WEBVTT - Death and the King's Favorite (with Benjamin Woolley) 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:05.080 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:12.560 and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised. In two 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:16.560 thousand and five, the English Heritage team working on restoring 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:23.240 Apethorpe Haul in Northamptonshire made a phenomenal discovery. Their job 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.080 wasn't an easy one. Though Apethorpe had once been a 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:33.640 magnificent estate that hosted Tutor and Jacobean Royalty over the centuries, 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:37.840 it had fallen into disrepair, first during a period where 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.240 it was used as a youth detention facility, and then 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:45.480 later when it was purchased, presumably as an investment by 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.080 a Libyan businessman who never spent a single night there. 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:53.520 The palace was crumbling, and the only reason it even 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:57.160 lasted long enough to be protected by the English government 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:02.560 was because of an elderly gardeners caretaker who continued working 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:07.560 without salary to block windows, stop leaks and chase away 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:12.959 would be vandals. When the English Heritage restoration began, the 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:18.039 magnificence of the house slowly became apparent again. There were 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.000 centuries old grotesque wall paintings that had been covered in 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:26.840 the eighteenth century and plaster freezes hidden under attic floorboards. 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:31.080 But the best discovery was in the chamber that had 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:35.160 originally been built in order to accommodate the visits of 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:39.400 King James the First. James the First also known as 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:44.160 James the sixth in Scotland, frequently visited Apethorpe. It was 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:47.120 the estate he spent the most time at outside of 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:52.120 his own palaces, and in his bedchamber, the restoring team 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:57.880 removed a wall of plaster to uncover a secret passageway. 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:02.200 Passageway that led to the room that would have been 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:07.680 occupied by the King's favorite George Villiers, the first Duke 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:13.280 of Buckingham. A secret passageway between the bedrooms of two men, 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:18.600 just normal platonic dude stuff. If you know King James 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.960 at all, it's probably because of the Bible that bears 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.399 his name, or the episode on this podcast we did 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:29.320 about his habit of witch hunting. Neither of those two 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:34.280 character traits seemed particularly aligned with the other big thing 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:38.799 about King James that he had a pattern of selecting 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:47.079 close male favorites. These relationships were absolutely intimate, undeniably romantic, 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:51.960 and probably sexual, although that's a matter of much debate 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:57.480 even today among scholars. Personally, I defer to Antonia Fraser's view, 0:02:57.880 --> 0:03:00.880 which she wrote in her nineteen seventy five biography of 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:05.360 the King quote in sexual matters, it is generally better 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.880 to assume the obvious unless there is some very good 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.880 reason to think otherwise. And that was decades before they 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.400 found the secret bedroom tunnel. Whatever the extent of the 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:22.840 physical relationship between King James and George Villiers, the relationship 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:29.080 itself reshaped English politics. George went from being a minor 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:34.480 second son of landed gentry to a duke, a meteoric 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:40.440 rise that first delighted and then terrified and threatened other noblemen. 0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.200 King James had been in his late forties when they 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:48.280 met George. In his early twenties. The young man had 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.640 been thrust into court by his ambitious mother Mary, who 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:56.880 saw her handsome son as a key into high society. 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:01.640 But even she could not have imagined just how successful 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.360 George would be. But no one can rise forever, and 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:11.720 the intimate jealous closeness that George and James shared might 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:16.839 have in the end cost them both their lives. I'm 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:20.040 Danish schwartz, and this is noble blood. 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:27.200 I'm thrilled to be speaking today with Benjamin Wooley, a 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:30.520 professor at Goldsmith's University of London and the author of 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:33.600 The King's Assassin, which was the basis of the new 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:38.159 television series Mary and George that's finally available in the US. 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:40.480 I'm so thrilled to be talking with you. Thank you 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:42.839 so much for being here. Thank you. 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:44.280 I look forward to it. 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.480 So let's start with Georgie's early life. Though obviously he 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:52.559 would have this meteoric rise through court politics, his early 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:56.240 prospects were extremely limited. You write that he was the 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:59.240 second son of a father who had already been married 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.880 and already had earlier sons from that marriage. So what 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:07.120 did that mean in terms of George's future in the 0:05:07.160 --> 0:05:08.200 seventeenth century. 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:13.039 Well, being a second son at that particular time was 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:16.120 not a comfortable position to be in. So they stood 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:20.400 to inherit nothing. Under the system of primogeniture that's called 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:25.280 where the eldest son inherits everything in the family. If 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.040 there's an eldest son, that obviously means they're in line 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.640 to get that. So the second son has nothing, and 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:34.200 that can make life extremely difficult. I mean you kind 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.240 of see it now, don't you. In the relationship between 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.720 I don't know, Princes William and Harry. It's a complex, 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.680 difficult relationship. It's a difficult position for people like Harry. 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:47.920 You know, you have the air and the spare and 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:50.559 that was very much the case for second sons, even 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.599 more so right through the entire system as it worked 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:58.600 in that time. And George was, as you say, in 0:05:57.680 --> 0:06:01.120 an even worse position because he wasn't even in the 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.279 first family. He was a second son in a second family, 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.640 so his prospects were bleak. And a kind of measure 0:06:08.640 --> 0:06:10.919 of that is that if you look through the history 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:13.400 of that time, people who were in his position who 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:18.120 came from sort of I suppose, middling gentry rings, so 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:21.120 they went from the aristocracy. But there weren't peasants by 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:24.200 any stretch of the imagination, but this sort of gentry class. 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:26.719 It was really difficult for them, and they would do 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.720 things like well what notably, a lot of them piled 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:32.719 at well, not that many, but some of them piled 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:35.000 on a ship and set off for Virginia in the 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.080 US to set up Jamestown. The people who did that 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:41.320 was a really motley crewe who were made up of 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:44.080 a lot of second sons, who had nothing else to do. 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:48.280 So that was his predicament, that was his situation, and 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.440 that is what makes made for me his story and 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.120 his mother's role in that story all the more remarkable. 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:00.320 So from a pretty early age, his mother is able 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:03.320 to see some sort of potential in him. What does 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.080 she see in him? And then how does she cultivate that? 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.480 Well, she sees some potential in him and some lack 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:15.000 of potential in her eldest son, John. So the eldest 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:19.960 who would inherit whatever fortunes of the family made was 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.880 I think, right from the start, clearly had a problem 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:27.800 of some sort I mean in more modern turns where 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:31.920 you'd say had some sort of mental illness, probably congenital 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:34.800 mental illness, because it seemed to show up quite early on, 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.920 and it certainly manifested itself in violent ways later on 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.760 in his life. So he was a difficulty and she 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:45.160 couldn't see what she could do with him, because she 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.600 was determined, a very determined woman who was going to 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:54.400 try and sort of get the ranking she thought she deserved. 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:56.640 She thought her and her family she came from this 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:59.680 family which she later claimed was related to five kings 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:03.440 of your Europe. I mean, that's highly debatable, but she 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.760 nevertheless thought she came from a very special line, and 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.679 John wasn't going to carry that, not as a reflection 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:15.680 of her line and background, nor as that of her 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:20.080 husband who died when John and George were just were young, 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.560 who was called Sir George Villiers. So George's father was 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.680 also called George. One of those things that happened throughout 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:30.320 history at that time, causing chaos for those of us 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.199 trying to research the families. But she could see that 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:37.199 George was a much better prospect, if you liked, for 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:41.280 realizing her ambitions than John. He wasn't very scholarly, he 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:43.160 wasn't very intellectual. 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:46.079 So he wouldn't be a good fit for the church exactly. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.000 So if you're looking at the options that were available, 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:53.040 that's exactly the sort of option that might have been considered. 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:59.640 But he was obviously he good looking, charismatic, seemed to 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:04.640 be musical, very good dancer, physically, sort of self assured, 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:10.040 and all those things made it clear that he would 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:14.320 have a successful time if she could somehow get him 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:18.360 within the orbit of the royal court. I mean, most 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.640 people it wouldn't have heard in her position, which was 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:26.120 complicated in any number of ways. I mean, she was 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.640 what was called a waiting woman to a richer relative, 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:32.599 which doesn't mean she was a servant exactly or a 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:34.920 sort of scullery maid, and her enemies would make her 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:37.120 out to be as such later on, but she was. 0:09:37.440 --> 0:09:40.199 She was in a kind of one of those very 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:44.240 ambiguous social positions, which was between service, if you like, 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:49.719 in companionship to another higher ranking individual. So she was 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:54.240 low in the pecking order, and so to even think 0:09:54.280 --> 0:09:56.720 about trying to get somebody into the royal court was itself, 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.840 you know, that was a moonshot, as it were, in 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:02.200 talking about the times were in. But nevertheless, she was 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.960 that ambitious, and George seemed to present a prospect as 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.000 somebody who she could just shapen into the sort of 0:10:10.040 --> 0:10:13.479 person who would do the job, would have a possibility 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:18.720 of success. So that was her aim as her singular aim, 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:24.240 and various sort of historical forces basically aligned themselves to 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.960 make this a completely unexpected possibility. 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:32.880 You wrote that there was the sort of benefit of 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:37.199 the fact that James, obviously, coming from Scotland, had surrounded 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:40.000 himself sort of with Scottish men. He had had a 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.640 favorite Somerset, who was sort of disliked by nobility, and 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:49.360 so English nobility had a vested interest in helping to 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:53.200 propel an English boy into the King's orbit. 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:57.800 Exactly so, one of the courtiers was complaining how the 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:02.679 English were unable to the beams of his royal sunlight 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.240 or something. I can't quite remember the exact quote, but 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.960 they couldn't get a look in literally to the King, 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:13.240 or well the King's bedchamber, which it wasn't just a bedroom, 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.280 it was the sort of locust of power at the time, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:20.640 the place where people who counted, so to speak, had 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:22.840 to have access in order to get the King's ear 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:25.080 physically get the king's ear. It was like that. It 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.679 was that kind of court. So they needed a glamorous 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:34.120 young English boy to catch the King's eye, and George 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:37.600 went down to London. His mother obviously sent him down 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.319 the King's Way as it was called, down from Leicestershire, 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:43.800 which is in the midlands of England, down to London, 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:49.360 and George hung around court. In fact, he nearly ended 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:54.160 up marrying the child of a prominent courtier who died 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.320 before a marriage could be achieved. I don't know what 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:00.599 the father's attitude towards it would have been, but the 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:03.880 executive of the father's will of the bride to bees 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:08.960 or the prospect of a bride to be, the executors 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.200 of his will just did everything to prevent George wheedling 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.800 his way into the fact that particular family line, so 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:20.920 he was that whole scheme fell apart. I don't know 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:23.560 if that was something that Mary was involved in or not. 0:12:23.720 --> 0:12:27.640 The historical record doesn't tell us, but it was some 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.840 time and somewhere after that that this group of nobles, 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:35.800 led by the Earl of Pembroke, initially it seems, got together. 0:12:35.920 --> 0:12:39.000 So he was actually Pembroke shows in Wales, and so 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:42.880 he had Welsh connections, but Wales in England were essentially 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.040 one nation at the time, one kingdom, and so he 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.520 worked to come up with a scheme and George was 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:54.679 pushed forward as the candidate to fulfill that scheme, and 0:12:54.720 --> 0:13:00.320 that's when the scheming really began, and it turned out 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:05.320 to be extremely successful, culminating in its first stages with 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.199 George catching the King's eye by doing a beautiful dance, 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.040 one that we had the privilege of watching being recreated 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:15.960 for the show. Mary and George. He did this dance 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:18.800 that caught the King's eye and that is what set 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:19.560 the ball rolling. 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:24.040 It reminds me of the famous masquerade that Anne Boleyn 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.560 danced in to catch Henry the eighth Side that these 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:32.280 masquerades were just a market for people to see beautiful. 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:35.200 People exactly, and they were very effective of that when 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:37.640 it came to the royal court, and that's a very 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:42.160 good comparison. It subsequently led to George being knighted and 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.600 being made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which means it's 0:13:44.600 --> 0:13:47.680 a kind of ticket to enter and be part of 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.040 the bed chamber. It doesn't mean at this stage anything 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:55.880 relating to having any kind of physical intimacy with the king. 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:01.559 There were lots of gentlemen of the bedchamber essentially, not 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:04.480 not just the sort of intermediary between the king and 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:09.280 his people, or more particularly individuals like his Privy counsel 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.439 and so on, you know, the people who ran the government. 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.360 It wasn't just that it was also a protective ring 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:25.000 around him because obviously the monarch was vulnerable. I mean, yes, 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:28.360 an entourage that was there to protect him so had 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:33.480 to be very closely monitored because within two years of 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:38.320 James coming down from Scotland when he inherited the English throne, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.800 because from Scotland and England were two separate kingdoms at 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:45.840 this time and would remain so throughout James's reign, much 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:50.960 to his frustration. But he barely got his backside onto 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:53.120 the throne when somebody tried to blow him up. So 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.280 that's the famous gunpowder plot. It was called of sixteen 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:01.440 oh five. So he was paranoid already. As he put 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.720 it himself, he had been nourished in fear because of 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:09.120 his extraordinary early years. He inherited the Scottish rome when 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:10.040 he was still a baby. 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:13.320 He was a cradle king, of course, And just backing 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:15.280 up a little for the context, his mother would have 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.560 been Mary, Queen of scott who was beheaded. His father 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.160 was murdered when he was just an infant. This is 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.280 someone who has seen death and destruction since he was 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:28.080 since he was born. I can't even imagine exactly. 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:31.440 Yeah, so he'd never had a period when he was 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:34.520 settled and safe, and that was reflected in his behavior 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:37.120 throughout his reign in England as well as Scotland. He 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:40.160 was restless. He would never stay in one place for 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:45.600 very long. He would tour the country, bankrupting local grandees, 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:47.720 guy insisting they put him up for a little while, 0:15:48.120 --> 0:15:50.520 and he would, you know, he would hunt, and he 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.680 would he would do. He would distract himself with any 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:55.080 number of entertainments. 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:55.840 You know. 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:58.520 He was a great patrol, of course, of the arts 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:03.520 of the King's Men, which was Shakespeare's troupe of players actors. 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:09.280 So he was somebody who constantly needed distracting from his fears, 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:11.640 if you like, constantly worried that he was going to 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:13.800 come under attack. So for somebody to get into the 0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.520 bedchamber was to give them a level of trust that 0:16:18.480 --> 0:16:22.520 was extremely important and special, and it was how that 0:16:22.600 --> 0:16:26.600 trust was used that would define George's career. 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:31.600 Before we jump back into George's career, I think it's 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.840 probably worth just taking a moment to address the elephant 0:16:34.920 --> 0:16:38.960 in the room, which is in terms of you mentioned 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:43.400 James liking distractions. He has a history of male favorites. 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:47.640 George was certainly not the first male favorite, and historians, 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:51.120 i think, for centuries have been trying to parse out 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:55.760 what those relationships were, whether they were physical, whether they 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.520 were sexual, whether they were romantic. What is the conclusion 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:03.520 you've you've come to in terms of James's relationships with 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:07.040 his male favorites and George in particular. 0:17:07.240 --> 0:17:09.439 Well, I think what i'd say about that, And obviously 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:12.000 I've been thinking about it a lot, and when I 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:16.040 was involved in this production as historical consultant, we have 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:22.240 these extraordinary conversations about what the nature of the intimacy 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.560 was between George and James. You know, they had their 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:27.080 own reading of that situation. 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:32.080 Well, television is always more dramatic than history. 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.960 Yeah, it's not only that it has to be more dramatic. 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:39.160 It has to really physically show you what's going on. 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:39.880 You know, you can't. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:40.679 I mean, you can. 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:44.520 Obviously be a little bit euphemistic about it. Bedroom Dawes 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:48.520 can close at vital moments, but that clearly isn't the 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:50.439 way things go at the moment when it comes to 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:55.440 historical drama. So I just should make it absolutely clear. 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:57.680 I love the scripts, I love the people who worked 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:00.720 on it, and I'm really pleased with what they did 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:05.520 with it. But thinking of this historically, if there's this 0:18:06.240 --> 0:18:07.920 key to it, in a way, it's a series of 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:13.439 letters which were helpfully drawn together into an edited so 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:19.080 there was an edited edition of these letters published by 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:23.040 an American academical bergerom called King James and the Letters 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:26.240 of homo Erotic Desire, and it is a really good 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.000 piece of academic work because he's dug into the letters, 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:33.560 you know, the references that the letters make to people 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:37.320 and places and so on are explored. But they also 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.159 because they're in a collection, and because when I first 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.080 encountered this, I just read it through from beginning to end. 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.960 It's an extraordinary collection. Now, if it was a collection 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.000 of letters between a man and a woman, I think 0:18:50.160 --> 0:18:52.199 you would just take it as read that this was 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.919 a romantic, intimate sexual relationship. I don't think you would 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.600 start to fret about whether or not it was sexial 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.560 in nature. The complication is obviously that this was the 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:07.720 same sex relationship and it was being conducted in a 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.639 period when, as we see it now, they were much 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:15.359 more you know, homophobic, whatever term you want to use 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:18.760 for it. That's where I think it gets tricky. And 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.280 from my perspective as somebody who sort of researched it 0:19:22.359 --> 0:19:25.560 and thought about it, I think part of the problem 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:29.119 is us we assume that the past is always slightly 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:34.080 more in terms of sexual relationships and politics and that 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.399 sort of thing more regressive than as you further you 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.520 go back, It's like homophobia just escalates, gets worse and 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:44.399 worse and worse. Although any number of those sorts of 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:50.800 things considered to be wrong. Now that's to use a 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:54.480 anachronistic concept. I think, to try and think about what 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:57.560 was going on now. I'm the romantic in the sense 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:02.280 that I do think romance love is something that's probably 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:06.560 common through various centuries of history. I keep, as it were, 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.560 running into it when I'm writing and researching and writing 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:14.480 the people I write about, But then I consider myself 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:16.800 a biography. I'm always sort of looking for that kind 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:17.120 of thing. 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:18.440 But how those. 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:23.760 Relationships form and what form they take is if you 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:28.359 look at it through contemporary eyes without bearing in mind 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:30.840 what was going on at the time, you kind of 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.400 lose the picture of what could be happening, what sort 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:37.840 of relationship it could be. And so if you think 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.520 about that time, we're thinking about a time when you know, 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:45.200 gender fluidity, if you like, was something that was much 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.440 more a part of life. I mean, you've only got 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:50.960 to think of Shakespeare. Every Shakespeare played I had men 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:53.440 playing boys and men playing women. 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:58.280 In some of James's letters, I believe even calls George wife. 0:20:59.000 --> 0:21:01.920 Yes, yes, did He made this plea to George. After 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:06.159 James lost his wife Anne of Denmark the Queen, he 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.159 wrote this extraordinary letter to George asking him to be 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:13.680 his wife, and George reciprocated with very loving letters back 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:18.520 to James. Now, obviously there's a power dynamic here. For example, 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:21.639 a lot of the criticism, if that's the word of 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:26.880 people from people, particularly in the past, of portraying James 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.879 as in inverted commas gay or homosexual, and I'm putting 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:34.040 them in perverted commas because those for concepts would be 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:36.800 nothing to people who lived in that period. I mean, 0:21:36.800 --> 0:21:38.960 they just wouldn't know what you were talking about. The 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:41.560 idea of sexuality wouldn't have made any sense to them. 0:21:41.960 --> 0:21:46.240 But anyway, so one of the objections to painting their 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:50.439 relationship as being sexual was because of the sodomy laws 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:55.960 of the time and James's support of those laws. But 0:21:56.000 --> 0:21:59.960 there were sodomy laws, they weren't They weren't anti homosexual 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.400 laws or same sex relationship laws. They were very specific 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.920 about a very specific physical act, a bit like rape law. 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:13.359 And I think partly they're because of concerns about power 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:17.200 relations and about how men abusing boys and so on. 0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:24.000 Obviously there are biblical prohibitions against men lying with men, 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.760 as to use the terminology of the Keith James Bible, 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:33.800 of course, But again I think to read that through 0:22:33.800 --> 0:22:38.399 contemporary eyes, assuming that this is evidence of basically being 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:43.640 sexily regressive in some way, that wasn't you know, that 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:46.600 wasn't the preoccupation. The preoccupations were in all sorts of 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:50.000 different directions and concerns, with all sorts of different issues, 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:55.280 theological and otherwise. So I think James could happily have 0:22:55.359 --> 0:22:59.600 an intimate sexal relationship with another man without that without 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:05.560 him thinking that he was breaking really many taboos. I mean, 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:10.240 sexual acts themselves were taboo in the sense you didn't 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:12.600 do them in public, you didn't talk about them in public, 0:23:12.960 --> 0:23:16.520 things like that. That more or less applies now that 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:20.920 the idea that the same sex relationship itself was something 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:25.520 that he had to particularly hide or was particularly concerned about, 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:30.160 or that it's particularly controversial even to consider. I think 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:34.119 that's to look at it through an anachronistic lens. 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:37.720 I think that's so well said. Especially I've read some 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:40.720 people that talk about because for someone who doesn't know 0:23:40.800 --> 0:23:43.440 much of history, they might hear King James and only 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:46.720 associate him with the Bible. And he was married with 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:48.840 I believe seven children with. 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:52.320 Not all the three yeah, not all. 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:55.639 The survivors survived. But you know, had had clearly a 0:23:55.680 --> 0:23:59.520 sexual relationship with a woman. But I agree with you 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:02.240 that I don't think, in my opinion, the reading feels 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:05.760 like it wouldn't have precluded a romantic or sexual relationship 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:07.120 with men as well. 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:12.960 The thing is is what I loved about it was 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:16.160 the romance. It was a very romantic relationship at least 0:24:16.200 --> 0:24:20.080 particularly for James, and James for me, emerges from this 0:24:20.200 --> 0:24:25.119 story as a fascinating, really fascinating character. And I have 0:24:25.240 --> 0:24:27.680 said to Chap who played him in Mary and George 0:24:27.720 --> 0:24:30.200 Tony Curran, I had a long discussion with him before 0:24:30.240 --> 0:24:33.320 he started out on this production. It was a big 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:36.160 you know, it was a massive amount of work for him. 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:38.800 Six months or so they were filming, and he did 0:24:38.840 --> 0:24:41.240 point out after he'd been filming for a couple of 0:24:41.400 --> 0:24:43.199 well maybe a couple of months, I can't remember, but 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:45.040 he said, when I went to the set one day 0:24:45.320 --> 0:24:46.560 and he said it was nice to be able to 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:49.199 talk to me with some clothes on. He you know, 0:24:49.640 --> 0:24:53.639 it was it demanded a great deal of this actor, 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:56.439 and I think Tony did an amazing job of it. 0:24:56.520 --> 0:24:59.720 I'm not sure that everyone picks it up, having you know, 0:24:59.800 --> 0:25:02.359 look took the aftermath of the show and some of 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:06.239 the reviews, which is a shame. Not everyone kind of 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:09.000 sees what I saw. But then, of course I'm seeing 0:25:09.000 --> 0:25:12.280 something seeing it from a very particular perspective. But I 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:16.440 think he pulls out the subtleties of a very very 0:25:16.640 --> 0:25:23.680