THIRTEEN
In response to his son’s advance, in 1607 the king ordered Henry’s household change from schoolroom to collegiate court, another decisive step towards a fully fledged royal court. Chaloner knew what the king had in mind; his own upbringing with Cecil offered a precedent for this kind of think-tank – educating young aristocrats, gentlemen and wards of court in a tradition of service to the Crown, church and commonwealth. John Dee had presided over something similar at Mortlake.
James Cleland, John Harington’s tutor, eulogised the new collegiate court: ‘Here they may obtain his Highness favour, as Hylas won the love of Hercules; Patroclus of Achilles, and Esphestion of Alexander the Great.’ Great leaders needed high-calibre intimates. ‘I recommend … the Academy of our Noble Prince,’ Cleland said, because here they ‘learn the first elements to be a Privy Councillor, a General of an Army, to rule in peace, and to command in war.’ Cleland foresaw counsellors who ruled and commanded, as well as the king.
As king, Henry would take his young brother and his ‘Patroclus’ and ‘Ephestion’ – youths such as John Harington and Essex – with him to be his counsellors and generals. By following the ‘precepts of the most rare persons in Virtue and Learning’, living and dead, Henry could advance a reformation in ‘government civil’ as well as ‘military’, and perfect the reformation in religion, stuck halfway to heaven. Henry and his court would make the kingdom admired for its progressive politics, religion, and culture, and maybe even feared for its virtue.
What his father wanted, on the other hand, was to create an esteemed Renaissance centre of learning around the student prince, fit heir to the philosopher king. James, Europe’s Solomon, saw the Stuarts as the ombudsmen of Europe. He wanted Henry’s courtly college to reflect his own image. James was not the only parent to try and appropriate his child’s life to enhance his own agenda – or the last to be disappointed when the child proved to have a mind of its own.
The growing number of military ‘rare persons in Virtue and learning’ at St James’s did not reflect the king’s mind. Still they came. Though not greatly appreciated by the King of Peace at Whitehall, Henry welcomed the vigorous, martial-souled men who spent much of their lives honing their virtue in defence of the Protestant cause. War veterans, politicians, soldiers from the front line of current conflicts in Christendom, skilled at ‘command in war’, stood with the prince and his friends in the long galleries of St James’s and Richmond, poring over tables covered with maps of countries, sieges and battles from all over Europe. They debated the evolving European scene as new intelligence came in. The prince could not lead the conversations, but followed his father’s early instructions to ‘be homely with your soldiers as your companions, for winning their heart … Be curious in devising stratagems.’
Sir Edward Cecil told them how Maurice of Nassau, the future Prince of Orange, got to the extraordinary position where a group of tiny Dutch states stood poised to defeat the might of Spain. Prince Maurice’s successes were due to one simple rule: avoid errors as much as possible and observe those of your enemy. Maurice believed he learned far more from defeats than victories. ‘The profiting by other men’s errors and examples was a secret the … Prince of Orange did so much study,’ said Sir Edward, seeing Maurice as a role model who might make him a great military leader. ‘Yea he … professed the art of war by it … which made us, that had the honour to bear him company, to be glad when we could get him to discourse of it.’
Sir Edward revered Maurice as ‘a great Master’ of the theory and practice of war and disseminated Maurice’s wisdom among Henry’s circle. The Dutch leader trained his commanders to go over what happened every day, to write it down nightly and learn from their mistakes, said Cecil. Maurice called it ‘his Experience’ – the material he needed to formulate strategy and better tactics.
Maurice laid out his methods in his most famous work on the military arts, The Exercise of Arms for Calivers, Muskets and Pikes (1607). In it he detailed how he had recreated the Dutch army to suit modern warfare. The book swiftly appeared in French, German, Danish and English editions. Richly illustrated by Jacob de Gheyn, his handbook on infantry training and troop formations became the gold standard on teaching infantry drill for fifty years. Henry introduced it at home. He built a military training yard a mile from St James’s Palace on which to practise and perfect Maurice’s innovations. Nassau complimented Henry by dedicating the English edition to him. De Gheyn eulogised the prince in inimitable English as a youth ‘who doth yet give such a lustre to this arms, by the continual familiaritie he hath with them in his often practise’. Henry wrote thanking Maurice, following his father’s advice to ‘use all other Princes, as your brethren, honestly and kindely’.
Maurice encouraged the study of ancient and modern texts on battles and the art of war. Henry was amassing a collection of such books and manuscripts. Some he bought, many more came as gifts. Ex-soldier Barnaby Riche sent him a copy of his military theory, the Fruits of Long Experience. Like Maurice, Riche emphasised the need for continual training, good discipline, good quality men and officers, decent pay, good education in modern military theory, developing leadership skills in your officers, looking after your main asset – soldiers and ex-soldiers – and ensuring the nobility adopted a professional approach to soldiering. Chivalry must serve the cavalry’s needs.
As cavalrymen, Henry and his friends spent hours on horseback, perfecting control of the animal, until horse, shield and weapon were extensions of their wills. Sir Edward Cecil and M. de St Antoine, the riding master sent by Henri IV, trained Prince Henry in the latest cavalry manoeuvres. They practised equestrian ballet, the skills and discipline of dance and war overlapping, turning on a penny at speed, perfectly balanced.
Prince Charles shared their practice sessions, apparently as keen to obtain martial prowess as his brother, whom he shadowed. In ‘your absence I visit sometimes your stable and ride your great horses’, he told Henry, ‘that at your return I may wait on you in that noble exercise’. Charles worked to make himself as brilliant a horseman as Henry.
It was soon obvious that, illustrating the law of unintended consequences, the new courtly college had led to the formation of a military salon at St James’s, giving Henry and his circle a first-class martial education. The king had told Henry to make himself familiar with ‘the art military’ by letting it ‘appear in your daily conversation, and in all the actions of your life’; so Henry did.
The French ambassador observed the tight-knit character of the collegiate court. Prince Henry ‘shows himself … very good natured to his dependents, and supports their interests against any persons whatever; and pushes what he undertakes for them or others, with such zeal, as gives success to it’. Like his father, Henry was loyal and tenacious to the point of obstinacy. ‘Besides exerting his whole strength to compass what he desires, he is already feared by those who have the management of his affairs,’ observed de la Boderie. If he did not become a strong character, he would be crushed.
More and more men petitioned to serve him. As the king continued his habit of removing himself from the capital for over half the year – much of the time amusing himself with a new favourite, young Robert Carr – Whitehall struggled to regain its character as that uniquely intense, claustrophobic core of power and patronage it had been under Elizabeth I, with its daily analysis of fresh news at home and abroad magnetising diplomatic activity. Inevitably, restless entrepreneurs, fringe politicians – as well as soldiers, sailors, courtiers, neglected Puritan preachers and frustrated foreign delegates – drifted to St James’s. These men pulled Henry out of the schoolroom, into the mainstream of national and international affairs from a young age. He seemed willing to fulfil a role his father had semi-abandoned.
Given the king’s detached stance, the collegiate court became an increasingly active arena of political activity. Salisbury sent Henry confidential papers on European and domestic issues continually, asking Adam Newton to return them when he had copied them, in case the king wanted them back. In 1608, Spain and the Dutch Republic entered negotiations for a ceasefire, after over thirty years of war. As a matter of course Salisbury outlined the government’s position to Henry. The free Dutch would never acknowledge Spain as their ruler and never accept religion on the agenda at all, he said, both of which Spain required as a condition of full peace talks. Henri IV proposed a compromise – a long truce. James supported the truce, ‘with the protestation that religion shall be no part of the bargain’, Salisbury told Henry. St James’s should support this line. It would mean universal peace in Europe for the first time in decades. ‘They that were so far off, and are come so near, will not easily sever,’ he added, hopefully.
However, Sir Edward Cecil, returning from campaigning in Holland for the winter break, informed them that Maurice of Nassau was against the truce and wanted England to come out against it. After fighting for so long, Maurice believed the Republic was close to outright defeat of Spain. A peace treaty would offer permanent liberty for the Dutch Protestants, whereas a truce acknowledged both sides had grievances and kept open the door to renewed hostilities. Salisbury asked that Henry at least endorse the Dutch–Spanish truce whenever he received foreign diplomats, despite any misgivings.
Henry’s collegiate court now fulfilled some of the functions of the king’s court. Canny, James believed he knew the way the wind blew, allowing the hotter heads to let off steam with their excitable talk at St James’s, where they had no real power, while he governed by despatch from wherever he happened to be.
However, if the prince was going to take on some of his father’s public duties, he must have a suitably magnificent setting, or it insulted the foreign delegates and the countries they represented. They must be received with all the pomp due to the person of the ruler himself. The problem, as ever for the Stuarts, was how to pay for it.