Sexuality of James VI and I

Throughout his life James I had relationships with his male courtiers, beginning with his older relative Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox. Growing up, James did not have any parents, for his father, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, was murdered and his mother, Mary I of Scotland was forced to flee when she married the suspected murderer, James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. His grandfather was assassinated during his boyhood, and he had no siblings.

James adopted a severe stance towards sodomy using English law. His book on kingship, Basilikon Doron, lists sodomy among those “horrible crimes which ye are bound in conscience never to forgive”. He also singled out sodomy in a letter to Lord Burleigh giving directives that Judges were to interpret the law broadly and not issue any pardons saying that "no more colour may be left to judges to work upon their wits in that point."

However, Jeremy Bentham, in an unpublished manuscript, denounced James as a hypocrite after his crackdown: "[James I], if he be the author of that first article of the works which bear his name, and which indeed were owned by him, reckons this practise among the few offences which no Sovereign ever ought to pardon. This must needs seem rather extraordinary to those who have a notion that a pardon in this case is what he himself, had he been a subject, might have stood in need of."

Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox

Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, 1603–1609.

At the age of 13, James made his formal entry into Edinburgh. Upon arriving he met the 37-year-old, married, father of 5 children, French lord Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox who Puritan leader Sir James Melville described as "of nature, upright, just, and gentle". The two became extremely close and it was said by an English observer that "from the time he was 14 years old and no more, that is, when the Lord Stuart came into Scotland… even then he began… to clasp some one in the embraces of his great love, above all others" and that James became "in such love with him as in the open sight of the people oftentimes he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him".

The King first made Stewart a gentleman of the bedchamber, then went on to the Privy Council, earl and finally duke of Lennox. In Presbyterian Scotland the thought of a Catholic duke irked many and Lennox had to make a choice between his Catholic faith and his loyalty to James. At the end Lennox chose James and the king taught him the doctrines of Calvinism. The Scottish Kirk remained suspicious of Lennox after his public conversion and took alarm when he had the earl of Morton tried and beheaded on charges of treason. The Scottish ministry was also warned that the duke sought to "draw the King to carnal lust".

In response the Scottish nobles plotted to oust Lennox. They did so by luring James to Ruthven Castle as a guest but then kept him as prisoner for ten months. The Lord Enterprisers forced him to banish Lennox. The duke journeyed back to France and kept a secret correspondence with James. Lennox in these letters says he gave up his family "to dedicate myself entirely to you"; he prayed to die for James to prove "the faithfulness which is engraved within my heart, which will last forever." The former duke wrote "Whatever might happen to me, I shall always be your faithful servant… you are alone in this world whom my heart is resolved to serve. And would to God that my breast might be split open so that it might be seen what is engraven therein."

James was devastated by the loss of Lennox. In his return to France Lennox had met a frosty reception as an apostate Catholic. The Scottish nobles had thought that they would be proven right in their convictions that Lennox's conversion was artificial when he returned to France. Instead the former duke remained Presbyterian and died shortly after, leaving James his embalmed heart. James had repeatedly vouched for Lennox's religious sincerity and memorialized him in a poem called Ane Tragedie of the Phoenix, which said he was like an exotic bird of unique beauty killed by envy.

Following Esme's death James married Anne of Denmark in 1589 to produce heirs for the throne. The two had 8 children with the last being born during 1607. By then James had lost interest in his wife and it was said that she led a sad, reclusive life, appearing at court functions on occasion.

Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset

A few years later after the controversy over his relationship with Lennox faded away and he began a relation with Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset. In 1607, at a royal jousting contest, 17-year-old Robert Carr, the son of Sir Thomas Carr or Kerr of Ferniehurst, was knocked from a horse and broke his leg. According to the Earl of Suffolk, Thomas Howard, James fell in love with the young man, and as the years progressed showered Carr with gifts. Carr was made a gentleman of the bedchamber and he was noted for his handsome appearance as well as his limited intelligence. His downfall came through Frances Howard, a beautiful young married woman. Upon Carr's request James stacked a court of bishops that would allow her to divorce her husband in order to marry Carr. As a wedding present Carr was named earl of Somerset.

During the next two years the relationship between Carr and James became troubled as Carr increasingly preferred his wife. In 1615 James fell out with Carr. In a letter James complained, among other matters, that Carr had been "creeping back and withdrawing yourself from lying in my chamber, notwithstanding my many hundred times earnest soliciting you to the contrary" and that he rebuked James "more sharply and bitterly than ever my master Buchanan durst do".

At this point public scandal erupted when the underkeeper of the tower revealed that Carr's new wife had poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury, his best friend who had opposed the marriage. James angered over Carr's attachment to his wife exploited the opportunity and forcefully insisted that they face trial.

On the eve of the trial, Carr threatened to reveal publicly that the King had slept with him. The next day, as he gave testimony before the Lords in Westminster Hall, two men were stationed beside him with cloaks, ready to muffle him in case of an indiscreet outburst. This was done on instructions of the King to the Lieutenant of the Tower. Carr, however, conducted himself with dignity. His wife confessed to the deed and they were sentenced to death. The King reprieved them both but held them in the tower for 7 years and then pardoned them and granted the pair a country estate.

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham

The last of James's three close male friends was George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, the son of a Leicestershire knight. They had met in 1614, around the same time that the situation with Carr was deteriorating. Buckingham was described as exceptionally handsome, intelligent and honest. In 1615 James knighted him and 8 years later he was the first commoner in more than a century to be elevated to a dukedom.

The King was blunt and unashamed in his avowal of love for Buckingham:

I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.

Contemporary commentators, such as the homosexual Théophile de Viau did not mince words in describing the king's relationship. In his poem, Au marquis du Boukinquan, de Viau writes: "Apollo with his songs / debauched young Hyacinthus, / And it is well known that the king of England / fucks the Duke of Buckingham."

Buckingham became good friends with James’s wife Anne, she addressed him in affectionate letters begging him to be "always true" to her husband. In a letter to James, Buckingham said "sir, all the way hither I entertained myself, your unworthy servant, with this dispute, whether you loved me now... better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed's head could not be found between the master and his dog". James in some letters addressed him as his spouse saying that "I desire only to live in this world for your sake... I had rather live banished in any part of the Earth with you than live a sorrowful widow's life without you... God bless you, my sweet child and wife, and grant that ye may ever be a comfort to your dear dad and husband". A few years later James died with Buckingham at his side.

Inconsistencies in theory

The King's Lennox dynasty, Stewart of Darnley, was the leadership (see Duke of Aubigny, Duke of Lennox) of the Scottish guard/Garde Écossaise in France, during the Auld Alliance. This is why Catholic Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox was King James's Protector, although Knoxian opponents of the Royal Succession to the English Crown were strident in their claims that this was a Child grooming pederasty that caused James to have homosexual relationships throughout his life. The allegations do not address how Darnley's sexual aggression with regards to Mary and her subsequent response, affected the attitude of James towards marriage with a Lutheran-turned-Catholic, with the public pressure on him immense in Scotland and less so in England. James therefore, preferred England and this was considered at the expense of Scottish interests, much like how the Knoxians hated Lennox for his French sympathies.

Nor do the charges of homosexuality address the adultery inherent in his supposed lover Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, who murdered Overbury, an obstacle to the woman he sought unchallenged heterosexual relations with and having the King in conspiracy for the forced divorce with Devereaux--son of an old opponent of Queen Elizabeth. The King's anger with Carr was due to the exposure of this in the media and how it would damage his reputation, not particularly for any homosexual longing over the issue. Furthermore, the King had Walter Raleigh executed for Habsburg Spain, a complete outrage to Calvinists who were looking to a Dutch alliance. Both Devereaux's father and Raleigh were charged with enforcing Elizabethan rule over the Catholic Irish, considered heroic actions by the King's English critics.

The insinuations of homosexuality do not account for the fact that supposed lover George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham was also close to the Queen Anne (crypto-Catholic) and James's son Charles I of England (supposedly crypto-Catholic) in the pursuit of the Spanish Match--something the King's detractors (Calvinists) and propagandists of homosexuality were vehemently opposed to in his own time. Aside from that, Buckingham failed to relieve the Calvinists under siege by the Catholics at La Rochelle, totally unforgivable to the Calvinists in the kingdom. Furthermore, Villiers's daughter married another Lennox Royalist.

These were all people of the Jacobean era establishment, thus considered deserving of all manner of attack by the Calvinist and Covenanter opposition to the "un-Reformed" King and his unwelcome fusion of a "Reformed" Scotland with the "un-Reformed" (Episcopalian, rather than Presbyterian--or Congregationalist) England. James infuriated a lot of people with his father's attitude about kingship, by continuing his mother's policies and removing his person from the land of his birth to rule from afar. When the king was inept at English affairs, his critics in both lands eventually merged to destroy his son and heir during the English Civil War. Usually the people who support the theory also believe that his marriage was/is only a cover-up for homosexuality, merely supplying heirs, although many of these supporters themselves believe in the practice of bisexual relationships as normal, just not for the King's time period. A minority of those who believe in the homosexual theory, also believe that homosexuality is what made the King inept at his dutie, much like the claims placed on Edward II of England. Both kings were considered failures for things which amounted to national shame and both have been considered homosexuals, rather than bisexuals.

External link

• Essay on the sexuality of James I