The correspondence collections of the diplomats William Trumbull and Sir Dudley Carleton have been described as 'the basic starting place for any study of Jacobean England', yet historians have tended to simply ransack their letters for facts for political history. For the first time, this thesis places the selection and readership of news in Trumbull's and Carleton's letters in the vitally important context of their own private interests and ideological perspectives. At the same time the thesis takes an innovative approach to diplomatic sources which have previously been used simply to understand the minutiae of foreign policy, and instead advances richly documented arguments about the ways in which news and rumour were circulated, scrutinised and interpreted during the early Stuart period. It investigates the manipulation and suppression of diplomatic information, shedding light on the process of Jacobean foreign policy decision making. It explores the issue of government secrecy and the interception of letters, as well as the rhetorical ploys through which individuals expressed potentially dangerous opinions in a 'plausibly deniable' manner. It examines the ways in which contemporaries scrutinised royal actions and their sometimes exaggerated suspicions of royal dissimulation, as well as shedding light on the 'performative' nature of early Stuart kingship. At the same time, this thesis investigates the largely overlooked subject of political rumours, examining the ways in which they were authenticated and believed as well as how they became distorted and what this can tell us about contemporary attitudes and ways of reasoning about the news. It will also explore the self-fulfilling potential of rumours and the extent to which they were used as weapons in court and international politics, as well as shedding light on contemporary attempts to attribute and understand them. The richness of Trumbull's and Carleton's correspondence, and the breadth of themes and questions it allows us to address, mean that this thesis offers much richer and fuller case studies for understanding the dissemination and interpretation of news and rumour than have been attempted thus far.

This thesis explores how James I performed and represented his royalty in two key areas. The first is his engagement with the European tradition of magnificence, which was a central aspect of Renaissance court culture, in such areas as public appearance and liberality. The second is his self-representation in his writings. James prioritised verbal over visual forms of self-representation and portrayed himself as a Writer-King, and these are amongst the most distinctive aspects of his kingship. The thesis examines a range of primary sources, principally James’s writings but also contemporary responses to the king’s self-representation, such as letters and ambassadorial reports, and engages with other critical and historical studies. The gaps and misapprehensions in accounts of James that this thesis contributes towards rectifying derive from several general tendencies. There has been an over-reliance on the early historiography of James, a lack of work on the Scottish and European contexts for his self-representation in England, and little attention paid to his writings. This thesis combines the close reading of the ‘literary’ approach with the attention to context of the ‘historical’ approach, placing the discussion of James’s self-representation within the cultural and political contexts of Scotland and England, and considering his cultural and political engagement with continental Europe. It has four main chapters, one on James’s background in Scotland, one on his performance of the role of magnificent king in England, and two on the writings he wrote or republished in England. The discussion reveals that in Scotland James developed tendencies, strategies, and anxieties that would continue into his English reign, and argues that negative perceptions of him in England derived largely from a clash between the style he had developed and the expectations of his new subjects. It examines James’s attempts to combine authorship and authority and reveals their problematic relationship. The discussion suggests that James was aware of the importance of effective self-representation, but his style, the clash of expectations, and problems inherent in the representation of royalty, meant that his attempts to reinforce his image risked undermining and demystifying the king.

Arthur Ingram and Lionel Cranfield were part of the early modern phenomenon of social mobility, rising from humble merchants to titled gentlemen in one generation. Cranfield, especially, reached significant heights in a matter of years. Despite the fact both men have merited biographies which chart their commercial and political careers, little attention has been paid to their lives outside of the political sphere leaving room for an analysis of their family and personal estates and the extent to which they utilised their houses in their self-projection. The originality of this thesis lies in its comparison of the two men which not only highlights their dependency on each other and mutual advertisement of each other’s image, but also opens up the question of regional disparity in house building as Ingram’s country estates were situated in Yorkshire whereas Cranfield’s were mainly close to London. The first chapter introduces the issues of social mobility, self-fashioning, and regionality, provides a literature review and explains the methodology employed. Chapter 2 looks at the careers and families of Ingram and Cranfield before examining the ways in which they furthered their ascent through the fashioning of their attire, education and learning, and social networks. The thesis then focuses on the houses of both men, with Chapters 3 and 4 considering how they built and styled their houses. Chapter 5 examines the craftsmen and materials employed by Ingram and Cranfield on their building programmes and in particular the geographical location of their houses. Chapter 6 discusses the way Ingram and Cranfield furnished their residences and how their households were related to the local community, particularly in terms of hospitality. The gardens and grounds that surrounded their houses are the subject of Chapter 7. The thesis concludes with an evaluation of the significance of Ingram’s and Cranfield’s houses in the self-projection of their image and how far the geographical location of their residences affected how successful this was.