Loading summary
Transcript67 lines
- [00:01]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home? Or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:37]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [00:47]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [00:51]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Together we're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [00:57]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [00:59]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [01:02]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Liberty Liberty.
- [01:03]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Liberty.
- [01:04]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Liberty.
- [01:05]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
You've got social dialed in. Search is doing its thing. So why do your marketing results look the same as six months ago? That's because you're fishing in the same pond as everyone else. Podcast listeners are a different audience entirely. More engaged, harder to reach through traditional channels, and ready to act when someone they trust makes a recommendation. We're acast and we put them right in front of you. Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts, book host, reads or run your own ads and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have. Brand new results. Acast.acast.com advertise.
- [01:48]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors. From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn and to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Whenever we think about royal favourites in history, their stories can feel almost unbelievable. Young men or women who rise from relative obscurity to become the most powerful figures in the kingdom, wielding influence not just over a monarch's private life, but over politics, war and culture. This month on Not Just the Tudors, we're looking more closely at some of the most famous, nay notorious royal favourites in the Elizabethan and Stuart courts, tracing how their role evolved from trusted companions and kin to into something far more volatile and publicly resented. Last time we encountered Robert Dudley, possibly the only man who truly captured Queen Elizabeth I's heart Do go back and have a listen to that episode if you've not done so already. Today, we take a step into the Stuart court to meet George Villiers, the man who would become the Duke of Buckingham and the closest favourite of King James I and later King Charles I. Buckingham's story unfolds in the early 17th century. A dazzling but volatile world. This was a society of glittering courts and extravagant display, where courtiers wore diamond studded clothes and staged spectacular entertainments. And yet it was also an age of political tension, religious conflict and fragile royal authority. England was beginning to change with the growth of print culture and public opinion, even as ancient hierarchies and court rituals still dominated political life. Into this world stepped Villiers, a handsome young gentleman from a relatively modest gentry background, who rose with astonishing speed through the royal court. Within just a few years, he'd become not only only the favorite of King James VI and First, but one of the most powerful men in England, controlling access to the King and distributing patronage across politics, religion, diplomacy and war. Yet his rise was extraordinarily controversial. Buckingham was at the center of dramatic episodes that captured the imagination of contemporaries. The daring journey he made with Prince Charles to Spain in pursuit of a royal marriage, ambitious but disastrous military expeditions and fierce political battles in Parliament, where he became the lightning rod for criticism of the Stuart monarchy. To some, he was dazzling, charismatic and brilliant. To others, he was arrogant, reckless and dangerously powerful. Either way, he became one of the most talked about figures of his age who continues to fascinate us today. Only last year he was the subject of the television drama Mary and George, which we covered in the Not Just the Tudors episode called Seducing James I. Joining me today to explore the remarkable rise and fall of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is the writer and historian Lucy Hughes Hallett, whose book the Scapegoat, the Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham, brings his extraordinary story vividly to life. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Lucy, welcome to the podcast.
- [05:51]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
- [05:54]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
I've been wanting to have you onto the podcast to talk about this book ever since I saw it in in Waterstones on one of those tables at the front. What a wonderful book and what an extraordinary life that we're going to be talking about. George Villiers is often described as both dazzlingly beautiful and immensely powerful. Can you paint a picture for us of his personality and his appearance? What is it about him that made him stand out initially?
- [06:22]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
His looks. He was famous for his Beauty. He was described by one contemporary as the handsomest man in Europe and by another as one of the handsomest men in the whole world. And by the end of his life, he had become extremely unpopular with the populace. But even so, even though there were so many people who by that stage absolutely detested him, nobody ever denied that he was very strikingly good looking. And King James was known to be keen on handsome young men. And his previous favorite, Robert Carr, the Earl of Somerset, had recently fallen from favour. The story of how Somerset fell is sensational, that we probably aren't going to go into it now because it might take up the whole episode, but just to give you a quick resume, Somerset and his wife had been jointly found guilty of murdering his best friend, the instruments of the murder being a combination of witchcraft and poisoned custard tarts. So Somerset was in the Tower, King James was lonely, and James was married to Queen Anne, known in this country as Queen Anne of Denmark. He'd got her pregnant at least seven times. Only three of the children survived past infancy, so he could do the necessary to produce an heir. He. But he was definitely the people he fell in love with were male and a group of ultra Protestant grandees, perhaps rather surprisingly, including the Archbishop of Canterbury in the role of kind of pander to a homosexual king, slightly unorthodox role for a major churchman. The Archbishop and his group of aristocrats, who were passionately Protestant, anti Spanish, wanted to persuade James to change his foreign policy and resume the war against Spain, which had been brought to an end. They decided that the best way for them to be able to influence James was to find another gorgeous young man. And so they asked around and somebody. Well, actually, we know who it is. It was a young man who had himself aspired to be King James favorite, but James wasn't interested in him. And he rather generously said, I've got this friend called George who's even better looking than I am. And it was arranged for George villiers, then aged 22, to meet the King. He was invited to join the royal hunt in the summer of 1614. And it was immediately noticed that, that the King had noticed him.
- [09:16]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
I mean, it's sort of extraordinary, isn't it, that they could use this weakness, I suppose, his attraction. I mean, perhaps it's a weakness. Many of us have, his attraction to devastatingly handsome young men. But, you know, to have this man sort of dressed up and dangled in front of him by the people around the King seems an extraordinary opportunity and the kind of manipulation of the systems of power. And presumably those doing it were hoping that they would be able to control George as if he were the puppet and they were the puppeteers.
- [09:56]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Exactly. They did. They imagined that he would be a kind of malleable pretty boy who would be very grateful to them for bringing him to court and giving him this extraordinary life as a royal favorite. Having been really nobody special, you know, he wasn't from one of the great aristocratic families, he hadn't been kind of born and bred to rule that. What they had failed to grasp is that it is possible to have a pretty face and a mind of your own. And it turned out that George Villiers was actually, he was going to go his own way. And it turned out that his own way was the King's. He decided to be loyal to King James rather than to the cabal of grandees who brought him to court. And they not just brought him to court. I mean, you mentioned dressing him up and we know that they did indeed literally do that. He sort of first enters written history about a year before that fateful day when he went out hunting. And at that point he was seen at the horse races in Newmarket. Newmarket already then being the center of the sort of horse racing culture in this country. And that day at Newmarket he was wearing what was then his only suit, which was pretty shabby. And the person who recorded this in his diary mentions that night, George Villars would be dossing down in the corner of someone else's room at the inn. He couldn't afford a room of his own. A few years later he would be the richest person in the country outside of the royal family. So he came a very long way. And to get him started, to get his foot on the first rung of the ladder, his sponsors did indeed buy him some nice new clothes.
- [11:51]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
What should we understand about the nature of King James's personality, his own particular quirks, which would have shaped Buckingham's role at court?
- [12:03]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
One of the great pleasures of writing about Buckingham was getting to know King James, who I do think is one of the most interesting monarchs that have ever sat on the throne of England or Scotland for that matter. And James was, for one thing, he did have these favourites and they were handsome and he fell in love with them. But the relationship wasn't just a, an erotic one. What he wanted of them was that they should be his loyal deputies and right hand men and he liked to shape them. So to find a young man promising, clever as well as good looking, and then to train him was something that James took great Pleasure in. And there's a letter that survives between him where he writes to Buckingham saying, I'm shaping you to be my instrument. You know, he was actually teaching Buckingham statecraft. And although later, or indeed actually very quickly, as soon as Buckingham started to get his hands on real power, people started to sneer at him. You know, he's a jumped up nobody. How can he possibly be able to wield the amount of power that he's been given? The answer is that actually he was. He had been trained for it by the King and by his other mentor, probably the cleverest man in England at the time, Sir Francis Bacon, in Buckingham. As soon as he realized that he was on the way up and he was going to have initially influence, and after that proper sort of official, acknowledged power, he became a privy councillor, he had held high offices of state and he had the good sense to ask for advice. And Francis Bacon wrote him a wonderful letter, which we still have, which really should be taught in every business school in the world, I think, which tells you. Well, it gives him a great deal of advice. But one of the most useful pieces is how do you handle an employer who firmly believes, as King James did, that he is God's representative on earth? And Buckingham was good at that. He was a lot of his contemporaries, people who knew him, that is, I mean, you know, the general public tended to see him as arrogant and far too big for his boots. But the people who actually knew him, courtiers, people who were around watching him operate, they all mention how gracious he is. He has good manners, he listens to people. He, you know, he hears their. He hears what they want, he tries to oblige them. And indeed, obligingness is something that he's often credited with. And modesty, quite the opposite of his public Persona, which is that of the kind of proud, arrogant upstart. And I think this soft power of good manners, modesty, courtesy, that gave him huge power and influence over the King who did not like to be stood up to. It was possible to manipulate him through kindness.
- [15:21]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
That's very interesting. It's fascinating that actually the things that helped him rise, the qualities that he needed, were almost the opposite of those which became part of the infamous notorious story of Buckingham later. What were the sort of key moments that we should notice on this meteoric rise? Whereas the points at which you can say, oh yes, he's really taken a step up.
- [15:46]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Well, so after first meeting James out hunting, he very soon joined the court, a fairly lowly position of a royal cupbearer and the cupbearers were, you know, they were low down the hierarchy, but they were able to hold conversations with the King. The cup bearer would stand by the King while he was dining and literally pour out his drink, fill his cup and chat to him. And the cupbearers were the only people who were permitted to be that close to the King while he ate. Everyone else had to stand back. And there are contemporary accounts of how people noticed that James enjoyed talking to his new cupbearer. And so Buckingham was very quickly, although low down the hierarchy, he was near the King. And then very soon, well, it took nearly a year, but on the following St. George's Day, which of course is in April, the Queen got involved. And this is a very odd twist of the story, but another contemporary records that the Queen had probably with some, you know, some sadness, realized that her husband was constantly going to have these male favorites who would really replace her as his number one love object. But given that that was the case, she worked out that the best thing for her was going to be to make friends with these young men and even to kind of get behind them, sponsor them. And so there's this odd little charade that was played out after the Great Garter day ceremonies on St. George's Day, when the Queen brings George Villiers, as he still was just playing George Villiers, to the King and asks the King to knight him and to give him an extra place, a more exalted place at court. Now, of course, the King knew exactly that came as no surprise to him. The Queen had been told to make this request, but by somehow recruiting her, in a sense, the King undercut any future complaints she might want to make. He would be able to say that it was your idea, but equally, from her point of view, it meant that she and George Villars were friends. And indeed, quite soon, the Queen was writing letters to Villars addressing him as my dear dog, because he called himself. In his letters to the King, he signs off, your Majesty's humble slave and dog, which may seem a bit peculiar, but James loved to hunt. He loved his horses and hounds. And it was a well known fact that King James was just as fond of some dogs as he was of most people.
- [18:52]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
You mentioned Francis Bacon and his advice. I had the great fortune recently to be at Gormanbury, not the house that Bacon would have known, but the more recent one. But it contains portraits gathered in the 17th century, including bacon and one of George Villiers. And one of the things I was struck by is how handsome he is. I mean, so Much of the time, when one reads descriptions of people in the past and you're told they're handsome or beautiful, and then you look at the portrait and modern eyes can't see it, it is lost on us. We don't see the beauty. Whereas George Villiers seems to have a beauty that transcends centuries. But what I was also struck by was the richness of the clothing. We've heard about him being dressed and just sort of how magnificent a figure he was. And I wondered how portraits and art can be seen to reflect his status and his personality.
- [19:55]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Yes, his relationship with the arts was very important to him. And to begin with, you know, the beginning of his public career, he was most noted for his dancing skills. And the peculiar art form of the Jacobean court was that of the court masque, which was, and continued a bit into Charles I's reign. But it's mainly under James that the masks were the absolute focus of the ceremonial life of the court. And they weren't just entertainments, they were kind of rituals celebrating the institution of monarchy. And they were fabulously expensive, extravagant. Most of them were designed brilliantly by the wonderful Inigo Jones. And unfortunately, set design is an ephemeral art form. You can't really know exactly what they looked like. But a lot of Jones costume design sketches have survived and also a lot of descriptions by contemporaries who attended the masques. And one of them was a visiting Venetian ambassador who gave a wonderful description of how Buckingham would dance. And he was almost immediately recognized to be a star dancer. The dancers were. They weren't professional performers, so words of the masque was spoken by actors, because to speak in an assumed character would not be an honorable thing for an aristocrat to do. But anyone could dance. That was totally okay. The king didn't dance because he was congenitally lame. But the queen danced, the princes danced, and so did the privy councillors, you know, a lot of the most important people at court. And there was a group of young courtiers who were particularly celebrated for their dancing, and they were known as the high dancers. But Buckingham had a superpower which none of the other high dancers had. And according to this Phoenician ambassador, the others would leap up into the air and then come back down again as you do. But Buckingham would leap up into the air and just stay there for a bit. And while he was airborne, he would caper like a young goat. And the king loved to see him do it. So he was very prominent in this form of performance art at court. But then once he became first Influential as the favorite who controlled access to the king. And then as a result of that influence, he became extremely rich because people wanted the favorite's favor and they would give him presents, what we might call bribes. Although it was, you know, perfectly normal behavior, it wasn't seen as being particularly corrupt. But he became richer and richer.
- [22:53]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
It's Instagram influences today, isn't it? Hashtag gifted, you know, except if they had political influence, I suppose.
- [23:00]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Well, he certainly was an influencer. But once he became rich, he encountered a wonderful character called Balthasar Gerbiet, who was a real kind of chancer and hustler. And he and Buckingham, they were both 24 when they met. They were, you know, young men on the make. And Gerbier was an artist. He had many skills. He was an artist, architect, calligrapher. But he arrived in England from Holland and he presented himself to Buckingham and said, you know, you're the up and coming man. You're getting very rich. What are you going to do with all this money? And your answer should be, you should become a patron of the arts. And I, Gerbier, will help you assemble one of the greatest collections in Europe. And that is what happened. Buckingham was amused by Gerbier. They became very close friends. The letters between them are wonderfully lively and vivacious. And Buckingham sent Gerbiet off to Venice. Venice, not Florence, because it was Venetian art that people in this country were interested in at the time. And Gerbier came back with paintings by Tintoretto, Veronese, Titian, amazing masterpieces. Amazing to us because those works are known and admired, but amazing to the people in the early 17th century England, because very few people in this country had ever actually seen an Italian Renaissance paint painting. Because when Henry VIII's work with Rome in the previous century made it very, very difficult for English or Scottish people to travel on mainland Europe. And so Buckingham was showing kind of the English court, not just individual paintings, but a whole style of art that was completely fresh and exciting and thrilling. And he wasn't only buying or rather commissioning Gerbier to go shopping for him and bring these old masters from the previous century, he was also commissioning work from the hot, unknown new artists. When Buckingham got married in 1621, and his wedding happened to coincide with the first visit to this country of a totally unknown young artist called Anthony Van Dyck, who, of course, when he returned a few years later, would be the. The premier artist in England for many years. But Buckingham was the first person to commission him. He got Van Dyck to paint two portraits of himself, Buckingham and his new wife, the former Catherine Manners. And they're fantastically unorthodox, and particularly the one in which the happy couple are posing as Venus and Adonis, wearing almost no clothes, which really wasn't normal for anyone as grand and powerful as Buckingham or as rich and aristocratic as Catherine. She was the richest heiress in the country, which of course, is one of the reasons why Buckingham chose to marry her. But they did seem to become very fond of each other. But there they are, sort of semi naked. It's really arguably the first Baroque portrait to have been painted in this country. So Buckingham was showing himself a very bold and innovative patron of the arts and sponsor of have Them Coming. That's wonderful.
- [26:29]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
A couple of years after his marriage, one of the most sort of controversial parts of his story takes place, which is his journey to Spain with this plan to marry Prince Charles to the Spanish Infanta. He's disguised as Tom Smith. I mean, it sounds like it's something out of a novel. Can you take us through that adventure?
- [26:52]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Yeah, it's a crazy story. It really is. So Prince Charles, who by this time was the heir to the throne, his elder brother having died in his teens. Prince Charles, who had been the spare, suddenly found himself the heir. And it was very important, of course, for him to get married, because the number one job of the heir to the throne is to beget heirs to the throne for the next generation. But it was proving rather difficult. So for 10 years, negotiations have been going on between the English and Spanish diploma to try and sort out a marriage contract for the wedding of Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, future Charles I, with the Spanish princess, the Infanta Maria. And we now know, because we have access to Spanish papers which reveal this. But the English at the time didn't know that the Spaniards had no intention ever of allowing this marriage to go ahead. All they wanted to do was to stall for time, primarily in order to prevent Charles being married to a French princess, because it wouldn't suit the Spaniards to have an Anglo French alliance. But anyway, Charles became very impatient when the negotiations began. He was a child, he was in no hurry to get married. But when he was 22, he began to want his wife. And he and Buckingham cooked up this plan and they were good friends. And it's just an interesting indication, actually, of how charming and careful Buckingham could be in his private relationships, because the relationship between a very anxious young man, which Charles was, and his father's homosexual lover is not always an easy one, that in this Case Charles seems to have been as charmed by Buckingham as his father was. Not to love him in the kind of erotic way that King James did, but to sort of look up to him and revere him, almost as though he was a sort of more glamorous elder brother. And so the two of them decided that they were going to go to Spain and they were just going to cut through all this knotty diplomacy and they were just going to jolly well get the princess and bring her home.
- [29:17]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
And.
- [29:18]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
And they tricked King James into giving his consent to this plan. They went to see him, they said, we want to go to Spain. And they made James promise that they could go. He actually saw nothing wrong with the plan in principle, but of course, what he was imagining would be a great sort of state visit with trains of courtiers and probably several ships of the fleet taking Charles and backing him off, off over to Spain. So he said, yes, okay, I promise you can go. And a man of honour does not go back on his promise. Whereupon they revealed that their plan wasn't at all what he had in mind. They were going the day after tomorrow, as you said. They would go incognito. They would call themselves Jack Smiths and Tom Smiths. They would travel by public transport, which means post horses. They would take only three companions. And final detail, they'd already bought their false beards. So off they went. And James was. He didn't stop them, although he was distraught, mainly because he saw that this was a very, very dangerous undertaking. And indeed it was. But they managed to get all the way to Madrid and plenty of people along the way did wonder who they might be. I mean, their first mistake was they set off from Buckingham's house in Essex, near Chelmsford, and they galloped off down and arrived at Tilbury, and they were going to take the ferry across to Dartford, across the Thames Estuary. And when they got to the other side, the ferryman said, fairs, please. And so there's, you know, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Buckingham, three other courtiers who are accompanying them, and between the five of them, they all slapped their pockets looking for a penny, but of course, none of them had anything smaller than a gold coin worth several hundred times the proper fare. So they were giving themselves away all the time. But they traveled so fast that they did manage to keep ahead of the rumors that were circulating about these suspicious strangers. And they made it all the way to Madrid. And having stopped off in Paris, where they not satisfied with just wearing false beards, Charles and Buckingham bought themselves Full bottomed wigs, which were not yet fashionable in England, but were absolutely Le Denier Cris in Paris. And they went to the Louvre and they watched the French royal family dancing, which was the first time that Charles ever laid eyes on the. The Princess Henrietta Maria, who would of course eventually become his wife, but so incognito, they watched the French royal family and then they hurried on to Spain before anyone could say, who are those two? And they got to Madrid, where the Spaniards were appalled. The Spanish court was very, very formal, very ceremonial, very hierarchical, and the idea that the heir to the throne of a European power could just turn up wearing a sort of dusty riding suit that he'd bought along the way with so few attendants and just arriving in the middle of the night with no pomp and ceremony was very shocking to the Spanish. And so much so that actually they begged Buckingham and Charles to immediately leave the city, hide out in a monastery for a week and then come back into Madrid formally and make a sort of proper entrance. And, you know, some better clothes had been found for them and as a formal kind of welcoming ceremony was staged for their benefit. So that was, you know, a big adventure that was fun. But quite soon it stopped being fun. It became clear that the marriage was not going to take place and that Charles and Buckingham were effectively being held hostage. What the Spaniards wanted was for Charles to convert to Catholicism, which he wasn't going to do. And he was occasionally allowed to lay eyes on the Infanta Maria, who supposedly there was still talk of maybe this marriage taking place that clearly wasn't ever going to. But they were never allowed alone together. There's one sort of rather pathetic story of Charles actually climbing over a wall and jumping down the other side into the garden where the Infanto was walking with her ladies and waiting. He imagined that she'd be so impressed by this romantic gesture and think how athletic and dashing he was, that she would then immediately unfreeze and become more friendly towards him. But in fact she just shrieked and ran away. The wooing wasn't much fun, but as I said, they were there for six months and we don't have time, I think, to go into the incredibly complicated negotiations that were going on. But there were times when it seemed really unclear whether they were ever going to be allowed to go home. But finally they did and they went home rather sheepishly this time in. In a ship with other ships, you know, fleet accompanying them with all the kind of grandeur that they hadn't had on the way out. So they arrived home. And at that point they were anxious because they'd failed. They weren't bringing home the prince.
- [35:12]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Are you looking for the perfect podcast to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights?
- [35:19]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Well, look no further than the award winning After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal with me, Maddy Pelling and me, Anthony Delaney.
- [35:27]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
We are historians and love all things
- [35:29]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
gloomy and macabre, from Tudor executioners and ancient Egyptian death rituals to witch trials and folklore. Feel transported back in time on After Dark, out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [35:42]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
And guess what? We're also now on YouTube. After Dark, a podcast from history hit.
- [36:01]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Did that affect Buckingham's standing back at home that he dashed off with the prince, and yet this whole great thing had not come off?
- [36:10]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
It certainly did affect it, but in a rather surprising way, in that it turned out that the last thing the English people wanted was a Spanish princess for their future queen, because, you know, they'd been at war with Spain on and off for over half a century by that time. Throughout most of Elizabeth's reign, the war was often only kind of semi official. It often wasn't declared war, but a lot of people like Francis Drake raiding Spaniards and so forth. So the English hated the Spaniards and they hated them for being Catholic, and they also just saw them as being a hostile rival power. And so there's a wonderful contemporary woodcut showing King James welcoming Charles back and embracing him. And then in the background, you can see the people of England throwing their hats in the air and ringing bell and lighting bonfires to celebrate the fact that this mission had not been accomplished. And it's probably the moment when Buckingham was at his most popular with the general public. They called him St. George on horseback.
- [37:16]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Now, he had been Lord Admiral for some time, but James, I suppose we could say that his reign was characterized by an instinct towards peacemaking. And you've explained brilliantly how Buckingham amazingly manages to carry his position as favorite on from father to son. Even as we get into the transition from one reign to the next, it's a very different position, the type of favorite that he is between those two reigns, but he stays very close. At what point do we see Buckingham transition himself from being a kind of peacemaker to an advocate of war?
- [37:57]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Really, it's with the death of James. James, as you say, was a pacifist. He called himself the King of Peace. Pacifist is probably too absolute a word. But he didn't see any glamour and excitement in war. There were still a lot of people who were thinking along sort of chivalric lines. The feeling that somehow to fight was the test of a person. Well, particularly a man's virility, his courage. It was also a way to make your fortune. People could, if you went off to war and you got yourself a prisoner whom you could exchange for a big ransom, you know, there are ways of making money out of fighting. Fighting was quite popular activity. Of course, as tends to happen still, people can get very excited at the beginning of a war, but then once they realize how expensive warfare is, they tend to go off it. And they also, of course, go off it when they're husbands, lovers, children are being killed. But James kept the peace. He doggedly refused to be dragged into the dreadful sequence of conflicts which was starting up on the European mainland, the beginning of what would come to be known as the Thirty Years War. And James just would not get involved. But as soon as he was dead and King Charles becomes king, and Charles, he's eight years younger than Buckingham, very anxious, unconfident. He has a terrible stammer, so he dreads having to speak in public. He looks to Buckingham to take the lead, and Buckingham gets the blame for what happens next. But it really was always Buckingham and Charles working in partnership. The King was always supporting him in it. But it was Buckingham who instigated two completely unnecessary wars, one against Spain and the other against France. Unwise to take on one of those powers. Absolute lunacy. To take on both simultaneously. And so at that point, Buckingham's life story becomes increasingly tragic and increasingly desperate because having been the trusted, loyal, obedient deputy to a very wise older king, he's now really kind of leading a very inexperienced and anxious younger king and making some very bad decisions.
- [40:31]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
And is it fair to say that he is pretty hands on when it comes to military campaigns, to managing the fleet, to engaging with the Navy.
- [40:43]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Very much so. Very much so. The people who were hostile to Buckingham in the early part of his career, and they saw him as just a pretty boy, a sort of a toy for the King, they saw him as a kind of lap dog. But actually, Buckingham was from the very start, extremely hardworking. And once King James made him Admiral of the Fleet, he took that job very, very seriously. And a lot of his correspondence has survived which shows him, you know, he wasn't dancing around covered in diamonds all the time. He certainly did quite a lot of that. That. He was also sitting there in his office writing letters about supplies for the Navy, worrying about the amount of grain and meat and boots for the Troops. He was a hard working administrator and good at it. I mean, he renovated ships, he managed to cut costs, he was efficient. But he was not, as it turned out, a very gifted or fortunate military commander. And what happened once we're into the reign of King Charles and these ill advised wars which should never have taken place, we find repeatedly, and this is a ghastly sense of the same old problems coming round and round and round again, we find Buckingham deciding that he's going to go to war with France over the Huguenots in La Rochelle, or he's going to go to war with Spain and trying to sort of emulate the Elizabethan sea dogs raiding the treasure fleet. And what keeps happening is that these campaigns are underfunded and in the attempt to get enough money, the fleet is slow to sail or something delays it. And so, you know, you don't go to war after June. You know, this is what I've learned from studying all this because if you do, you get bogged down in the winter and your troops or your sailors start to die of cold, they start to starve, they start contracting disease, your ships get tossed around in the Bay of Biscay by those terrible storms. And so one after another episode of not just failure, but kind of incompetent, you know, failure due to incompetence and Naics backing and increasingly unpopular until from being St. George on horseback, he becomes, according to one member of the House of Commons, the source of all our miseries.
- [43:24]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
So we see this moment where he's becoming the focal point, I suppose, for all sorts of grievances. How does this play out? How do the parliamentary accusations against him unfold? And I suppose knowing what's coming, we know the Civil War's on the horizon. They did not. And knowing what James has said about divine right and how Parliament has felt challenged by this, what can we read into these accusations about the sort of the tensions between monarchy and Parliament and how they're developing?
- [44:04]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Yeah, throughout the last three years of Buckingham's life, there were incredibly dramatic scenes in the House of Commons especially. And there are wonderful descriptions because, because one of the things that I found most exciting in writing about this period is it really sees the beginnings of the press. So there aren't newspapers as we know them, obviously, but there are news sheets printed or sometimes handwritten and then distributed on the streets. There are sermons. I mean, the pulpit is very often a great place for broadcasting news and opinion. But there is for the first time really in British history, maybe in world history, actually, as a sense that the people know what the rulers are doing. For the first time ever, they actually have a written record available to them of what's being said in the palace of Westminster and particularly in the House of Commons. And meanwhile, of course, it's the first time that the ruling class can get any really clear idea of what the people think of them. So all these pamphlets and news sheets which are circulating mean there is now a two way communication far more clear than has ever been before. And obviously in earlier period, the King and his ministers would be aware when the population were becoming unruly and restive and unhappy. But now they can actually read what it is the people want. And increasingly what the people want, it turns out, is to get rid of Buckingham. I called my book about Buckingham the Scapegoat, because although, as I say, Buckingham and King Charles were working together at all times, there was no point where Buckingham was forcing through something against the King's will. It was a partnership. But Charles doesn't on the whole get blamed because obviously, as you say, the Civil War's coming up. In the next decade, the people would rise up against their King and in the decade after that, they would kill him. But in the 1620s, it was still really hard for anyone to blame the King. And even the most outspoken critics of the policies of Buckingham and Charles, the speakers in the House of Commons, particularly the great orator, Sir John Eliot, he always begins his speeches by saying how much he loves and reveres the King and he means it. People, however critical they were of the King's policy, they still did have an almost religious feeling about the King. And it's something that is most alien to our way of thinking. I think however much any of your listeners may be royalists and love the Royal family, this sense that the King really was sacred and that even in your, you know, in your silent thoughts, to criticize him was a kind of blasphemy. It was frightening thing to do, much easier to say, we love our King, but he's being led astray by the wicked Duke of Buckingham. And so that's how the, you know, the public criticism is voiced. The tax on Buckingham.
- [47:44]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Whether it's a birthday trip, a family reunion or just a fun getaway, booking a VRBO vacation rental means no worrying about surprises. VRBoCare and 24.7Life Support have your back if something's off. The Loved by Guest filter helps you find top rated homes. And verified reviews mean real feedback from real, real VRBO guests so you know exactly what you're booking.
- [48:02]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Honestly, I Just booked my VRBO because
- [48:04]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
there was a sweet wine fridge. Hey, we all have our reasons. Don't walk into a surprise if you know you. VRBO terms apply. See vrbo.com trust for details. Are you looking for the perfect podcasts to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights?
- [48:22]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Well, look no further than the award winning After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal with meet me, Maddy Pelling and me, Anthony Delaney.
- [48:29]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
We are historians and love all things
- [48:32]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
gloomy and macabre, from Tudor executioners and ancient Egyptian death rituals to witch trials and folklore. Feel transported back in time on After Dark, out every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [48:45]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
And guess what? We're Also now on YouTube After Dark, a podcast from history.
- [49:05]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
It's interesting also in terms of that oratory, that public criticism, that we can see classical education and religious fervor shaping the rhetoric used against Buckingham himself. Can we talk a bit more about that and how we see this sort of culture of oratory really shaping political conflict at this point?
- [49:31]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Yes. And again, another thing that's very exciting, as you know, in writing about this period, is that people could speak so fluently and so well. And I think it, I'm sure it has to do with the fact that everyone went to church. And of course, one of King James great legacies was the King James Bible. And so almost everybody went to church weekly. At least they heard, you know, the cadences of the King James Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer. There's two huge sort of cornerstones really, of English literature, so that even people who were completely illiterate could control the syntax. They could speak very fluently. They could speak in complicated sentences with many, many subordinate clauses, and they could go on for hours and hours.
- [50:27]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
And they did, didn't they? I mean, they would. Preachers would speak for extraordinary long periods of time. I think we have to think of sermons as the kind of theatre of the day. There was also theatre, of course, and that when they were seeing Shakespeare, some of these people. But you know, across the country as a whole, they didn't have Netflix. They did have the Sermon.
- [50:49]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
They had the Sermon. And as you say, of course, this is the great age of English drama. And again, you know, the audiences for Shakespeare's plays or Webster's or Turner's or any other wonderful dramatists of the period, some of them were illiterate. This wasn't theatre, was not for the elite. It was mass entertainment. So people were capable of appreciating and creating these wonderful, wonderful Linguistic masterpieces. And some of them were in the House of Commons and some of them were attacks on Buckingham. And a lot of those speeches have survived, often in fairly unreliable versions, so that there'll be a lot of people writing them down. But then when you compare the accounts that different recorders would have come up with rather different versions, but still we get that very strong sense of these passionate outpourings of wonderful thundering oratory denouncing Buckingham. And so then as a great jurist, Sir Edward Coke, comes up with the idea that you can do something called impeaching and the idea of an impeachment. It's a sort of. It's a legal process that hadn't been used for several centuries, but it was a legal instrument which would allow the House of Commons to bring a case against, against the Duke of Buckingham, which they did. But when they did so, King Charles, partly to protect him, partly because he might have been going to do so anyway, dissolved Parliament. And Parliament was repeatedly dissolved. Every time the members of the House of Commons wanted to speak out against the foreign policy being pursued by Buckingham and Charles, Parliament would be dismissed yet again. But then Charles had to keep summoning Parliament again in order to get them to authorize taxation to finance these increasingly expensive wars. And then there are amazing scenes in the House of Commons. I mean, there's a time when they sit in silence for an entire day, they refuse to do any business. And of course one of the business that they're not doing is authorizing the taxation that the King wants. And then finally there comes a day when they know that the King is about to dissolve Parliament again. The speaker has left the Commons chamber. He's gone from the palace of Westminster to the palace of Whitehall where the King is. And they know that the speaker, whose function is as a kind of intermediary between Crown and Parliament, the speaker will return from Whitehall almost certainly with the message dissolving Parliament yet again. And they know they've got perhaps an hour before they're dissolved. And they have all agreed in this session that they're not going to mention the Duke of Buckingham, because if they do it just going to annoy the King and he's going to dismiss them again. And it's more important to them to try to protect citizens rights which are being flouted all the time by these royal commandments. And so they've decided not to mention Buckingham. But in this moment of crisis, one of them stands up and he says, this is the crisis of Parliaments, we must speak. And at that point up stands Sir Edward Coke, the great jurist again, aged 78. He's already been imprisoned in the Tower under King James for defying the monarch. And he says, I know I shall never speak in this House again. And so now I must speak clearly. The Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all our miseries. And the name has been spoken, the taboo has been broken, and there is an incredible uproar. There are people weeping. One newsletter writer reports there are over 100 weeping eyes. So all these elderly men, you know, justices of the peace, lawyers, great landowners there with tears pouring down their faces because it's dangerous that some of their number have already been hauled off to the Tower. Shocking breach of parliamentary privilege, as you say. This is the beginning of the real, the breakdown in relations between King and Parliament, which will eventually lead to the civil wars.
- [55:27]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
And we get that sort of culminating, I suppose, in the passing of the Petition of Right.
- [55:32]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
What's the significance of that? It's a petition of Right, it's not a petition of grace. And a Petition of Grace is something which the Commons have occasionally come up with, Petitions of Grace where they ask the King to do this, that or the other thing of his graciousness. The Petition of Right is insisting on, on basic rights, which go right back to Runnymede to the Magna Carta. They include habeas corpus, they include the idea that the King cannot imprison anyone without due cause given. And also they include the principle that the King cannot raise taxation without the authorization of Parliament because to do so is actually theft. The king, when he imposes unauthorized taxes, is stealing from his own people. So it's a very bold assertion of rights which have been accepted for centuries, but which James has actually already contravened and so had Elizabeth before him. And Charles is now contravening them over and over again because he's trying to raise money for these unsuccessful wars. And the less successful they are, the more expensive they become, the more money is required. And Charles doesn't want to keep summoning Parliament and getting authorisation, because as soon as he does so, the leaders of the House of Commons will make demands. They will not grant taxation without concessions from the King, which he doesn't want to give.
- [57:12]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Now, we have have to fast forward a little bit just to get to the end of Buckingham's story and the time we have available. But can we talk about this extraordinary thing? August 1628. What happens and why? And what is the public reaction?
- [57:33]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Okay, so that summer had seen some of those uproarious scenes in the House of Commons that we were talking about. And as I've said at this point, what's said in Whitehall or in Westminster will be available in print on the streets very, very quickly. And there's a particular speech which is recorded and is circulating in pamphlet form. And one John Felton from Suffolk, who's a Puritan. And he gets hold of the text of this speech. He reads that the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all our miseries. And Felton, he's a Puritan. He's fought for Buckingham and he's been wounded. He's applied for promotion and he's been passed over. He's unhappy. He blames Buckingham for his own. The things have gone wrong for him personally, but he's also politically opposed. And so he reads the text of this speech and he thinks that he felt can do his country a great service. So Parliament has just been dissolved yet again. Buckingham has gone down to Portsmouth, where he's assembling a fleet for yet another expedition against France. And Buckingham has set up his headquarters in the Greyhound Inn. Felton buys a knife. He walks all the way to Portsmouth from London. He can't afford a horse. He. He makes his way into the Greyhound Inn. He gets into the room where Buckingham is having breakfast with his officers. Very busy. A lot of people coming and going. No one notices Felton or wonders who he is. And he leans against a windowsill and waits for his moment. And when Buckingham walks towards him, the moment comes and Felton steps forward and he kills Buckingham with one blow to the heart. Mayhem. Nobody sees what's happened and that the room is so crowded that Buckingham doesn't actually fall to the floor. He just sort of collapses back into the arms of the people around him. People think maybe he's just had a stroke or something. Felton manages to slip away and gets into the kitchen of the inn. But then he changes his mind and he decides he wants. Wants to own what he sees as the great favor he's done to his country. Everyone's shouting, you know, where is the villain? Where is the murderer? And people are running out of the inn. They're running down to the gates of the city to see if the murderers are ready on the road. But Felton steps forward and says, I am the man. So, of course, he's arrested and he's marched in chains all the way back to London. Meanwhile, the terrible news has been taken to the King, King Charles, who's staying in a house just outside Portsmouth. And the messenger arrives while the King is hearing prayers. Prayers are being said for the whole household. And so the messenger comes and whispers in King Charles's ear, and Charles just stays. He waits until the prayers are over. He doesn't say anything. He gets up and he goes to his room and he shuts himself into the room and he doesn't come out for four days. And people can hear him weeping through the door. So he's heartbroken. But meanwhile, Felton has been apprehended and he's going to be taken up to London to be questioned. Because it's now nearly quarter of a century since the Gunpowder Plot, but people are still terrified if it's now a jolly occasion, bonfires and fireworks on 5 November. But for the people in England in the early 17th century, the gunpowder Plot was absolutely terrifying. If it hadn't been discovered and prevented, it would have been really the most devastating terrorist act ever anywhere in the world, including things that we've seen more recently. The entire ruling class of England would have been blown up. Monarch and, you know, all the Members of Parliament, everybody. So people were terrified and they thought that Felton must be part of a similar conspiracy, a similar plot. So he's marched all the way up to London and he's taken, you know, he's chained and walking along the road 70 miles. And the idea was that the royal authorities imagined that people would be booing him and throwing things at him, but actually there are a lot of people cheering him. There are a lot of people who by this stage hate Buckingham so much that they're quite happy. And Felton becomes something of a hero, and there are songs written and sung about him. And he arrives in London where he's being interrogated by the Privy Council. And at one point, one of the Privy Councillors, there's dispute about who it is, but might have been Archbishop. William, Lord, who will become Archbishop, says to him, you must give us names. You've got to give us names. And he keeps saying, no, I don't have any fellow conspirators, it's just me. This is what I thought God wanted me to do. I can't give you any names. And so then, then William, Lord or another, says, well, through that door over there is the rack, and if you don't give us names right now, you're going in there. And Felton says this wonderful thing, he says, all right, torture me. And if you do, of course I will give names to stop the agony. I will say anything. And the first name I give will be yours, my Lord, which I think so sort of beautifully and wittily exposes the futility of torture as well as its atrocity. So he's not tortured, but he is, I'm afraid, executed. But he does become something of a hero. Felton as Buckingham. On his tombstone, the monument in Westminster Abbey to Buckingham, it says he was by King's beloved, but of the people loathed.
- [64:08]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Well, that is wonderful as a conclusion and so striking that Felton says that at a time when people across Europe are being tortured for all sorts of things, as witches, for example, because people thought that pain guaranteed truth. How interesting that Felton sees right through that. Well, thank you so much for taking us into Buckingham's story. It feels that we've really seen both the heights to which one could rise at court and the absolute dangers of doing so, the precariousness of royal favor. We've seen Robert Carr Somerset as he was fall and now Buckingham murdered. And I suppose one thing that it's really brought home to me is this sense that he may have come to court for his looks, but he stayed because of his speech. And his own agency in the end is what becomes problematic as far as the public are concerned. And that might well be, as you said, because there is a rhetoric that cannot be directed at King's. He becomes, as your book calls him, the scapegoat. But it also, I suppose, leads us to pondered the question of how much as a royal favorite, you really were allowed to be your own person, don't you think?
- [65:38]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Yes. Yes. Well, the thing about being a favorite is that your power is entirely dependent on the monarch whose favorite you are. Buckingham is almost unique, as you've said, in managing to be favorite to two successive kings, but it's a very unstable position.
- [65:58]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Yes, I love Wyatt's line, the slippery top of Court's estates. Thank you so much, Lucy Hughes Hallett, for coming onto the podcast and talking so wonderfully about George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
- [66:12]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Thank you.
- [66:15]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
My thanks again to Lucy Hughes Hallett. Next time we leave, leap forward some seven decades to find out more about Sarah Churchill, Queen Anne's closest confidant and potential lover, who was the subject of the Oscar winning film the Favourite. Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History hit. Thanks also to my researcher Max Wintle and my producer Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistoryhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode next time on not just the Tudors from history. Hit. We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions.
- [67:14]
Lucy Hughes Hallett
Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.
- [67:18]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
Well, you're going to take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [67:24]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
How is their signal out here?
- [67:26]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together so the network out here is huge. We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits. And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, okay, here's the turn.
- [67:38]
Professor Susanna Lipscomb
Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
- [67:42]
Podcast Advertiser/Host
America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out. Plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available at US Cellular stores in Hermiston. Best Mobile Network Based on analysis by Ooklo Speed test intelligence data second half of 2025 bigger network the combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details. Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one, for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers. Get started@acast.com advertisement.