The unmarried Puritan preacher John Rainolds questioned the use of the phrase "with my body I thee worship" in the standard English wedding ceremony. King James openly teased him about this. He said, "Many a man speaks of Robin Hood who never shot his bow; if you had a good wife yourself, you would think that all the honor and worship you could do her would be well bestowed." He then spoke of his queen as "our dearest bedfellow."
In 1603 James wrote the following to Anne:
"...I thank God I carry that love and respect unto you which, by the law of God and nature, I ought to do to my wife and mother of my children. . . For the respect of your honorable earth and descent I married you; but the love and respect I now bear you for that ye are my married wife and so partaker of my honour, as of all my other fortunes... Where ye were a king's or cook's daughter ye must be all alike to me being one my wife."
D.H. Wilson wrote the following about King James's love poems to his wife:
"He remained infatuated with his bride, whose praises he sang in sonnets and in other verse. Her beauty, he wrote, has caused his love,
'Long smoldering as fire hidden among coals, to burst into sudden blaze.' She inspires his verse, and her approbation spurs him to preserve, though government brings stormy cares. But she is a sweet physician who can soothe and cure his ills."
In fact, James did something almost unique for a royal monarch. He taught that the king should be a moral person, faithful to his wife and should set a moral example for his people. It was common for kings to have a number of mistresses. In France the king's mistress was considered an official member of the royal court. In fact the lack of mistresses in King James's Court is often used as proof that he was a homosexual. However a lack of mistresses is also a sign of a godly man leading a clean moral life.
James further writes:
"Marriage is one of the greatest actions that a man does all his time." "When you are married, keep inviolably your promise made to God in your marriage, which all stands in doing of one thing. And abstaining from another, to treat her in all things as your wife and the half of yourself, and to make your body (which then is no more yours but property hers) common with none other. I trust I need not to insist there to dissuade you from filthy vice of adultery remember only what solemn promise you made to God at your marriage." And for your behavior to your wife, the Scripture can best give you counsel therein. Treat her as your own flesh, command her as her lord, cherish her as your helper, rule her as your pupil, please her in all things reasonable, but teach her not to be curious in things that belong not to her. You are the head, she is your body, it is your office to command and hers to obey, but yet with such a sweet harmony as she should be as ready to obey as you to command, as willing to follow as you to go before, your love being wholly knit unto her, and all her affections lovingly bent to follow your will."
James repeatedly taught the importance of morality and marriage. James wrote in Basilicon Doron:
"But the principal blessing that you can get of good company will stand, in your marrying of a godly and virtuous wife. . . being flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. . . Marriage is the greatest earthlv felicity. .. without the blessing of God you cannot look for a happy marriage."
James instructed his son:
"Keep your body clean and unpolluted while you give it to your wife whom to only it belongs for how can you justly crave to be joined with a Virgin if your body be polluted? Why should the one half be clean, and other defiled? And suppose I know, fornication is thought but a venial sin by the most part of the world, yet remember well what I said to you in my first book regarding conscience, and count every sin and breach of God's law, not according as the vain world esteems of it, but as God judge and maker of the law accounts of the same: hear God commanding by the mouth of Paul to abstain from fornication, declaring that the fornicator shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven, and by the mouth of John reckoning out fornication among other grievous sins that declares the commiters among dogs and swine." James notes the end thereof is a "man given over to his own filthy affections."
Because of King James's strong moral teaching and personal example, Disraeli wrote: "James had formed the most elevated conception of the virtues and duties of a monarch." Few English monarchs used the moral authority of the throne to teach morality and demonstrate it by example. Those who did, like King James and Queen Victoria, generated great resentment from those who were convicted by their moral teachings. In both cases, after their death, their enemies attacked them with vicious moral slanders. The real King James was an outstanding moral example and a clear moral teacher. In neither case was there any evidence to back up their accusations. King James pointed out how many civil wars were started by the illegitimate sons of kings. He pointed out how many innocent lives could have been saved if kings had been moral people.
