'A Pattern for a King's Inauguration': The Coronation of James I in England

'A Pattern for a King's Inauguration': The Coronation ofJames I in England Sybil M. Jack The significance of James I's coronation and of his attitude to that ceremony has been overlooked in the process of rehabilitating his reputation as monarch. More attention should be paid to the fundamental beliefs that dominated his actions, in particular his sense of duty and of the binding nature of an oath. The coronation was central to his convictions, as it emphasized such aspects ofrule as legitimacy, continuity, and divine sanction. In many ways, coronation was the single most important event in any monarch's life, as the consecration established his or her power and authority. The significance of this in a deeply religious age cannot be overestimated. Coronation defined the office of a king and, as Schramm argues, it reaffirmed the ideals of government, such as justice. Conscience, directed by the coronation oath, required that James be a good ruler. He wrote that a good ruler should love his people like a father, and believed that his people, moved in turn by their consciences, should reciprocate. James's letters from Scotland show a noticeable respect for the wishes of the people. Many of his contemporaries remarked upon his faith in the love of his people, 'which he is accustomed to call the true guard ofprinces'. John Nichols lists 33 tracts inspired by the Coronation: Progresses ofJames VIand 1,4 vols (London, 1828), I, p. i. Dr Elizabeth Clarke at the University of Warwick is conducting a project to produce a modem edition of Nichols. There have been two reprint editions (New York: Burt Fratches, 1964, and N e w York: A M S Press, 1968) There were numerous panegyrics. Sir Robert Ayton sent one in Latin from France, published much later in his Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1637); Sir John Harington, Nugae Antiquae (London, 1804), I, p. 334. P. E. Schramm, A History ofthe English Coronation (Oxford, 1937), pp. 1-95. The Secret Correspondence ofSirRobert Cecil with James VIKing ofScotland, ed. David Dalrymple (Edinburgh, 1766), Letter 1 (to his ambassadors, the Earl of Marr and Edward Bruce), pp. 2-3. James I by his Contemporaries, ed. R. Ashton (London: Hutchinson, 1969), p. 5. Parergon 21.2 (2004) 68 Sybil M. Jack I A standard account of the coronation suggests that the event was unduly delayed, and that James and Anna of Denmark were 'crowned in a half-empty abbey while the rain poured down outside'. James has also been represented as behaving without adequate solemnity. Yet as w e shall see, James took the occasion very seriously indeed. There is growing recognition that the representation of his accession long accepted as orthodox was biased by the political purposes of his early biographers. Sir Anthony Weldon's characterization of him, in an account published during the interregnum, as 'the wisest fool in Christendom', was much repeated by later authors. Recent scholarship has contradicted this view, so that Gordon Donaldson's estimate of James as a m a n of 'very remarkable political ability and sagacity'is n o w widely accepted. Jenny Wormald and Maurice Lee have demonstrated James's skills as a perceptive ruler with a canny appreciation of the longer-term interests of all his kingdoms. Despite some shifts in his polemic, his long-term objective to be 'a universal king' and to achieve national unity by a policy of moderation remained unaltered throughout his life. S. J. Houston, James 1,2nd ed. (London: Longmans, 1995), p. 26; Ethel Carleton Willi Anne ofDenmark: Wife ofJames VI ofScotlandJames I ofEngland (London: Longmans, 1970), pp. 84-85. Quoted in Jenny Wormald, 'James VI and I: Two Kings or One?, History, 68 (1983), 187-209 (pp. 190-91). See also The Reign ofJames VI and I, ed. A. G. R. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1973), pp. 1-22. See for instance G. Davies, 'The Character of James VI and I', Huntington Library Quarterly, 5 (1941-42), 33--63 (p. 63). Discussions of James's possible homosexuality have maintained this approach: see D. Bergeron, Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James ofEngland and Scotland (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991) dnd King James and Letters ofHomoerotic Desire...