The true story behind Mary & George

And not far away, in the Abbey’s St Nicholas Chapel, lies (in both senses) his mother. Though her grave is more modest, the inscription she commissioned on her own behalf tells us that she was “descended from five of the most powerful kings of Europe, by five direct descents”.

But who are these noble subjects? They are Mary and George Villiers, the focus of Sky TV’s lavish new period drama, Mary & George – a series inspired by The King’s Assassin, my non-fiction book about them both.

Their story comes from the Jacobean age, which may be the reason Mary and George are not better known. The Jacobeans have tended to get lost in the margins of British history, eclipsed by the Tudors. The confusing name doesn’t help. It refers to Jacob, the Latin form of James, the king who presided over the period – strictly, James VI of Scotland and I of England – because he was the sixth of that name to rule Scotland and, following the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, the first to rule England.

But get past that nominative jumble, and you find an age of wonders: of artistic innovation, new forms of popular entertainment, Shakespeare at the height of his powers, the birth of Britain’s global empire, the rise of corporate finance, the formulation of key modern scientific and medical ideas and, of course, the King James Bible.

Meanwhile, in rural England, accelerating trends in the enclosure of common land, new agricultural methods and rapid urbanisation were disrupting social order.

This was Mary’s world. She might have later claimed royal descent, but she was born around 1570 in the Leicestershire village of Glenfield to a local squire. A probably meagre education led her to becoming companion and domestic servant to the wife of a richer relative. There she met Sir George Villiers, a local landowner and MP. They were married by 1591 and quickly had four children (plus one who died in infancy). George, her second son, was born in 1592.

Sir George was ambitious. He had acquired his knighthood by dubious means and spent lavishly on furthering his career. But he died in 1606, probably of the plague, leaving Mary with enormous debts. With characteristic boldness, she married one of her late husband’s debtors, an octogenarian former Sheriff of Nottingham. However, relations quickly soured and, on his deathbed, he disowned her and her children.

A shrewdly chosen replacement was quickly found: Sir Thomas Compton, a loyal, loving log merchant. Sir Thomas had royal connections through his brother, a glamorous star of the Accession Day tilts (jousts). Finally, she had the platform she needed to achieve her ultimate goal: getting one of her children into King James’s court.

It’s hard to appreciate the audaciousness of her plan – and not just because of the yawning gap in social rank. James was a nervous, stand-offish monarch. Dubbed the “cradle king”, he inherited the throne as a baby and was, as he later put it, “nourished in fear”. His estranged father, Lord Darnley, was married only briefly to his mother Mary, Queen of Scots, from 1565 to 1567, before he was murdered within months of his son’s birth. This led to his mother abdicating in her son’s favour and fleeing to England, where her cousin Queen Elizabeth had her imprisoned then beheaded.

Fear was further nourished after he succeeded to the English throne. Just two years into his reign, there was an attempt to blow him up – the infamous Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The king responded by surrounding himself with a protective retinue of young, trusted Scottish men. “The Scottish monopolise his princely person,” complained a disgruntled English MP, “standing like mountains betwixt the beams of his grace and us”.

However, in 1614, chinks of light appeared. James’s relationship with his closest favourite, the moody, volatile Robert Kerr (or Carr), was fraying. Sensing an opportunity, a group of nobles scrambled to find an English replacement. Mary and George’s moment had come. A relentless programme of grooming and education had transformed her second son into a comely young gentleman. In 1614, she procured him a role as cup bearer at a banquet for the King of Denmark, James’s bibulous brother-in-law. Within six months George was in the royal bedchamber – and within the year the royal bed.

So began Mary and George’s relentless climb up the aristocratic and political ladder, culminating in 1623 with him becoming Duke of Buckingham, a rank usually reserved for the royal family. Mary, meanwhile, had been made a countess, and became one of the few women whose company and views the king valued.

Behind this astonishing rise was a fascinating love triangle between James, George and Mary – a passionate, volatile and ultimately fatal affair. This is what caught the eye of Liza Marshall of Hera Pictures, Mary & George’s producer. It also lies at the heart of the bawdy, funny, flamboyant and – in my view – deeply humane TV scripts written by DC Moore.

And, full disclosure: there’s full disclosure – particularly when it comes to sex. There are suggestive hints about the physical nature of James’s and George’s relationship in the letters they exchanged (George, for example, recalling their times together when “the bed’s head could not be found between the master and his dog”). But there is no way of knowing what actually happened in the royal bedchamber – leaving plenty of scope for the imagination.

As historical adviser to the series, I made it clear that, for me, history should inspire – not contain – the drama. Bridgerton’s bold decision to make this explicit in the casting and storytelling was refreshing, but it is a tradition that goes back to the BBC’s 1970s masterpiece I, Claudius (described by the New York Times as “Imperial Rome writ large and perverse”). History provides the stage, not the script, to explore themes such as ambition, power, love, death and social identity. It also helps remind us of names that have been forgotten. At the foot of George’s Westminster Abbey memorial stands a figure representing Fame. Stepping boldly towards us, her outstretched arm should be carrying the trumpet she used to proclaim her hero’s name, but someone pinched it (along with her wings, apparently). With this new series, perhaps Fame will take flight again, and her trumpet blare out a reminder of Mary and George’s extraordinary legacy. The playwright and poet James Shirley wrote George’s epitaph:

Here lies the best and worst of Fate,

Two kings’ delight, the people’s hate,

The courtiers’ star, the kingdom’s eye,

A man to draw an Angel by.

Fear’s despiser, Villiers’ glory,

The Great man’s volume, all time’s story.

Mary & George continues Tuesday 9.00pm Sky Atlantic.
The King’s Assassin: The Fatal Affair of George Villiers and James 1 by Benjamin Woolley (Macmillan)