0:00

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production

0:03

of iHeartRadio and Grimm and

0:05

Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion

0:07

advised. In

0:12

two thousand and five, the English Heritage

0:14

team working on restoring Apethorpe

0:17

Haul in Northamptonshire made

0:19

a phenomenal discovery. Their

0:22

job wasn't an easy one. Though

0:25

Apethorpe had once been a magnificent

0:28

estate that hosted Tutor and

0:30

Jacobean Royalty over

0:32

the centuries, it had fallen into

0:34

disrepair, first during

0:37

a period where it was used as a youth

0:39

detention facility, and then later

0:41

when it was purchased, presumably as

0:44

an investment by a Libyan

0:46

businessman who never spent a single

0:48

night there. The palace

0:50

was crumbling, and the only reason

0:53

it even lasted long enough to be

0:55

protected by the English government was

0:57

because of an elderly gardeners

1:00

caretaker who continued working

1:02

without salary to block

1:04

windows, stop leaks and chase

1:07

away would be vandals. When

1:09

the English Heritage restoration began,

1:12

the magnificence of the house slowly

1:15

became apparent again. There

1:17

were centuries old grotesque

1:19

wall paintings that had been covered in

1:22

the eighteenth century and plaster

1:24

freezes hidden under attic floorboards.

1:27

But the best discovery was

1:29

in the chamber that had originally

1:31

been built in order to accommodate the

1:34

visits of King James the First.

1:37

James the First also known as James

1:39

the sixth in Scotland, frequently

1:42

visited Apethorpe. It was the estate

1:44

he spent the most time at outside

1:47

of his own palaces, and in

1:49

his bedchamber, the restoring

1:51

team removed a wall of plaster

1:54

to uncover a secret

1:57

passageway. Passageway

1:59

that led to the room that

2:01

would have been occupied by the King's

2:03

favorite George Villiers,

2:06

the first Duke of Buckingham.

2:09

A secret passageway between the bedrooms

2:12

of two men, just normal

2:14

platonic dude stuff. If

2:17

you know King James at all, it's

2:19

probably because of the Bible that bears

2:22

his name, or the episode

2:24

on this podcast we did about his habit

2:26

of witch hunting. Neither

2:28

of those two character traits seemed

2:31

particularly aligned with the other

2:33

big thing about King James

2:36

that he had a pattern of selecting

2:39

close male favorites.

2:41

These relationships were absolutely

2:44

intimate, undeniably romantic,

2:47

and probably sexual,

2:49

although that's a matter of much debate

2:52

even today among scholars. Personally,

2:55

I defer to Antonia Fraser's

2:57

view, which she wrote in her nineteen

2:59

seventy five biography of the King quote

3:02

in sexual matters, it is generally

3:05

better to assume the obvious unless

3:07

there is some very good reason to think

3:09

otherwise. And that was decades

3:12

before they found the secret bedroom

3:14

tunnel. Whatever the

3:16

extent of the physical relationship

3:19

between King James and George Villiers,

3:21

the relationship itself reshaped

3:24

English politics. George

3:27

went from being a minor second

3:29

son of landed gentry to

3:32

a duke, a meteoric

3:34

rise that first delighted and

3:37

then terrified and threatened other

3:39

noblemen. King James

3:42

had been in his late forties when they

3:44

met George. In his early

3:46

twenties. The young man had been

3:48

thrust into court by his ambitious

3:51

mother Mary, who saw her

3:53

handsome son as a key into

3:55

high society. But even she

3:58

could not have imagined just how

4:00

successful George would be. But

4:03

no one can rise forever, and

4:06

the intimate jealous closeness

4:08

that George and James shared

4:11

might have in the end cost

4:14

them both their lives. I'm

4:16

Danish schwartz, and this is

4:19

noble blood.

4:24

I'm thrilled to be speaking today with

4:26

Benjamin Wooley, a professor at Goldsmith's

4:28

University of London and the author of The

4:30

King's Assassin, which was the basis

4:33

of the new television series Mary and

4:35

George that's finally available

4:37

in the US. I'm so thrilled to be talking

4:39

with you. Thank you so much for being here.

4:42

Thank you.

4:43

I look forward to it.

4:44

So let's start with Georgie's early

4:47

life. Though obviously he would have this

4:49

meteoric rise through court politics,

4:52

his early prospects were extremely

4:54

limited. You write that he was the second

4:56

son of a father who had already been

4:58

married and already had earlier sons

5:01

from that marriage. So what did that

5:03

mean in terms of George's future

5:05

in the seventeenth century.

5:09

Well, being a second son at

5:11

that particular time was not

5:13

a comfortable position to be in. So

5:15

they stood to inherit nothing. Under

5:17

the system of primogeniture

5:19

that's called where the eldest son

5:23

inherits everything in the family. If

5:25

there's an eldest son, that obviously means

5:27

they're in line to get that. So the second son

5:30

has nothing, and that can make

5:32

life extremely difficult. I mean you kind of see

5:34

it now, don't you. In the relationship

5:36

between I don't know, Princes

5:38

William and Harry. It's

5:41

a complex, difficult relationship. It's

5:43

a difficult position for people like

5:45

Harry. You know, you have the air and the spare

5:47

and that was very much the case for second

5:49

sons, even more so right through the entire

5:52

system as it worked in that time.

5:55

And George was, as you say, in

5:57

an even worse position

5:59

because he wasn't even in the first family.

6:02

He was a second son in a second family,

6:05

so his prospects were bleak. And

6:07

a kind of measure of that is that if you look

6:10

through the history of that time, people who

6:12

were in his position who came from sort

6:14

of I suppose, middling

6:16

gentry rings, so they went

6:18

from the aristocracy. But there weren't

6:20

peasants by any stretch of the imagination, but

6:22

this sort of gentry class. It

6:24

was really difficult for them, and they would do things

6:27

like well what notably, a

6:29

lot of them piled at well, not that many, but

6:31

some of them piled on a ship and set off for

6:34

Virginia in the US to set up Jamestown.

6:36

The people who did that was a really

6:39

motley crewe who were made up

6:41

of a lot of second sons, who had

6:43

nothing else to do. So that was

6:45

his predicament, that was his situation, and

6:48

that is what makes made for me

6:51

his story and his mother's

6:53

role in that story all the more remarkable.

6:56

So from a pretty early age,

6:59

his mother is able to see some sort of potential

7:02

in him. What does she see

7:04

in him? And then how does she cultivate that?

7:07

Well, she sees some potential

7:09

in him and some lack of potential in

7:11

her eldest son, John. So

7:14

the eldest who would inherit whatever

7:17

fortunes of the family made was

7:20

I think, right from the start, clearly

7:23

had a problem of some sort I

7:25

mean in more modern turns where

7:27

you'd say had some sort of mental illness, probably

7:31

congenital mental illness, because it seemed

7:33

to show up quite early on, and it certainly

7:35

manifested itself in violent

7:38

ways later on in his life. So

7:40

he was a difficulty and she

7:42

couldn't see what she could do with him, because

7:45

she was determined, a

7:47

very determined woman who was going to try

7:50

and sort of get the

7:52

ranking she thought she deserved. She

7:54

thought her and her family she came from this family

7:57

which she later claimed was related to five

7:59

kings of your Europe. I mean, that's

8:02

highly debatable, but she nevertheless thought

8:04

she came from a very special line, and

8:08

John wasn't going to carry that, not

8:11

as a reflection of her line and background,

8:13

nor as that of her

8:15

husband who died when John

8:18

and George were just were young, who

8:21

was called Sir George Villiers. So

8:23

George's father was also called George. One

8:25

of those things that happened throughout

8:27

history at that time, causing chaos for

8:29

those of us trying to research the families. But

8:33

she could see that George was

8:35

a much better prospect, if you liked, for realizing

8:38

her ambitions than John. He wasn't

8:40

very scholarly, he wasn't very intellectual.

8:42

So he wouldn't be a good fit for the church exactly.

8:46

So if you're looking at the options that were

8:48

available, that's exactly

8:51

the sort of option that might have been considered.

8:53

But he was obviously

8:55

he good looking, charismatic,

8:59

seemed to be musical, very

9:01

good dancer, physically, sort

9:03

of self assured, and all

9:05

those things made

9:07

it clear that he would

9:10

have a successful time if she could

9:12

somehow get him within

9:14

the orbit of the royal

9:16

court. I mean, most people it wouldn't

9:19

have heard in her position, which

9:21

was complicated in any

9:23

number of ways. I mean,

9:25

she was what was called a waiting woman

9:28

to a richer relative, which

9:30

doesn't mean she was a servant exactly or a sort

9:32

of scullery maid, and her enemies would make her

9:34

out to be as such later on, but she was.

9:37

She was in a kind of one of those

9:40

very ambiguous social positions, which was

9:42

between service, if you like,

9:44

in companionship to another

9:47

higher ranking individual. So

9:49

she was low in the pecking order, and

9:52

so to even think about

9:54

trying to get somebody into the royal court was itself,

9:57

you know, that was a moonshot, as it were,

9:59

in talking about the times were in. But nevertheless,

10:02

she was that ambitious, and George seemed

10:04

to present a prospect as somebody

10:06

who she could just shapen into

10:09

the sort of person who would do the job, would

10:12

have a possibility of success. So

10:15

that was her aim as her singular

10:18

aim, and various sort of historical

10:20

forces basically aligned

10:23

themselves to make this

10:26

a completely unexpected possibility.

10:30

You wrote that there was the sort of benefit

10:32

of the fact that James, obviously,

10:34

coming from Scotland, had surrounded

10:37

himself sort of with Scottish men. He

10:39

had had a favorite Somerset, who was

10:41

sort of disliked by nobility,

10:44

and so English nobility

10:47

had a vested interest in helping

10:49

to propel an English

10:51

boy into the King's orbit.

10:54

Exactly so, one of the courtiers

10:56

was complaining how the English were

10:59

unable to the beams of his

11:01

royal sunlight or something. I can't quite remember

11:04

the exact quote, but they couldn't

11:06

get a look in literally to

11:08

the King, or well the King's

11:10

bedchamber, which it wasn't just

11:12

a bedroom, it was the sort of locust

11:15

of power at the time, the place where

11:18

people who counted, so to speak, had

11:20

to have access in order to get the King's ear

11:22

physically get the king's ear. It was like that. It

11:25

was that kind of court. So

11:27

they needed a glamorous young English

11:30

boy to catch the King's eye, and

11:33

George went down to London. His

11:36

mother obviously sent him down the

11:38

King's Way as it was called, down from

11:40

Leicestershire, which is in the midlands of England,

11:43

down to London, and

11:45

George hung around court. In fact,

11:47

he nearly ended up marrying

11:50

the child of a prominent

11:52

courtier who died before

11:55

a marriage could be achieved. I don't know what the father's

11:58

attitude towards it would have been, but

12:00

the executive of the father's will

12:02

of the bride to bees or the prospect

12:06

of a bride to be, the executors

12:09

of his will just did everything

12:11

to prevent George wheedling his

12:13

way into the fact that particular family line,

12:16

so he was that whole

12:18

scheme fell apart. I don't know if

12:21

that was something that Mary was involved in

12:23

or not. The historical record doesn't tell

12:25

us, but it was some

12:28

time and somewhere after that that this group

12:31

of nobles, led by the Earl of

12:33

Pembroke, initially it seems, got

12:35

together. So he was actually Pembroke shows

12:37

in Wales, and so he had Welsh connections,

12:40

but Wales in England were essentially

12:43

one nation at the time, one kingdom,

12:46

and so he worked to come

12:48

up with a scheme and George was pushed

12:51

forward as the candidate to

12:53

fulfill that scheme, and that's when

12:55

the scheming really began, and

12:59

it turned out to be extremely

13:01

successful, culminating

13:03

in its first stages with George

13:05

catching the King's eye by doing a beautiful dance,

13:08

one that we had the privilege

13:10

of watching being recreated for the

13:12

show. Mary and George. He

13:15

did this dance that caught the King's eye

13:17

and that is what set the ball rolling.

13:20

It reminds me of the famous

13:22

masquerade that Anne Boleyn danced

13:24

in to catch Henry the eighth Side

13:27

that these masquerades were just

13:29

a market for people to see beautiful.

13:31

People exactly, and they

13:33

were very effective of that when it came to the royal

13:36

court, and that's a very good comparison.

13:39

It subsequently led to George being

13:41

knighted and being made a Gentleman of the

13:43

Bedchamber, which means it's a kind of ticket

13:45

to enter and be part of the bed

13:47

chamber. It doesn't mean at this stage

13:50

anything relating to having any

13:53

kind of physical intimacy

13:55

with the king. There were lots of

13:57

gentlemen of the bedchamber essentially,

14:01

not not just the sort of intermediary

14:03

between the king and his people, or

14:06

more particularly individuals

14:08

like his Privy counsel and so on, you

14:10

know, the people who ran

14:12

the government. It wasn't just that it was also

14:15

a protective ring around him

14:17

because obviously the monarch

14:20

was vulnerable. I

14:24

mean, yes, an entourage that was there

14:26

to protect him so had to be

14:28

very closely monitored

14:31

because within two years of James

14:34

coming down from Scotland when he

14:36

inherited the English throne, because

14:39

from Scotland and England were two separate

14:41

kingdoms at this time and would remain so throughout

14:44

James's reign, much to his frustration.

14:46

But he barely got

14:48

his backside onto

14:51

the throne when somebody tried to blow him up. So

14:53

that's the famous gunpowder plot. It was

14:55

called of sixteen oh five. So he

14:57

was paranoid already.

15:00

As he put it himself, he had been nourished

15:03

in fear because of his extraordinary

15:05

early years. He inherited the Scottish

15:08

rome when he was still a baby.

15:10

He was a cradle king, of course,

15:12

And just backing up a little for the context, his

15:14

mother would have been Mary, Queen of scott who

15:16

was beheaded. His father was

15:19

murdered when he was just an infant. This is

15:21

someone who has seen death and destruction

15:23

since he was since he was born. I

15:25

can't even imagine exactly.

15:28

Yeah, so he'd never had

15:30

a period when he was settled and safe,

15:32

and that was reflected in his behavior throughout

15:35

his reign in England as well as Scotland.

15:37

He was restless. He would never

15:39

stay in one place for very long. He

15:41

would tour the country, bankrupting

15:43

local grandees, guy insisting

15:46

they put him up for a little while, and he

15:48

would, you know, he would hunt, and

15:50

he would he would do. He would distract

15:52

himself with any number of entertainments.

15:55

You know.

15:55

He was a great patrol, of course, of

15:58

the arts of the King's Men, which was

16:00

Shakespeare's troupe of players

16:03

actors. So he was

16:05

somebody who constantly

16:07

needed distracting from his fears, if

16:09

you like, constantly worried that he was going

16:11

to come under attack. So for somebody to get into

16:13

the bedchamber was to give

16:16

them a level of trust that was

16:19

extremely important and special, and

16:21

it was how that trust was used

16:24

that would define George's career.

16:28

Before we jump back into George's

16:30

career, I think it's probably worth just taking

16:32

a moment to address the elephant in

16:35

the room, which is in

16:37

terms of you mentioned James liking

16:39

distractions. He has a history

16:42

of male favorites. George was certainly

16:44

not the first male favorite, and

16:47

historians, i think, for centuries have been

16:49

trying to parse out what those

16:52

relationships were, whether they were

16:54

physical, whether they were sexual, whether

16:56

they were romantic. What is

16:58

the conclusion you've you've come to in

17:01

terms of James's relationships

17:03

with his male favorites and George

17:05

in particular.

17:07

Well, I think what i'd say about that, And obviously

17:09

I've been thinking about it a lot, and when

17:11

I was involved in this production as

17:14

historical consultant, we have these extraordinary

17:17

conversations about what

17:20

the nature of the intimacy was between

17:23

George and James. You know, they

17:25

had their own reading of that situation.

17:27

Well, television is always more dramatic

17:30

than history.

17:32

Yeah, it's not only that it has to be more

17:34

dramatic. It has to really physically

17:37

show you what's going on. You know, you can't.

17:39

I mean, you can.

17:40

Obviously be a little bit euphemistic

17:43

about it. Bedroom Dawes can

17:45

close at vital moments, but that clearly

17:48

isn't the way things go at the moment when it comes

17:50

to historical drama. So I

17:53

just should make it absolutely clear. I

17:55

love the scripts, I love the people who worked

17:57

on it, and I'm really pleased with what

17:59

they did with it. But

18:02

thinking of this historically, if there's

18:05

this key to it, in a way, it's

18:07

a series of letters which were helpfully

18:11

drawn together into an edited so there

18:13

was an edited edition

18:16

of these letters published by

18:19

an American academical bergerom called

18:21

King James and the Letters of homo Erotic

18:24

Desire, and it is a really good

18:26

piece of academic work because he's dug

18:29

into the letters, you know, the references

18:31

that the letters make to people and places

18:34

and so on are explored. But

18:36

they also because they're in a collection,

18:39

and because when I first encountered this, I just

18:41

read it through from beginning to end. It's

18:43

an extraordinary collection. Now, if

18:45

it was a collection of letters between

18:48

a man and a woman, I think you

18:50

would just take it as read that this was a

18:52

romantic, intimate sexual relationship.

18:55

I don't think you would start

18:58

to fret about whether or not it was sexial

19:00

in nature. The complication

19:03

is obviously that this was the same sex

19:05

relationship and it was being conducted

19:07

in a period when, as we

19:09

see it now, they were much more

19:12

you know, homophobic, whatever

19:14

term you want to use for it. That's

19:17

where I think it gets tricky. And from my perspective

19:20

as somebody who sort of researched

19:22

it and thought about it, I think

19:24

part of the problem is us we assume

19:26

that the past is always slightly

19:29

more in terms of

19:32

sexual relationships and politics and that sort

19:34

of thing more regressive than as

19:36

you further you go back, It's like

19:39

homophobia just escalates, gets worse

19:41

and worse and worse. Although any number

19:43

of those sorts of things considered to be wrong.

19:47

Now that's

19:49

to use a anachronistic

19:51

concept. I think, to try and think

19:54

about what was going on now. I'm

19:56

the romantic in the sense that

19:58

I do think romance love is

20:00

something that's probably common through

20:04

various centuries of history. I keep, as

20:06

it were, running into it when I'm

20:08

writing and researching and writing

20:11

the people I write about, But

20:13

then I consider myself a biography. I'm always

20:15

sort of looking for that kind of thing.

20:17

But how those.

20:18

Relationships form and what

20:20

form they take is if

20:23

you look at it through contemporary

20:26

eyes without bearing in mind

20:28

what was going on at the time, you

20:30

kind of lose the picture of what could

20:33

be happening, what sort of relationship it

20:35

could be. And so if

20:37

you think about that time, we're thinking about a

20:39

time when you know, gender fluidity,

20:41

if you like, was something that was

20:44

much more a part of life.

20:47

I mean, you've only got to think of Shakespeare. Every

20:49

Shakespeare played I had men playing boys

20:52

and men playing women.

20:54

In some of James's letters, I believe

20:56

even calls George wife.

20:59

Yes, yes, did He made this plea

21:01

to George. After James lost

21:03

his wife Anne of Denmark the Queen,

21:06

he wrote this extraordinary letter to George

21:08

asking him to be his wife, and

21:10

George reciprocated with very loving

21:13

letters back to James. Now, obviously

21:15

there's a power dynamic here. For

21:18

example, a lot of the criticism,

21:20

if that's the word of people from people,

21:23

particularly in the past,

21:25

of portraying James as in inverted

21:27

commas gay or homosexual,

21:30

and I'm putting them in perverted commas

21:32

because those for concepts would be nothing

21:35

to people who lived in that period. I mean, they just wouldn't

21:37

know what you were talking about. The idea of sexuality

21:40

wouldn't have made any sense to them. But anyway,

21:42

so one of the objections

21:45

to painting their relationship as being

21:47

sexual was because of

21:49

the sodomy laws of the time and

21:52

James's support

21:54

of those laws. But there were sodomy

21:56

laws, they weren't They weren't anti homosexual

22:00

laws or same sex relationship

22:02

laws. They were very specific about

22:04

a very specific physical act, a

22:06

bit like rape law. And I

22:08

think partly they're

22:11

because of concerns about power relations

22:14

and about how men abusing boys

22:16

and so on. Obviously

22:18

there are biblical prohibitions

22:22

against men lying with men, as

22:24

to use the terminology of the

22:26

Keith James Bible, of course, But

22:29

again I think to

22:31

read that through

22:33

contemporary eyes, assuming that this is

22:35

evidence of basically being

22:38

sexily regressive in some way, that

22:42

wasn't you know, that wasn't the preoccupation. The

22:44

preoccupations were in all sorts of different

22:47

directions and concerns, with all sorts of different

22:49

issues, theological and otherwise.

22:52

So I think James could happily

22:55

have an intimate sexal relationship with another

22:57

man without that without

22:59

him thinking that he was

23:02

breaking really many

23:04

taboos. I mean, sexual

23:07

acts themselves were taboo in the sense

23:09

you didn't do them in public, you didn't talk about them

23:12

in public, things like that. That

23:14

more or less applies now that

23:16

the idea that the same sex relationship

23:19

itself was something that he had

23:21

to particularly hide or was particularly

23:24

concerned about, or that it's particularly

23:27

controversial even to consider.

23:29

I think that's to look at it through

23:31

an anachronistic lens.

23:34

I think that's so well said. Especially

23:37

I've read some people that talk about because

23:39

for someone who doesn't know much of history, they might

23:41

hear King James and only associate

23:44

him with the Bible. And he was married

23:46

with I believe seven children with.

23:49

Not all the three yeah, not

23:52

all.

23:52

The survivors survived. But you

23:54

know, had had clearly a sexual relationship

23:56

with a woman. But I agree

23:59

with you that I don't think, in my opinion, the

24:01

reading feels like it wouldn't have precluded

24:03

a romantic or sexual relationship

24:05

with men as well.

24:08

The thing is is what I

24:10

loved about it

24:12

was the romance. It was a very romantic

24:15

relationship at least particularly for James,

24:17

and James for me, emerges

24:19

from this story as

24:22

a fascinating, really fascinating character.

24:24

And I have said to Chap who played him in Mary

24:27

and George Tony Curran, I had a long discussion

24:29

with him before he started out on this production.

24:32

It was a big you know, it was a

24:34

massive amount of work for him. Six months or

24:37

so they were filming, and he did point

24:39

out after he'd been filming for a couple

24:41

of well maybe a couple of months, I can't remember, but

24:43

he said, when I went to the set one day and

24:45

he said it was nice to be able to talk to me with some clothes

24:47

on. He you know, it was

24:50

it demanded a great deal of

24:53

this actor, and I think Tony did an

24:55

amazing job of it. I'm not sure that everyone

24:57

picks it up, having you

24:59

know, look took the aftermath of the show

25:02

and some of the reviews, which

25:04

is a shame. Not everyone kind of sees

25:06

what I saw. But then, of course I'm seeing

25:09

something seeing it from a very particular perspective.

25:12

But I think he pulls out the

25:14

subtleties of a very very interesting

25:17

historical character who is bizarrely

25:20

almost completely absent

25:23

from our historical record as a

25:25

significant figure. I cannot

25:27

understand why that's the case. You know, we've

25:30

all heard of Henry the eighth

25:32

and Elizabeth, but why

25:35

James the first sixth

25:38

isn't up there with the

25:40

sort of the big names of British

25:42

monarchy. I have no idea.

25:45

I just have to say I also love Tony

25:47

kran I have loved him from the

25:49

episode of Doctor Who where he plays Vincent

25:52

van goh So anyone who has

25:54

seen that episode of Doctor Who, it's the same

25:56

wonderful actor. Back

25:59

to George, this close

26:01

relationship with the king leads

26:04

to a I will say, meteoric

26:06

rise in court. I believe.

26:09

Is this correct? He's the first non

26:12

royal family member, or the only non royal

26:14

family member at the time, to become

26:17

a duke.

26:19

Yes, dukedoms were generally for members

26:21

of the royal family, and that's still the case. Actually,

26:23

but there were some other dukedoms I shouldn't,

26:25

you know, pretend they weren't.

26:28

I mean, for example, the Duke of Norfolk,

26:30

the Howard family. They were not. They

26:32

didn't have direct they had links to

26:34

the royal family, but they're very remote.

26:37

So there were dukes around who weren't members of the

26:39

royal family, but nobody had been made a duke

26:41

for the best part of a century.

26:44

Elizabeth First didn't make any of her

26:46

courtier's dukes. She made some

26:49

lower you know, earls, for example. She

26:52

made no one a duke, and in fact, had she

26:54

done so, that would have changed

26:57

the shape of her reign because

26:59

it implied in some way, I

27:02

suppose, because she was childless, that

27:04

the person she promoted to that position was

27:07

in line for the throne. Even

27:10

so, you know, it carries

27:12

a lot of weight, that title.

27:14

And indeed, during George's time

27:16

when he was made duke, which was around the

27:18

time well in the midst of

27:20

this amazing escapade, him and Charles

27:23

hairing off through France to Spain to try

27:25

and capture the the hand of the

27:27

Infanta, the Spanish princess. He

27:30

was made due then, but it

27:32

immediately aroused rumors that he

27:34

was aiming to seize the throne.

27:37

His enemies certainly thought that that was

27:39

a possible motive. In

27:42

any case, it was the most

27:44

extraordinary promotion, and it

27:47

was something that elevated the Villiers

27:50

family to a social rank

27:52

that even Mary, who had

27:55

this very high opinion of

27:57

her social position, a

27:59

true who if you like, or natural

28:01

social position, even she couldn't

28:04

have imagined that happening. And she became a countess.

28:07

It's a special title. It was one that James

28:09

basically bestowed on. It wasn't heritable, but

28:11

it was one he just thought, I'm going to make you a countest.

28:14

I think you're such an amazing woman. Here's a countess

28:16

ship.

28:18

So with Mary becoming

28:20

a countess, she also gained incredible

28:23

access to the King. George

28:25

obviously has sort of unprecedented

28:27

access to the King's person. Your

28:30

book is called the King's assassin.

28:32

Can you sort of walk us through what you've

28:35

determined about King James's

28:38

illness and then death with regards

28:40

to George and Mary. Yeah.

28:42

So there's two controversies surrounding

28:45

what I wrote about this. One

28:47

of them is, you know, to just

28:50

accept that George and James

28:52

had a sex of relationship. But the other one is

28:54

that George and Mary were somehow involved

28:56

in James's death. I'm

28:58

slightly puzzled by both controversies.

29:01

What I don't say in the book is that

29:03

George and Mary definitely

29:06

killed James. There's no way of knowing that

29:08

that though, is not, as I see

29:10

it, the issue. So I first

29:13

encountered these two when I was researching

29:15

another book called The Herbalist,

29:18

about a sort of a completely different

29:20

figure. He was a sort of a

29:23

radical from the Civil War pier called Nicholas

29:25

Culpepper. His

29:27

nemesis was a doctor called William Harvey.

29:30

Brilliant doctor incidentally discovered

29:33

the circulation of the blood, for example,

29:35

changed the course of medical history, you could say.

29:37

But William Harvey was at James's bedside

29:39

in his final hours, alongside

29:41

him with these two figures, Mary and George, and I thought,

29:43

who on earth are they, and then they started

29:46

to interfere in the King's care in what was

29:48

being in the medicines dispensed to

29:50

him. Now, what we do know from,

29:53

among other things, actually spies

29:56

that were in the King's court at the time who had

29:58

that somehow had access we don't know their

30:00

names, but who had access to the king's

30:03

bedside and saw what was going on. So

30:05

these were people who were reporting back to their

30:07

spymasters back in Catholic

30:09

Europe what was going on. So

30:11

we know something was going on, and what seemed to

30:13

be going on was that Mary and George

30:15

decided to apply a medicine

30:18

that their own apothecary, Mayor's

30:20

apothecary to be specific, had mixed up

30:23

as a plaster and potion in

30:26

James's final hours while he was ill

30:28

with what was diagnosed fairly familiar

30:30

disease at the time, malaria,

30:32

because malaria was endemic in England.

30:35

Then having dismissed the royal

30:37

doctors from the King's bedside and then

30:39

subsequently trying to

30:41

force them to sign a declaration to

30:43

say they had agreed to the dispensing

30:45

of this medicine to James. Having

30:48

done all that leading to James

30:50

having a series of fits and dying. Now, he

30:52

was weak, he was ill. He was not

30:54

that old, but he was aging, and he you

30:57

know, he could have died of natural causes. But

31:01

soon after his death the rumors

31:03

started to spread that they

31:05

had poisoned him.

31:07

On paper, it's a little suspicious,

31:09

but impossible to convict

31:11

based on based on the circumstances.

31:13

Yes, absolutely, but I mean it

31:15

would be more or less impossible

31:18

to convict anyone of any poisoning

31:20

at that time, because of course there's no forensic

31:22

evidence to be had, and that's

31:24

not the point. The significance of this is

31:26

the impact it had subsequently, because the House

31:29

of Commons set up essentially

31:31

a sort of secret committee that

31:34

interviewed the doctors and asked them what had

31:36

happened, and they used it in order to draw

31:39

up a case against George, because by

31:41

this stage the Parliament,

31:43

which had once hailed George as

31:46

Saint George on horseback, the great

31:48

champion of the people, had turned against

31:50

him because of his involvement with Charles,

31:53

and it poisoned. They may

31:55

not marry and George may not have poisoned James,

31:57

but what they did poisoned relationships

32:00

between parliament and the king. The

32:02

new king, Charles the First, and

32:05

even when Charles was

32:08

arrested by parliamentary forces,

32:10

so Charles tried to all without

32:12

Parliament for a period basically

32:15

of two decades or over two decades.

32:17

And the upshot was that Parliament

32:19

went to war with Charles. That was

32:21

the Civil War.

32:22

They Charles the just for

32:24

any listeners, Charles the first, James's

32:27

son after James died.

32:29

Exactly who inherited the throne here

32:31

When James died, Charles

32:34

eventually lost to

32:36

Parliament and was arrested, and one of the charges

32:38

brought against him was that he was involved

32:40

in the death of his father. So

32:43

that rumor had been rumbling around

32:46

through throughout that period, and I think

32:48

that's the aspect of it that makes

32:50

it so important historically.

32:53

And the roots to that was when

32:56

George and Charles, this

32:58

was when James was still alive, when they went

33:00

to Spain to try and see if Charles

33:02

could marry the Infanta, the Spanish king.

33:04

That would have changed the geopolitics

33:07

of Europe. In an instant England,

33:09

which had been a sort of hostile Protestant

33:12

power, James

33:14

had tried to regularize relationships

33:16

between Britain and Spain that

33:19

would have secured it if that had

33:21

happened. It didn't happen, and

33:23

George has sort of tactically

33:26

decided, well, if you're not going to

33:28

support that, we'll turn against

33:30

you. James wasn't prepared to do that. When

33:33

James died, he was conveniently

33:35

out of the way and him and

33:37

Charles, who subsequently married a

33:39

French princess, could pursue

33:42

a policy of antagonism

33:44

towards Spain. And that's what George

33:47

did. It didn't go well,

33:49

it went very badly. In fact, George was

33:52

not a terribly good tactician, you

33:54

could argue, but he was a really

33:57

interesting politician, and he tried to

33:59

set up a kind of Northern Protestant

34:03

cluster of nations

34:05

hostile to Catholic Europe.

34:08

And when I was researching this, Brexit

34:11

was underway though, the British

34:15

referendum which led to the

34:17

decision to leave the European

34:20

Union, and in a sense

34:23

George was a sort of proto brexiteer,

34:25

you could argue. He thought that that,

34:27

you know, Europe should be more open, more Protestant,

34:30

it shouldn't, you know, cow taw to

34:32

the Pope and to

34:34

the Habsburgs, who were the royal

34:37

sort of the royal dynasty that ruled

34:39

Catholic Europe. He thought

34:41

that that that there should be a challenge

34:43

to that. America was bound up in

34:45

this Jamestown and the founding of Jamestown

34:48

was during this period. It was

34:50

seen as part of this sort

34:52

of Protestant this new Protestant

34:55

order, and one way

34:57

or another, George was at the heart

34:59

of this. That's why he's a much more significant

35:01

figure than maybe we really

35:04

appreciate him to be. And that's

35:06

why a really chunky piece

35:09

of scholarship exploring his life

35:11

and politics is something we

35:14

need.

35:15

One thing I found actually a little

35:17

touching is that relationship between

35:19

George and Charles. Obviously,

35:22

George had this intimate

35:24

relationship with Charles's father, but

35:26

the age gap between George

35:29

and the son Charles is much

35:32

closer. And once Charles

35:34

becomes king, he really not

35:37

I feel a little bad making this one, but

35:39

sticks his neck out again and again for George

35:42

and protects him. I find that very touching.

35:45

Yes, they start off as antagonists

35:47

because Charles Charles, when James

35:49

is still alive, Charles is feeling neglected

35:52

by his father, and he

35:55

makes a couple of attempts to actually get George

35:58

into trouble, and James sticks

36:00

by George at Charles's expense,

36:04

and George turns it around. He actually

36:06

he actually stages a kind of banquet,

36:08

he calls it the Friend's Banquet or something

36:10

like that, which to which he invites Charles

36:13

and lots of other sort of leading members of court

36:16

to patch up the relationship. And

36:18

then that's followed up by then it's

36:21

just the two of them and about two others

36:23

in support who ride across

36:26

France to Madrid, across

36:28

the Pyrenees, the

36:30

mountain range that separates France

36:33

and Spain, on to Madrid and

36:35

turn up at the doorstep for the English ambassadors,

36:37

frightening the living daylights out of the

36:39

port chap because they had no idea

36:41

that this was going to happen, and

36:44

putting the entire sort of future of the

36:47

Kingdom at stake in that maneuver, and

36:50

they just they're glued together from then

36:52

then on, and that's why you

36:55

know, the poisoning thing comes up.

36:57

Subsequently, Charles was at Theobalds,

37:00

the country retreat where James

37:03

fell in and died. During

37:06

that time, and so that's why

37:08

there was suspicions surrounding Charles

37:10

that he was plotting with George

37:13

and Mary, and George stood

37:15

by him until George was assassinated.

37:19

Well, actually that in itself is an interesting

37:22

question, but by

37:24

one of the naval personnel

37:27

who claimed he hadn't been paid. But George

37:29

was assassinated, and that, in a

37:31

sense is one of the first things

37:33

that leaves Chiles so marooned politically

37:37

that civil war is too

37:39

strong to say it at that point would

37:41

have seemed inevitable, but certainly seemed more

37:43

likely.

37:44

I would say, I've

37:46

already kept you and I'm so grateful

37:48

for your time. But before you leave, just one

37:51

more quick question. George had this

37:54

incredible rise, but he would

37:56

die fairly young and fairly

37:59

tragically when he was assassinated.

38:02

Can you speak to that just a little bit.

38:04

Once Charles was on the

38:06

throne, George decided to throw everything

38:08

at trying to sort of carve out

38:11

himself a role for himself

38:14

as a kind of military leader of

38:16

the Protestant cause. So there was this big

38:18

tension geopolitically speaking, between

38:22

the Protestant countries kingdoms,

38:25

mostly of Northern Europe,

38:27

but very crudely and the Catholic

38:30

countries of southern Europe,

38:33

and he wanted to try and build an alliance

38:35

actually out of countries that Protestant countries

38:37

in the north of Europe. And he embarked on a number

38:39

of military campaigns to do this, and one

38:42

of them one involved in an attempt

38:44

to try and actually go and support

38:46

of Protestants in Spain and France

38:49

with two two missions, and they went

38:51

very badly wrong and he was heavily

38:53

defeated. And also by

38:55

this stage under Charles, the regime

38:58

was running short of money because these military oppers

39:00

are very expensive. Sailors who

39:02

had been press ganged into taking part

39:04

in these expeditions were

39:06

going unpaid. And there was one of these

39:08

figures called the figure called John Felton,

39:11

who met George when

39:14

he was acting as Admiral of the Fleet and

39:16

had gone to Portsmouth and had gone

39:18

to an inn called the Greyhound. John

39:21

Felton came up

39:23

to him and essentially stabbed

39:25

him to death. And

39:27

that assassination sent

39:30

shock waves through the

39:32

entire court because it would it

39:34

was going to change everything basically in terms

39:37

of the power dynamics of the of

39:39

Charles's court and his body

39:41

was brought back. His mother was still alive.

39:44

She was there to receive the body when it was brought

39:46

back to London. And, as I suppose,

39:48

the last gesture of the sheer

39:51

ambition of this

39:54

rise to power of the Villiers family,

39:57

he ordered the most spectacular,

40:00

arguably spectacularly vulgar

40:03

memorial to George, which

40:05

was took up a whole side

40:07

room, so to speak, of the royal

40:09

part of Westminster Abbey. In other words, he

40:12

was buried among the kings and queens of England

40:14

and Britain, probably the biggest

40:17

and gaudiest memorial of all. Ironically,

40:19

James is also buried there, but there's

40:22

now a plaque, but there was no memorial

40:24

to him. There wasn't even a plaque when he was

40:27

interred in Westminster Abbey. So

40:29

those who go to Westminster Abbey can see

40:31

George in all his magnificence, and if

40:33

they just pop over to the other side of

40:36

the chapel, they will also see his mother lying

40:38

alongside his father, the

40:41

one who died when he was young, making

40:44

her claims to being the offspring

40:46

of five rulers of Europe.

40:49

They made it all the way to Westminster.

40:51

Abbey, they did in

40:54

Stile.

40:55

Thank you so much. This was fascinating

40:58

to any listeners. I highly recommend watching

41:00

the television series wherever it is streaming,

41:03

wherever you geographically are located.

41:06

Thank you again so much. What a privilege.

41:08

Thank you, It's been great.

41:11

Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio

41:15

and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

41:18

Nobel Blood is hosted by me Danish

41:20

Forts, with additional writing

41:22

and researching by Hannah Johnston,

41:25

Hannah Zewick, Courtney Sender,

41:27

Julia Milani, and Arman Cassam.

41:30

The show is edited and produced

41:32

by Noemy Griffin and rima

41:35

Ill Kali, with supervising

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