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James VI and I
James VI of Scotland from the period 1587–1613, By Paulus van Somer (1576–1621)
King of Scots (more...)
Reign	24 July 1567 – 27 March 1625 (&0000000000000057.00000057 years, &0000000000000246.000000246 days)
Coronation	29 July 1567
Predecessor	Mary, Queen of Scots
Successor	Charles I
Regent	James Stewart, Earl of Moray Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox John Erskine, Earl of Mar James Douglas, Earl of Morton
King of England and Ireland (more...)
Reign	24 March 1603 – 27 March 1625 (&0000000000000022.00000022 years, &0000000000000003.0000003 days)
Coronation	25 July 1603
Predecessor	Elizabeth I
Successor	Charles I
Consort	Anne of Denmark
among others... Issue
Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia Charles I of England Robert Stuart, Duke of Kintyre
House	House of Stuart
Father	Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley
Mother	Mary, Queen of Scots
Born	19 June 1566(1566-06-19) Edinburgh Castle, Scotland
Died	27 March 1625 (aged 58) Theobalds House, England

James VI & I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scots as James VI from 1567 to 1625, and King of England and Ireland as James I from 1603 to 1625.

He became King of Scots as James VI on 24 July 1567, when he was just thirteen months old, succeeding his mother Mary, Queen of Scots. Regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1581.^[1]

Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture.^[2] James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597),^[3] True Law of Free Monarchies (1598),^[4] and Basilikon Doron (1599).^[5] Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom", an epithet associated with his character ever since.^[6]

Childhood

Birth

James Charles Stuart was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. James was a descendant of Henry VII of England through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, older sister of Henry VIII. Mary's rule over Scotland was insecure, for both she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by the Protestant population. Lord Darnley secretly allied himself with the rebels and murdered the Queen's private secretary, David Rizzio, just three months before James was born.^[7]

James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son of the monarch and heir-apparent, automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. He was baptised on 17 December 1566, according to Catholic rites, in a ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France (represented by John, Count of Brienne), Elizabeth I of England (represented by James’s aunt, Jean, Countess of Argyll), and Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (represented by Philibert du Croc, the French ambassador). Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, who she referred to as "a pocky priest", spit in the child's mouth, as was then the custom.^[8]

James's father, Henry, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at the Hamiltons' house, Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for Rizzio's death. Upon his father's death, James became Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross. Mary was already an unpopular queen, and her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Henry, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her.^[9] In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle; she never saw her son again. She was forced to abdicate on 24 July in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent.^[10]

Regencies

The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, "to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought"^[11] in the security of Stirling Castle.^[12] James was crowned King of Scots at the age of thirteen months at the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, on 29 July 1567.^[13] The sermon at the coronation was preached by John Knox. In accordance with the religious beliefs of most of the Scottish ruling class, James was brought up as a member of the Protestant Church of Scotland. The Privy Council selected George Buchanan, Peter Young, Adam Erskine and David Erskine as James’s preceptors or tutors. As the young king’s senior tutor, Buchanan subjected James to regular beatings but also instilled in him a lifelong passion for literature and learning.^[14] Buchanan sought to turn James into a god-fearing, Protestant king who accepted the limitations of monarchy, as outlined in his treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos.^[15][16] James learned to speak Greek, Latin and French, and was also schooled in Italian and Spanish. He later jokingly remarked that he could speak Latin before he could speak his native Scots.

In 1568 Mary escaped from prison, leading to a brief period of violence. The Earl of Moray defeated Mary's troops at the Battle of Langside, forcing her to flee to England, where she was subsequently imprisoned by Elizabeth. On 22 January 1570, Moray was assassinated by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, to be succeeded as regent by James's paternal grandfather, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, who a year later was carried fatally wounded into Stirling Castle after a raid by Mary's supporters.^[17] The next regent, John Erskine, 1st Earl of Mar, died soon after banqueting at the estate of James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, where he "took a vehement sickness", dying on 28 October 1572 at Stirling. Morton, who now took Mar's office, proved in many ways the most effective of James's regents,^[18] but he made enemies by his rapacity.^[19] He fell from favour when the Frenchman Esmé Stewart, Sieur d'Aubigny, first cousin of James's father Lord Darnley, and future Earl of Lennox, arrived in Scotland and quickly established himself as the first of James's powerful male favourites.^[20] Morton was executed on 2 June 1581, belatedly charged with complicity in Lord Darnley's murder.^[21] On 8 August, James made Lennox the only duke in Scotland.^[22] Then sixteen years old, the king was to remain under the influence of Lennox for about one more year.^[23]

Personal rule in Scotland

James in 1586, age 20

Although a Protestant convert, Lennox was distrusted by Scottish Calvinists, who noticed the physical displays of affection between favourite and king and alleged that Lennox "went about to draw the King to carnal lust".^[19] In August 1582, in what became known as the Ruthven Raid, the Protestant earls of Gowrie and Angus lured James into Ruthven Castle, imprisoned him,^[24] and forced Lennox to leave Scotland. After James was freed in June 1583, he assumed increasing control of his kingdom. He pushed through the Black Acts to assert royal authority over the Kirk and between 1584 and 1603 established effective royal government and relative peace among the lords, ably assisted by John Maitland of Thirlestane, who led the government until 1592.^[25] One last Scottish attempt against the king's person occurred in August 1600, when James was apparently assaulted by Alexander Ruthven, the Earl of Gowrie's younger brother, at Gowrie House, the seat of the Ruthvens.^[26] Since Ruthven was run through by James's page John Ramsay and the Earl of Gowrie was himself killed in the ensuing fracas, James's account of the circumstances, given the lack of witnesses and his history with the Ruthvens, was not universally believed.^[27]

In 1586, James signed the Treaty of Berwick with England. That and the execution of his mother in 1587, which he denounced as a "preposterous and strange procedure", helped clear the way for his succession south of the border.^[28] During the Spanish Armada crisis of 1588, he assured Elizabeth of his support as "your natural son and compatriot of your country",^[29] and as time passed and Elizabeth remained unmarried, securing the English succession became a cornerstone of James's policy.

Marriage

Anne of Denmark, by John de Critz, c. 1605.

Throughout his youth, James was praised for his chastity, since he showed little interest in women; after the loss of Lennox, he continued to prefer male company.^[30] A suitable marriage, however, was necessary to reinforce his monarchy, and the choice fell on the fourteen-year-old Anne of Denmark (born December 1574), younger daughter of the Protestant Frederick II. Shortly after a proxy marriage in Copenhagen on 20 August 1589, Anne sailed for Scotland but was forced by storms to the coast of Norway. On hearing the crossing had been abandoned, James, in what Willson calls "the one romantic episode of his life",^[31] sailed from Leith with a three-hundred-strong retinue to fetch Anne personally.^[32] The couple were married formally at the Bishop's Palace in Oslo on 23 November and, after stays at Elsinore and Copenhagen, returned to Scotland in May 1590. By all accounts, James was at first infatuated with Anne, and in the early years of their marriage seems always to have showed her patience and affection.^[33] But between 1593 and 1595, James was romantically linked with Anne Murray, later Lady Glamis, whom he addressed in verse as "my mistress and my love". The royal couple produced three surviving children: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died of exhaustion, after playing a game of "real tennis" having not fully recovered from pneumonia, in 1612, aged 18; Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia; and Charles, the future King Charles I of England. Anne died before her husband in March 1619.

Theory of monarchy

In 1597–98, James wrote two works, The True Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron (Royal Gift), in which he established an ideological base for monarchy. In the Trew Law, he sets out the divine right of kings, explaining that for Biblical reasons kings are higher beings than other men, though "the highest bench is the sliddriest to sit upon".^[34] The document proposes an absolutist theory of monarchy, by which a king may impose new laws by royal prerogative but must also pay heed to tradition and to God, who would "stirre up such scourges as pleaseth him, for punishment of wicked kings".^[35] Basilikon Doron, written as a book of instruction for the four-year-old Prince Henry, provides a more practical guide to kingship.^[36] Despite banalities and sanctimonious advice,^[37] the work is well written, perhaps the best example of James's prose.^[38] James's advice concerning parliaments, which he understood as merely the king's "head court", foreshadows his difficulties with the English Commons: "Hold no Parliaments," he tells Henry, "but for the necesitie of new Lawes, which would be but seldome".^[39] In the Trew Law James maintains that the king owns his realm as a feudal lord owns his fief, because kings arose "before any estates or ranks of men, before any parliaments were holden, or laws made, and by them was the land distributed, which at first was wholly theirs. And so it follows of necessity that kings were the authors and makers of the laws, and not the laws of the kings."^[40]

English throne

Proclaimed King of England

Scottish and English Royalty
House of Stuart
James VI & I
Henry, Prince of Wales
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia
Charles I
Robert, Duke of Kintyre

From 1601, in the last years of Elizabeth I's life, certain English politicians, notably her chief minister Sir Robert Cecil,^[41] maintained a secret correspondence with James in order to prepare in advance for a smooth succession. In March 1603, with the Queen clearly dying, Cecil sent James a draft proclamation of his accession to the English throne. Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March, and James was proclaimed king in London later the same day.^[42] As James headed south on April 3 with his courtiers and advisors, his new subjects flocked to see him, relieved that the succession had triggered neither unrest nor invasion.^[43] When he entered London on May 7 he was mobbed.^[44] He then stayed for several nights at the Tower of London. His English coronation took place on 25 July, with elaborate allegories provided by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, though an outbreak of the plague restricted festivities.^[45]

Early reign in England

Portrait of James by Nicholas Hilliard, from the period 1603–09

Despite the smoothness of the succession and the warmth of his welcome, there were two unsuccessful conspiracies in the first year of his reign, the Bye Plot and Main Plot, which led to the arrest, among others, of Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh.^[46] Those hoping for governmental change from James were at first disappointed when he maintained Elizabeth's Privy Councillors in office, as secretly planned with Cecil,^[46] but James shortly added long-time supporter Henry Howard and his nephew Thomas Howard to the Privy Council, as well as five Scottish nobles.^[47] In the early years of James's reign, the day-to-day running of the government was tightly managed by the shrewd Robert Cecil, later Earl of Salisbury, ably assisted by the experienced Thomas Egerton, whom James made Baron Ellesmere and Lord Chancellor, and by Thomas Sackville, soon Earl of Dorset, who continued as Lord Treasurer.^[46] As a consequence, James was free to concentrate on bigger policy issues, such as a scheme for a closer union between England and Scotland and matters of foreign policy, as well as to enjoy his leisure pursuits, particularly hunting.^[46]

James was ambitious to build on the personal union of the crowns of Scotland and England to establish a permanent Union of the Crowns under one monarch, one parliament and one law, a plan which met opposition in both countries.^[48] "Hath He not made us all in one island," James told the English parliament, "compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" In April 1604, however, the Commons refused on legal grounds his request to be titled "King of Great Britain".^[49] In October 1604 he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, though Sir Francis Bacon told him he could not use the style in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance".^[50]

In foreign policy, James achieved more success. Never having been at war with Spain, he devoted his efforts to bringing the long Anglo–Spanish War to an end, and in August 1604, thanks to skilled diplomacy on the part of Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, now Earl of Northampton, a peace treaty was signed between the two countries, which James celebrated by hosting a great banquet.^[51] Freedom of worship for Catholics in England continued, however, to be a major objective of Spanish policy, causing constant dilemmas for James, distrusted abroad for repression of Catholics while at home being encouraged by the Privy Council to show even less tolerance towards them.^[52]

The 1613 letter of King James I remitted to Tokugawa Ieyasu (Preserved in the Tokyo University archives).

Under King James I, expansion of English international trade and influence was actively pursued through the East India Company. An English settlement was already established in Bantam, Indonesia, and in 1613, following an invitation by the English adventurer William Adams in Japan, the English captain John Saris arrived at Hirado in the ship Clove with the intent of establishing a trading factory. Adams and Saris travelled to Shizuoka where they met with Tokugawa Ieyasu at his principal residence in September before moving on to Edo where they met Ieyasu's son Hidetada. During that meeting, Hidetada gave Saris two varnished suits of armor for King James I, today housed in the Tower of London.^[53] On their way back, they visited Tokugawa once more, who conferred trading privileges on the English through a Red Seal permit giving them "free license to abide, buy, sell and barter" in Japan.^[54] The English party headed back to Hirado on October 9, 1613. However, during the ten-year activity of the company between 1613 and 1623, apart from the first ship (the Clove in 1613), only three other English ships brought cargoes directly from London to Japan.

Gunpowder plot

On the eve of the state opening of the second session of James's first Parliament, on 5 November 1605, a soldier named Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the parliament buildings guarding a pile of wood, not far from 36 barrels of gunpowder with which he intended to blow up Parliament House the following day and cause the destruction, as James put it, "not only...of my person, nor of my wife and posterity also, but of the whole body of the State in general".^[55] The sensational discovery of the Catholic Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly became known, aroused a mood of national relief at the delivery of the king and his sons which Salisbury exploited to extract higher subsidies from the ensuing Parliament than any but one granted to Elizabeth.^[56]

King and Parliament

The moment of co-operation between monarch and Parliament following the Gunpowder plot represented a deviation from the norm. Instead, it was the previous session of 1604 that shaped the attitudes of both sides for the rest of the reign, though the initial difficulties owed more to mutual incomprehension than conscious enmity.^[57] On 7 July 1604, James had angrily prorogued Parliament after failing to win its support either for full union of the crowns or financial subsidies. "I will not thank where I feel no thanks due," he had remarked in his closing speech. "...I am not of such a stock as to praise fools...You see how many things you did not well...I wish you would make use of your tolet liberty with more modesty in time to come."^[58]

As James's reign progressed, his government faced growing financial pressures, due partly to creeping inflation^[59] but also to the profligacy and financial incompetence of James's court. In February 1610 Salisbury, a believer in parliamentary participation in government,^[60] proposed a scheme, known as the Great Contract, whereby Parliament, in return for ten royal concessions, would grant a lump sum of £600,000 to pay off the king's debts plus an annual grant of £200,000.^[61] The ensuing prickly negotiations became so protracted that James eventually lost patience and dismissed Parliament on 31 December 1610. "Your greatest error," he told Salisbury, "hath been that ye ever expected to draw honey out of gall".^[62] The same pattern was repeated with the so-called "Addled Parliament" of 1614, which James dissolved after a mere eight weeks when Commons hesitated to grant him the money he required.^[63] James then ruled without parliament until 1621, employing officials such as the businessman Lionel Cranfield, who were astute at raising and saving money for the crown, and sold earldoms and other dignities, many created for the purpose, as an alternative source of income.^[64]

Spanish match

Portrait of James by John de Critz, c. 1606

Another potential source of income was the prospect of a Spanish dowry from a marriage between Charles, Prince of Wales, and the Spanish Infanta, Maria.^[65] The policy of the Spanish Match, as it was called, also attracted James as a way to maintain peace with Spain and avoid the additional costs of a war.^[66] The peace benefits of the policy could be maintained as effectively by keeping the negotiations alive as by consummating the match—which may explain why James protracted the negotiations for almost a decade.^[67] Supported by the Howards and other Catholic-leaning ministers and diplomats—together known as the Spanish Party—the policy was deeply distrusted in Protestant England.

The outbreak of the Thirty Years War, however, jeopardized James's peace policy, especially after his son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, was ousted from Bohemia by Emperor Ferdinand II in 1620, and Spanish troops simultaneously invaded Frederick's Rhineland home territory. Matters came to a head when James finally called a parliament in 1621 to fund a military expedition in support of his son-in-law.^[68] The Commons on the one hand granted subsidies inadequate to finance serious military operations in aid of Frederick,^[69] and on the other—remembering the profits gained under Elizabeth by naval attacks on gold shipments from the New World—called for a war directly against Spain. In November 1621, led by Sir Edward Coke, they framed a petition asking not only for war with Spain but also for Prince Charles to marry a Protestant, and for enforcement of the anti-Catholic laws.^[70] James flatly told them not to interfere in matters of royal prerogative or they would risk punishment,^[71] which provoked them into issuing a statement protesting their rights, including freedom of speech.^[72] James ripped the protest out of the record book and dissolved Parliament once again.^[73]

In 1623, Prince Charles, now 23, and Buckingham decided to seize the initiative and travel to Spain incognito,^[74] to win the Infanta directly, but the mission proved a desperate mistake.^[75] The Infanta detested Charles, and the Spanish confronted them with terms that included his conversion to Catholicism and a one-year stay in Spain as, in essence, a diplomatic hostage. The prince and duke returned to England in October without the Infanta and immediately renounced the treaty, much to the delight of the British people.^[76] Their eyes opened by the visit to Spain, Charles and Buckingham now turned James’s Spanish policy upon its head and called for a French match and a war against the Habsburg empire.^[77] To raise the necessary finance, they prevailed upon James to call another Parliament, which met in February 1624. For once, the outpouring of anti-Catholic sentiment in the Commons was echoed in court, where control of policy was shifting from James to Charles and Buckingham,^[78] who pressured the king to declare war and engineered the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer, Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, when he opposed the plan on grounds of cost.^[79] The outcome of the Parliament of 1624 was ambiguous: James still refused to declare war, but Charles believed the Commons had committed themselves to financing a war against Spain, a stance which was to contribute to his problems with Parliament in his own reign.^[80]

Religious problems

James in a portrait by Paul van Somer I, c. 1620. In the background is the Banqueting House, Whitehall by architect Inigo Jones (1573-1652) which was commissioned by James.

The Gunpowder Plot reinforced James's oppression of non-conforming English Catholics; and he sanctioned harsh measures for controlling them. In May 1606, Parliament passed the Popish Recusants Act requiring every citizen to take an Oath of Allegiance denying the Pope's authority over the king.^[81] James was conciliatory towards Catholics who took the Oath of Allegiance,^[82] and he tolerated crypto-Catholicism even at court.^[83] However, in practice he enacted even harsher measures against Catholics than were laid upon them by Elizabeth. Towards the Puritan clergy, with whom he debated at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604,^[84] James was at first strict in enforcing conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans;^[85] but ejections and suspensions from livings became fewer as the reign wore on. A notable success of the Hampton Court Conference was the commissioning of a new translation and compilation of approved books of the Bible to confirm the divine right of kings to rule and to maintain the social hierarchy, completed in 1611, which became known as the King James Bible

In Scotland, James attempted to bring the Scottish kirk "so neir as can be" to the English church and reestablish the episcopacy, a policy which met with strong opposition.^[86] In 1618, James's bishops forced his Five Articles of Perth through a General Assembly; but the rulings were widely resisted.^[87] James was to leave the church in Scotland divided at his death, a source of future problems for his son.^[88]

Personal relationships

Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset (1587-1645), by John Hoskins

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), by Peter Paul Rubens, 1625

Throughout his life James was rumoured to have had love affairs with male courtiers, in particular Esmé Stewart, 6th Lord d'Aubigny (later 1st Duke of Lennox); Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset; and George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. In his own time he was notorious for his male loves, and it was said of him that Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen (Rex fuit Elizabeth, nunc est regina Jacobus). referring to his position of power in post-elizabethan times. However, this was often misread to mean other things.^[89] Some modern historians disagree: "The evidence of his correspondence and contemporary accounts have led some historians to conclude that the king was homosexual or bisexual. In fact, the issue is murky." (Bucholz, 2004)^[90] In Basilikon Doron, James lists sodomy among crimes "ye are bound in conscience never to forgive". At age 23, James and 300 of his men performed a dramatic rescue of Anne of Denmark when she was stranded on the coast of Norway. They married and she gave birth to seven children, some sources say nine children, only three of whom survived. James also had a documented two year affair with Anne Murray, later with Lady Glamis, to whom he wrote poetry.

However, restoration of Apethorpe Hall, undertaken 2004-2008, revealed a previously unknown passage linking the bedchambers of James and his favourite, George Villiers.^[91]

James I wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter for this portrait by Daniel Mytens in 1621.

The Overbury Affair

When the Earl of Salisbury died in 1612, he was little mourned by those who jostled to fill the power vacuum.^[92] Until Salisbury's death, the Elizabethan administrative system over which he had presided continued to function with relative efficiency; from this time forward, however, James's government entered a period of decline and disrepute.^[93] Salisbury's passing gave James the notion of governing in person as his own chief Minister of State, with his young Scottish favourite, Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, carrying out many of Salisbury's former duties, but James's inability to attend closely to official business exposed the government to factionalism.^[94]

The Howard party, consisting of Northampton, Suffolk, Suffolk's son-in-law Lord Knollys, and Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham, along with Sir Thomas Lake, soon took control of much of the government and its patronage. Even the powerful Carr, hardly experienced for the responsibilities thrust upon him and often dependent on his intimate friend Sir Thomas Overbury for assistance with government papers,^[95] fell into the Howard camp, after beginning an affair with the married Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, daughter of the earl of Suffolk, whom James assisted in securing an annulment of her marriage to free her to marry Carr.^[96] In summer 1615, however, it emerged that Overbury, who on 15 September 1613 had died in the Tower of London, where he had been placed at the King's request,^[97] had been poisoned.^[98] Among those convicted of the murder were Frances Howard and Robert Carr, the latter having been replaced as the king's favourite in the meantime by Villiers. The implication of the King in such a scandal provoked much public and literary conjecture and irreparably tarnished James's court with an image of corruption and depravity.^[99] The subsequent downfall of the Howards left Villiers unchallenged as the supreme figure in the government by 1618.^[100]

Final year

During the last year of James's life, with Buckingham consolidating his control of Charles to ensure his own future, the king was often seriously ill, leaving him an increasingly peripheral figure, rarely able to visit London.^[101] In early 1625, James was plagued by severe attacks of arthritis, gout and fainting fits, and in March fell seriously ill with tertian ague and then suffered a stroke. James finally died at Theobalds House on 27 March during a violent attack of dysentery, with Buckingham at his bedside.^[102] James’s funeral, a magnificent but disorderly affair, took place on 7 May. Bishop John Williams of Lincoln preached the sermon, observing, "King Solomon died in Peace, when he had lived about sixty years...and so you know did King James".^[103]

Legacy

The king was widely mourned. For all his flaws, James had never completely lost the affection of his people, who had enjoyed uninterrupted peace and comparatively low taxation during the Jacobean Era. "As he lived in peace," remarked the Earl of Kellie, "so did he die in peace, and I pray God our king [Charles] may follow him".^[104] The earl prayed in vain: once in power, Charles and Buckingham sanctioned a series of reckless military expeditions that ended in humiliating failure.^[105] James bequeathed Charles a fatal belief in the divine right of kings, combined with a disdain for Parliament, which culminated in the English Civil War and the execution of Charles. James had often neglected the business of government for leisure pastimes, such as the hunt; and his later dependence on male favourites at a scandal-ridden court undermined the respected image of monarchy so carefully constructed by Elizabeth.^[106] The stability of James’s government in Scotland, however, and in the early part of his English reign, as well as his relatively enlightened views on religious issues and war, have earned him a re-evaluation from many recent historians, who have rescued his reputation from a tradition of criticism stemming back to the anti-Stuart historians of the mid-seventeenth century.^[107]

The King James Version ("KJV") of the Bible was dedicated to him, being published in 1611 as a result of the Hampton Court Conference which he had convened to resolve issues with translations then being used. This translation of the Bible is still in widespread use today.

During the reign of James, the English colonization of North America started its course. In 1607, Jamestown was founded in Virginia, and in 1620 Plymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During the next 150 years, England would fight with Spain, the Netherlands, and France for control of the continent.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

• 19 June 1566 – 24 July 1567: Prince James
• 19 June 1566 – 24 July 1567: The Duke of Rothesay (Earl of Carrick, Lord Renfrew)
• 10 February – 24 July 1567: The Duke of Albany (Earl of Ross, Lord Ardmannoch)
• 24 July 1567 – 27 March 1625: His Grace James VI, King of Scots
• 24 March 1603 – 27 March 1625: His Majesty King James I of England

As King of England and Scots, James's full style was His Majesty, James VI, by the Grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, King of Scots, Defender of the Faith, etc.

Prior to his ascension in Scotland, his full style was Prince James Stuart, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Albany, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Ross, Lord Renfrew, Lord Ardmannoch, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland

Arms as Prince James, Duke of Rothesay

Arms as James VI, King of Scots, prior to Union of the Crowns, 1603

Scottish quarterings of the Royal arms of James VI & I, post 1603

Quarterings of the Royal arms of James I & VI, post 1603, outwith Scotland

List of writings

• Daemonologie 1597
• Basilikon Doron 1599
• The True Law of Free Monarchies 1598
• His Maiesties Poeticall Exercises at Vacant Houres,^[108] poems, 1591
  • Lepanto, poem
• A Counterblaste to Tobacco
• A Declaration against Vorstius - His Majesties Declaration concerning his Proceedings with the States generall of the United Provinces of the Low Countries, in the matter of D. Conradus Vorstius, comprising "the seasonable suppression of the dangerous doctrines of Conradus Vorstius"[1]

Children

James's wife, Anne of Denmark, gave birth to seven children who survived beyond birth:^[109]

1. Henry, Prince of Wales (19 February 1594 – 6 November 1612). Died, probably of typhoid fever, aged 18.^[110]
2. Elizabeth of Bohemia (19 August 1596 – 13 February 1662). Married 1613, Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Died aged 65.
3. Margaret Stuart (24 December 1598 – March 1600). Died aged 1.
4. Charles I of England (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649). Married 1625, Henrietta Maria. Executed aged 48.
5. Robert Stuart, Duke of Kintyre (18 January 1602 – 27 May 1602). Died aged 4 months.^[111]
6. Mary Stuart (8 April 1605 – 16 December 1607). Died aged 2.
7. Sophia Stuart. (Died in June 1607 within 48 hours of birth.)^[112]

James I with his children, engraved by Willem de Passe	wife: Anne of Denmark	son: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales	son: Charles I of England
daughter: Elizabeth of Bohemia

Ancestry

See also

• Cultural depictions of James I of England

Notes

Non-cited references

• Atherton, Ian; and David Como (2005). The Burning of Edward Wightman: Puritanism, Prelacy and the Politics of Heresy in Early Modern England. English Historical Review, Volume 120, December 2005, Number 489, 1215–1250. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Barroll, J. Leeds (2001). Anna of Denmark, Queen of England: A Cultural Biography. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. ISBN 0812235746.
• Barroll, J. Leeds and Susan P. Cerasano (1996). Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism and Reviews. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 0838636411.
• Bucholz, Robert and Newton Key (2004). Early Modern England, 1485–1714: A Narrative History. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0631213937.
• Croft, Pauline (2003). King James. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-61395-3.
• Davies, Godfrey ([1937] 1959). The Early Stuarts. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198217048.
• Donaldson, Gordon (1974). Mary, Queen of Scots. London: English Universities Press. ISBN 0340123834.
• Fraser, Antonia (1974). King James VI of Scotland, I of England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0297767755.
• Guy, John (2004). My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots. London and New York: Fourth Estate. ISBN 1-84115-752-X.
• Krugler, John D. (2004). English and Catholic: the Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801879639.
• Lindley, David (1993). The Trials of Frances Howard: Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James. Routledge. ISBN 0415052068.
• Milling, Jane (2004). "The Development of a Professional Theatre", in The Cambridge History of British Theatre. Jane Milling, Peter Thomson, Joseph W. Donohue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521650402.
• Noble, Mark (1795). An Historical Genealogy of the Royal House of Stuarts, from the Reign of King Robert II to that of King James VI. London: R. Faulder. Read complete digitized copy at Google Books. Retrieved 19 April 2007.
• Perry, Curtis (2006). Literature and Favoritism in Early Modern England. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521854059.
• Rhodes, Neil; Jennifer Richards; and Joseph Marshall (2003). King James VI and I: Selected Writings. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 0754604829.
• Sharpe, Kevin M. (2000). Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521664098.
• Smith, David L (2003). "Politics in Early Stuart Britain," in A Companion to Stuart Britain. Ed. Barry Coward. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0631218742.
• Solt, Leo Frank (1990). Church and State in Early Modern England: 1509–1640. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195059794.
• Stewart, Alan (2003). The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I. London: Chatto and Windus. ISBN 0-7011-6984-2.
• Stroud, Angus (1999). Stuart England. Routledge ISBN 0415206529.
• Watts, Michael R (1985). The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198229569.
• Williams, Ethel Carleton (1970). Anne of Denmark. London: Longman. ISBN 0 582 12783 1.
• Willson, David Harris ([1956] 1963 ed). King James VI & I. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-60572-0.

Further reading

• The Diary Of Samuel Ward: A Translator Of The 1611 King James Bible, edited by John Wilson Cowart and M.M. Knappen.
• Akrigg, G. P. V (1978). Jacobean Pageant: The Court of King James I. New York: Atheneum. ISBN 0-689-70003-2.
• Chambers, Robert (1856). "James VI". Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen. London: Blackie and Son. http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/james6.htm. 
• Fraser, Antonia (1974). King James VI of Scotland, I of England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-76775-5. 
• Houston, S J. James I. Longman Publishing Group (June 1974), Seminar Studies ISBN 0582352088.
• Lee, Maurice (1990). Great Britain's Solomon: James VI and I in his Three Kingdoms. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01686-6. 
• Lockyer, Roger (1998). James VI and I. Longman. 2nd edition.
• Lockyer, Roger (1999). The Early Stuarts: The Political History of England 1603-1642. Longman.
• Lynch, Michael (historian) (1991). Scotland: A New History. Ebury Press. ISBN 0712634134.
• "Preaching to the Converted? Perspectives on the Scottish Reformation," in The Renaissance in Scotland: Studies in Literature, Religion, History and Culture. - AA MacDonald, M. Lynch and IB Cowan (Leiden, 1994)
• Peck, Linda Levy (1982). Northampton: Patronage and Policy at the Court of James I. Harper Collins. ISBN 0049421778.
• Williamson, David (1998). The National Portrait Gallery History of the Kings and Queens of England. London: National Portrait Gallery. ISBN 1-85514-228-7. 

External links

Books about James I available online

• The Historie and Life of King James the Sext. Written towards the Latter Part of the Sixteenth Century by John Colville (1804)
• An Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of James I and Charles I, and the Lives of Oliver Cromwell and Charles II by William Harris (1814): Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V
• Memoirs of the Court of King James the First by Lucy Aikin (1822): Vol. I, Vol. II
• Papers Relative to the Marriage of King James the Sixth of Scotland, with the Princess Anna of Denmark; A.D. M.D.LXXXIX., and the Form and Manner of Her Majesty's coronation at Holyroodhouse. A.D. M.D.X.C by James T. Gibson-Craig (1828)
• Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court, in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I by Peter Cunningham (1842)
• Original Letters Relating to the Ecclesiastical Affairs of Scotland: Chiefly Written by, or Addressed to His Majesty King James the Sixth after his Accession to the English throne (1851): Vol. I, Vol. II
• Correspondence of King James VI. of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England, During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (1861)
• The Essayes of a Prentise, in the Divine Art of Poesie. Edinburgh. 1585. A Counterblast to Tobacco. London, 1604 by King James I (1869)
• The Literary Character: or, The History of Men of Genius, Drawn from their own Feelings and Confessions; Literary Miscellanies; and An Inquiry into the Character of James the First by Isaac D'Israeli (1881)
• History of England from the Accesion of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603-1642 by Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1883-1891): Volume I (1603-1607), Volume II (1607-1616), Volume III (1616-1621), Volume IV (1621-1623), Volume V (1623-1625), Volume VI (1625-1629), Volume VII (1629-1635), Volume VIII (1635-1639), Volume IX (1639-1641), Volume X (1641-1642)
• Historical Sketches of Notable Persons and Events in the Reigns of James I and Charles I by Thomas Carlyle (1898 ed.)
• James VI and the Gowrie Mystery by Andrew Lang (1902)
• The English Church in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. (1558-1625) by Walter Frere (1904)
• The History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Restoration (1603-1660) by Francis Charles Montague (1907)
• "English Witchcraft and James the First," in Five Pamphlets by George Lyman Kittredge (1911-17)
• Court Masques of James I: Their Influence on Shakespeare and Public Theatres by Mary Sullivan (1913)
• The Political Works of James I (1918 ed.)

Other links

• Proclamation styling James I King of Great Britain on October 20, 1604
• James I, illustrated biography by Jenny Wormald, C.E. Hodge Fellow & Tutor in Modern History, St Hilda's College, Oxford
• Works by James I of England at Project Gutenberg
• James I, print and digital communication
• Gunpowder, Treason and Plot film-page (James or Iakov)

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From Wikiquote

James VI of Scotland and I of England (Charles James Stuart) (19 June 1566–27 March 1625) was a king who ruled over England, Scotland, and Ireland, and was the first Sovereign to reign in the three realms simultaneously.

Sourced

• If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy, as God and the devil. ... No bishop, no King!
• I will make them conform themselves, or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse.
  • Speaking of the Puritans at Hampton Court Conference (16 January 1604)

• A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
• Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.
  • A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604)

• I acknowledge the Roman Church to be our mother church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions...Let [the Papists] assure themselves, that, as I am a friend of their persons, if they be good subjects, so am I a vowed enemy, and do denounce mortal war to their errors.
  • On Roman Catholics, at the opening of parliament in 1604.

• That which concerns the mystery of the King's power is not lawful to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakness of Princes, and to take away the mystical reverence that belongs unto them that sit in the throne of God.
  • Speech in the Star Chamber (June 1616)

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

James I of England

• A Counterblaste to Tobbacco

From Familypedia

James VI, King of Scots
James I, King of England
James I, King of Ireland

Biography

James I of England was born 19 June 1566 in Edinburgh Castle, Midlothian to Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (1545-1567) and Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland (1542-1586) and died 27 March 1625 in Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, at the age of 58 years of stroke. James married Anne of Denmark 20 August 1589 in Frederiksberg.

Children

Common ancestors of James I of England (1566-1625) and Anne of Denmark (1574-1618)

1. Adelheid von Hessen (c1272-1315)
2. Dorothea von Brandenburg (1430-1495)
3. Elisabeth von Henneberg (c1289-1377)
4. Elisabeth von Meißen (1329-1375)
5. Friedrich I von Meißen (1257-1323)
6. Friedrich II von Meißen (1310-1349)
7. Friedrich V. von Nürnberg (1333-1398)
8. Johann II. von Nürnberg (c1310-1357)
9. Johann der Alchimist von Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1406-1464)

Citations and remarks

Contributors