In early March 1625, King James I fell ill with what was initially diagnosed as a mild fever. His physicians were not unduly concerned but, contrary to expectations, the fever did not abate or follow the predicted course. Although James was usually reluctant to take medicine, it emerged that on becoming unwell he had imbibed a ‘drink or syrope’ supplied by his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, ‘without the consent or knowledge of onye of the doctours’. Buckingham had also arranged for supposedly therapeutic plasters to be applied to James’s breast, but these too were very far from bringing about any improvement. As James’s condition worsened, Buckingham’s intervention came in for criticism from those in attendance in the sickroom, much to the indignation of the duke himself. After suffering from dreadful diarrhoea and excreting ‘very many black ejections’, James died on 27 March. The doctors’ postmortem concluded that ‘alienating and rotting humours’ within him had led to fatal results. As for Buckingham, he appeared ‘sorrowe it selfe’ at his master’s death. 

A year later Parliament set about Buckingham’s impeachment. James’s son, who had succeeded his father as Charles I, was as devoted to Buckingham as his father had been, but the duke’s disastrous foreign policy and military failures had ensured that by early 1626 almost everyone else in the kingdom regarded