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James I & Buckingham
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The rise of Buckingham
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George Villiers (1592-1628) was the third child of the second
marriage of a Leicestershire knight. As such, he was raised as a
gentleman but was far from wealthy. However, he did have good looks
and charming manners, and in the summer of 1614 he attracted James I's
attention.
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Anne of Denmark |
James I's relations with Robert Carr, Earl of
Somerset were already beginning to sour, and Somerset's
enemies (especially George Abbot and the Earl of Pembroke)
pushed Villiers into the King's company. Abbot persuaded
James' wife, Anne
to recommend George for a post as Gentleman of the Bedchamber. |
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Thereafter, Villiers rise was meteoric:
In April 1616, he was made a Knight of the Garter and given lands
worth £1,500 p.a.
In August 1616, James gave him the title of Viscount Villiers and
over the next few months gifts of more land worth about £30,000.
In January 1617, George became Earl of Buckingham and a month later
joined the Privy Council. January 1618 saw him promoted to Marquis
of Buckingham (the highest rank James had yet bestowed). |
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George Villiers was finally made Duke of Buckingham in May 1623
- the highest position in the English peerage. George became the first man in a
century to attain that rank with no royal blood in his veins. |
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The secret of Buckingham's
success with James I was not simply good looks, but the constant care
and attention he lavished on James. He hunted regularly with James,
entertained him at meal times, and accepted James' public expressions
of affection. |
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James' unbounded affection for
Buckingham gave the young man a virtual monopoly of royal patronage.
One of the ways in which Buckingham used this was to benefit his own family -
arranging marriages to the rich and powerful for his siblings,
half-siblings and their many children.
[Table of Villiers' family connections]
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The couple's children, George and Francis
(Francis died aged 19) |
In May 1620, George
himself married the seventeen-year-old Katherine Manners - the
daughter of the 6th Earl of Rutland and his wife Frances
Knyvet. Katherine was not only very pretty, she was an
immensely wealthy heiress.
After the death of George, she remained good friends with
Charles I, |
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George's brother in law, William Feilding - a
man of very limited abilities - became a rear-admiral and
was created Earl of Denbigh.
Feilding was one of the first
Englishmen to visit Persia and India (hence his portrayal with
an Indian youth in attendance). He died from wounds sustained
fighting during the Civil War for the Royalist cause at Birmingham.
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William Feilding,
1st Earl of Denbigh
(1587-1643) |
Endymion Porter (1587-1649) |
One of the marriages arranged for the Buckingham
family was that of Olive Boteler (George's half-niece) to
Endymion Porter, a courtier and diplomat. Porter grew rich in
his own right by extracting money from those who wanted favors
from Buckingham.
Porter later became a friend and advisor to Charles I. |
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The sheer extent of Buckingham's power was
sufficient to explain his widespread unpopularity. But he was also
blamed for many of the problems that beset England from 1618 to 1628 -
the period of his ascendancy. |
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During the early 1620s, England's economy
sustained some of the worst blows of the century. England's
population continued to increase during the early seventeenth
century. Another 700,000 mouths appeared to feed between 1600 and
1625. (This and later population growth was
unevenly distributed across the country]. |
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A misguided attempt (known as the Cockayne
Project, of 1614-17) to have English wool worked into cloth in
England rather than in the Netherlands severely damaged the English
cloth industry: Exports fell dramatically.
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Quite apart from trade wars with the Dutch, the demand for broadcloth
in Europe decreased because of the Thirty
Years War. Wool and cloth-producing regions - East Anglia, in
particular - saw economic stagnation throughout the 1620s and beyond. |
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Bad weather also produced a bad harvest in 1621
and a terrible one in 1622. There was actual starvation in parts of
Scotland, and in parts of England, the poor were reduced to eating dogmeat.
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Spain had been England's enemy
for half a century, but James I concluded peace with Spain early in
his reign, and by the 1620s hoped to ally with this great power through a
marriage alliance of his son, Prince Charles with the Spanish Infanta,
Maria Anna (1606-46).
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Elizabeth, "the Winter Queen" (1596-1662)
daughter of James I, wife of Frederick V |
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The Infanta Maria as a child |
The Infanta Maria,
painted c. 1630 by Diego Velazquez |
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James I was almost the only person left wanting
peace and cooperation with Spain. But James was growing old and in
poor health - regularly suffering painful attacks of gout.
Increasingly, power lay with Charles and Buckingham.
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Frederick V, Elizabeth and their infant son (who
died, age twelve).
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Charles and Buckingham schemed for
war with Spain, and this cause was a popular one in England
where there was widespread sympathy for the misfortunes of the
"Winter Queen" and fear of Catholic expansionism. Another
Parliament was summoned in 1624 that greeted with enthusiasm
Charles and Buckingham's plans for war: "War only will secure
and repair us", announced Sir John Eliot. Parliament agreed and
voted about £300,000 for the war. |
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James was the last remaining obstacle to war,
but he fell seriously ill and despite (or possibly as a result of?)
the ministrations of Buckingham and his mother died 25 March 1625. |
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