Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Cultural Topics/Homosexuality

James I and Sodomy

Editing Notes: This has now seen a lot of excellent editing. I could see more information being useful, but perhaps on slightly different topics, like sodomy under the law or homosexuals other than James.

There are many contemporary accounts that suggest that James I of England may have been bisexual or homosexual, but none of those accounts constitute conclusive evidence. James fathered several children by his wife, Anne of Denmark, which indicates that he was not completely uninterested in the opposite sex. On the other hand, he may merely have been carrying out his duty to secure a male heir to the throne. The difficulty in proving whether or not he was indeed bisexual or homosexual lies in the fact that male companionship and intimacy often crossed many romantic lines that to us may seem scandalous or sexual in nature but to many living in James' time; it was simply the norm for men to be very close to each other and often physically affectionate as well.

As the head of the Church of England, James was expected to condemn homosexual behaviour. He states in his treatise, Basilikon Doron, that one must not commit several acts which are not in keeping with the guise of being a good king, including witchcraft, murder, incest (especially within the degrees of consanguinities), sodomy, poisoning, and false coin. (1) Sodomy, he wrote, was "one of those horrible crimes...that a king was bound in conscience never to forgive." (2) However, while King James wrote of sodomy as a “horrible” crime, “sex with subordinates was a prerogative of patriarchy, and James was the chief patriarch of the whole realm.” (3) He “could have been perfectly earnest in condemning sodomy while simultaneously engaging in what we today would call homosexual behaviour" (4) because the “legal definition [of sodomy] was extremely narrow." It specified only one sex act between men, anal intercourse, and excluded all other genital sex acts.” (5) James is said to be “a notorious hypocrite where swearing and drinking were concerned; he could simply have been the same where sodomy was concerned.” (6)

It is possible that, although the Church and the cultural expectations of the time were against homosexuality, James was able to get away with his actions because he was the king. However, it is more likely that the very fact that James was the king made him a target for accusations of deviant sexual behavior. In his day, James was the subject of many "verse libels, mean-spirited memoirs, and political pamphlets" that accused him of homosexuality or bisexuality. (7) Many of his contemporaries appear to have at least suspected him of homosexuality, with one commenting that ""the love the king showed [towards his favorites] was as amorously conveyed as if he had mistaken their sex and thought them ladies; which I have seen Somerset and Buckingham labour to resemble in the effeminateness of their dressings; though in... wanton gestures they exceeded any part of womankind...". (8) Despite the many contemporary accounts, no hard evidence exists to clarify James' relationship with his favorites. (9)

In Stuart England, there was a fine line between homosexuality, which was forbidden, and male intimacy. The former was seen as a mockery of God and an abomination, while the latter was not only praised, but also necessary as an essential part of the functioning of the state. There was little privacy in the Stuart age and it was the norm to share a bed with another person and most of the time this constituted being in bed with another man. Since people often talked and did business in bed, "to be someone's bedfellow suggested that one had influence" over another person and most often meant nothing more than a business relationship. (10) It was in this sense that Archbishop Laud wrote in his diary, “That night in a dream the Duke of Buckingham seemed to me to ascend into my bed, where he carried himself with much love towards me, after such rest wherein wearied men are wont exceedingly to rejoice; and likewise many seemed to me to enter the chamber who did see this.” (11) Significantly, the Archbishop notes that the intimacy between himself and his patron, the Duke, was seen by many people. The degree of influence Laud had with the Duke became common knowledge as the intimate relationship between himself and the Duke was impossible to to overlook. (12)

The connection between intimacy and influence became fraught with tension in the king's court and the lines between intimacy, influence, and business had been blurred in James' court. Royal patronage and access to the monarch determined career success in the early modern state and this created many opportunities for certain men to manipulate the king to further their own goals. The concern of James' courtiers that the system of patronage might be corrupted by excessive favoritism or sodomy was an understandable fear that many of them shared. (13) The most powerful courtiers were the ones who had access to the king's Privy Chamber or Bedchamber, making the king's bedchamber "a crucial and contested political venue...". (14) The political function of the bedchamber led to jealousy among lesser courtiers and created tensions between the king's personal life and the affairs of the state. (15) Male friendship had become so important in James' court, that the thought of accusing the king of sodomy was almost treasonous in nature. Nonetheless, there were those that would say that he had corrupted an extremely important relationship and endangered the proper functioning of the state in order to achieve a forbidden personal satisfaction. (16) Thus, accusations of sodomy against James may have sprung from deeper anxieties about corruption and instability in the government, as well as jealousy. It may have been in this spirit of anxiety and envy that one contemporary wrote that the Duke of Buckingham achieved his high position in James' court "upon no merit [but] by that of his beauty and his prostitution." (17) The relationship between James and the Duke was certainly close and physical and caught the eyes of many of the courtiers. The Duke, anticipating his return to England from his Spanish posting, wrote in a letter to James, “I cannot now think of giving thanks for friend, wife, or child; my thoughts are only bent on having my dear Dad and Master’s legs soon in my arms.” (18) Despite this intimate language and the anxieties of many of the King's contemporaries, it is impossible to know whether James' and the Duke had a relationship that was homosexual in nature or simply a very close male bond that was common during this time and reflected many of the values and virtues of those in England.

(1) King James I, Basilikon Doron, Section 20.

(2) Alan Bray, "Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England," History Workshop, no. 29 (Spring 1990), 3.

(3) Michael B. Young, King James & the History of Homosexuality (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 48.

(4) Ibid., 49.

(5) Ibid.

(6) Ibid., 50.

(7) Curtis Perry, "The Politics of Access and Representations of the Sodomite King in Early Modern England," Renaissance Quarterly 53, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 1055.

(8) Caroline Bingham, "Seventeenth-Century Attitudes toward Deviant Sex," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1, no. 3 (Spring, 1971): 461.

(9) Bingham, 461.

(10) Bray, 4.

(11) Ibid., 4.

(12) Ibid., 4.

(13) Perry, 1056.

(14) Ibid., 1057.

(15) Ibid., 1057.

(16) Ibid., 1058.

(17) Bingham, 461.

(18) Young, 47.