Leviathan: The Rise of Britain as a World Power. David Scott

approval he set about packing the Bedchamber with his friends, and got so many of his kin and clients jobs or sinecures in Ireland that it became almost his private fiefdom. Inevitably, he was deeply resented by those who were unable or unwilling to ride his coat-tails. And as always with court upstarts, he was despised by members of the ancient nobility for usurping what they saw as their rightful place in the king’s favour. As for James’s fawning upon such a creature, that worried contemporaries more for what it supposedly said about his fitness to govern than as a sign of perceived sexual deviance. Effeminacy was equated with wilfulness, an inability to govern one’s passions. In a political context it was associated with tyranny.

      The sight of James heaping affection and rewards on his minions was a major reason his English Parliaments were so unwilling to vote him taxes. Why, asked MPs, should the king be granted public money to squander on ‘private Favourites’?⁴¹