Your book After Elizabeth opens at Whitehall during the last Christmas of Elizabeth I’s reign. From a political perspective, what sort of environment was Sir John Harington walking into?
He walked into a court glittering on the brink of extinction. There were dances, bear-baiting, gambling, masques — but Elizabeth was dying. She was painted half an inch thick to disguise decay; she stuffed her cheeks with cloth to mask mortality. Beneath the jewels and candlelight lay fear: fear of civil war, of foreign invasion, of religious bloodletting. No heir had been named. England stood on a precipice. Christmas 1602 was therefore not festive but febrile. Courtiers calculated futures while their Queen withered. Some mourned; others prepared to prosper. It was a court holding its breath. Harington carried a tract favouring James VI of Scotland.
Why did he back James?
Because James represented order — and hope. He had the strongest hereditary claim, but more importantly he seemed a possible healer. England was exhausted by decades of recusancy fines, priest-hunts and suspicion. James, son of the Catholic martyr Mary, Queen of Scots yet himself Protestant, appeared uniquely positioned to reconcile factions.
When Elizabeth died in March 1603, what ensured the smooth accession?
Speed and secrecy. Robert Cecil moved instantly. James was proclaimed within hours. England did not explode — but that does not mean the danger was imaginary. It remained real.
Let’s turn to the drama of Catholic expectation and disappointment. How did that unfold?
At first there was euphoria. English Catholics believed their long persecution might end. James had hinted at toleration. Prison doors seemed poised to open. Instead, general pardons excluded “Papists.” Hopes collapsed almost overnight.
The disillusionment hardened into conspiracy. The so-called Bye Plot — led to arrests, executions, and exile. Priests were hanged, drawn and quartered. Heads fell. England had changed monarchs, but blood still flowed.
There was also a great deal of anti Scottish feeling, and this way behind the Main Plot which involved Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Cobham in allegations of treason. Raleigh — Elizabeth’s brilliant, arrogant favourite — was ruined. Stripped of office, condemned, imprisoned in the Tower.
You describe Elizabeth’s memory being treated almost with contempt by James. What do you mean?
She was a spinster, and he despised that. The symbolism was also brutal. Elizabeth’s magnificent gowns were removed from the Tower, cut up and refashioned into costumes for Queen Anna’s masque, The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses. The dead Queen’s regalia became theatrical fabric: the old regime dismembered and repurposed.
Meanwhile, at court, drunken games replaced austerity. The heir, Prince Henry, was tossed about by revellers. The tone shifted from anxious restraint to conspicuous expenditure. Scots favourites enriched themselves. English courtiers muttered. Resentment simmered.
Was the peaceful succession therefore an illusion?
Not an illusion — but a narrow escape. There was no civil war in 1603. Yet beneath the surface lay fracture lines that would widen in the decades to come.
Catholic disappointment did not end with the Bye Plot. It would culminate in 1605 with the Gunpowder Plot — an attempt not merely to protest but to annihilate king and Parliament in flame. The Jacobean settlement was fragile from the start.
After Elizabeth is not a tale of smooth transition. It is a story of near-misses, shattered hopes, falling heads, and smouldering grievances. The peace of 1603 was real — but provisional.
Leanda de Lisle is an historian and the author of After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England.
