James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle

[1] He was knighted and taken into favour by James VI of Scotland, brought into England in 1603, treated as a "prime favourite" and made a gentleman of the bedchamber.

On 9 February 1608 he performed in the masque The Hue and Cry After Cupid at Whitehall Palace as a sign of the zodiac, to celebrate the wedding of John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington to Elizabeth Radclyffe.

Honora, Lady Hay was favourite of Anne of Denmark and they enjoyed the company of a Venetian diplomat and musician Giulio Muscorno.

[2] In February 1617 he presented a masque by Ben Jonson, Lovers Made Men, to the French ambassador Baron de Tour at his house in London.

In 1621 and 1622 he was sent to France to obtain peace for the Huguenots from Louis XIII, in which he was unsuccessful, and in September 1622 was created Earl of Carlisle.

In 1628, after the failure of the expedition to Rhe, he was sent to make a diversion against Cardinal Richelieu in Lorraine and Piedmont; he counselled peace with Spain and the vigorous prosecution of the war with France, but on his return home found his advice neglected.

His extravagance and lavish expenditure, his double suppers and costly entertainments, were the theme of satirists and wonder of society, and his debts were said at his death to amount to more than £80,000.

[13] On 2 July 1627 Carlisle obtained from the king a grant of all the Caribbean Islands, including Barbados, this being a confirmation of a former concession given by James I.

[2] A colonial plantation venture on Barbados was led in 1628 by Marmaduke Roydon, a prominent City of London merchant and one of Carlisle's major creditors.

His second wife, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, was involved in many conspiracies, or allegations thereof, during the English Civil War.