page_title: Anne of Denmark
section_title: Custody of Prince Henry
hierarchical_section_title: Anne of Denmark / Relationship with James / Custody of Prince Henry
caption_attribution_description: English: Prince Henry Frederick, eldest son of James VI &amp; I and Anne of Denmark, (Palazzo Reale, Turin). Français&#160;: Le Prince Henri-Frédéric Stuart, fils aîné de Jacques Ier d'Angleterre et de Anne de Danemark.
context_page_description: Anne of Denmark was Queen consort of Scotland, England, and Ireland by marriage to King James VI and I.
  The second daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark, Anne married James in 1589 at age 14 and bore him three children who survived infancy, including the future Charles I. She demonstrated an independent streak and a willingness to use factional Scottish politics in her conflicts with James over the custody of Prince Henry and his treatment of her friend Beatrix Ruthven. Anne appears to have loved James at first, but the couple gradually drifted and eventually lived apart, though mutual respect and a degree of affection survived.
  In England, Anne shifted her energies from factional politics to patronage of the arts and constructed her own magnificent court, hosting one of the richest cultural salons in Europe. After 1612, she suffered sustained bouts of ill health and gradually withdrew from the centre of court life. Though she was reported to have been a Protestant at the time of her death, evidence suggests that she may have converted to Catholicism at some point in her life.
  Historians have traditionally dismissed Anne as a lightweight queen, frivolous and self-indulgent.
context_section_description: Anne soon learned that she would have no say in her son's care. James appointed as head of the nursery his former nurse Helen Little, who installed Henry in James' own oak cradle. Most distressingly for Anne, James insisted on placing Prince Henry in the custody of John Erskine, Earl of Mar at Stirling Castle, in keeping with Scottish royal tradition.
  In late 1594, she began a furious campaign for custody of Henry, recruiting a faction of supporters to her cause, including the chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane. Nervous of the lengths to which Anne might go, James formally charged Mar in writing never to surrender Henry to anyone except on orders from his own mouth, "because in the surety of my son consists my surety", nor to yield Henry to the Queen even in the event of his own death. Anne demanded the matter be referred to the Council, but James would not hear of it. After public scenes in which James reduced her to rage and tears over the issue, Anne became so bitterly upset that in July 1595 she suffered a miscarriage. Thereafter, she outwardly abandoned her campaign, but it was thought permanent damage had been done to the marriage. In August 1595, John Colville wrote: "There is nothing but lurking hatred disguised with cunning dissimulation betwixt the King and the Queen, each intending by slight to overcome the other." Despite these differences, Anne and James visited the Prince at Stirling in December 1595 and returned to Holyrood Palace to celebrate her 21st birthday. They had six more children. Anne extended and rebuilt Dunfermline Palace, in 1601 preparing a lodging for her daughter Princess Elizabeth, but the princess remained at Linlithgow Palace on the king's orders. Her younger sons Charles and Robert were allowed to stay with her at Dunfermline and Dalkeith Palace.
  Anne saw a belated opportunity to gain custody of Henry in 1603 when James left for London with the Earl of Mar to assume the English throne following the death of Elizabeth I. Pregnant at the time, Anne descended on Stirling with a force of "well-supported" nobles, intent on removing the nine-year-old Henry, whom she had hardly seen for five years; but Mar's wife and son would allow her to bring no more than two attendants with her into the castle. The obduracy of Henry's keepers sent Anne into such a fury that she suffered another miscarriage: according to David Calderwood, she "went to bed in anger and parted with child the tenth of May."
  When the Earl of Mar returned with James' instructions that Anne join him in the Kingdom of England, she informed James by letter that she refused to do so unless allowed custody of Henry. This "forceful maternal action", as historian Pauline Croft describes it, obliged James to climb down at last, though he reproved Anne for "froward womanly apprehensions" and described her behaviour in a letter to Mar as "wilfulness".
  After a brief convalescence from the miscarriage, Anne travelled from Stirling to Edinburgh accompanied by several English ladies who hoped to join her court, including Lucy, Countess of Bedford and Frances Howard, Countess of Kildare.  Anne duly travelled south with Prince Henry, their progress causing a sensation in England. Lady Anne Clifford recorded that she and her mother killed three horses in their haste to see the Queen, and that when James met Anne at Dingley Hall in Northamptonshire, "there was such an infinite number of lords and ladies and so great a Court as I think I shall never see the like again."
caption: Prince Henry Stuart, c. 1608, by Robert Peake the Elder
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