Gossipy exposés of shenanigans at the heart of government are nothing new. The author, Sir Anthony Weldon (1583–1648), was a courtier of years of experience and standing; his account of court intrigues around the Stuart Kings James I (1603-1625) and Charles I (1625-1649) was written seemingly in the tense period leading up to the English Civil War in the 1640s, and for a private readership (the printed text was not published until several years into the Commonwealth period, when the monarchy had been abolished, and he himself had died).</p><br /><br />This text, known as the source for the summing up of James I as "the wisest fool in Christendom", gives us an insider's partisan, at times pruriently scurrilous, account of James's diplomatic manoeuvres to maintain peace with Spain and avoid involvement in foreign wars, and of the jockeying for position between English courtiers and those brought from Scotland by James, the factional intrigues and rivalries, the trading of office and reve
