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Discordia Concors

Discordia Concors When Macaulay accused James I of constantly “stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and taking a style alternately of a buffoon and a pedagogue,” he was following in a tradition initiated in the mid–seventeenth century by Anthony Weldon in his The Court and Character of King James.1 While Weldon, an anti-Scots polemicist, represents Elizabeth I in his book as “the most Glorious Sun that ever shined in our Firmament of England,” the front matter promises a “Picture of our Times”—of “secret Crimes/ Discover’d,” of “Tricks of State,” “Greatnesse debauched,” and “the People’s Hate.”2 Later generations of historians would tend to echo Weldon’s views—without, however, always expressing them so adamantly.3 For T. S. Eliot, James was not so much an object of scorn as Elizabeth was an object of praise. It was Queen Elizabeth who, Eliot wrote in 1926, was the “representative of the fi nest spirit of England of the time”; and it was the Elizabethan sensibility that created the 1. As quoted in Christopher Durston, James I (London: Routledge, 1993), 3. 2. Anthony Weldon, frontispiece to The Court and Character of King James (London, 1651), vii. s 3. Among these historians are Samuel http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

Discordia Concors

Kolbrener, William
Common Knowledge , Volume 11 (1) – Jan 1, 2005
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-11-1-111
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Abstract

When Macaulay accused James I of constantly “stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and taking a style alternately of a buffoon and a pedagogue,” he was following in a tradition initiated in the mid–seventeenth century by Anthony Weldon in his The Court and Character of King James.1 While Weldon, an anti-Scots polemicist, represents Elizabeth I in his book as “the most Glorious Sun that ever shined in our Firmament of England,” the front matter promises a “Picture of our Times”—of “secret Crimes/ Discover’d,” of “Tricks of State,” “Greatnesse debauched,” and “the People’s Hate.”2 Later generations of historians would tend to echo Weldon’s views—without, however, always expressing them so adamantly.3 For T. S. Eliot, James was not so much an object of scorn as Elizabeth was an object of praise. It was Queen Elizabeth who, Eliot wrote in 1926, was the “representative of the fi nest spirit of England of the time”; and it was the Elizabethan sensibility that created the 1. As quoted in Christopher Durston, James I (London: Routledge, 1993), 3. 2. Anthony Weldon, frontispiece to The Court and Character of King James (London, 1651), vii. s 3. Among these historians are Samuel

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2005

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