This is John Batchel, speaking to Claire Jackson, the historian and professor of history at Cambridge,

whose new book is The Mirror of Britain, which is descriptive of a series of gems on a hat worn by James I,

James I, 6th of Scotland, who takes over Great Britain, invents it, from Elizabeth in 6003.

Here, a scene that is extraordinary, Hollywood-like, James's son Charles, and the Duke of Buckingham,

a cavalier character, if there ever was what, decide to go to

Spain on their own, to find a wife for Charles, to resolve conflicts having to do with Roman Catholic

and Protestant, on their own. Here, Claire describes it.

It's completely out of the future.

Claire Jackson, the mayor of Britain.

Not at all.

It's one of the things that I wanted to include,

because normally it's a kind of seen as an idiosyncratic footnote, but it is jaw-dropping. There's been this whole discussion for many years that one of the

ways in which James will settle these big Protestant Catholic divisions in Europe is to marry his

daughter to a Protestant and to marry his son to a Catholic Spanish Hapsburg, and that will

solve the problem. A lot of people don't like this idea, and the Spanish are quite keen to sort of

string James along. But then suddenly out of the blue, Charles, as Prince of Wales, when he's 22, 23,

decides that he should just go and land up in Madrid in a very kind of chivalrous way. James tries to dress it up as

well, I suppose I went to Denmark and your grandfather went to France, but they only went after a

marriage had been agreed. They didn't do what Charles and Buckingham do, which is defy every

punctilio of diplomatic etiquette, shock the Spanish and end up virtually being imprisoned in Madrid

for six months. Did they have bodyguards? Did they take it?

No, no, no. They donned false beards, called themselves

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