ..."

But there was another side to James. In August 1605 he visited Oxford, "his favorite place in England." At the Bodleian Library, "surrounded by the chained-up books, he told the assembled dons, 'Were I not a King, I would be a University-man. And I could wish, if ever it be my lot to be carried captive, to be shut up in this prison, to be bound with these chains, and to spend my life with these fellow captives which stand here chained.'"

Elizabeth had been queen of England as long as anyone could remember. It was time for a change-a new generation was waiting its turn. But Elizabeth's motto was semper eadem, "always the same." She would not lie down but stayed on her feet, half asleep, holding on to the bedposts. Finally she let go, and after so many years without a king, England had one. What would he be like? The road from Edinburgh was strewn with flowers. James threw gold to the crowd. The king was a big spender.

Nicolson says that James had "an Arcadian vision of untroubled togetherness. . . . The English church would be unified, its Elizabethan squabbles forgotten. England and Scotland would become one country. Peace would be established in Europe." But in the first months of James's reign in England, he came slap up against what T. S. Eliot calls "English denseness." English gentlemen did not want a "Great Britain." What would happen to their ancient privileges? James Stuart was a Scot, an outsider.

The nation was divided on religion. A conference was held at Hampton Court to discuss what should be done. Men who could be leaders were invited. Not all of those who came were well born, and some had a humble background. Lancelot Andrewes' father was a merchant mariner.

The bishops, on their knees, made suggestions. Puritans as usual were a problem. The king was for toleration. He did not want the "brainsick and heady preachers," but welcomed "the learned and grave men of both sides."

John Reynolds, intending to say that there should be a meeting of "brethren," thoughtlessly called it a "presbyterie." Presbyterians wanted to do away with the Church of England. But James loved those splendors. "No bishops," he shouted, "no king!" "Into this fierce, overheated atmosphere . . . the first suggestion, the seed of the King James Bible dropped. John Reynolds said, 'May your Majesty be pleased that the Bible be new translated.'"

The stricter Puritans were disappointed with the outcome at Hampton Court. There would be "no great change to the church, and certainly no hint of revolution-but at court an air of optimism prevailed." Nicolson says that "Dressed up as a meeting of opposites, this conference was in fact the bringing together of a consensus."

King lames knew exactly what the Bible should be: "a text to which the nation as a whole, Puritan and prelate, court and country, simple and educated, could subscribe." And he knew how such a Bible could be made-by working together, "jointness," the pieces coming together like a screw joining two pieces of wood, not a nail being hammered and splitting the wood. The work would be done methodically. Nicolson says, "There would be no 'hint of inspiration, even of prayerfulness.' King James's rules for translation were "exact directions, state orders, not literary or theological directions."