Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers.

  • Norman Chevers
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    53/68 (page 51)
    under the Great Seal of England. “ This medicine found his Majesty in the declination of his disease, (and we all wish it had left him so) but his better days were shortly turned into worse; and instead of health and recovery, we hear, by good testimony (that which troubles the poor and loyal com- mons of England) of great distempers, as droughts, raving, fainting, an intermitting pulse, strange effects to follow upon the applying of a treacle plaster. But the truth is, testimony tells us, that this plaster had a strange smell, and an infective quality, striking the malignity of the disease inward, which nature, otherwise, might have expelled outward. Add to this the drink, twice given to his Majesty, by the Duke’s own hands, and a third time refused, and the following complaint of that blessed prince, the physicians telling him, to please him for the time, that his second impairment was from cold taken or some other ordinary cause: ‘ No, no,’ said his Majesty, ‘it is that which I had from Buckingham.’* And though there be no precedent for an act offered to the person of a King so insolent as this; yet it is true that divers persons as great as this, have been questioned and condemned for less offences against the person of their sovereign. It was an article amongst others laid against the Duke of Somerset, for carrying Edward the Sixth away in the night- time, out of his own bed, but from Hampton Court to Windsor; and yet he was entrusted with the protection of his person. Precedents failing us in this point, the common law will supply us. The law judgeth a deed done in the execution of an unlawful act, man-slaughter, which otherwise would but have been chance medley ; and that this act was unlawful the * These details are also given by Roger Coke in his “ Detection of the Court and State of England, during the last four Reigns.” As Coke’s narrative is, evidently, com- piled, ipsissimis verbis, from the report of these Parliamentary proceedings, it cannot, of course, be considered to have any independent weight as evidence. Brodie has given the following remarkable passage from the MS. copy of White- lock’s relation of his embassy to Sweden—a passage which the Editor has thought proper to omit. At one of his private audiences with Queen Christina—she “fell into a discourse concerning King James, and asked what testimony there was of his being poisoned, as many have affirmed-. Whitelock told her that, in the beginning of the reign of the late King Charles, that business was under examination in Parlia- ment, whereof Wlntelock was then a member.” [He was one of the eight managers in the Duke’s impeachment] “That the doctors who attended King James, in that sickness, did testify that, contrary to their order, a plaster and a drink with powder was given to him by'' the Countess of Buckingham, the Duke’s mother.” [Brodie remarks—the Commons charged the Duke witli having given it with his own hand, but this discrepancy is immaterial] “ that he took it by the persuasion of the Duke and of his mother, that the disease being a violent fever, the plaster was of an infective quality, and turned the heat inwardly, that the King took them twice, and fell into raving fits after it, and cried out, ‘ That which George hath given me hath killed me ;’ that his body swelled very much. The Queen said,—‘ Then certainly, he was poisoned.’ Whitelock said that many believed it, but that there was any ill intention was not made to appear. Brodie adds that—“ Whitelock (whose children were nearly allied to Buckingham’s family) did not keep a diary of his embassy with any view to publication, and he declares that he was careful not to speak reproachfully of any one, not even of an enemy, regarding whom the Queen made enquiries.” It will, however, be perceived how very much stronger the words—“ That which George hath given me hath killed me /” are than the expression attributed to the King in the Parliamentary report.—A strong illustration of the danger of making such statements by unaided memory. This circumstance of aggravation does not appear in Whitelocke’s narrative of the Parliamentary proceedings in his “Memorial of English affairs from the reign of Charles If