Weldon was clerk of the kitchen to James I and afterwards clerk of the Green Cloth.  He was knighted in 1617, and accompanied James to Scotland in that year, but was dismissed from his place at court for his satire on the Scots.  He took the side of the parliament in the Civil War.  The dedication to Lady Elizabeth Sidley (first printed in the second edition) states that the work ’treads too near the heeles of truth, and these Times, to appear in publick’.  According to Anthony a Wood she had suppressed the manuscript, which was stolen from her.  Weldon had died before it was printed.  The answer to it called Aulicus Coquinariae describes it as ’Pretended to be penned by Sir A.W. and published since his death, 1650’.

Other works of the same kind, though of inferior value, are Sir Edward Peyton’s The Divine Catastrophe of The Kingly Family Of the House of Stuarts, 1652, and Francis Osborne’s Traditionall Memoyres on The Raigne of King James, 1658.  They were printed together by Sir Walter Scott in 1811 under the title The Secret History of the Court of James the First, a collection which contains the historical material employed in The Fortunes of Nigel.

Though carelessly written, and as carelessly printed, Weldon’s character of James is in parts remarkably vivid.  It was reprinted by itself in Morgan’s Pboenix Britannicus, 1732, pp. 54-6; and it was incorporated in the edition of Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier published in 1792:  see The Retrospective Review, 1821, vol. iii, pt. ii, pp. 378-9.

There is a valuable article on Weldon’s book as a whole in The Retrospective Review, 1823, vol. vii, pt.  I.

PAGE 4, l. 6. before he was born, probably an allusion to the murder of Rizzio in Mary’s presence.

l. 11.  The syntax is faulty:  delete ‘and’?

On James’s capacity for strong drinks, compare Roger Coke’s Detection of the Court and State of England (1694), ed. 1719, vol. i, p. 78.

l. 27. that foul poysoning busines, the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, the great scandal of the reign.  Robert Ker, or Carr, created Viscount Rochester 1611 and Earl of Somerset 1613, had cast his eye on the Countess of Essex, and, after a decree of nullity of marriage with Essex had been procured, married her in December 1613.  Overbury, who had been Somerset’s friend, opposed the projected marriage.  On a trumped up charge of disobedience to the king he was in April 1613 committed to the Tower, where he was slowly poisoned, and died in September.  Somerset and the Countess were both found guilty in 1616, but ultimately pardoned; four of the accomplices were hanged.  Weldon deals with the scandal at some length in the main part of his work, pp. 61 ff.

l. 30. Mountgomery, Philip Herbert, created Earl of Montgomery 1605, succeeded his brother, William Herbert, as fourth Earl of Pembroke in 1630 (see No. 7).  To this ’most noble and incomparable paire of brethren’ Heminge and Condell dedicated the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, 1623.  Montgomery’s character is given by Clarendon, History, ed.  Macray, vol. i, pp. 74-5; and, as fourth Earl of Pembroke, vol. ii, pp. 539-41.