The Murderous Affairs of King James

Against the paranoid backdrop of the Scottish witch trials, a murder plot involving King James and some of his lovers took place. To make matters more juicy, it centres around the Bonnie Earl of Moray, who is said to be the most handsome man in Scotland. How does this situation create a conflict of interests for King James VI & I? Joining Kate today is the wonderful Gareth Russell, author of Queen James: A New History About the Life and Loves of Britain’s First King, James Stuart, to help us unravel this twisty and tantalising murder plot. This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 2:16Kate Lister?

  Hello my lovely Betwixters, it's me Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets and we like to get mucky about history around here. And because we do, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. And we have to keep telling you that in case you have A forgotten or B a newbie has wandered in completely unaware and is going to clutch their pearls and go running to their mum to tell tales. Right, on with the show.

• 2:52Kate Lister?

  King James VI of Scotland was a very smart man with a very snazzy beard, it has to be said. He was a prolific writer of everything from political theory to sonnets and of course, his mad, mad ramblings on witchcraft, which was a bestseller. He spoke French and Latin fluently, as well as English, which was his second language after Scots. But apparently, and as we will learn today, his sense of logic and reason could all be swept away by one beautiful man in a kilt. All joking aside though, his love of a beautiful twink didn't half get him into some sticky situations, and not the fun kind. Right, kilts and ruffs at the ready, let's do it.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  What are you according to, ma'am?

• 3:40Speaker 05

  Oh, money, of course.

• 3:42Speaker 06

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning him up and pushing him up.

• 3:56Speaker 06

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, a beautiful dam. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie.

• 4:08Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me Kate Lister. As we've explored before on this podcast, 16th and 17th century Scotland was a hell of a place. You got the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, King James uniting the English and Scottish crowns and... The witch trials were kicking off. But what is less well known about King James's rise to power was a rather brutal murder, carried out by the man said to be the most handsome man in all of Scotland and firm favourite of King James. Joining me today to take us into this world of sex, murder, intrigue and kilts is the fantastic and utterly wonderful Gareth Russell, who has just published a biography of King James.

• 4:53Kate Lister?

  So there really is nobody better to be telling us about this man and his favourites. Are you ready to do this? I'm ready to do this. Let's do it. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Gareth Russell. How are you doing?

• 5:11Speaker 05

  Very well. I'm very happy to be back.

• 5:13Kate Lister?

  You must be riding high on the success of your book, which I have right here. Nobody can see it, but I can. And it is, this is a chunky beast.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  She is a chunky queen.

• 5:23Kate Lister?

  She certainly is. Full title, Queen James, The Life and Loves of Britain's First King.

• 5:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, yeah, it was, I loved writing it. And I'd been, yeah, I mean, it's been very, very lovely, the way it's landed. Since it's come out, people seem to, I mean, I'm very grateful. And it was, it was one of those books, rare books, that when you were finished, you could have kept going. Usually at the end, you think, get this away from me. This is, this has consumed my life like an Aztec sacrifice. And instead, it's just, it was something that I was so interested in. I loved writing about him. And with James, there were so many things in his life, he thought this could have been a book on its own. Remarkable.

• 6:05Kate Lister?

  What brought you to him? Do you know, like, what, do you remember what point you thought, I need to write about James? Just for anyone listening, James, who, James, the first of England and sixth of Scotland, that James?

• 6:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, that James. So that, it was two things. The first was I'd written at the palace, which I've been on, just to talk about here before, about Hampton Court. And it was, the premise was different chapter, different room, different person, different decade. But three of the chapters were set when James was in residence at Hampton Court. And I remember doing a lot of the reading around it for that book and thought, oh, there's so much here. But I can't really follow him or his wife after they leave Hampton Court. And I'd finished it and I Was introduced by another friend to the novelist Elizabeth Fremantle, who a lot of people will know, who's written some brilliant books about Catherine Parr that became the movie Firebrand, but she's also written some really excellent novels

• 6:59Speaker 05

  about the 17th century, including one about James's favourite Robert Carr. And I was sort of saying, oh, you know, I loved writing about him. And it was in that conversation that she said, it's time for a biography that kind of looks at James through the prism of the men he loved, in the way we get such rich books about Henry VIII and the six women he loved. And do you think, I think you're the one to do it? So that, after she said that, sort of solidified that desire to go back. So it was two things. It was really a comment from a friend and the previous book. So that's how I ended up stalking James for two years.

• 7:36Kate Lister?

  I think that we can say quite comfortably now that James was at least bisexual. This is one of the things that throughout the history of James has been, people sort of politely skirted round it, or they referred to his favourites, or they kind of, they just didn't talk about it at all. But we're now, thankfully, in a place where we can go, no, that was his boyfriend.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think there's, it's sort of an Occam's razor kind of thing, which is that you have to contort intellectually, like into almost acrobatic levels of flexibility to explain some of the letters away. And there are others, particularly the more erotic ones or the more romantic ones, where it is absolutely impossible to reach any other conclusion. I mean, the best, and I use best again as a stretch, counter explanation is that the ones between him and the Duke of Buckingham were jokes, which I, which is, yeah, it's not great. And it is not very tenable of a theory.

• 8:35Kate Lister?

  Even if you accept that, there's still a whole load of other favourites that he had. You can't sort of feel like they were all jokes.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's exactly it. And also, like, there's one where Buckingham talks about essentially James getting him a handjob. There's just no way to explain that, because it's actually, because it's not a kind of... Like if he was maybe I don't like rugby drinks today and someone made the joke, it would be an outright joke. He's kind of couched it in this way that you have to read it two times to realise what he's saying. It's not an outright joke, but how he puts it is, he writes a letter of thanks to James for how the motion of his hand the night before had proved what lay in his heart and that Buckingham took greater satisfaction from James's hand doing that than his own hand doing it and he hopes he can reciprocate the favour. There's not, it's not

• 9:27Speaker 05

  ambiguous, but it's not funny in the way.

• 9:29Kate Lister?

  It's hilarious. No, it's not.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. And I completely agree. I sort of say at the end of the book that I, when I talk a little about the terminology, if I had to put my money on a kind of Kinsey scale bet with James, I would say bisexual with an overwhelming preference for his own gender, which can happen. And I think, you know, I think very obviously he was capable of performing sexually with his wife. I don't think he found, I don't think he found women repulsive. I just don't think the passions of his life were ever with women. I think.

• 10:05Kate Lister?

  No, there were no mistresses, were there?

• 10:07Speaker 05

  No, there's one really brief one. And I sort of say in the book, like, I think it's possible that something happened. So this was around 1595, so not too long after what we're talking about today. Her name was Anne Murray and she was a lady in waiting to Anna of Denmark. Anna ends up hearing her, which I think maybe suggests there was something. And the English ambassador was under the impression for about three weeks in the summer of 1595 that James might be sleeping with this woman. But what was quite interesting was when I was doing a Q and A about the book, Minnie Genshaw, who's written a book about the English Civil War recently, he was talking about it and he said, I don't try to force the reader's hand in what the conclusion is. I just think for me, it's something might have happened. And.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  Interestingly, Minnie said when he read it and kind of read the evidence, he thought it looked like James kind of showing off too much. And he thought it was like, it was protesting too much. It didn't convince him at all. Uh, that, that, that he, he thought he was kind of, at this point, he's, he's having a bit of tension with Anna in the marriage over how to raise their eldest son. That is a pretty convincing counter explanation to my conclusion, which is that did James just use Anne Murray to annoy Anna? It's perfectly possible. He writes a poem about her that seems to, I think, imply a sexual relationship, which could be protesting too much, or it could be sincere. But apart from that, no, no one else.

• 11:31Kate Lister?

  And the main loves of his life that he writes about, speaks about is quite open, like shockingly.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:37Kate Lister?

  Open actually about, they're, they're all men.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  They are, and writing the book, I think, one of the, one of the things I started with, that I was quite keen to avoid if I could, was I did not want this to be a book about James in which Scotland's a prologue. That can happen with biographies of James because he became King of England in Ireland in sixteen oh three, but he did spend over half his life only in Scotland. And luckily, just over half the book ends up being about his Scottish life. But my concern was that there would be so much more firm evidence for the later English favourites like Robert Carr and George Villers. And so what I was, I had sort of a set of criteria in my head, like what makes the cut of, of acceptable proof?

• 12:23Speaker 05

  And I was quite surprised to find that while there aren't the really long letters that you will see with Buckingham and Somerset later, you do see his first romantic letter written when he's about twenty one. You see the first speculation about his sexuality outright when he's seventeen and you see a general acceptance in the court that he is sleeping with men when he's about twenty, twenty one. It was interesting to have a good variety of sources about it, but what I tried to do was only accept. Either obviously sources from James himself or people within the household rather than the court extended because that is where gossip, I think, becomes misleading.

• 13:05Kate Lister?

  We could do an entire episode on how gay was James and I, I hope that you would come back to do that, but we are actually here to talk about a murder.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 13:15Kate Lister?

  A murder that it is famous in historian circles, but I don't think it's reached sort of the general public in the way that what was Mary Queen of Scots husband, Darnley.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:29Kate Lister?

  When he got stabbed or Ritzio.

• 13:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:32Kate Lister?

  Or anything like this. So this is a murder of, am I going to pronounce his name right? Murray.

• 13:38Speaker 05

  Murray. Yeah, I got that wrong.

• 13:40Kate Lister?

  Murray, I knew I tried to give it a French lilt.

• 13:42Speaker 05

  I did the audio book for this and a week before I was like, oh, wait, I have to record myself pronouncing all of these names. And I was like.

• 13:51Kate Lister?

  I did the same thing to myself.

• 13:52Speaker 05

  I mean, it's, I mean, there are some words that will not be appearing in future books. And say goodbye to the word remunerate because, because after 17 takes it's banished. But I was slightly, I got really concerned that I would have sort of like Northern Irish or like ulster hubris and think I've got this. We're close enough. So I spent about, I spent a few days making sure I got it. I, I wasn't pronouncing it how a Northern Irish person would because they're similar, but sometimes they're different. So yeah, it's Murray, but it's spelt M O R A Y.

• 14:27Kate Lister?

  Murray.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  Murray.

• 14:28Kate Lister?

  Okay. Who, what, can you introduce the cast of characters?

• 14:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:31Kate Lister?

  Tell us, set it up. It's a, it's a murder mystery and who is he and how was he involved in James?

• 14:37Speaker 05

  So.

• 14:37Kate Lister?

  With James.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  So this is, it's like, I'll set up like a good Poirot mystery. There is, you'll start, you'll start with it.

• 14:42Kate Lister?

  Love a Poirot.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  So do I. It's February. It's a cold February in 1592.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  And the young Earl of Murray, who he's about twenty seven, all the main participants, Murray Huntley and James are ballpark the same age, they're between about twenty five, twenty six and twenty nine. And Murray is nicknamed in Edinburgh the Bonnie Earl of Murray, he's said to be sort of the best looking man in the Scottish aristocracy.

• 15:13Kate Lister?

  Oh, hello.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  And our other participant, the Earl of Huntley, is the second best looking man in the Scottish aristocracy. So it's a battle of the beefcakes. And so fifteen ninety two, particularly February fifteen ninety two, Scotland is still in the long shadow of the North Berwick Witch Trials, they've not yet collapsed. And Murray is on James's radar because James believes, and he's correct, that Murray has become far too friendly with the new Earl of Bothwell. James is cousin on the illegitimate side of things and Bothwell is immensely powerful, very influential and very ambitious.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  And during the North Berwick Witch Trials, one of the things that emerged was that Bothwell was allegedly the mastermind behind the coven that had been plotting to kill the king. And it's that that turns James.

• 16:10Kate Lister?

  Well, that's a plot twist.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that was one of the things that really surprised me working on the book, which is that initially when the North Berwick Witch Trials started, James thought they were nonsense and was not convinced.

• 16:20Kate Lister?

  Did he?

• 16:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, so he thought it was ludicrous and his argument was perfectly logical, which was, but you've got this from torture, so of course they told you they were guilty because they wanted you to stop. And his Danish in-laws have started their own witch hunt and they are saying, no, no, it's real. And the Kirk, the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, particularly under the leadership of Andrew Melville, who succeeds John Knox, is convinced that the king is morally lackluster and that there are clearly satanic influences at play in Scottish politics and James is doing nothing to stop them. And so Melville organizes a series, a sort of round robin sermons from the ministers of the church, including when the king goes to church, to tell him that he's being lackluster in his duty.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  And

• 17:07Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 17:08Speaker 05

  James offers to question some of the suspects himself. And it's one of those fascinating mysteries in history, which I think you sort of just have to accept you can't explain. The way I sort of have said, and when I'm talking to people and they ask about it is the way I would, I think is an acceptable comparison is if you have a friend who believes in tarot card readings and a friend who doesn't, sometimes the friend who believes in it will be able to have told you about a very specific reading. And whether that's cold reading or whether you believe it's real is sort of irrelevant for this purposes, but either is possible.

• 17:48Speaker 05

  And during James's questioning of them, two of the main suspects, a woman called Agnes Sampson and a man called Richard Graham, both refused to retract their confession. And I think the psychology of false confessions is probably fascinating there. But James tells them that he doesn't really believe them and Agnes, who I think, I mean, the torture inflicted on her before she gets to James had been really just absolutely horrific. And she insists that she is, and she whispers something in his ear that allegedly he'd said to his wife, Anna of Denmark, on their wedding night, and James is converted and is convinced it's real.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  But Richard Graham and Agnes both testify that their, their coven is being controlled by Lord Bothwell, who plots to kill the king and the queen through necromancy and take the throne for himself because on his father's side, he is an illegitimate grandson of King James the fifth. And I think he's always been a bit ambitious, a bit pushy, and James the sixth has never really liked or trusted him. And this confirms his worst fears and it's sort of that environment of when in a conspiracy, circumstances become clues. So the fact that Bothwell's manservant, Rinnian, is friends with the merchant who's confessed, oh, that must be the link.

• 19:07Kate Lister?

  All very paranoid, isn't it?

• 19:09Speaker 05

  It is, it really is. And, um, and it has been a season of terrible weather. And I think, you know, try to remember. I try to remember when I was.

• 19:17Kate Lister?

  It's all the proof I need.

• 19:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely. I was like, it's satanic. Um, I'm cold.

• 19:21Kate Lister?

  Right, satanic, that's it.

• 19:24Kate Lister?

  See, I, I always had the idea that James was properly gung ho about witches, that it was one of his stranger personality quirks, that this quite learned, educated man for some reason just got a real hard on for witches and started executing people. So it's interesting that you're saying that's not quite right. You had to be led down this road.

• 19:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that to me made it more terrifying. It actually became slightly more frightening to think there was someone who had what we had, the skeptic's charter of why these confessions can't be trusted and why you should be a little bit more careful and all the rest of it.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  And yet, in the dark, in the, in an atmosphere of fear, he was led to do things that were reprehensible and, and quite interestingly, I mean, I didn't know until I worked on the book, that in sixteen sixteen, he intervened and shut witch hunts down. So you see him later in his life almost go full circle back to where he had been, but it takes a long time for, maybe I, maybe that's psychological as well, that element of if you've done it, you almost can't bring yourself to accept it was wrong, because then you have to start to look at, at your, at your sin, your culpability. So the Earl of Bothwell is detained at Edinburgh Castle, but he manages to overpower his guards, scale the walls and escape. And he goes on the run.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  And James is genuinely quite terrified that Bothwell will be using both magic and malice to, to stage a rebellion. And he becomes even more paranoid and isolated because several people closest to him start to try to talk him out of the witch hunt. So his wife, Queen Anna, his second cousins, he sort of treats them almost like a brother, Ludovic, the Duke of Lennox, and his former love, Alexander Lindsay, all come to him and try to point out to him that they think this obsession with the witch hunts, but particularly with the Earl of Bothwell's role in it. Has led him to make some unwise decisions. And James loses his mind. I mean, Alexander Lindsay had never been anything but loyal.

• 21:26Speaker 05

  Had actually sort of sacrificed his own happiness to make James happy. A really good person, I think, from the sources that I could read, and I found the relationship very sweet. And it was sad that it ends with James. James ended it just before the marriage. But he, he says, so you, you're betraying me too. At one point, he's screaming at Anna so intensely that she starts crying, he starts crying. Really, James is a man, by his own admission, he says later, it consumed his life. And with Bothwell on the run, James initially suspects that Bothwell has crossed the border to England. And he writes to Elizabeth the first and says, if that vile man is in England, under the terms of the treaty they'd signed in fifteen eighty six, she is to extradite him back.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  And Elizabeth writes back and says perfectly honestly, I will if he's here, but I can see no evidence at all that he is in England. I think he might still be in Scotland. And she was right. And there are these odd moments between James and Elizabeth where sort of like the trade unions of monarchy kick in and their personal gripes are dropped and they start giving genuine advice to each other. And treason is usually where they do help one another. So James starts to wonder if Bothwell is on the run, who's hiding him? And he is being moved from home to home of friendly aristocrats in the Lowlands.

• 22:48Kate Lister?

  Why are they friendly to him if he's a nasty witch that's run off and traitorous? Why, why would people help?

• 22:54Speaker 05

  I think part of it's family ties. A lot of them have, have links to the Hepburns, his mother's family. And also that quite a few of them just aren't convinced this is real. They think the king, like, I mean, if even the queen is starting to try to tell him, you've, you've gone too far in this.

• 23:11Kate Lister?

  Calm down. Let's take a minute.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, have a peppermint tea, relax, we're good.

• 23:15Kate Lister?

  We'll just, some deep breaths here.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. But James becomes convinced that one of the aristocrats hiding Bothwell is the Bonnie, Earl of Murray.

• 23:26Kate Lister?

  Okay, why does he think that? What's his, is, is this just pointing at people now and just going, you're doing it, you're doing it too? Does he have any evidence of this?

• 23:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that's a great question because I think what made, to your earlier point about what makes it more frightening with these witch hunts, is that actually there's always a kernel of truth. There's always, that's what makes it more frightening. And Murray had always been quite sympathetic to Bothwell and he had backed him up in minor quarrels at court and different positions in the Privy Council. Bothwell had had served as Lord High Admiral before the Witchhuns and Murray had been a big supporter of him. And they were friendly, genuinely friends as well. And Murray is one of the few aristocrats who at court is openly defending Bothwell. So James.

• 24:14Kate Lister?

  Well, that'll do it.

• 24:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, that'll do it. So James, and also, you know, Murray's sort of, James and Murray had gone on quite well before. You know, James had jousted at Murray's wedding.

• 24:24Kate Lister?

  Is James any of these people's boyfriend? Is there any sexual history? Is this, is this an ex that like, you know, that you've just got the power to go witch? You're a witch.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  So the, no, the ex isn't killed, the ex is the killer in this one.

• 24:37Kate Lister?

  Oh, hello.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, yeah.

• 24:39Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  Welcome to the double plot twist. So.

• 24:42Kate Lister?

  Right. Continue.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  James is, James starts to really try to find a way to get the Earl of Murray knocked out of politics, or at least to admit that he has been hiding Bothwell. Murray has substantial lands in the northeast of Scotland, but they're not the largest set of lands. So the most dominant family in the north are Clan Gordon. And the head of Clan Gordon is the second best looking man in the aristocracy, George Gordon, sixth Earl of Huntley. And before I started Queen James, I was under the impression that James had had a sort of unreciprocated crush on Lord Huntley.

• 25:20Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  But two, three or four, actually, to be honest, but two core pieces of evidence from 1587 and 1588 changed my mind. And I do think that they were sleeping together in the autumn of 1587.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  So hot and hardy Huntley, as he's known, is a very skilled warrior, very charismatic. You sort of get the impression of a bit of rough, aristocratic, but yeah, yeah, because sort of, you know, terrible.

• 25:46Kate Lister?

  I know the.

• 25:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. There were times where I was looking at it and I thought, I don't know what you could do in there, but I have to assume it was impressive.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  So the Huntley is the first relationship with James where there is a direct source from James to Huntley that is openly romantic. So Huntley, as I say, had a lot of land in the Highlands, so he splits his time between court and the estates. And James writes a letter to him when he's 21, Huntley's 24, 25, and Huntley's just left for the Highlands. And James says, I may swear upon my soul to you that since the moment you have left my side, I have not had one second on thinking of you, except when I am asleep and scarcely even then.

• 26:31Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 26:31Speaker 05

  Which is so platonic.

• 26:33Kate Lister?

  Yeah. So just, just good friends, everybody, just flatmates.

• 26:37Speaker 05

  So and the other, what was a really interesting source was someone who knew them well, didn't like Huntley. Huntley was Catholic and the, they would have used the phrase lying in, in a way that we would use sleeping with. So it technically has a different meaning, but this source is from a court here quite close to both of them. And he made a joke about, yes, Huntley's a Catholic, but I think he would rather be lying in a woman's chamber than lying in the king. So the pun that he's saying is I think he'd rather be sleeping with a woman, but his best interests are served by sleeping with the king. And I think it was, I think it was a very brief.

• 27:14Kate Lister?

  Gay for pay.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, essentially. And, and it did pay. And I think, I think now Huntley and James will remain friendly for the rest of their lives. I think, you know, and Huntley commits a bit of an oopsie, who hasn't, in that just after James is treaty with Elizabeth, Huntley, who has never really forgiven Elizabeth for ordering the execution of a Scottish queen, sends letters to Philip the second and says, FYI, apropos of nothing, I have deep water ports in my estates. So if you ever have, for any reason, sort of large fleet that maybe wants to make landfall in the British Isles and go knocking in England, come with.

• 27:54Speaker 05

  And James is furious at this and says, you know, what, if you had, if that had happened. The treaty would have collapsed, foreign policy would have imploded, Elizabeth would have had every justification to declare war on us for what we had done. And Huntley is detained at Edinburgh Castle and asks for permission to to explain himself in person. James says no, and then eventually says yes. And when he arrives in the room, James falls on him, kissing him to the astonishment of many, and then asks him to spend the night. And the next morning tells a thoroughly unimpressed council of Scotland, I've changed my mind, he's innocent. He didn't do anything, which is why I was like, I don't know what you can do in bed, but it's.

• 28:36Kate Lister?

  He did something.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  It's armada defeating. So it's, so Huntley is someone who James, and this will play into the murder we're talking about. Huntley is allowed to get away with things that nobody else would, even long after, I think, the evidence I could find of a sexual relationship has fizzled out quite amicably.

• 28:56Kate Lister?

  Whatever he was doing, he did it well.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  He did it very well. We're about three years out from this. By the time things are coming to a boil. And Huntley has since married James's second cousin, Henrietta Stewart. And Henrietta is an impressive figure, in the way James's wife Anna is impressive. She's French, brought up French, although she's Stewart. She's very beautiful, very charming. She has that quality of glamour that I think is underestimated in history and in politics. It can do things to people. She's also extremely intelligent. And she, when she first arrives in Scotland, I think she's a bit overwhelmed, overawed, as a teenager, anyone sort of moving to a new country would be. And she had gone along with, you know, attending Presbyterian

• 29:41Speaker 05

  services to please the king. And eventually, a year or two after her marriage, she said, actually, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm a Catholic and that's it. And she becomes a very, as conscious of Huntley, Henrietta's a really effective voice for the dwindling number of Scottish Catholics. And Scotland at this time, I think, is effectively federalism through feudalism. The aristocracy still has an immense amount of influence in the countryside. And two of the families who've sworn loyalty traditionally to Clan Gordon are the MacIntoshes and the Grants, and they have converted to Protestantism. And feeling quite alienated by the Catholicism being practised by the Earl and Countess,

• 30:22Speaker 05

  they try to switch allegiance to another family in the North, which is the Earl of Murray's.

• 30:28Kate Lister?

  It's all very dramatic, isn't it?

• 30:29Speaker 05

  It's all very, it's all very Westerosi. I enjoy it.

• 30:32Kate Lister?

  It's very Game of Thrones, isn't it?

• 30:35Speaker 05

  It is. It's really exciting and unusual, I think, to see feudalism actually work that clearly. It really does. In Scotland, it does seem to function. And the only thing that makes it a little tricky from a historian's perspective is the bonds of loyalty between the subsidiary families and the core clan are so intense that some of the subsidiary families change their name to the clan's name. So trying to, sometimes you'll see a Captain Gordon who turns up in this and you think, is that a relative or is that simply a very loyal talent or follower? But the transfer of allegiance of the Grants and the MacIntoshes to the Earl of Murray, who offers to protect them and take them in, leads to a deterioration of relations between Huntley and Murray.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  And the families had never liked each other. Murray's always trying to make himself the most powerful family in the North of Scotland, at the expense of the Gordin's. And his mother is a member of Clan Campbell, who are the third most powerful family. So there are two very powerful Protestant families in the North and one extremely powerful Catholic family. They've been pushed, it's sort of like tectonic plates. It's only a matter of time before there is an earthquake. And just as this is coming to fruition, this is when James starts to suspect that Murray is hiding Bothwell. And so James and Huntley reconnect over this. And Huntley offers to deal with the problem of Murray.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  And James wants both of them to come to court and to, first of all, they're forced to sign pledges of peace because there has been sort of attacks on each other's property. There's escalating tensions and violence in the Scottish Highlands. So James asks them both to sign a deed of peace and to come to court where there will be a hearing about what has happened. Murray's going to answer questions about Bothwell. He's going to try to give satisfactory answers to Huntley about protecting two families that technically should be under the protection of God.

• 32:34Kate Lister?

  Have they found Bothwell yet at this point?

• 32:36Speaker 05

  No, Bothwell is still, Bothwell's still on the, on the lam and, and he will, with very dramatic, he will come back with flair. But Murray goes south and in preparation for this meeting. And before the meeting happens, he has a sort of a few days to kill. And his mother, the Dajra Lady Dun, lives in the south of Scotland, near Edinburgh. So he goes to visit her at her castle at Donny Bristle. And for whatever reason, and this is where it started to get really controversial, Huntley and his men surround, lose their temper over something and they surround Donny Bristle and demand that Murray comes out and surrenders himself.

• 33:21Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  And Murray, well within his rights, it has to be said, says, no, yeah, absolutely not. Today's not the day I am visiting mum. And one of Huntley's followers, allegedly this Captain Gordon, decides to smoke him out. And they start setting fire to parts of the Donny Bristle estate and eventually-

• 33:43Kate Lister?

  This doesn't sound sensible.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  There are, listen, I mean, there are questions, you know, is everyone wise in hindsight? Sure. But surely there was someone at the time who was like, maybe we don't burn it.

• 33:53Kate Lister?

  Like there's using you initiative.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 33:56Kate Lister?

  And then, and then there's, we thought that we'd set fire to this guy's house when he's on his way to have a visit with the king.

• 34:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. What could go wrong? I mean, I think it's one of-

• 34:05Kate Lister?

  What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

• 34:07Speaker 05

  I mean, listen, snowflakes, who hasn't set fire to a house once or twice?

• 34:13Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Gareth and James after this short break.

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• 37:56Speaker 05

  So Murray decides that he's going to make a run for it, partly because I don't think he wants his mum to end up medium rare. And he manages to ride out at speed and actually breaks through the cordon of Huntley men around the house, around Donny Russell. And they give chase and they catch up with him at the coast where he enters into combat with Huntley. And

• 38:22Kate Lister?

  Directly with him, mano a mano.

• 38:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, mano a mano.

• 38:25Kate Lister?

  Wow, look at that. I don't see that very often.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  No, I mean, it's proper. I mean, it is, it's kind of angry chivalry on crack is how I would describe it.

• 38:34Kate Lister?

  It's normally like, I'll get these men to fight these men that you've got and we'll just sit here and, but like, they're actually fighting one another.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, and what's interesting about this is that there is discussion later off, did other people help Huntley do it? Which would have been an unfair advantage because Murray was essentially on his own at this stage. But then the flip side is if Huntley did it, Huntley killed him. So there's always this grey area of who delivered the killer blow. And I think it was Huntley. And the reason for this is that Lord Murray exits with what I think might be my favourite parting line in history. So bear in mind, he's the first best looking and Huntley's the second. And he says to him, Huntley, you've spoiled a face far fairer than your own. So.

• 39:25Kate Lister?

  Nice. Oh, I like that. That's a bitch burn. Nice, isn't it?

• 39:28Speaker 05

  I'm dead, but I'm still hotter is how he's going on.

• 39:31Kate Lister?

  I'm still hotter. Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  I'm a ten, you're a nine. See you on the flip side, babes.

• 39:37Kate Lister?

  You will never be better looking than me now.

• 39:39Speaker 05

  Cause you, cause you like, I'm going out at my peak. I've had my glow up. So.

• 39:44Kate Lister?

  I've left a beautiful corpse.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  He, and yes, and I mean, a flawless segue, cause he does leave a beautiful corpse and we know that because his mother had a painting of it made. And so.

• 39:55Kate Lister?

  Oh, oh, that's, that's okay. Fair enough.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Lady Doon is obviously horrified at this. And one other thing, sorry, she said as well, that has just fired up the suspicions about Bothwell is that Murray's has just named his youngest son Francis, which is the same name as Bothwell. So James is just convinced that some, that he's godfather or something.

• 40:17Kate Lister?

  Hashtag science.

• 40:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. Follow the science. And, um, and so Huntley retreats, flees back to Edinburgh and I think has an idea that this is going to seriously blow up, also because his men had fought with and killed the sheriff of the area who had been trying to guard.

• 40:37Kate Lister?

  This wasn't the plan. Was this the plan? Was this what he was supposed to do? This doesn't sound like a sensible plan.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  Hot and hearty Huntley is a man with a temper and it can often get the better of him. And I think, to be honest, reading between the lines and sometimes on the lines, it was one of the things that made him most attractive to James and to a lot of people. But.

• 40:54Kate Lister?

  He has a type.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  He does. And look, but what's thrilling in the bedchamber might be a liability in the battlefield.

• 41:00Kate Lister?

  This is the thing. If you could take James to one side, you would just have to say, look, James, you're welcome to have your boyfriends, but please stop basing military strategy and international peace treaties on the twinks that you like. Just stop doing it.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  I know that. He can bend a poker with his bare hands, but he's also set far to your foreign policy. So, you know.

• 41:21Kate Lister?

  They can't meet, James. Just behave yourself.

• 41:24Speaker 05

  You know the way there's a gym, it's like a corridor between the council chamber and the bedchamber. Think of that as metaphorical as well, as well as architectural. So Huntley goes back and, and really, you know, in any case, the murder of someone of Murray's prominence would have been a scandal. But what.

• 41:41Kate Lister?

  Yes, it would. Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  But, but what makes it the scandal it becomes is the grief-fuelled rage of his mother, Lady Dun. So she retrieves the body, has it embalmed, painted, and she brings it in procession to Edinburgh, crying for justice against Huntley for what he's done. She extracts the bullets with her bare hands and hands them out to family followers as memento morais.

• 42:08Kate Lister?

  And. Wow, they don't make them like that anymore.

• 42:10Speaker 05

  No, I was like, when I was writing it, I thought, you know, however crazy you want to take this, I've got your back. I will write it in a way, whatever you want to do, Lady Dun, go ahead. And.

• 42:22Kate Lister?

  You go. Bring the drama.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  So she, she has the embalmed corpse displayed at St Giles Kirk in Edinburgh. She is determined to force James's hand. And Edinburgh erupts with protests about this because they are, first of all, in Edinburgh, there tends to be a fairly vigorous dose of anti-Hilander sentiment. And Huntley is, you know, King of the North, as he's called sometimes, which is again, Game of Thrones-y. There has been lingering resentment even within the court about what Huntley's been allowed to get away with since the days of the, the Armada three years earlier. And, and a suspicion that, you know, the fact that his wife Henrietta is allowed to continue defending Catholicism because she's related to the king. There's just a lot of people who have different reasons to dislike Huntley.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  By this point, the first pamphlets have started to appear in Edinburgh about the buggerer king. And the fact that the, the young queen is not yet pregnant. She will get pregnant the next year. It just hasn't. I mean, I sometimes wonder, actually, did James sort of hold off partly because she was so young? Because when she does conceive, it's fairly regular, but it's after this. But anyway, the first pamphlets really implying that James can't have sex with women are starting. And because of his favourite's role in killing Murray, the rumor starts that Anna and Murray, the Queen and Lord Murray, had been having an affair. And that's the version of events that's immortalised in a very famous ballad in Scotland

• 43:50Speaker 05

  called The Bonnie or the Murray, which suggests that James was so jealous of her love for Murray that he sent Huntley to kill him, when in fact the actual shagging that had been happening had been probably between the king and Huntley, not between the queen and Murray. So James is faced with his marriage being called into question, a link to

• 44:11Kate Lister?

  Sanity.

• 44:12Speaker 05

  Sanity, a link to finding Bothwell is gone. And he also is once again facing accusations that he can't deal with Huntley. When I was telling you about it, you'd said this can't have been the plan, this is insane. And everyone in Scotland reaches the same conclusion and says, there's no way he would have done this unless James had told him he could do it. And I don't think James had said that.

• 44:33Kate Lister?

  I can see why people would say that.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 44:37Kate Lister?

  Just thinking about that.

• 44:38Speaker 05

  It's so, it's so egregious that even someone with Huntley's aristocratic pedigree, wealth and very, very loyal followers.

• 44:48Kate Lister?

  And class A blowjob skills.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  We have to assume, we have to.

• 44:52Kate Lister?

  We have to assume.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  I mean, to me, he just was the kind of person who you knew you should not be sleeping with. But you were.

• 44:58Kate Lister?

  God, I would, I would have had sex with him then, that's my type. It's just awful.

• 45:04Speaker 05

  I mean, when I was writing it, I thought, yeah, I get it, I get it, I understand.

• 45:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah, yeah, damn it, god damn it.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  James, I'm.

• 45:10Kate Lister?

  But no, but I, I can see why you'd say that because it's so insane.

• 45:14Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:14Kate Lister?

  The only reason you'd do it is if you knew you wouldn't get in trouble for doing it.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  So I think that final part that you just said is exactly it. I think, I don't think James told him to do it because I think James was shrewd enough to know this will blow up badly. But I think Huntley knew, if the armada didn't take me down, this isn't going to. I think he knew that James, that to me is the, the sort of how you square the circle. But I completely understand why, given how James had treated Huntley before, that people in Edinburgh would have reached the conclusion, something has to have, there has to have been a wink, a nudge, a nod, something to tell him. James issues a public proclamation, it's so intense, the speculation in Edinburgh, that the king issues a proclamation saying, I had no role in this, I did not tell him to do it.

• 45:59Speaker 05

  But those unquantifiable powers of attraction or infatuation exert themselves again. And Huntley is imprisoned for a week. Has a meeting with James and James says, well, look, you know, it was, it was a, it was a jewel that got out of hand, which technically, technically is true of the last segment of it. But setting fire to.

• 46:25Kate Lister?

  Yeah, come on, James.

• 46:27Speaker 05

  So, and, and the poor lady Dunn feels that she's been denied justice and she has been. And she curses James on her deathbed. So again, she went out as the kind of hero I'd come to expect. The only thing that really pulls focus from this, and I think maybe from James and Huntley, is the fact that the Earl of Bothwell does then reappear and he does so.

• 46:50Kate Lister?

  Always taking his time, just come strolling in. Did I miss much?

• 46:53Speaker 05

  Well, he, he breaks into the palace in the morning and charges at James. And some of his friends let him into the palace. He sort of stages a mini coup. Just before this happens, James turns to him and says, well, you can take my life. But unlike the devil with your soul, you can't take my soul. And Bothwell falls to his knees, hands over his sword and says, if you, if you truly believe after this, I am in league with Satan, you can kill me here. He's weeping and said, I have never practiced witchcraft. I've never practiced black magic. And James, I think, realising the palace is surrounded, maybe caught up in the sentiment of the moment, pretends to believe him. And that really is the final collapse of the witch trials. And he, but he's always watching Bothwell.

• 47:38Speaker 05

  And a couple of years later, Bothwell will become involved in another plot. And this time I think he realises that James will not be pretending to forgive him. This time he'll have him and Bothwell flees abroad and dies years later in Italy. But that is the only thing that, it's, it's that shock of Bothwell breaking into the palace that pulls focus from the Bonnie Earl of Murray's death. To me, it's like, it's a perfect sort of window into. A lot of James, of the sexuality, the role the favourites could play, the violence that was endemic within the aristocracy at the time, and also that what the witch hunts had done to sort of mental and political equilibrium. And Biddy Dunn was right, no one is ever really held to account.

• 48:23Speaker 05

  There is one execution, which is Captain Gordon, the man who may have set the fire, may have. But again, it's still a question of, but surely Huntley, all Huntley had to say was.

• 48:35Kate Lister?

  Where's he? Where's he gone? Where's he gone to?

• 48:38Speaker 05

  So Huntley goes back to the Highlands for a bit, has a lovely time. James, I think, I look at it as he forgave him for this. But it was almost a case of like, don't push it. You, he, I think he saw.

• 48:49Kate Lister?

  You're on a short fucking leash now, Pat.

• 48:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. And he, he does then, he doesn't abandon his feud with the other Protestant family in the North, Clan Campbell. And two years later, there are pitched battles between the Battle of Glenlivet in the North. And this time, James sides with the Campbells and actually burns down part of Huntley's castle, new castle at Strathbogey. So I think what happens after the Murray killing, James is like, don't, please don't fucking push me again with this because I, I've done, I've taken more.

• 49:23Kate Lister?

  Well, they're not.

• 49:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I really, I don't want more, more of this. But again, you know, Huntley sort of quite cleverly then bends the knee to James. And James sort of shunts them into political exile for a while. He's kept under detention for a few months this time, then released into the care slash custody of his wife Henrietta, who James, in fairness to him, absolutely can trust, despite their different religions. She is first and foremost a Stuart family loyalist and that's sort of, she learnt that from her father, Esme, and she's very, very determined to stay loyal to the family. So.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Huntley retreats from any of these kind of really dramatic actions for a while. But then James's second daughter Margaret is born in 1598 and Huntley is invited back to court, where he's elevated to become the first Marquess of Huntley. And also, he's the last of all his favourites to die. He dies in 1635, it's 1636, sorry. He is completely fine. Hot and hearty Huntley does not, Teflon, I mean, nothing sticks.

• 50:28Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  So that is, I think, yes, I mean, we can't, I don't think you can downplay just how prominent the Gordons were, but powerful aristocratic families had been, like the Hamiltons, had been brought to ruin long before in Scotland, and the even more powerful, the Gordons. I think you see genuinely just what the impact of James's love could be through the case of the Murray killing.

• 50:47Kate Lister?

  Strange feature of him, because in so many other ways, I mean, he's a man of great contradictions anyway, but he seems to have been really smart, like really intellectually curious, is a very skilled politician. But when there's a pretty boy in the picture, it just all goes out the window completely.

• 51:11Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Gareth and James after the short break.

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• 52:18Speaker 05

  Actually, the other flip side of it that I found quite fascinating and endearing in a strange way is that, like many good political figures, particularly at that time, he becomes a very skilled liar when it comes to politics and government and even, I think, pretending to be okay with Bothwell when the break into the palace happens. He can sort of hate and wait very well, I think. But where all that subterfuge falls apart are in these letters to these men, where it's as if, sometimes you get an impression of could this have been who he would always have been, had politics not shaped his life in that way. It's remarkable. But yeah, the Murray killing and also, I mean, you know,

• 52:57Speaker 05

  it's Sod's Law in history. Poor Anna is left dealing with these insinuations for years that she had been carrying on with Deshie Murray. And it does cause her quite a bit of problems. She does become very unpopular in Edinburgh party because of her spending, but also because of these rumours. And any time she has a close friendship, even with James's cousin, the Duke of Lennox, these rumours will revive. So it does, it's in a strange way, what happens with the Earl of Murray sticks to James and Anna, but not to the Marcus of Huntley.

• 53:33Kate Lister?

  As a final question then, what was for James, what was the legacy of this murder? Because it's interesting to talk about like one particular scandal in the wake of a very turbulent time, especially today, because it feels like there's just one political scandal after another. Like, you can't keep up with it at the moment. Every time there's a news alert, you're like, oh god, no, no, not another one. But you sort of get a sense of how fast the world can actually move on. Like, we're immersed in one scandal, that it's, oh, people were planning war atrocities via WhatsApp or whatever it was, and now we're on to the next one, and now we're on to the next one, and now somebody else has did, did, did. Did this murder leave a lasting stain on James's reputation, or did the world move on?

• 54:14Speaker 05

  Both, I think. Scandal to me is a self-sustaining or self-generating climate. And we are in a period where we, on the one hand, I think, hanker for the news to be boring. Again.

• 54:27Kate Lister?

  God, yeah, I'm microdosing the news at the moment. It's like, I can barely just like, look at it and just like, right, okay, okay, someone else, right, okay.

• 54:34Speaker 05

  I mean, I, I also think, I mean, years anthropologists will look back and say, it did something to us, that we, we had too much news. It wasn't supposed to be.

• 54:42Kate Lister?

  Because we had too much.

• 54:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, they shouldn't have been getting it 24 hours a day. They needed time to recover. But I do think scandal and insecurity feed on each other. And I don't think it is a coincidence that this happens after a year and a half of political and social chaos because of these witch hunts. And, and the aristocracy all of a sudden feeling that the ground is shifting beneath them all because necromancy and witchcraft allegations in Scotland are no respecters of class. I mean, James the Fifth burnt Lady Glam's to death for it. And, you know, it, it can come for everyone. And James has, you know, James's witch hunts in 1591, there have been very wealthy women, there have been wealthy men, there have been poor men, poor women. It's taking out everyone who, you know, so

• 55:28Speaker 05

  I think that's part of what makes the environment in which the Murray murder happens so unsettled. But I also think it's what makes it, it flares brightly and hotly for a while. And then, like Huntley's temper, it dissipates. But the thing I think that makes it last is the ballad. And the, you know, the earliest records we can find for this Bonnie Earle Murray ballad are the early 17th century. So about a decade after, now my gut would tell me it's probably closer to the actual time of the killing. But the fact that it's so popular in the early 17th century suggests that it's still being talked about.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  And it does leave a stain on James's reputation. It doesn't necessarily, outside of the court.

• 56:18Speaker 05

  Lead to further speculation about him and Huntley. It does certainly lead to the suggestion that he's a king capable of double dealing. There's something off in his private life and that all is not what it seems when it comes to these government decisions. So the specifics of it, I think, gets swallowed up in that period of scandal. But the memory of it preserved in things like the songs and rumours and discussions. I think it does leave a permanent question mark over James. That means that when other things linked to favourites come out in 15 years' time, people already have a framework to go, ah, that's what that was.

• 56:57Kate Lister?

  Gareth, you have been wonderful to talk to. You've been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me.

• 57:02Kate Lister?

  If people want to know more about you and your work and your fabulous book, which I've just noticed I've got chocolate on, I was reading it this morning. I've got, I've got part of an Easter egg on it, but where can they find you?

• 57:12Speaker 05

  So happy. So the book is Queen James, The Life and Loves of Britain's First King. It's out now in Britain and Ireland and Australia in audio and hardback. It'll be out as The Six Loves of James the First in America in December. And I'm most active on Instagram at underscore Gareth Russell.

• 57:31Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much for dropping by. Will you come by again for another chat?

• 57:34Speaker 05

  Anytime. I really enjoy it. Thank you very much for having me.

• 57:41Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Gareth for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you want us to explore a subject or maybe you just fancy saying hi, then you can email us at [email protected]. Coming up, we've got episodes on the truth behind the minor tour to how to give birth like a medieval person with none other than Eleanor Janiger. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheet, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  The Quarter Pounder with Cheese is made with 100% fresh beef, cooked when you order it. Then comes the melted cheese, the slivered onions, the pickles, the ketchup, and the mustard. Add hot crispy fries and an ice cold Coke, all for $8. And if things go well, one loose fry at the bottom of the bag. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, now $8. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

• 58:56Speaker 03

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera, demonic possessions, cursed mirrors, Bigfoot, poltergeists, exorcisms, near-death experiences, unsolved mysteries, missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.