Except Buckingham. Mind you, we don't know nearly as much about his early life as we do about the royals, because he was the second son of a second son, really obscure gentry, but he comes across as solidly confident, with a great instinct for building up a network (reminder, he had his entire family marry into high nobility as the price for any favours they wanted from him, which meant that the Villiers clan became so completely linked with the traditional noble families that even with so many later hating his guts, he could rely on not all working against him simply out of self interest, fearing because of the family connection they would share in his downfall. Buckingham also had the ability that many a favourite lacked, never losing sight of the need to keep his monarch happy and close. (Favourites who fall usually neglect their monarch, ask Struensee. But not Moltke.) Where he just overestimated his own abilities was in foreign politics.
(Digby the envoy to Spain, Earl of Bristol: Tell me about it!)
As an example of how James was dissed pre 20th century, there's famously Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1822: He was deeply learned, without possessing useful knowledge; sagacious in many individual cases, without having real wisdom; fond of his power, and desirous to maintain and augment it, yet willing to resign the direction of that, and of himself, to the most unworthy favourites; a big and bold asserter of his rights in words, yet one who tamely saw them trampled on in deeds; a lover of negotiations, in which he was always outwitted; and one who feared war, wehre conquest might have been easy. He was fond of his dignity, while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labour, ye toften neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated.
And Macauly, he of the Victorian Fritz biography, disses likewise: The indignation by his claims and the scorn excited by his concssions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive His cowardice, his childishness his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial person and manners, his provincial accent made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. (..) It was no light thing that, on the very eve of the decisive struggle between our kings and their parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagaogue.
Modern historians: Behold the homophobia. Okay, let's talk favourites. James was hardly the only royal who had them. So did Elizabeth. Hers, like his, profited financially from this, big time; in fact, Elvis!Essex having monopolies was a huuuuge problem brought up in one of her last parliaments. We will grant you that the Tudors, especially Elizabeth and her ghastly Dad, had the hang on coming across as simultanously royally dignified and of their people in the way most of the Stuarts never managed, who came across as either too informal (James I and VI) or too stiff and remote (Charles I and James II), with Charles II pretty much the only one achieving the right balance. But moving on to "dominated by his favourites" politically; in fact, James was pretty consistent in his policies, and the one time he changed them, near the end of his life when Buckingham and Charles had joined forces with Parliament on Rah Rah Rah War With Spain!, he did so not because Buckingham batted his eyelashes at him but because he could see there was no support for his reconciliatory policy left.
And finally, about that. Sir Walter, you and Macauly are 19th century guys buying into the whole awesomeness of war thing in combinataion of "naturally, Britain will always win". May we, living after two devastating world wars, remind you that the last decade of Elizabeth's reign when she was at war with Spain nearly bankrupted the country? Which isn't surprising, because it nearly bankrupted Spain, too, having to fight her and the Netherlands, and Philip had near all of South America to exploit, while Britain hadn't yet gotten that lucratively into the colonial gain. In fact, Elizabeth herself could count, she knew war was expensive, and that's why she greenlighted acts of piracy but refused to go to war for as long as she could until Philip launched the Armada. James making peace with Spain once she died was possible for him because he and Philip III. were not the ones who had started that war and so had no face to lose by the fact there was no real winner, but if she could have done it the same way, she probably would have.
Now, you seem to think that if James had gone to war against Spain at any point after making peace with them, especially once the 30 Years War had kicked off, this would have been a good thing for Britain, and also he would have won, because in your 19th century minds, England always does. Never mind the fact that when Charles and Buckingham did got to war after his death, they got their asses kicked, first by Spain, and then by France. Thing is, the British army and navy both were nothing to write home about. Partly because of the decades of peace, partly because of the general corruption, but in fact the Brits would not get a reputation for having a fearsome fighting force until the New Model Army under Fairfax and Cromwell comes into being, and years of Civil War change it into a lean mean fighting machine, and also by that time the American wealth gets pumped into Britain on a large scale. What James had at his disposal during his reign would not have fared any better than those same guys did once he'd breathed his last. Also, where would they have been fighting? Helping his daughter and son in law to recover the Palatinate and Bohemia? How would James have supplied British troops on the freaking continent, surrounded by Habsburg ruled territory, in the early years of the Thirty Years War? Or, if you want James to have attacked the Spanish coast the way Charles and Buckingham tried to as a rerun of the Elizabethan Age's Greatest Hits - what are your reasons to believe his navy would have done any better, with pretty much the same (lack of) command staff at his disposal? And finally, what exactly would have been gained for all the expense that putting GB on a war footing would have incurred? As opposed to the Armada situation, England wasn't under threat. Nor were their colonies. War with Spain inevitably means no trade with Spain, which means loss of money. Also: the Thirty Years War as it was was an unholy bloody mess devastating Europe. We don't think it would have ended any sooner if GB had thrown in their unprepared fighting men, such as there were, as well. It just would have gotten even more people killed.
Mind you, there are things you can really critisize James for. But not "unmanly tears" (this is so 19th Century Stiff Upper Lip Talk! Both in the Renaissance and in Baroque times, men crying was not seen as shameful - note Walter Raleigh, for example, repeatedly refers to crying in his letters from the Tower, and none of the Victorians thought he was less of a dashing hero for it) or his idea that pan-European peace in general and England/Spain peace in particular was a good thing.
(Not letting his daughter return to England after she and her husband got kicked out of Bohemia was harsh, and I can understand Elizabeth the Winter Queen going from "best Dad ever!" in her early letters to him just after her marriage to "my father has ever more hurt than helped us" a decade later. But: future Charles I had always been a sickly child. And during James' life time, he wasn't yet married, nor did he reproduce. Which means that if Charles had died while Elizabeth and her husband were in England, Elizabeth would have become Queen - and Frederick, the guy who had just started a cross European war by accepting the Bohemian Crown and who had proved his complete lack of military skills or ability to maintain a useful network of allies, would have become King. I can understand why James would do everything to avoid that prospect.)
Now, if I had to make a case against James, his obsession with witchcraft would certainly feature. He wasn't so blind (especially in his later years) that the posssibility of false testimony didn't occur to him, and he had some later cases investigated for that reason, but still, the man wrote an entire book to encourage the persecution of witches, which it duly did, and his idea that the storms that disrupted Anne's and his ships when they were about to marry each other had been conjured by a coven cost eight women their lives. Which was only the beginning. And you can argue he had as bad a taste in boyfriends as Heinrich (as in, the brother of Fritz).
(Here's a competition: Kalckreuth & Kaphengst vs Somerset & Buckingham!)
Not to mention that his idea of how to treat kid' Charles' stutter and walking problems were as barbaric as the medical regime kid future F1 was put under, with Charles lucking out what once he was in England, his appointed caretakers were Robert and Elizabeth Carey who actually had way more sensible ideas and put a stop to the other ones. ANd while we're talking family, given James himself was repeatedly kidnapped in his youth, I can see why he thought the heir of the throne had to be especially guarded and that he would only entrust him to people he really really trusted to do that, i.e. the Earl of Mar and his wife (who had been James' own governess and apparently the sole person kind to him in his childhood), but he could have been more understanding about Anne's desire to raise her own son. All not great traits! And none get critiqued by the Victorians.
Kalckreuth: I ended up a Field Marshal, Somerset ended up in prison and then while out of it, still disgraced! Also, I could have had Fritz and nobly chose Heinrich, while he had to marry the Howard girl, a marriage that was instrumental to his downfall. There is no comparison.
Somerset: I guess we're not mentioning your bonkers attempt to make a pass at Mina as a way to keep Heinrich when he was truly sick of you, then. I may have made mistakes, but my wife loved me so much that she never once attempted to blame me, on the contrary, she insisted on exonorating me during every interrogation. I don't see any of the unfortunate women you ended up marrying doing that for you, Kalckreuth.
Buckingham: It's a severe insult to my financial acumen to compare me to Kaphengst. Yes, I spent a lot of money, but I also found ever new avenues to generate it, and I made my entire family rich. Meanwhile, he pissed away all that Heinrich gave him and ended up broke.
Kaphengst: Yeah, well, I never was impeached or accused of having poisoned Heinrich, was I? I didn't get murdered, only to have my murder greeted by near universal cheer in the entire country! My having a good time only affected me. And okay, Heinrich and his art collection and his plans to visit Paris. But still! I object to this comparison!
Lehndorff: Speaking entirely without bias and objectively, I vote Kalckreuth and Kaphengst being the worst.
Fritz: If Kaphengst and Kalckreuth didn't turn out like Somerset and Buckingham, it's only because I kept the lot of them, Henri and his boytoys, far, far away from power. That's why I did it. For Prussia. Not because I needed therapy via roleplay or anything. My impeccable taste, on the other hand...
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cahn
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-15 08:38 am (UTC)(Digby the envoy to Spain, Earl of Bristol: Tell me about it!)
As an example of how James was dissed pre 20th century, there's famously Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1822: He was deeply learned, without possessing useful knowledge; sagacious in many individual cases, without having real wisdom; fond of his power, and desirous to maintain and augment it, yet willing to resign the direction of that, and of himself, to the most unworthy favourites; a big and bold asserter of his rights in words, yet one who tamely saw them trampled on in deeds; a lover of negotiations, in which he was always outwitted; and one who feared war, wehre conquest might have been easy. He was fond of his dignity, while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labour, ye toften neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated.
And Macauly, he of the Victorian Fritz biography, disses likewise: The indignation by his claims and the scorn excited by his concssions went on growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions, and by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity, he kept discontent constantly alive His cowardice, his childishness his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial person and manners, his provincial accent made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. (..) It was no light thing that, on the very eve of the decisive struggle between our kings and their parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagaogue.
Modern historians: Behold the homophobia. Okay, let's talk favourites. James was hardly the only royal who had them. So did Elizabeth. Hers, like his, profited financially from this, big time; in fact, Elvis!Essex having monopolies was a huuuuge problem brought up in one of her last parliaments. We will grant you that the Tudors, especially Elizabeth and her ghastly Dad, had the hang on coming across as simultanously royally dignified and of their people in the way most of the Stuarts never managed, who came across as either too informal (James I and VI) or too stiff and remote (Charles I and James II), with Charles II pretty much the only one achieving the right balance. But moving on to "dominated by his favourites" politically; in fact, James was pretty consistent in his policies, and the one time he changed them, near the end of his life when Buckingham and Charles had joined forces with Parliament on Rah Rah Rah War With Spain!, he did so not because Buckingham batted his eyelashes at him but because he could see there was no support for his reconciliatory policy left.
And finally, about that. Sir Walter, you and Macauly are 19th century guys buying into the whole awesomeness of war thing in combinataion of "naturally, Britain will always win". May we, living after two devastating world wars, remind you that the last decade of Elizabeth's reign when she was at war with Spain nearly bankrupted the country? Which isn't surprising, because it nearly bankrupted Spain, too, having to fight her and the Netherlands, and Philip had near all of South America to exploit, while Britain hadn't yet gotten that lucratively into the colonial gain. In fact, Elizabeth herself could count, she knew war was expensive, and that's why she greenlighted acts of piracy but refused to go to war for as long as she could until Philip launched the Armada. James making peace with Spain once she died was possible for him because he and Philip III. were not the ones who had started that war and so had no face to lose by the fact there was no real winner, but if she could have done it the same way, she probably would have.
Now, you seem to think that if James had gone to war against Spain at any point after making peace with them, especially once the 30 Years War had kicked off, this would have been a good thing for Britain, and also he would have won, because in your 19th century minds, England always does. Never mind the fact that when Charles and Buckingham did got to war after his death, they got their asses kicked, first by Spain, and then by France. Thing is, the British army and navy both were nothing to write home about. Partly because of the decades of peace, partly because of the general corruption, but in fact the Brits would not get a reputation for having a fearsome fighting force until the New Model Army under Fairfax and Cromwell comes into being, and years of Civil War change it into a lean mean fighting machine, and also by that time the American wealth gets pumped into Britain on a large scale. What James had at his disposal during his reign would not have fared any better than those same guys did once he'd breathed his last. Also, where would they have been fighting? Helping his daughter and son in law to recover the Palatinate and Bohemia? How would James have supplied British troops on the freaking continent, surrounded by Habsburg ruled territory, in the early years of the Thirty Years War? Or, if you want James to have attacked the Spanish coast the way Charles and Buckingham tried to as a rerun of the Elizabethan Age's Greatest Hits - what are your reasons to believe his navy would have done any better, with pretty much the same (lack of) command staff at his disposal? And finally, what exactly would have been gained for all the expense that putting GB on a war footing would have incurred? As opposed to the Armada situation, England wasn't under threat. Nor were their colonies. War with Spain inevitably means no trade with Spain, which means loss of money. Also: the Thirty Years War as it was was an unholy bloody mess devastating Europe. We don't think it would have ended any sooner if GB had thrown in their unprepared fighting men, such as there were, as well. It just would have gotten even more people killed.
=> James was smarter than all of you.
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-15 03:34 pm (UTC)Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-15 04:07 pm (UTC)(Not letting his daughter return to England after she and her husband got kicked out of Bohemia was harsh, and I can understand Elizabeth the Winter Queen going from "best Dad ever!" in her early letters to him just after her marriage to "my father has ever more hurt than helped us" a decade later. But: future Charles I had always been a sickly child. And during James' life time, he wasn't yet married, nor did he reproduce. Which means that if Charles had died while Elizabeth and her husband were in England, Elizabeth would have become Queen - and Frederick, the guy who had just started a cross European war by accepting the Bohemian Crown and who had proved his complete lack of military skills or ability to maintain a useful network of allies, would have become King. I can understand why James would do everything to avoid that prospect.)
Now, if I had to make a case against James, his obsession with witchcraft would certainly feature. He wasn't so blind (especially in his later years) that the posssibility of false testimony didn't occur to him, and he had some later cases investigated for that reason, but still, the man wrote an entire book to encourage the persecution of witches, which it duly did, and his idea that the storms that disrupted Anne's and his ships when they were about to marry each other had been conjured by a coven cost eight women their lives. Which was only the beginning. And you can argue he had as bad a taste in boyfriends as Heinrich (as in, the brother of Fritz).
(Here's a competition: Kalckreuth & Kaphengst vs Somerset & Buckingham!)
Not to mention that his idea of how to treat kid' Charles' stutter and walking problems were as barbaric as the medical regime kid future F1 was put under, with Charles lucking out what once he was in England, his appointed caretakers were Robert and Elizabeth Carey who actually had way more sensible ideas and put a stop to the other ones. ANd while we're talking family, given James himself was repeatedly kidnapped in his youth, I can see why he thought the heir of the throne had to be especially guarded and that he would only entrust him to people he really really trusted to do that, i.e. the Earl of Mar and his wife (who had been James' own governess and apparently the sole person kind to him in his childhood), but he could have been more understanding about Anne's desire to raise her own son. All not great traits! And none get critiqued by the Victorians.
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-17 01:42 am (UTC)(Here's a competition: Kalckreuth & Kaphengst vs Somerset & Buckingham!)
This one made me laugh. :)
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-17 07:23 am (UTC)Somerset: I guess we're not mentioning your bonkers attempt to make a pass at Mina as a way to keep Heinrich when he was truly sick of you, then. I may have made mistakes, but my wife loved me so much that she never once attempted to blame me, on the contrary, she insisted on exonorating me during every interrogation. I don't see any of the unfortunate women you ended up marrying doing that for you, Kalckreuth.
Buckingham: It's a severe insult to my financial acumen to compare me to Kaphengst. Yes, I spent a lot of money, but I also found ever new avenues to generate it, and I made my entire family rich. Meanwhile, he pissed away all that Heinrich gave him and ended up broke.
Kaphengst: Yeah, well, I never was impeached or accused of having poisoned Heinrich, was I? I didn't get murdered, only to have my murder greeted by near universal cheer in the entire country! My having a good time only affected me. And okay, Heinrich and his art collection and his plans to visit Paris. But still! I object to this comparison!
Lehndorff: Speaking entirely without bias and objectively, I vote Kalckreuth and Kaphengst being the worst.
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-18 02:06 am (UTC)Fritz: If Kaphengst and Kalckreuth didn't turn out like Somerset and Buckingham, it's only because I kept the lot of them, Henri and his boytoys, far, far away from power. That's why I did it. For Prussia. Not because I needed therapy via roleplay or anything. My impeccable taste, on the other hand...
Fredersdorf: :)
Henri: *cough*
Glasow*cough*Biche: Woof!
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-19 12:41 am (UTC)Buckingham: It's a severe insult to my financial acumen to compare me to Kaphengst.
Kaphengst: Yeah, well, I never was impeached or accused of having poisoned Heinrich, was I?
Hee!
And I love Lehndorff getting the last word!
Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-22 08:15 pm (UTC)Re: David Bergeron: King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire - I
Date: 2024-01-19 12:39 am (UTC)Heh. Okay, I guess... I'm glad there's one guy who wasn't just completely traumatized :)
=> James was smarter than all of you.
HEE. Yeah! Go James!