“May They Associate”: Decoding an Illuminated Book Designed for King James VI in Paris by Agents of Mary, Queen of Scots

This article focuses on one of the many hundreds of surviving books acquired or intended for the Scottish and English libraries of King James VI and I. Many are arrestingly beautiful material objects. Yet, even among these riches, this book stands out for its overlooked artistic and political significance. A thorough analysis reveals its importance for the study of title pages as “outstanding witnesses for the history of the early modern cosmos of images”.¹ The book repeatedly surfaced in the collections of some of the greatest French bibliophiles of the nineteenth century: Ambroise Firmin-Didot; Charles-Alexandre, third marquis de Ganay; and Eugène and Auguste Dutuit.² In 2016 it featured as the final item in an exhibition at the Musée des Antiquités in Rouen, Trésors enluminés de Normandie: Une (re)découverte.³ Despite these appearances and its residence since 1902 in the public collection of the Petit Palais, Paris, the book has never been addressed in the scholarship on its intended recipient, King James VI and I.

The book in question is a copy of Henri Estienne’s second edition of the collected works of the ancient Greek author Xenophon, printed in 1581.⁴ I argue that, far from being a straightforward presentation copy from its printer, as is sometimes believed, it was commissioned and designed for James in Paris around 1581–82 by agents of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. Analysis of the illuminated texts and emblems on its complex title page shows that Mary’s most famous emblem was reworked into a new design with the aim of promoting her plan for joint rule, or “Association”, with her son. I discuss the scheme and execution of the volume in terms of meaning, design, artistry, and cost, bringing to light the role of the little-known John Gordon, a Scotsman in Paris of dubious morals but emblematic expertise. These findings provide new evidence not only for the rich and interconnected visual culture of Jacobean Scotland and France, but also for the teenage King James’s own aptitude and interest in the interpretation of text integrated with visual imagery.

The book’s editor-printer Henri Estienne was the most famous humanist scholar-printer of his era. By the time of its publication in 1581, he was in dire straits financially because of the enormous cost of printing two landmark works of scholarship. These were his five-volume Greek thesaurus, Thesaurus Graecae linguae (1572); and his edition of Plato’s collected works (1578), the second volume of which he had dedicated to King James VI. Estienne’s financial precarity may have also prompted him to dedicate his new edition of Xenophon to James. In 1579 James had rewarded the Protestant composer Jean Servin with 100 gold crowns after Servin had dedicated his printed psalm settings to him, commissioned a luxuriously bound set, and personally transported them to Scotland for presentation.⁵ Estienne had probably heard of James’s generosity to Servin. They both worked on the psalm paraphrases of George Buchanan, James’s tutor, and were also both residents of Geneva, where Estienne’s new edition of Xenophon’s works was printed.⁶ It has usually been assumed from its ornate decoration that the copy of the book analysed here was the dedication copy, sent to James by Estienne.⁷ Two pieces of evidence raise questions about this assumption. The first is the copy’s distinctively Parisian “fanfare” binding, discussed in more detail below (fig. 1). High-profile presentation copies bound in Geneva were generally bound in a different style by workshops such as the Geneva Kings’ Bindery, which was chosen by Jean Servin for his presentation set for King James (fig. 2).⁸ The second piece of evidence reveals itself when we open the book to find not Estienne’s printed title page (fig. 3) but richly illuminated images surrounding a poem addressed to James by a “John Gordon, Scotsman” (fig. 4). Why would Henri Estienne, a capable poet, send a copy of his Xenophon to be bound in Paris and order his own name and printer’s device to be replaced with a poem written by someone else? His printer’s device depicting an olive tree had been passed down the family as a powerful commercial and cultural symbol of the Estienne printing dynasty. Hélène Cazes has noted that “la sobriété de la mise en page, sans cadre ni couleur” (the sobriety of the page layout, with neither border nor colour) was an important visual signifier of an Estienne edition.⁹ This densely illuminated title page could not therefore be more un-Estienne. The reason for the incongruity is probably that the book was not a straightforward dedication copy from Estienne but a complex political gift designed by Gordon.

A closer look reveals that the printed title page is present beneath the decoration, and that a blank sheet of paper has been pasted over it as a base for the illumination (fig. 5). The only element that has been preserved from the printed page is the work’s title, but even its printed letters have been painted over in gold on a veined red ground imitating a marble tablet. The rest of the printed page has been replaced by a complex design of emblems and mottoes. Half the page is now taken up by Gordon’s thirty-six-line neo-Latin poem written in gold on an azure ground, within a triumphal arch. To the left is Hercules with his characteristic Nemean lion skin and club, while to the right is another symbol of ancient Greek heroism: the Argo, the ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts. The content is remarkably beautiful but relatively unsurprising so far, its classical imagery well suited to an edition of Xenophon being sent to a young, elite male recipient. However, at the top of the page is a rather more unusual set of images and mottoes. In the top corners of the page are two crowns outlined in gold and composed of golden stars, and between them are two Latin mottoes: “Coeant simul” (May they join together at the same time) and “Prima fruitur speratq[ue] secundam” (He/she enjoys the first and hopes for the second).

The identity and personal contacts of the poem’s author clarify the meaning of these mottoes. The poem’s heading reads “Ad Iacobum VI Scot Regem in Xenophontem ab Henrico Stephano illi dicatum Io. Gordonus Scot” (John Gordon, Scotsman, to James VI King of Scotland in the Xenophon dedicated to him by Henry Stephanus [i.e., Henri Estienne]). Gordon was the grandson of an illegitimate daughter of King James IV of Scotland and therefore a blood relation of both Mary, Queen of Scots, and King James VI.¹⁰ He was also an extremely slippery character. A report commissioned by William Cecil concluded of his spying and double-dealing that “his custom was to dine with the one and sup with the other, making his profit of both, and making both privy of the other’s counsels”.¹¹ Gordon used his classical learning to curry royal favour by writing panegyrics. He wrote in Latin in support of Mary, which prompted her to ask the archbishop of Glasgow James Beaton, her ambassador in France, to advance Gordon his yearly pension in 1571.¹² Mary’s financial support enabled him to study in Paris and serve as gentleman-in-waiting to Charles IX, Henri III, and Henri IV. He also spent time in her household in England.¹³

In France, Gordon served as a court expert on emblems and classical myths. The printed account of Henri III’s 1581 Balet comique de la Royne, a significant performance, ended with Gordon’s interpretation of its Circe mythography.¹⁴ This publication has been regarded as a significant influence on both Ben Jonson, whose copy survives, and Inigo Jones, who lifted text directly from Gordon for the masque Tempe Restored (1632).¹⁵ Gordon was also the person who recommended to Henri III an emblem of three crowns accompanied by the motto “Manet ultima caelo” (The last remains in heaven).¹⁶ Michael Bath and Nuccio Ordine have traced the evolution across Europe of this emblem, which was invented by or for Henri’s sister-in-law, the eighteen-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, and which first appeared on a jeton minted for her in 1560 (fig. 6).¹⁷ She later embroidered it into the hangings of her bed of state, which was sent to James in 1587.¹⁸ The upper portion of the title page of James’s Xenophon must be another interpolation of this emblem and its accompanying mottoes. Mary’s 1560 jeton shows two of the three crowns as real crowns, while the third is made of stars. The motto on the jeton reads “Aliamque moratur” (And she awaits another). As mentioned earlier, the Xenophon title page depicts two star crowns with the motto “Prima fruitur speratq[ue] secundam” (He/she enjoys the first and hopes for the second). In both cases, the implied object of expectation, enjoyment, or hope is a crown. Bath has shown that the ambiguity is deliberate: it is what gave the emblem “the extraordinary political and rhetorical power which it had in the sixteenth century”.¹⁹ For Mary, the star crown could represent her claim to the throne of England and/or, less controversially, the expected reward for her piety after death.

What, then, do the two star crowns and mottoes represent in the book intended for her son? In 1581, the year in which the book was printed, Mary was planning what is known as the Association, a scheme for joint rule by her and James as co-monarchs. The Catholic monarchs of Europe would not recognise James as king without Mary’s permission. While in English captivity, she used this as leverage in her attempts to persuade her son to agree to her plan. The Association has been “typically overlooked or misunderstood: indeed, there is no proper scholarly account” of it.²⁰ It has recently been addressed in the context of the English succession by Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes, while the decryption of Association-related letters from Mary has provided new evidence.²¹ One of these letters, dated 20 October 1581, revealed Mary’s anxiety about the safe delivery of a crucial Association-related missive to James Beaton in Paris.²² The cryptographers did not identify the letter she mentioned.²³ It can now not only be identified but also connected to the design of the Xenophon title page. The letter in question must have been a letter of 28 August 1581, Mary’s commission to Beaton regarding the Association.²⁴ Fearing it lost, she sent him another letter on 28 October, explaining the Association’s constitutional innovations and practical arrangements in great detail over sixteen pages. She charged Beaton with negotiating her son’s agreement to her plan and even described her planned Association coinage: “there shall be on one side engraved the portraits of the faces of their majesties … with this inscription ‘Securitas publica’, or other such device which will be found fitly to denote and signify the said union and association”.²⁵ “Securitas publica” is exactly the motto used on the Xenophon title page, on one of the pedestals below the poem. This Association motto also provides the context for the second motto between the two star crowns: “Coeant simul” (May they join together at the same time; or, indeed, May they associate). The two star crowns, then, symbolise the hoped-for joint rule: a new transformation of Mary’s internationally famed emblem. Mary had stipulated in her letter to Beaton that James would need to be re-crowned, either actually or symbolically.²⁶

With this context in mind, we are now better equipped to interpret Gordon’s poem on the title page. In full, with my interlinear English translation, it reads:

Ad Iacobum VI Scot. Regem in Xenophontem
ab Henrico Stephano illi dicatum Io. Gordonus Scot.
John Gordon, Scotsman, to James VI King of Scotland
in the Xenophon dedicated to him by Henry Stephanus²⁷

Cecropii Xenophon dulcis populator Himetti,
Xenophon was a consumer of the Hymettian sweetness of Cecrops,²⁸
condidit actaeis dulcia mella favis:
he preserved sweet honey from Attic honeycombs:
illud opus Cyro normam exemplarque dicavit,
he dedicated that work to Cyrus as a standard and example
quo martem horrisonum quo regeretque togam:
of how to direct cacophonous war and wear the toga [of peace]:
caelatus tacitis fornix curvamina signis,
the arch carved on its vaulting with motionless symbols
regnandi leges fásque modósque notat:
signifies the laws, religious dictates, and methods of ruling:
accipe utrumque simul tibi, rex termagne, sacratum,
receive both of these dedications²⁹ together, great king,³⁰
his vitam et mores, his tua sceptra rege:
with these rule your life and customs, with these rule your kingdom:³¹
auratis sese pennis quae miscet Olympo,
it is Glory who stirs up the heavens with her golden wings,
Gloria, vocali quae ferit astra tuba:
who reaches the stars with her resounding trumpet:
illa est quae cineres superans et lurida fata,
it is she who, overcoming ashes³² and ghastly fortunes,
humanis animis fortia facta ciet:
sets in motion bold deeds through human spirits:
sustinet hanc magnis Victoria clara triumphis,
shining Victory sustains her through great triumphs,
illa docet trepidum vincere posse metum:
she teaches the fearful that it is possible to conquer fear:
illam suffulcit Virtus, quae fortis, et aequa,
Virtue holds her up, who is brave, and just,
quae prudens, animos temperat illecebris:
who is prudent, who holds minds back from temptations:
fulgent parte una pacis rediviva trophaea,
the renewed trophies of peace gleam on one side,
relligio, leges, eloquium, sophia:
religion, laws, speech, wisdom:
parte alia radiat victricis gloria dextrae,
on the other side shines the glory of the victorious right hand,
et robur vibrans fortiter arma manu:
and strength boldly brandishing weapons:
terminus utrinque est geminisque adama[n]te columnis
the terminal figure on either side is made of adamant in twin columns,
fert opus eximium, fulmina calcat humi:
it holds an extraordinary load, it bears down the crushing weight of a thunderbolt on the ground:
vim rapidam, subitos motus constantia vincit,
constancy overcomes swift force and sudden tumults,
tempus edax sistit versatilésque vices:
it halts devouring time and reversals of fortune:
illa basis gemino librans fundamine molem,
that pedestal balancing the weight on a twin foundation,
quae leges armis protegit, arma premens:
it protects laws with weapons, holding weapons:
illa ligat reges populis, regíque popellum,
it binds kings to peoples, and the masses to the king,
utrosque et puro continet officio:
it holds them together with pure duty:
sic meritus coelum Alcides post fortia facta,
thus Alcides³³ was worthy of heaven after brave deeds,
quaeque tulit Minyas per freta vasta ratis:
and the ship which carried the Minyans³⁴ through the immense seas:
pectore tanta imo rex magne haec munera conde,
treasure such valuable gifts as these deep in your heart, great king,
hic rebus portus sit statioque tuis:
may this be a haven and resting place from your affairs:
hinc decus et verae quaeras praeconia laudis,
from here may you seek honour and the publishing of true praise,
virtutisque viam celsa per astra petas:
may you seek the way of virtue through the lofty stars:
sic armis magno maior tibi gloria Cyro,
thus in arms there will be greater glory for you than for mighty Cyrus,
sic animos satures nectare Cecropio.
thus may you fill hearts with the nectar of Cecrops.

The poem’s framing device refers to Xenophon’s role as the biographer of Cyrus the Great of Persia. Gordon used it to signal his classical learning and flatter James’s own, assuming that he would understand the reference to the “sweetness of Hymmetos”, a mountain near Athens.³⁵ The sources for this reference were the works of the ancient Graeco-Roman writers Pliny, Pausanias, and Strabo, all of which were familiar to those with a Renaissance humanist education. Gordon could be confident that the young king had read these works during his intensely academic upbringing with his tutors, George Buchanan and Peter Young. Gordon’s performative erudition may have influenced James’s decision in 1603 to recall him from France to become dean of Salisbury and to praise him “with a speciall Encomion, that hee was a man well travelled in the Auncients”.³⁶ Gordon correctly judged that James would have read Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, one of the most influential works in the speculum principis, or “mirror for princes”, genre.³⁷ James’s childhood copy of the 1569 Basel edition of Xenophon survives,³⁸ as does Young’s record of a remark made by the young James when reading Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.³⁹ By describing Cyrus’s exemplarity as a leader in war and peacetime, Gordon set up a link to the “carved arch” with its corresponding two sides. The trophies on the right represent peace, including an armillary sphere, a globe, music books, and musical instruments. Those on the left represent martial victory. They include weaponry, armour, and what appears to be the head of a tapir. Tapirs had been described by several European authors by the early 1580s. André Thevet had mentioned them in his Les singularitéz de la France antarctique.⁴⁰ James had owned a copy of this book since childhood, and Mary, Queen of Scots, reproduced images from another copy of it in her embroidery, including a toucan.⁴¹ There are no securely identified European visual representations of tapirs from before 1594.⁴² If this is a tapir, it may symbolise, given the military context, the perceived glories of colonial expeditions, including those that had enabled Frenchmen such as Thevet to encounter tapirs in South America. The poem also tells us that the two figures perched atop the arch are the personifications of Glory, with trumpet, standing on Virtue, who is holding a gold crown rather than her customary laurel wreath.

It is noteworthy that although the poem explains every visual element below the title of the printed work, it does not address any of the imagery or mottoes at the top of the page connected to Mary’s famous emblem. A closer reading of the poem, however, suggests that Gordon directs James’s attention towards them in a more nuanced way. He interprets the surrounding images as portraying the benefits that Mary is offering James through the Association. Twin figures share the burdens of war and peace, providing a constancy that is capable of overcoming attack or unrest. Their two pedestals, one bearing the motto specified by Mary as her chosen wording to “denote and signify” the Association, emphasise how judicial and military strength together promote national stability and popular loyalty to rulers. Accompanying the motto are a crossed caduceus and a cornucopia, jointly symbolising peace and public felicity. The message is strengthened by the other pedestal, with its image of a crossed sword, rule, and fasces, signifiers of military power, rectitude, and public order and concord respectively.⁴³ The motto on this pedestal is “Leges armis, legibus arma” (Laws for weapons, weapons for laws).

By contrast, Hercules and the Argo may seem like unremarkable classical images rather than part of this political subtext. However, consider their position on the page: they are depicted in the sky to emphasise that they both became constellations; the Argo even has a covering of stars to show that it is the Argo Navis constellation.⁴⁴ Gordon concludes the poem by urging James to gain even greater glory than Cyrus by “seek[ing] the way of virtue through the lofty stars”. The Association emblems and mottos are quite literally written in the stars of this page, floating loftily in the heavens above Hercules and the Argo; the two crowns are made from stars. The “way of virtue” lies, then, in agreement to the Association, which will help James to become, like Hercules and the Argo, a heroic figure “worthy of heaven”.

This title page can therefore be interpreted as a work of symbolic propaganda designed to promote the Association to James. Beaton, who we know was acquainted with Gordon and facilitated his payments from Mary, may have delegated the production of the book to him. Gordon was ideally equipped for the task, for he had experience of writing royal panegyrics in Latin, expertise with royal emblems, and even knowledge of Parisian bookbinders. Henry Killigrew reported in 1573 that Gordon had “deceived a bookbinder in Paris of a good piece of money”.⁴⁵ The design is most likely his, given its novel interpolation of Mary’s emblem and its integration with the textual content of his poem. His use of the adjective “termagne” to address James in the poem may also be a clue to one of his sources of inspiration. John Elder, tutor to Lord Darnley, had published in 1555 The Copie of a Letter Sent in to Scotlande, his account of Philip II of Spain’s arrival in England, where he recorded that the spectacle featured verses including the words “ter magne Philippe”, “wrytten in a field blue, whiche Heroldes call azure, with faire Romaine letters of siluer”.⁴⁶ It is possible that Gordon, an interpreter of royal pageants, used a copy of Elder’s work as an inspiration for his title page, with its address to James as “rex termagne”, written on an azure field in fair Roman capital letters of gold.

Illustrated title pages are attracting increasing scholarly attention. In Gateways to the Book: Frontispieces and Title Pages in Early Modern Europe, Gitta Bertram, Nils Büttner, and Claus Zittel argue that they form “the via regia leading into early modern visual culture: they provide emblematic models and ideograms; they are the key to the worlds of cognition and imagination; they show patterns of perception, ordering and reasoning; they shape the collective memory”.⁴⁷ The design of the title page in James’s Xenophon shares some elements with the genre of “architectural” title pages that was popular in the late sixteenth century.⁴⁸ Unlike these others, however, it is not the result of homogeneous mass production via printing. Its aim is not to “shape the collective memory” but to shape the mind of one individual, King James VI. Its relationship to the text it precedes is also fundamentally different to that of most title pages. Following Gérard Genette’s approach to interpreting the textual structures of books, title pages are generally treated as “paratexts” that serve as thresholds to the text proper.⁴⁹ However, Gordon’s title page, the only section of the book that is coloured and illuminated, presents itself as the only part that matters. Rather than encouraging its reader to pass through the archway into Estienne’s text, it persuades them to stop, entranced, and study not only Gordon’s poem but also his emblematic design. Estienne’s printed dedication to James, lauding him as a Protestant champion, literally pales in comparison. Recent research on title pages has been grounded in the assumption that “all title pages and frontispieces have in common that they introduce a codex”.⁵⁰ Gordon’s extraordinary title page does not play an introductory or supporting role but reverses this dynamic and makes the codex a support for its illumination.

The political content of this page enables us to pinpoint its decoration with unusual precision. We are looking at the output of a professional miniaturist working in Paris, probably in 1581–82. Most Renaissance artists of this kind are unidentifiable today, but we do know the name of one important miniaturist working on high-level commissions in Paris in the 1580s.⁵¹ Guillaume Richardière was employed in 1586 to illuminate a printed missal for René de Lucinge, seigneur des Alymes, and in the following year to illuminate another missal (known from an itemised bill) and the gospel book of the Ordre du Saint-Esprit, a chivalric order founded by Henri III.⁵² The first book, which has survived, opens with writing in gold on an azure ground: “I, Guillaume Richardierre, illuminated the present missal … I completed it in five months, helped by two companions, without doing any other work”. He continues to say that the costs were “for the illumination only, one hundred and forty écus d’or soleil; the binding cost fifteen écus soleil; the blank missal, three écus soleil” (fig. 7).⁵³ One miniature survives from the book he illuminated for the Ordre du Saint-Esprit.⁵⁴ Its border of golden stars trailing orange and red tails on an azure ground is strikingly similar to the background of the upper portion of the Xenophon title page (fig. 8). It is possible that Richardière was employed to realise Gordon’s vision, but closer study, possibly with scientific analysis of pigments, will be necessary to prove this. Regardless, it is clear from the nuance and detail of the Xenophon title page—particularly the fine shading and hatching on the anatomy—that its illuminator was extremely skilled.

Also anonymous is the other expert artist who worked on the book: its binder. The book was bound in the fanfare binding style that was a specialism of high-end binders in Paris. It can be difficult to appreciate today quite how much skill was involved in creating a binding of this kind. To produce a fanfare design, binders used many individual metal tools to cover the book’s surface in complex geometric designs of interlocking shapes. They then surrounded these with additional gilt tooling of leafy branches.⁵⁵ Each design is entirely unique. In his study of fanfare bindings, Geoffrey Hobson has observed that, on average, only two per year have survived from their main period of production from around 1570 to 1588.⁵⁶ Fanfare bindings were among the most difficult designs to execute and would have been beyond the capabilities of most binders, even in Paris.⁵⁷ They were produced in limited numbers, at great cost, for an exclusive clientele. Many owners of fanfare bindings were members of the French royal family, particularly Catherine de’ Medici and Henri III.⁵⁸ James VI is one of only four foreign monarchs known to have possessed a fanfare binding and the only one known to have owned multiple fanfare bindings.⁵⁹

Very little archival evidence survives for sixteenth-century binderies, which generally did not sign their work. The binding on James’s Xenophon, like many other fanfare bindings, has been attributed to Nicolas and Clovis Eve simply on the basis that they were known to be working at the top end of the market in Paris at the time.⁶⁰ Rigorous analysis of bindings, however, requires closer examination of the individual tools used across different books to identify shared ones, which may indicate an origin in the same workshop. Hobson followed French scholars in sounding a note of caution on attributions to the Eves.⁶¹ Using a systematic analysis of tools on fanfare bindings, he was able to identify twenty-three from the same workshop. The presence of Henri III’s arms on some of them showed that they were the work of a royal binder.⁶² Among the twenty-three is James’s Xenophon, with its distinctive tool of a tiny walking bird linking it to this group (fig. 9).⁶³ Like the illuminator, the binder employed to work on James’s Xenophon was clearly among the best to be found.

We can deduce, then, that a significant amount of money was spent on creating this deluxe personalised book for James. However, its commissioners were able to limit their expenditure because of the specific political focus of its decoration; they did not pay for illumination beyond the title page. It seems unlikely that John Gordon, who was known as a constant borrower of money, would have been able or willing to pay for the book, its binding, and its decoration. It is more likely that Beaton provided the financial backing as part of his commission from Mary to advocate for the Association on her behalf. Enough money was spent on the book to attract James’s attention with its spectacular binding and dazzle him with its title page, but nothing further. Although the rest of the book functioned as a carrier for its extraordinary title page, its contents were likely also a deliberate choice. The 1581 Xenophon was probably selected precisely because it had been dedicated to James by Henri Estienne, an international leader of Protestant scholarship. He was a friend and printer to many of the learned Scots who had contributed to James’s upbringing. These included Henry Scrimgeour, who had been the first choice to tutor the young James.⁶⁴ Estienne praised Scrimgeour in the dedication as the scholar whose research had laid the foundations for his editions of Xenophon.⁶⁵ Estienne also corresponded and worked with George Buchanan and Peter Young, the two scholars appointed as James’s tutors; Young was also Scrimgeour’s nephew and keeper of James’s library. The 1581 Xenophon, printed by Estienne and dedicated by him to James, was therefore ideally suited to act as a Protestant Trojan horse for pro-Catholic propaganda.

The care that went into the book’s production tells us a great deal about what people expected of the young king’s ability to interpret complex visual media. Why invest so much time, money, and effort in an object if James would not be able to understand its message? The design of the title page shows that James was expected to be fully conversant not only with pre-existing political emblems, but also with how they could be reworked and redeployed in new contexts. James’s librarian recorded a number of emblem books in his childhood library by the authors Andrea Alciato (in Latin), Claude Paradin (in French and Latin), Paolo Giovio (a French translation), and Guillaume de la Perrière (in French).⁶⁶ The design of the Xenophon title page shows that, as he approached adulthood, James was expected to have absorbed their contents. The teenage James was not just an able student but also a teacher in the art of emblems. In 1584 the Scottish courtier and poet William Fowler wrote in a note to James that “whils I was teaching your maiestie the art of me[m]orye yow instructed me in poesie and imprese for so was yours, sic docens discam” (while I was teaching your majesty the art of memory, you instructed me in poetry and emblems for so was yours, thus may I learn while teaching).⁶⁷ As well as attesting to James’s knowledge and interest in emblems, the quotation is noteworthy in associating his understanding of “imprese” (emblems) with “poesie” (poetry).

James’s own use of an integrated approach to poetry and visual imagery is apparent in his printed works, particularly his 1584 double acrostic poem in the shape of a funeral urn, mourning the death of his cousin Esmé Stewart.⁶⁸ He also drew on his classical education for displays and gifts, including the heroic figures of Hercules and the Argo that feature on the Xenophon title page. In 1594 he collaborated with William Fowler to design the baptism of his son Prince Henry Frederick at Stirling. The most notable feature was the huge model ship, which contributed to James’s self-presentation as a “newe Jason”, to use Fowler’s words.⁶⁹ In 1590, when James was in Denmark for his honeymoon, he gave the University of Copenhagen a silver gilt cup as a gift of thanks for his visit there. Until now, scholars of King James have been unsure of the cup’s design, survival status, or condition.⁷⁰ While it was partially melted during the British Navy’s bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, the cup and its lid were rescued from the wreckage and eventually became one of the earliest items in the collection of the National Museum of Denmark.⁷¹ Standing atop the lid is the figure of Hercules, depicted holding a club and lion skin just as on the Xenophon title page (fig. 10). James clearly recognised that classical images and emblems provided a shared visual language when he was planning events and gifts aimed at an international audience.

It is difficult to say whether the copy of Xenophon’s works carefully decorated with classical imagery, Gordon’s poem, and his emblem designs ever reached James. His librarian, Peter Young, stopped recording new additions to his library around 1580.⁷² Documented sightings of this copy can be traced back to 1741, when the bibliographer Michel Maittaire printed the text of the poem, which he had “happened to read”, deep in the appendix of the final volume in his Annales typographici ab anno MDXXXVI.⁷³ Maittaire was French but resided in England from the late seventeenth century, so it is not clear where he saw the book. Given how much effort had gone into producing it, Gordon and his associates must have tried their best to deliver it to James. In May 1583 Francis Walsingham heard from the English ambassador in Paris that John Gordon would be employed as the French king’s “agent about ye Scot kynge”.⁷⁴ Gordon applied to Walsingham for a passport in December that year, explaining that he planned a three-month trip to Scotland via England because he had been away for eighteen years and was eager to meet James.⁷⁵ Negotiations for the Association largely took place between 1581 and the summer of 1583, so the plan may have been to secrete the book in an earlier shipment or embassy from France. Such transportations of goods were used as opportunities for Association-related spying and the transmission of documents. A 1581 shipment of sumptuous French apparel for James and Esmé Stewart, transported by one of Mary’s close associates, fell under the suspicion of the English ambassador to France.⁷⁶ He wrote that if a boat were to intercept “George Douglas and his merchandise it would profit somebody. There will be letters worth the sight”.⁷⁷ These suspicions soon boiled over in the Ruthven Raid, when James was held hostage by some of his pro-English and anti-Mary nobles. They were reported to have tortured Douglas, who confessed that he had addressed James “in this matter of Association”.⁷⁸

The presence of Mary’s chosen Association motto in the book, communicated to Beaton after Douglas’s departure from France, suggests that it was transported in a later shipment. It may have accompanied the gift of horses sent to James by the duc de Guise in May 1582; a spy reported that the horses were only a “countenance” for the intelligence-gathering mission of their courier.⁷⁹ It is also possible that the plan had been for the book to be given to James by the two French ambassadors who arrived to check on him in January 1583 during the Ruthven Raid. There were fears that the raiders might panic and kill James.⁸⁰ Henri III and Mary had both charged the ambassadors with congratulating James on being “associated with her in this crown, which would render the happy rule of the serene King her son very lawful”.⁸¹ James was already gaining a reputation as a master of political deception, so one of the ambassadors made a copy of his responses in writing for Mary. The ambassador acknowledged her instructions not to record the Association negotiations in writing but assured her that there was no harm in James keeping the original.⁸² James then sent a copy to Elizabeth to defend himself against accusations by the English ambassadors that he was keeping Association overtures secret from her.⁸³ In this context of intercepted correspondence and leaked negotiations, the Xenophon presentation copy may have been intended as a seemingly innocuous and purposefully ambiguous gift that could slip past James’s minders and Elizabeth’s spies.

In 1599, King James VI composed his own work in the mirror for princes genre: his Basilikon Doron. He informed his son Henry that “Zenophon, an old and famous writer … setteth down a faire patterne for the education of a young Kinge, under the supposed name of Cyrus”.⁸⁴ Did he have in mind, or even to hand, the stunningly beautiful copy of Xenophon designed for him by John Gordon? We may never know whether the book reached its intended recipient, but it does not prevent us from drawing useful conclusions from it. Analysis of its complex title page has shown that John Gordon was not simply the author of its poem but also the designer of its visual content. Michael Bath’s analysis of Gordon as a vector for the transmission of emblems between monarchs can now be extended from Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henri III to James VI, with an additional transformation of the emblem “celebrated as the very model of a perfect impresa” across Europe.⁸⁵ It is an important addition to Bath’s findings on the importance of emblems in Scottish decorative arts and architecture during this period.⁸⁶ Gordon’s poem, translated into English for the first time here, has also been revealed to be an integral part of the page, directing interpretation of the surrounding images.

Assessment of the quality and style of the illumination and binding has given us a sense of the investment of time and money required to transform the book into a deluxe gift object. By situating the title page in the context of the Association, this article has produced new evidence for the use of books as carriers of political imagery, as well as for the planning of the Association itself. In the febrile climate of fear and suspicion of the early 1580s, Mary’s agents appear to have conceived the Xenophon presentation copy as an alternative, subtler form of political overture. They would not have invested so much in the book’s production if they had not believed it would have some chance of success. It shows that, even as a teenager, James was expected to be adept in the interpretation of visual media. Studying emblem books was part of his education, and he emerged from the schoolroom at Stirling equipped to understand and engage in the ever-evolving flow of images that characterised and linked courts across Europe. It is vital that we bear this in mind when we consider him as King James VI and I. James had become an active participant in international European visual and material culture long before he transformed that of Elizabethan England.