by guest author Margaret Skea
Most of us only get married once (to the
same person).
Things used to be different – for royalty
at least…
Some of us may have written a poem to our
beloved (not guilty).
That’s something that hasn’t changed.
A poem written by
James VI to Anne of Denmark ~ 1589
What mortal man may
live but hart*
As I do now, suche is
my cace
For now the whole is
from the part
Devided eache in divers place.
The seas are now the
barr
Which makes us
distance farr
That we may soone win
narr**
God graunte us grace…
* without love
** near
Born in 1566, James became king at the age of one, following the forced abdication of his mother Mary Queen of Scots in 1567.
In 1589, now 23, negotiations for a suitable
marriage, which had been a matter of primary concern to court and country alike
since his 16th birthday, were finally concluded.
His choice, Anne of Denmark, was one that
pleased himself – she was young and handsome. It pleased his subjects – reinforcing the
already important trade links with Denmark. And, he said, it pleased God - who had
‘moved his heart in the way that was meetest’.
Whether
James’ understanding of God’s will was influenced more by the fact that Anne
was eight years younger than himself, while the other candidate, Catherine of
Navarre, was eight years older and reputedly looking her age, than by the
earnest prayer he claimed, is a moot point.
Whatever, the contract was made and his chosen proxy, George Keith,
Earl Marishchal, was charged, not only with taking James’ place at the marriage
ceremony, but also with the task of bringing the new queen home.
On the 1st September 1589 a
small fleet left Denmark heading for Scotland.
It was to be an ill-fated
voyage. Storms battered the ships; the queen’s life was endangered by cannons which
broke loose from the their mountings; and when prayers failed to calm the seas, Peter
Munk, the Danish Admiral, concluding that the storms were the work of witches,
sought safe haven in Norway.
Munk’s belief that witches played a part in
the storms that threatened the ships, was one which James was ready to accept
and witch trials followed in both countries, including the infamous North
Berwick trials of 1590.
Unwilling to wait until the following
spring, James resolved to send ships from Scotland to bring Anne home. But when
his Lord Admiral, the Earl of Bothwell, told him how much such a venture would
cost, he quickly changed his mind. In fairness, though James had a reputation of being canny, especially where money was
concerned; he probably couldn’t afford it.
Enter Maitland, Lord Chancellor of Scotland,
who volunteered to send ships at his own expense. An offer that James was quick
to accept.
James then made what would be the most
impulsive and foolhardy gesture of his life, disregarding the increased dangers
of winter seas and deciding to accompany the fleet to Norway. Knowing it would not please his council
however, he took care both to ensure that word of his intention did not leak
out until it was too late for them to stop him, and to leave detailed
instructions for the governance of the
country in his absence. He was to be away for more than six months.
Fortunately for James, the journey, which Anne’s
ships had struggled to make for almost a month, took just 6 days, and he arrived
in Norway at the end of October.
There followed wedding No.2 in Oslo,
conducted in French by a Scots minister who had accompanied James, and finally,
in January 1590, for the benefit of the Danish royal family, wedding No 3 at
the castle of Kronborg in Denmark.
Thoroughly
married, by both Scots and Lutheran rites, the royal couple and their entourage
caroused the winter away in Denmark, finally leaving on the 21st
April 1590. They arrived at the port of
Leith, just outside Edinburgh, on 1st May 1590, to a tumultuous
welcome from a populace eager for a young and healthy king and queen.
It was a marriage that lasted thirty years
until Anne’s death in 1619, and though the initial happiness did not last, they
had eight children – three sons and five daughters. Their firstborn, Henry, having died in 1612,
it was their second son Charles who succeeded James; the marriage of their only
surviving daughter, Elizabeth, to Frederic V, Elector Palatine and King of
Bohemia eventually leading to the Hanovarian succession to the British throne.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Margaret Skea grew up in
Ulster at the height of the 'Troubles', but now lives with her husband in the
Scottish Borders.
Her debut novel, Turn of the Tide - the Historical Fiction Winner in the 2011 Harper Collins / Alan Titchmarsh People's Novelist Competition – is set in 16thc Scotland and is the story of a fictional family trapped in a real-life vendetta between warring clans. It was published by Capercaillie Books in November 2012.
An Hawthornden Fellow and award winning short
story writer - other recent credits include, Overall Winner Neil Gunn 2011,
Chrysalis Prize 2010, and Winchester Short Story Prize 2009. Shortlisted in the
Mslexia Short Story Competition 2012 and long-listed for the Matthew Pritchard
Award, Fish Short Story and Fish One Page Prize, she has been published in a
range of magazines and anthologies in Britain and the USA.
There is an excellent book Scotland's Last Royal Wedding that treats the issues surrounding the marriage in a very entertaining and thorough account, including how James left Holyrood to embark from Leith under cover of darkness. The final chapter is telling "And they did not live happily ever after." It is by historian David Stevenson and includes the Danish account of the event. It reads like a novel, for anyone interested in looking a little deeper into this topic that Margaret Shea presents.
ReplyDeleteFascinating! I didn't know the story of James and Anne's marriage.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!