Queen James by Gareth Russell review: 'a valiant attempt to make sense of a paradoxical king'

Written with enviable clarity and full of fascinating asides, this book should spark more sensitive readings both of James I and VI and of the Jacobean period in general, writes Stuart Kelly

The Fortunes of Nigel is not one of Walter Scott’s better known works. In one of his wittier prefaces, Captain Clutterbuck meets the enigmatic “Author of Waverley”, who promises his new novel will forgo the fantastic elements of The Monastery and claims in this, “All is clear and above board - a Scots metaphysician might believe every word of it”. This admirable initial scheme is only slightly derailed by Scott’s choice to have James VI and I as a character. The monarch’s desk is an antic assemblage strewn with papers including “the art of poetry, and schemes for the general pacification of Europe, with a list of the names of the king's hounds, and remedies against canine madness” – the first is true, James did write a book instructing poets what he expected of them – but this is just a metaphor for the man himself.

The chaos and contradictions of James’ study were “mere outward types of those which existed in the royal character, rendering it a subject of doubt amongst his contemporaries, and bequeathing it as a problem to future historians”. Gareth Russell’s book is a valiant, and mostly very successful attempt, to make sense of the paradoxical king. (Scott continues with a paragraph longer than this review enumerating the antisyzygy, as MacDiarmid would have called it, of James).

Painting of James I and VI wearing the jewel called the Three Brothers in his hat, after John de Critz, c. 1605 | Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

Russell is less academic than Steven Veerapen in The Wisest Fool, and more thorough than Thomas Cogswell in James I: The Phoenix King in Penguin Monarchs (its remit means we lose sight of the VI part, as the series includes Cromwell but excludes Robert the Bruce). Although the title is suitably eye-catching, it actually does a disservice to Russell’s scholarship and caution. James’ sexuality is only one part of the story, and since neither Duke of Buckingham nor Lord Spynie, to name but two of James’ favourites, had an OnlyFans account, precisely who did what and to whom is a cloistered matter. How we classify same-sex relationships is an ambiguous business. James clearly had emotional, intellectual and physical feelings for his “minions”, at the same time he was evidently in love with his wife, Anne of Denmark: Russell’s touching accounts of the griefs of James leaves one in no doubt of either. One thing which does, almost inadvertently, become apparent in the book is James’ sexual shrewdness. Without denying the sincerity of his feelings, he did not bequeath his own son Charles a host of interfering illegitimate relatives, as he had suffered. Ambiguities abound. When James wrote to Elizabeth protesting the death of Mary, was saying the death of his mother was even worse than when Elizabeth’s father, Henry VII had his “bedfellow” (Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn) – beheaded furious tactlessness or snide cunning?

In Russell’s telling, one of the major factors in James’ psychology, his neediness and avoidance of conflict (both personally and in European statecraft), is justifiable paranoia. Setting aside the Gunpowder Plot, James’ life began with an assassination attempt, with a pistol held to his pregnant mother’s stomach during the murder of Rizzio. Subsequent attempts – the Ruthven Raid, then the Gowrie Conspiracy – make it clear that reigning was a perilous affair. His panic attack when visiting Sir George Bruce’s engineering works at Culross, on his only visit to Scotland after his English coronation, is eminently understandable. His wariness manifested itself as a “hate and wait” policy, as Russell neatly dubs it. The striking fact is that it worked, especially when you consider the judicial execution of his mother (and his son). Similarly, James’ obsession with witches’ covens is rooted in the same anxiety (and exacerbated by the misogynistic rhetoric around his female forebears), although Russell judiciously observes that James was conspicuously lenient towards those accused of sorcery in later life. Awful though it was, again it does require some context. Liberal Switzerland had nearly ten times as many witch trials as Scotland.

It is impossible to write political history without church history, and Russell is nimble in dealing with what can seem dry distinctions, helped by a good turn of phrase – “the Church of England in 1603 was thus supported by most and loved by few”. James was clearly grated by the Kirk – Andrew Melville, Knox’s successor, reminded James he was “but God’s silly vassal” – but his training by the Kirk can be seen in his erudite emendations during the writing of what we call the King James Version of the Bible. Even while writing with enviable clarity about these matters, Russell finds room for fascinating asides – such as James seriously considering making Ireland a new homeland for exiled and dispossessed European Jews.

This book will hopefully spark more sensitive readings of both James and the Jacobean period, and it will be interesting to see how the picture shifts again with the publication of Clare Jackson’s The Mirror of Britain: A Life of King James VI and I in August of this year. There are still tantalising loose threads to tug at in the life of James. Macbeth may be familiar, but what was Shakespeare’s theatrical company doing performing a play, The Gowrie Tragedy, a year into James’ accession? Can we ever really know the man who at one and the same time is the only British monarch to write an epic poem (Lepanto, 1591) and the only one to threaten to moon his subjects from the Edinburgh to London coach?

Queen James, by Gareth Russell, William Collins, £25

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