Alastair Bellany is a History Professor at Rutgers who specializes in Early Modern British Isles: Political and Media History. He has been teaching at Rutgers since 1996 and is the Department Chair. Thomas Cogswell is a Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. He specializes in Early Modern England and has taught at Riverside since 1999. Both authors are established in their fields and both focus on Early Modern England. This is the first of two collaborations between the two authors. They’re currently working on England’s Assassin: John Felton and the Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham which relates to this book.
Alastair Bellany and Thomas Cogswell’s The Murder of King James I challenges what I knew about Early Modern England by stating that King James I was murdered instead of dying like natural causes as I was taught and read growing up. Before King James’s death, he had suffered a stroke that left him too weak to fight and he died a few days later. The royal physician’s had diagnosed the king with a “pure intermitting tertian ague, or a fever.” (Page 31). The king was said to have died of natural causes. The medical report that was published by the doctors said that the king’s health had taken a turn for the worse suddenly and that, on top of many underlying causes such as poor diet and previous medical history resulting in the king’s death, the autopsy on his body echoed what the doctors had said. Charles I, James’s son and successor spared no expense for his father “an estimated £50,000 was spent” (46) this was on top of Charles’s coronation, the sum was higher than the funerals and coronations of previous monarchs. This can be seen as a son mourning his father and at first glance, that’s what it was. Charles was honoring his father and establishing himself as the next monarch of England. But, you cannot help but to think in the back of your head that something was amiss, it felt like Charles was covering up his involvement in the plot to become the new monarch and as you read deeper, that starts to become a reality.
George Eglishman, who is the main focus of Bellany and Cogswell’s book, which dissects and examines every piece of evidence that Eglishman detailed in his own book. The Frontrunner of Revenge Upon The Duke of Buckingham for Poisoning the most potent James, King of Great Britain, as well as the Marquis Hamilton and other nobles. In his book, Eglishman accuses the Duke of Buckingham of poisoning King James I and of poisoning of Hamilton, who was Eglishman’s patron. Eglishman had also drawn people’s attention because of the rumors that while Hamilton was on his deathbed, Eglishman had converted him to Catholicism, the rumors on top of the belief that the publication of his book would have him sharing the same fate as his patron and the late king, he fled the country and went to Brussels. Eglishman wasn’t a saint by any means and he didn’t publish this book because he cared about King James, he had a vendetta against Buckingham and Charles, who he blamed for the troubles in his life up to date.
Eglishman’s actions resulted in Parliament opening up an inquire into the death of King James, news of Eglishman’s work transcended social status as it became the talk of the town in London “copies had been industriously scattered up and down in the streets of the city of London.” (210) This had a profound impact on English society as other officials started to come out with accusations against the Duke himself. The Earl of Bristol used the same method to spread his own charges against the Duke (210) The select committee called forward eight doctors to testify in the trial but the most important of these judges was John Craig, who was the unnamed doctor in Eglishman’s book. Craig had been assigned to be one of King James’s doctors in 1621 and he challenged Buckingham’s intervention in the care of the king and became a prisoner in his own chambers after he said that King James had been poisoned and when the doctors marched in the King’s funeral procession, Craig did not walk with the other physicians but with the servants and when it came to payment, Craig was not paid by Charles and did not get his pension back until 1635 (214). King Charles did not take kindly to royal physicians testifying before the committee and Ramsey was forced to become a prisoner in his own home after giving testimony that Charles deemed unacceptable. Each of the royal physician’s testified that the king should only be treated by them and with their consultation and that when they noticed that a plaster had been applied to the king’s side (The Duke had applied it to the King’s side without consulting the doctors first) they had it removed since they did not approve of it being applied. Buckingham also have the King something to drink that he said would help with the King’s illness. Over a few hours, the Duke’s intervention only made things worse for the ailing monarch. The articles of impeachment thrown at Buckingham weakened his stance and in 1628, he was assassinated by John Felton who claimed that he was spurred to do it by Eglishman’s book. In the end, Eglishman got his revenge for his patron. Buckingham was assassinated but what transpired after changed England and the role that it played in European politics.
After Buckingham’s death, the country started to fall apart and a Civil War erupted that divided the country. On one side you had Charles I and his loyalists and on the other, you had those that believed that Charles was a tyrant and that he deserved to be overthrown for aiding Buckingham for having a hand in his father’s death. Although George Eglishman’s The Frontrunner of Revenge wasn’t the sole reason that the English Revolution happened but it did provide a spark that complied with other factors of English society, cascaded into a full on revolution.
In conclusion, I found Alastair’s Bellany and Thomas Cogswell’s The Murder of King James I to be an interesting book and I’m glad that I selected it as one of my books but it definitely was not what I was expecting when I selected it. As I was reading it, it felt like a huge cover up by Charles because he wanted to be king so badly and Eglishman came in and spoiled it for him. Cogswell and Bellany did their research and I felt that they did a good job at breaking down Eglishman’s work and explaining why it mattered. Although I liked the book, I did have several complaints with how the book was written and its contents. First of all, I found that the book was really long and could’ve used some editing. In the database that I used, it was 618 pages and I had to take multiple breaks in order to read it in its entirety. Another key problem/issue that I had with the book was that the main argument or focus that they had was George Eglishman and the impact of his book and this wasn’t mentioned until page 200 in my book. If he was going to be the central point in your analysis, then I would’ve liked for him to be presented earlier in his book. Otherwise, I felt like Bellany and Cogswell presented a good book, they broke down Eglishman’s points and how it impacted Early Modern England and fits into the historiography that we have been examining in class since the start of the semester.
Reviewed by Vincent Cervone, Master’s Student at George Mason University.
