ABSTRACT
With the crown, James inherited a well defined role. He inherited the ideology of patriarchy (with which he had been quite comfortable in Scotland), but he inherited this as it had been modified and revised by an Elizabethan iconography. The situation he inherited as the English monarch thus raised certain expectations for the display of his power. In his letter to Dudley Carleton on 12 April 1603, John Chamberlain gives us some indication of how James met and in meeting instantly modified the expectations of Elizabethan courtiers and hangers-on. So great was the rush north to bring the Scottish king news of the queen's death and by such means to seek patronage, place, or promotions, according to Chamberlain, a proclamation had to be issued to restrain the flow" of ydle and unecessarie posters into Scotland, the number wherof grew to be a great burthen to the countrie and brought all things out of order." Chamberlain goes on to report of men like John Davies and Edward Nevill who were among the first to succeed in courting favor with the new monarch:
The King uses all very graciously and hath made Sir Rob: Carie of his bed chamber and groom of the stooIe. John Davies is sworn his man and [Edwan:l] Nevill is restored ... to all his titles and fortunes. The tenth of this rrioll~th the earle of Southampton and Sir Henry Nevill were delivered out of the Towre by a warrant from the Kinge. These bountiful beginnings raise all mens spirits and put them in great hopes, insomuch that not only protestants, but papists and puritanes, and the very poets with theyre ydle pamflets promise themselves great part in his favor; so that to satisfie or please all ... would be more then a mans worke. 1
His "bountiful beginnings" wrought a major change in Elizabeth's most characteristic policies and decisions. It brought release of the Essex coconspirators, promoted a typically ambitious Inns of Court man like Davies to a knighthood, and quickly settled Nevill's long standing claim to be declared Lord Abergavenny. During the first year of his reign, James displayed the prerogatives of his position by granting - and lavishly sowhat Elizabeth had formerly withheld - titles, honors, land, and lucrative patronage opportunities. Promoting the idea of the king as the source both ofland and of noble lineage, James not only indulged in conspicuous gift giving, furthermore, he also tried his hand at matchmaking among the English nobility. Upon coming to England, he shrewdly decided to pursue a policy of arranging marriages he had developed in Scotland for purposes of making peace among the feuding clans. Aside from the disastrous marriage of the young Earl of Essex to Lady Francis Howard by which James had hoped to mend relations between their families, the new monarch's efforts at matchmaking helped somewhat to end the Elizabethan style of manipulating competition among rival court factions. Perhaps more important, his active supervision ofthe exchange of women among aristocratic families lent credibility to the belief that a new kind of patriarch had arrived.
