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- [00:03]
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Eleanor Evans
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- [01:31]
Avatar Movie Promoter
Friday Avatar Fire and Ash arrives in theaters.
- [01:34]
Clare Jackson
I am the fire.
- [01:36]
Avatar Movie Promoter
Get your 3D tickets now for the greatest chapter of the biggest saga in history. Whatever happens, protect this family. Critics rave. It's by far the best Avatar movie.
- [01:48]
Clare Jackson
If your father and I do not return, you go as far and as fast as you can.
- [01:53]
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- [01:53]
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- [02:05]
History Extra Host
For more than 400 years, the reputation of King James VI of Scotland and first of England has been refracted and reflected through many lenses. In today's episode of the History Extra podcast, historian Claire Jackson will be exploring this multifaceted legacy, examining the many threads of the king's reputation that she explores in her new biography, the Mirror of Great Britain. Putting the questions to her was Eleanor Evans.
- [02:31]
Eleanor Evans
Today we're talking about your new biography of King James VI of Scotland and first of England, and I'd like to start with a few words. We've got agitate. We've got decoration. We've got impostor preoccupied and quintessence. And these really surprised Me as just a few of the words that first appear in the writing of King James vi. And first, James own words are foregrounded throughout your biography. And I hoped we could start with this idea of him as a wordsmith. Monarch.
- [02:59]
Clare Jackson
Yes. Those are words to which James is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary of being the first usage in print. They may not be. I mean, the OED is notoriously unrepresentative in terms of the way in which it identifies nilogisms. A lot of it depended on the assiduity or preferences of its readers. I mean, Shakespeare is cited over 30,000 times, but they're a very good way of accessing James interest in just all forms of lexicography and work. And I really wanted to bring James's words, both private and public, to the forefront of this biography. He is unusual in his embrace of print. I mean, print is a fairly new media for 16th and 17th century contemporaries. And throughout his life and his Scottish and English reigns, James embraces print as a way of communicating with his subjects. His first publication appears in Edinburgh in 1584, when he's only 18. It's a manual of Scottish poetry. And throughout his life he published on a huge range of subjects, poetry, demonology, political theory, theology, tobacco and smoking. And I wanted to integrate those works with an account of his life as well, as he's very proud of the fact that he issues so many proclamations and that he writes them all himself, he claims is an extensive correspondent. He just leaves a huge written legacy, perhaps most vividly demonstrated in his collected works that are first published in early 1617 with an expansion, expanded edition, second edition in 1620, huge, handsome folio volume. And he is the first monarch to monumentalize his works in this way. And his editor, James Montague, says that this is actually something that his subjects were quite disconcerted by, that they regarded his writings a bit like they regarded blazing stars or comets. They felt that they were portents of some strange thing. And I think one of the themes of the biography is that no monarch really wanted to communicate with his subjects more than James. And sometimes both among contemporaries and historians, no monarch has actually also been more misunderstood.
- [05:04]
Eleanor Evans
Well, I think that the wordsmith, the wordplay gives us a new view of James that perhaps people who have more of a passing interest in this monarch won't have seen before. And you do write about how this reputation, as you say, has been misunderstood. You've got a great line in the book, which I really loved, that four centuries is a long time to be in rehab and Your biography is a bit of a rehabilitation of this image. And I wonder if you can take us through a bit of the changing images and depictions of this king and where your biography sits in this story.
- [05:33]
Clare Jackson
Yeah, it probably won't be comprehensive because that would probably take the rest of the podcast. But I think one of the themes of the biography is that James surprised most people. He certainly surprised the English. I mean, they were surprised, first of all, that his accession to the crown in 1603 was as peaceful and uncontested as it turned out to be. And then he sort of continued sort of disconcerting. English contemporaries, at any rate, they weren't used to having a monarch who was so fond of talking and writing, who had such strong and developed views about kingship, who really felt that his place as monarch was in Parliament, in the law courts, constantly interrogating his judges and his privy councillors. I mean, they'd been used to this very, very long, quite silent reign of Elizabeth, with lots of things left unspoken. So there was that dimension to the surprise he encountered among contemporaries. There's also been lots of speculation over the centuries about his male favourites and the relations with them, well, as with his wife, Queen Anna, but really more catastrophically, perhaps for James, was the impact of the mid century civil wars. So it was very difficult really for subsequent generations to see James other than as the father of Charles I, who disastrously led British Isles into more than a decade of civil war and who ended up being executed on the order of the English Parliament. Very much histories of the stuarts, especially after 1688, especially after the Williamite revolution, and his own grandson, James vii. And second, fleeing into exile, there was what's often called a sort of secret history genre that attempted to sort of explain the Troubles of the 17th century through the moral failings of the Stuarts themselves. And James became very much bound up in Charles I's failures as a king. And really that sort of very stereotypical Whiggish view of James that persisted through the 18th century didn't really get dislodged in the 19th century. There are very sort of crude stereotypes by the likes of Lord Macaulay that focus very much on James and his male favourites, that are very cruel actually, in their assessments of James's physical bearing. I mean, it's now understood that James had a range of physical disabilities. One can only do retrospective diagnoses after about four centuries. But he clearly did have an odd gait. He clearly had some sort of neurological disorders. And there's been speculations about modern analyses of These, but certainly to the more crude stereotypes, you know, he was somebody who slobbered at the mouth, whose tongue was too large to fit, who walked oddly, who was forever hanging on his younger favour. And that sort of very crude one dimensional view of James persisted. And actually, as I say in the book, one of the more depressing rejoinders you get quite often when you say you're working on James is the kind of sellers and Yeatman, 1066 and all that. I can't remember exactly off the top of my head, but James I usually, because it's very English, slobbered at the mouth and had favourites. He was thus a bad king. And that language of slobbering at the mouth is there in a Spectator book review of 2021. It's just a very easy kind of reach for. And one of the things I talk about in the book is that, you know, homophobia has certainly been a fact in James's subsequent reception among historians. Lots of interest in his relationships with latterly someone like George Villiers, later Duke of buckingham. So to 19th century historians like Sir Walter Scott or court historian Jessie, you know, this was sort of grossly indecent and they really didn't often see beyond that. I've actually argued that perhaps scotophobia is just as prevalent a factor in some of the treatments of James as homophobia, particularly among contemporaries. I think that's one of the things that really shocks James when he comes to the throne is the extent to which there is just a lot of anti Scottish xenophobia. And the more in a sense that he retreats among his Scottish favourites, the worse it becomes. So, yeah, I hope that my biography doesn't veer too much in another direction, but I think what I really wanted to do was write a biography of James vi. And first, I think Scottish historians know a lot about James as King of Scotland from 1567 to 1603. But because the royal court relocates to London in 1603 often, their interest at that point tends to wane. And it is felt as though Scotland then becomes an absentine monarchy and it's governed remotely. Whereas English historians tend often to sort of assume that somehow James appears from nowhere in 1603 and that he's this kind of naive, inexperienced king rather than someone who's actually been on the throne for nearly four decades. So I wanted to try and write something that tried to make sense of those two reigns that are often sort of seen as some kind of insuperable biographical hurdle. Most biographies of James will be just portions of his reign with sort of 1603 as some unbridgeable point. It is a massive event in British history, and that's again, one of the themes of the book. But I still think this is one person and one king. And certainly James talks a lot when he's king of England about being an old king. He was past middle age. At the point that he becomes king of England, he says he was 36 and then he dies in his 58th year. But he sees this as something that happens in the sort of second part of his life. And I wanted to write something that was thematic, that looked at, for example, his attitude to witches in Scotland, as well as his involvement in prosecutions for witchcraft in England, and try and sort of bring those together to make sense of this fascinating, multifaceted individual.
- [10:46]
Eleanor Evans
Yes. There are so many through lines that run through this entire narrative and help us make sense of James both in those two halves. I don't want to, you know, separate those, just as you've alluded to. But, you know, it is a hinge moment in 1603. And I think the way that we often learn succession in this very linear fashion, you know, Elizabeth I dies and James becomes James I of England. It's such a linear narrative, and I think then in that so much gets lost of just how uncertain this succession. And I think you bring through how that's important to remember, but also the thread of his diplomacy. We think of him being such a diplomatic peace bringer in perhaps the latter half of his reign, but this was a game he was playing far before that, wasn't it?
- [11:30]
Clare Jackson
Yes, I think that that is one of the themes I wanted to bring through. And in a way that followed on from some of the things that I've been looking at in Devilland, which was very much looking at England, primarily the British Isles, but primarily England through the perspective of foreign diplomats. James knows for all of his Scottish reign, that he regards himself as the undoubted lawful successor to Elizabeth. And he engages in a very complex, multi threaded game of diplomacy. Elizabeth refuses steadfastly ever to confirm her successor. She actually makes it a capital, treasonable crime to even discuss who will succeed her, which one can see actually as fairly negligent on the part of a monarch. So James has a very complex relationship with Elizabeth that sort of governs his life. And she's his godmother. She's always present. They write to each other a lot. It's complicated by the presence of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, whose throne he is kind of given when he's a toddler, but who remains in English prisons for the first two decades of his life and then is eventually executed on Elizabeth's orders. And that's all very complicated. But James also engages in very sustained diplomacy with most countries in continental Europe if he is to further his rightful claim as he sees it, to succeed Elizabeth, he needs as many countries as possible to be convinced of his Many of those are Catholic countries, so he spends a lot of time engaging with Catholic states. And whereas Elizabeth I is really an isolationist and she doesn't have ambassadors in any Catholic country except France, James is very used to having diplomatic missions sent to all of Central Europe, Scandinavia. He has close links with the Oldenburg house through his wife, Queen Anna, as well as lots of German duchies as well as Spain and other countries in the papacy. It's very important to James to engage with all of that range of continental Europe, whether Protestant or Catholic. One of the points he wants to make to Catholic states is that they have nothing to fear from him acceding to Elizabeth's throne, that he has a good record of tolerating, not formally, but treating Catholics well. In Scotland, there are suspicions that his wife, Queen Anna, although raised as a Lutheran, has covertly converted to Catholicism. And he is also the son of a Catholic, Mary, Queen of Scots. And at the same time he appeals to Protestant states as being very firmly the Kirk of Scotland. And he's very used to receiving and hosting diplomatic missions in Edinburgh, Edinburgh, as well as to sending Scots abroad. And he continues very much that engagement in European diplomacy as King of England.
- [14:02]
History Extra Host
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- [15:17]
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- [15:52]
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- [16:25]
Eleanor Evans
You've given us a sense then of a compulsive communicator, someone who cares deeply about forging his own reputation and his own diplomatic path in the world. I was reading the proof of your book on the bus the other day, Prepar, and I turned sideways and saw this long row of Union Jacks. And it was just. I mean, you see them everywhere, especially in the summer in Britain. But it was just a moment where it just clicked for me of just how consequential this succession and his reign is in terms of being the king of these two kingdoms at the same time and uniting. I wonder if you can just talk a bit about his place in history in this moment and what you're considering a bit differently here.
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Clare Jackson
Yeah, and the very fact that we talk about it as the Union Jack, I mean, that comes from James himself, the Latin Jacobus of the most vexed questions in the early years was how to create a flag, the descendant of which is the Union Jap. Today that could represent two countries, two independent sovereign states coming together in an equal way. Vexillology, you know, the sort of formal science of flags is actually not very well equipped to show parity because there are lots of ways in which you arrange flags, proximity to the flagpole or the upper half that show precedence. But you had two countries, England and Scotland, where with the St. George's Cross and the saltire. And in the end, the design that we sort of instinctively think of today is actually only a 19th century variant where the St. George's Cross is dominant, sort of superimposed over the saltire. Actually, until the 19th century, there were two versions in Scotland. They tended to prefer one with the saltire superimposed over St. George's Cross and vice versa. But the complexities attaching to the flag are actually very symbolic of the complexities created by James's accession to the English throne. He seemed to assume that, that it would be very natural once his succession had happened, to then create a new country, to create a Great Britain. So that would be differentiated from Little Britain, sort of Brittany and France. This to him made complete geopolitical sense. He was converting the advantages of dynastic accession into territorial aggrandizement. For him, this was the beginning. And in some ways, I think it's a little bit like the King James Bible project. He had a very good idea and he then sort of assumed everybody would run with it. He recognized that this would involve sort of bringing the Church of England and Scotland closer together. But they were both Protestant state churches. Both countries had a parliamentary system of government. Both countries spoke a variant of the same language, Scots and English. You know, there were lots of reasons, as well as the sort of territorial sense of one island encompassed by sea, to bring these two countries together. And, you know, part of the book at the beginning is very much about James's disappointment that this just didn't really happen. I mean, for the English, it turns out that their crisis was what would happen after Elizabeth. Elizabeth died. Henry VIII had married six times, but had failed to secure the succession beyond that of his own children. And the English were terrified, with good cause, that on Elizabeth's death, England would just be plunged into some very bloody continental war of succession. For the reasons in the book, as we show that that doesn't happen, and James accedes to the throne as a Protestant male with three surviving children at this stage and a royal family. And then in a way, for the English, that's it. The crisis has passed. It's a sort of quirk to the English that James continues being king of Scotland, but he actually only goes there once in 1617. And I think to English minds, there is nothing really further to discuss. James, however, sort of comes down assuming that this will be the start of negotiations. He appoints commissioners to further union. James has good reasons for wanting union, as well as just the fact that it would be a natural desire for a ruler to sort of consolidate their territory. Because James actually knows that the link between England and Scotland, as long as it's a regal union, as it is in 1603, is really only vested in his person and that of his three children. If anything were to happen to them, that link would be broken. And in something like the Gunpowder Plot, major catastrophe within two years that threatened to take out at least James and Prince Henry and Prince Charles. Princess Elizabeth was not in London at the time, and in an era of plague as well, and Prince Henry dies himself in 1612, shows just how fragile that link is. Is certainly when Charles I is executed in 1649, that link is broken immediately. And the English sort of just say to the Scots, you know, you could do what you want, but this link is now gone. James also knows that he can't just simply pass legislation saying that from now on, England and Scotland will share the same royal line. And Henry VIII had tried to prevent the Scots of succeeding, so legislation alone isn't going to be enough. So James has a real reason to try and make these countries so indissolubly linked that they can't be be broken apart again. But that is an ambition in which he fails. But perhaps as a caveat, what he does do, though, is put on the table this vision of Britain and the language of Britain and things like the flag and proclamations and coinage that embed a notion of alliance between these two formerly warring states that at least until his death isn't challenged.
- [21:33]
Eleanor Evans
So if his reign is initializing this conception, it's a useful lens through which to really investigate the complexity between these two kingdoms and their path forwards. But also looking at the tumultuous nature of that as well, I think his personal life is an even greater manifestation of just the tumult that it could impose on personal stories. I mean, there's kidnap, there's murder, there's, you know, his mother's execution, there's the plot against his reign with gunpowder and all the rest of it. And I wonder if we can look at his personal story and his approach to those various events.
- [22:07]
Clare Jackson
Yeah, one of the very early chapters in the book is about violence, really. The extent to which physical danger and the naked sword are always very close to James. He often tells the traumatic tale of his mother Witnessing the very brutal, frenzied murder of her Italian personal secretary in Holyrood palace when she is six months pregnant with James and her terror that she had actually been the intended target. There are very complex factional fighting within the Scottish nobility and she flees pregnant with James and rides a very large distance in the middle of the night when she's six months pregnant with James. And James often talks about, you know, that trauma he experienced in utero. There are plenty other traumas in his early childhood because his mother's subsequent deposition when he is 13 months old triggers a 7 year civil war between members of the Queen's party who supported his mother, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, and members of the nobility who wanted to make James this Protestant boy king. Members of the King's party. And that lasts all of James's early childhood. There are attempts to kind of insulate him from much of the worst of the fighting in Stirling Castle, but he is very clear that control of his person is a prize for his enemies. So there are multiple assassination kidnapping plots throughout his young life. They don't go away. In his adult life, he also has a lot of success as King of Scotland in tackling endemic noble feuding among his Scots nobles. He doesn't like the idea of the most prominent people in his realm, whenever they have a dispute, deciding to, to sort of literally fight it out among themselves. What he wants people to do is come within the legal courts under his authority. He also has a very similar attitude to duelling. Aristocratic dueling in England. Again, it's not a good image for a monarch if his own nobles are busy spilling one another's blood. It is an endemic problem in France at the time. And James is desperate to sort of stop this shedding of blood. I mean, he's often portrayed as, again, in some of the more negative historiography, as being instinctively fearful and that the pacifism isn't really a sort of. Not, it's just a lack of courage. But I think one of the things I really wanted to do in this book is show that the whole of his life is one very courageous tale of survival against recurrent threats.
- [24:28]
Eleanor Evans
Yes, that absolutely comes across. And just to turn to a particular threat, the Gunpowder Plot, it's marked every year in Britain, but I think very few people know what James personal response to it is and the consequences therein. I wonder if we can look at this episode and his.
- [24:43]
Clare Jackson
It is a terrifying moment. I think it's interesting the way we celebrate. I mean, basically we sort of celebrate, I guess, the equivalent of a sort of counter terrorism success, that it was foiled. But the scale of what was enterprised by the plotters is massive. James's reaction to the Gunpowder Plot is deeply personal. He realizes that this wasn't just a single assassination attempt against him. It was very deliberately orchestrated to take place in Parliament. And as one of the plotters later said, when they were interrogated, that's where all the legislation against Catholics had been passed and that's where those who were going to persecute Catholics should meet their end. It would have taken out the entire political establishment. I mean, it was the House of Lords, the House of Commons, James, his two sons, foreign ambassadors, the judiciary. I mean, one of the interesting sort of ever perplexing questions is what did the plotters intend? And to some extent one just can't know. I mean, they must have envisaged such huge chaos resulting from this massive explosion and then a sort of vacuum of authority into which presumably they could insert themselves. I think the scale of the Gunpowder Plot also gives you some sense of the disillusion that Catholics felt on James accession. There was a lot of optimism about James becoming king. He was the son of an unofficial Catholic martyr, Mary Queen of Scots. His wife, Queen Anna was widely rumoured to be a Catholic convert and he had very good relations with a lot of Catholic nobles and Catholics and Scots Scotland. But James made it very clear from the outset that he was not someone like Henry IV in Scotland who's going to change their religion. He is a committed Calvinist and he keeps the same framework of persecutory legislation, the penal laws, as Elizabeth had done. And the plotters themselves are men in their 30s. They are people for whom James accession, as well as the fact that he's got two sons and a daughter. This looks to them like some never ending Protestant succession. They weren't prepared to put up with everything that their parents, grandparents had put up with sort of very oppressive fines and imprisonment. This was something that required a really radical intervention and action. James takes the threat very, very seriously. I mean, he claims credit for having thwarted it. It is when he is presented with a tip off letter that he orders that the palace of Westminster to be searched again. And that's the night before the 5th of November when Parliament is due to open, when Guy Fawkes and his barrels of gunpowder are discovered. So James Fell Basilwell takes credit for that. He then goes to Parliament to speak immediately, a few days afterwards to try and bring home to peers and MPs the real danger that this had Presented at that point, most of the plotters are still on the run, so it's a fast moving situation. But he also uses print, again, very characteristically, to ensure that as many people as possible know the danger in which he and his administration, and as I say, the whole political establishment, have been placed. There is a loss of judicial theatre accompanying the execution of the who are arrested and brought to trial, including Guy Fawkes. And all of their confessions are printed as well as James's speeches. And James then also embarks on a printed propaganda war with the Catholic heads of state in Europe and writes to them in the years after the Gunpowder Plot, trying to make clear to them how dangerous the papacy's claims to temporal supremacy are. James had reacted domestically by passing an oath of allegiance in England to. To force Catholics to swear that their allegiance as a temporal ruler was to him and that the Pope had no temporal claim on their authority. He made no reference to the Pope's spiritual authority. But as long as the Pope claimed the right to depose rulers whom the Pope regarded as heretical, James warned Protestant and Catholic rulers alike that their own positions were constantly endangered. James didn't really win that propaganda war. It was deeply embarrassing for a lot of Catholic heads of state to have this kind of rhetoric being sort of articulated as vociferously. But certainly the scale of what was enterprised brought home to James just how vulnerable early modern monarchs were.
- [28:50]
Eleanor Evans
I wonder how much as people attend fireworks displays or, you know, see bonfires with Guy Fawkes effigies on, people will remember this PR exercise that followed with James being this mass communicator and really putting his fears and message out there. I mean, I'll certainly be bringing it to mind to change the tack very slightly. Now we mentioned just how consequential his reign is in setting the path forward for Scotland and England and their ongoing relationship. Looking beyond those shores. There are also some very important developments and events within James's reign that have huge impact for both Ireland and America. And I don't want to lump these together too entirely, but just for the purposes of this conversation, I wonder if you could just take us through these importance of James's reign for these elements.
- [29:35]
Clare Jackson
Some contemporaries did sort of lump them together. I mean, a lot of the investors in the Irish plantations were the same individuals that then invested in the North American colonies. But no, they're treated separately in the book. And I think Ireland is a very important aspect of James rule. It came with the English crown and James succeeded at a point when the Elizabethan state had been waging war in Ireland for the best part of a decade, the Nine Years War in the 1590s. And as with most of James's foreign policy, he wanted to do things differently. The other foreign policy challenge he faced as King of England was that Elizabeth had also been waging a very long running war with Spain. And James always said, well, I have no quarrel with Spain, so let's make peace. But James was very aware that Ireland particularly offered Catholic powers in Europe the sort of perennial option of attempting side door into England. For various reasons, Protestant Reformation had not gained a strong foothold in Ireland. So it's a majority Catholic population, long standing confessional, but also also cultural commercial ties to Spain particularly. And there is a lot of excitement about James's accession initially in Ireland among Catholics, because he is seen as somebody who is not Elizabeth, as the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots. I think there's probably initially more hope that this will mean formal toleration for Catholics. But James certainly, I think, approaches Irish government with much more sensitivity than the Elizabethan administration. But it is a very fragile post war situation that he encounters. And that post war situation is made even more fragile by the flight of the earls. So two big regional magnates in the north of Ireland take fright at the growing threat to their position by James's administration and flee to the continent in 1607. That creates a huge power vacuum. And James is worried that, as they have said they'll do, their intention is to go to Spain or to the papacy and bring back arms and forces to re establish their power. James instead uses that vacuum as an opportunity to create a huge plantation project to plant Ireland with Protestants mostly, not exclusively, there are some Catholics as well. But to try and bring together Protestantism, peace, prosperity and to settle the whole of the north of Ireland in a new way, not massive estates, I mean to parcel it all up and to use the wealth, particularly of the city of London, to try and establish towns and marketplaces and remain, remove Gaelic customs and Gaelic attachments. It is a hugely ambitious project. It is successful to the extent that it is transformative of the physical arrangement of that area of Ulster. It's also deeply traumatic and leaves, you know, a very troubled legacy, much of which has endured over the centuries. But it is a very interesting sort of laboratory, almost moment, in which a lot of martial arts, both in London and in Dublin, are engaged in creating a new society on the ground. It is something that James has tried in Scotland. I mean, James had tried to plant, fairly unsuccessfully, the Isle of Lewis in the 1590s, again, to try and reduce the influence of Highland Gaelic chiefs that he felt had too much authority and weren't within royal authority. So it is a model that he is drawing from his experiences in Scotland, but as I say, it's one that proves deeply traumatic in Ireland. And at the same time, James is also interested in the colonial settlements that are taking place in North America, particularly in Virginia. These are very fragile settlements at this stage, but the very fact that Jamestown and the James river sort of bear his name show that by the end of James's reign, Virginia became the first Crown colony. There had been a series of problematic private company administrations, there had been local uprisings and massacres, and that toehold of the English state in that bit of North America remained so fragile that actually that became the first crown colony. And James himself said this would be something in which he would also take a very personal interest.
- [33:44]
Eleanor Evans
I mean, obviously, huge consequences for both nations there. And as you say, many sort of lines running right through to the present day. You sort of allude to at the end of the book that James sits after these two behemoths in popular culture of Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. Yet you've just outlined how consequential his reign is in so many ways. Why do you think that he sort of holds then, maybe a bit of a lesser place in that popular consciousness?
- [34:12]
Clare Jackson
I think the honest answer is, I don't know. I think he is a complex monarch. I think this is a complex period of history. You have two countries and two national histories. I think he is almost invariably associated with the difficulties of the Civil War, some of which can be traced back to structural problems within the reign. Sort of endemic Crown penury, sort of Crown finances is not something that James resolved. And he also has very problematic relations with the English Parliament. I still think he would not have ended up in the position that his son ended up in. I think there has also been generations of homophobia, scotophobia, to some extent.
- [34:51]
Eleanor Evans
Just reflecting on what you mentioned earlier in your answer about his reputation, his changing reputation and the attention that's been paid to his sexuality and his preference for male favourites and where that has, you know, ebbed and waned and perhaps colored his reputation. There has definitely been more of an interest, hasn't there, recently, driven by drama. There was a drama, Mary and George, that focused on this reputation and it sort of had a bit of a resurgence, seemingly. But what do you think of centering these relationships? And I guess the secondary part of that question is do we need a James VI and first drama in?
- [35:25]
Clare Jackson
I think that has been one of the distorting lenses looking at James in retrospect. I mean, for what it's worth, I think it's almost impossible really to extract a personal life from a monarch and not see it in political terms. James himself says as much in one of his big arguments with one of his male favorites. You know, I cannot divorce the fact that I am king from this, no matter how much I speak to you as a private man. To James, the idea of extricating his personal life would have seemed a contradiction in terms. This is also somebody who can never remember not being a king king from 13 months. But I do think to only focus on that misses so much. We all have various aspects to our lives, but James seems to me to have more than most. I mean, one of the things we haven't talked about is sort of his involvement in something like the King James Bible. I mean, this is somebody who is so marinated and fascinated by all forms of sort of theology. This is somebody who is very active as a parliamentarian and sort of political engagement, very exercised by continental geopolitics, politics, very interested in sort of the culture and the arts. And if one thinks about the sort of amazing writers of Shakespeare and Johnson and Donne and people that are writing at the same time, I mean, I see it as a fascinating sort of moment in British history, I mean both Scottish and English history. And I hope that sort of understanding James and his writings, whether they're to individuals with whom he was emotionally involved or whether they're to his subjects at large, that trust trying to bring all of these different facets. I mean, it's partly why I've called it the Mirror of Great Britain because you can have so many endless sort of refractions and reflections of an individual. But I hope just trying to appreciate the complexity of this person is part of this book's aim.
- [37:11]
Eleanor Evans
Absolutely. I mean, this whole conversation is encouraging listeners to please do turn to it because it is extraordinary. And Clare, I should have absolutely brought in that title at the very beginning. So if we can, you can perhaps use it as a bit of a conclusion instead. Your title, the Mirror of Great Britain, you alluded to its importance there, but what is it as an item?
- [37:29]
Clare Jackson
So the Mirror of Great Britain, technically, I mean at the time was a hat jewel. There's an illustration in the book of one of the full length portraits of James that was painted shortly after his accession to Elizabeth's crown, in which he's wearing this very prominent hat jewel, which is made up of jewels from both the English and Scottish royal collections. And it gives you this kind of very spangling symbolic endorsement of his idea that the Great Britain will be created. That's part of it. But as I show in the introduction, one of James's favourite metaphors was mirrors. He was always offering people a mirror of his soul, saying, you know, I am a transparent glass. You can see my inner secrets. It is kind of ironic that most people also thought he was one of the most skilled dissemblers, but in nearly every sort of opening of Parliament, he offers people a mirror. And it's a very common trope in early modern literature. The mirror of princes is supposed to sort of give you a model for emulation. But one of the sort of things I've talked about is the extent to which mirrors and vitreous technology at this time is itself changing. And, you know, mirrors inevitably sort of distort and deceive. So it is one of the sort of more metaphorical themes, as well as being a piece of jewellery that was then also quite symbolically broken up during the Civil wars and destroyed, so no longer survives.
- [38:46]
Eleanor Evans
Definitely broken up as James reputation has been refracted and distorted. It's a wonderful metaphor and wonderful final one, if I may. You've obviously looked at James in all his complexity as a biographer, and I wonder if there are aspects to his personality that are, you know, more challenging to today's audience or to you as a biographer. I mean, I don't know your own personal view, because I was quite interested in his view of women as well.
- [39:10]
Clare Jackson
Yes, I think probably there are. With every biographical subject, there are bits of a person that speak to you and then other bits that are much harder to access. And that must be true of all biographical subjects. I think some of my interest in James is very, very long standing and some. Some of it is, you know, having sort of myself always shuttled between Scotland and England, sort of both in life and sort of professionally and personally. And sometimes when he's misunderstood in both countries, that has struck a chord. But then I've also read biographies, you know, sort of advice on biographies where they're sort of saying, you know, you have to do everything that your subject did. And I don't hunt. I mean, this is somebody who spent probably half their adult life in the saddle hunting. So there are those bits. I've also been quite clever, clear that James is essentially a misogynist. I mean, James's views on women are pretty derogatory. Especially women who have views on things he doesn't like, sort of articulate women. And yeah, I think part of any historian's job is to try to understand the past, to try and understand, you know, where that's coming from and not really to sort of take a position. I mean, I remember once being asked, I think it was, you know, by a history magazine when I wrote a very small penguin monarch on Charles ii, if you could have a dinner party, who would you sit? Charles I second next to. And I remember just thinking Barbara Windsor, sort of off the top of my head. I just thought that would really work. You know, James, it would have to be. And I don't have that person in my head. But I mean, James, it would have to be a sort of youngish, very beautiful person who really understood theology. I mean, that would have been James's ideal where he could just spend all evening talking about the finer points of different kind of philological or theological aspects of scripture with someone male, beautiful. So I'm not sure that any biographer can ever really hope to access every part of the subject. I mean, that would surely be beyond someone. But what I actually hope is that in this anniversary year, lots of different appraisals of James will come forward from, you know, lots of different historians. But I think every generation tends to refight the Civil wars on its own terms. And hopefully every generation will find in aspects of James parts of his life that they find facts fascinating and eternally interesting.
- [41:17]
History Extra Host
That was Clare Jackson speaking to Eleanor Evans. Claire is honorary professor of Early Modern History at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Her latest book is the Mirror of Great Britain, A Life of James VI and first.
- [41:38]
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