Mary & George: homosexual relationships in the time of King James I were forbidden – but not uncommon

By Fiona McCall, University of Portsmouth

The Sky TV series Mary & George tells the story of the Countess of Buckingham, Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), who moulded her son George (Nicholas Galitzine) to seduce King James I. She believed that, as the king’s lover, her son could become wealthy and wield power and influence.

No one identified as a “homosexual” in King James’s time (1566-1625). The word was only coined in the Victorian period and sexuality was not used to construct identities as it is today.

There was also a more fluid concept of gender. Male and female bodies were seen as fundamentally the same, with sexual differences determined by the way bodily humours (fluids) flowed through them.

A man who desired sex with other men was seen as having an imbalance in his humours – and was blamed for failing to control it.

Sexual acts between men were forbidden by the church, citing passages from the the Bible. Corinthians 6:9 classed the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” among the “unrighteous” who would not inherit the kingdom of God.

The puritan theologian William Perkins, writing in 1591, itemised “strange pleasures about generation, prohibited in the word of God”. This included sexual acts with beasts, devils and members of the same sex.

It was sometimes thought that men who had sex with men would give birth to monsters. Sodomites (people who engaged in anal sex) were said to be the offspring of witches having sex with devils.

https://youtu.be/b9qrcRGfXug?si=G9hUXyQyml-exeIS

Sodomy on trial

Originally under the jurisdiction of the church courts, in 1533 sodomy or “buggery” became a secular crime subject to the death penalty. The offender “not having God before his eyes” was said to have “devilishly” and against “almighty god” and the “order of nature” committed the “destestible” sin of sodomy “not to be named amongst Christians”.

This sort of phrasing was usually reserved for the most heinous offences such as witchcraft, blasphemy and treason.

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