Everything about James I Of England totally explained
James VI and I (
19 June 1566 –
27 March 1625) was
King of Scotland as
James VI, and
King of England and
King of Ireland as
James I. He ruled in
Scotland as James VI from
24 July 1567, when he was only one year old, succeeding his mother
Mary, Queen of Scots.
Regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he didn't gain full control of his government until 1581. On
24 March 1603, as James I, he succeeded the last
Tudor monarch of
England and
Ireland,
Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He then ruled England, Scotland and Ireland for 22 years, until his death at the age of 58.
James achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced great difficulties in England, including the
Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and repeated conflicts with the
English Parliament. According to a tradition originating with historians of the mid-seventeenth-century, James's taste for
political absolutism, his financial irresponsibility, and his cultivation of unpopular
favourites established the foundation for the
English Civil War. Recent historians, however, have revised James's reputation and treated him as a serious and thoughtful monarch.
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. James himself was a talented
scholar, the author of works such as
Daemonologie (1597) and
Basilikon Doron (1599).
Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom", an epithet associated with his character ever since.
Childhood as King James VI of Scotland
Birth
James Charles Stuart was the only child of
Mary, Queen of Scots and her second husband,
Henry Stuart, Duke of Albany, commonly known as Lord Darnley. He was a descendant of
Henry VII through his great-grandmother
Margaret Tudor, elder sister of
Henry VIII. Mary's rule over Scotland was insecure, for both she and her husband, being
Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by
Protestant noblemen. Their marriage was a particularly difficult one. While Mary was pregnant with James, Lord Darnley secretly allied himself with the rebels and murdered the Queen's private secretary,
David Rizzio.
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. Elizabeth I of England, as
godmother in absentia, sent a magnificent gold
font as a christening gift.
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. 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. 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.
Regencies
The care of James was entrusted to the
Earl and Countess of Mar, "to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought" in the security of
Stirling Castle. The boy was formally crowned at the age of thirteen months as King James VI of Scotland at
the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling, on
29 July 1567.
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. 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, but he made enemies by his rapacity. 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. Morton was executed on
2 June 1581, belatedly charged with complicity in Lord Darnley's murder. On 8 August, James made Lennox the only duke in Scotland. Then fifteen years old, the king was to remain under the influence of Lennox for about one more year.
Personal rule in Scotland
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". 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. 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. 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, wasn't universally believed.
In 1586, James signed the
Treaty of Berwick with England; 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. During the
Spanish Armada crisis of 1588, he assured Elizabeth of his support as "your natural son and compatriot of your country"; and as time passed and Elizabeth remained unmarried, securing the English succession became a cornerstone of James's policy.
Marriage
Anne of Denmark (born December 1574), younger daughter of the Protestant
Frederick II. Shortly after a proxy marriage in 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", sailed from Leith with a three-hundred-strong retinue to fetch Anne personally. The couple were married formally at the
Old 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. 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, Prince of Wales, who was to die, probably of
typhoid, in 1612, aged 18;
Elizabeth, later
Queen of Bohemia; and Charles, the future King
Charles I of England. Anne predeceased her husband in March 1619.
Theory of monarchy
In 1597–8, James wrote two works,
The Trew 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". 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".
Basilikon Doron, written as a book of instruction for the four-year-old
Prince Henry, provides a more practical guide to kingship. Despite banalities and sanctimonious advice, the work is well-written, perhaps the best example of James's prose. 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". In the
Trew Law James states that the king owns his realm as a feudal lord owns his fief, because:
"[Kingsarose] 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."
English Throne
Proclaimed King of England
Sir Robert Cecil, maintained a secret correspondence with James in order to prepare in advance for a smooth succession. In March 1603, with the old 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. As James headed south, his new subjects flocked to see him, relieved above all that the succession had triggered neither unrest nor invasion; When he entered London, he was mobbed. James's 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.
Early reign in England
Despite the smoothness of the succession and the warmth of his welcome, James survived two 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. 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, but James shortly added long-time supporter
Henry Howard and his nephew
Thomas Howard to the Privy Council, as well as five Scottish nobles. 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. As a consequence, James was free to concentrate on the bigger issues, such as a scheme for a closer union between England and Scotland and foreign-policy issues, as well as to enjoy his leisure pursuits, particularly the hunt.
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. "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". In October 1604, he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, though
Sir Francis Bacon told him he couldn't use the style in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance".
In foreign policy, James achieved more success. Never having been at war with Spain, he devoted his efforts to bringing the long
Armada 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 countries, which James celebrated by hosting a great banquet. 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.
James's perspective of Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots
The succession of James as King of England continues to pose some ironies. Elizabeth I, who consented to the succession before her death, had also refused to intervene when James's mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded for
treason. James's perspective can be seen in a letter which he wrote to Elizabeth I, which states:
What thing, madame, can greatlier touch me in honour that's a king and a son than that my nearest neighbor, being in straitest friendship with me, shall rigorously put to death a free sovereign prince and my natural mother, alike in estate and sex to her that so uses her, albeit subject (I grant) to a harder fortune, and touching her nearly in proximity of blood? What law of God can permit that justice shall strike upon them whom He has appointed supreme dispensators of the same under Him, whom He hath called gods and therefore subjected to the censure of none in earth, whose anointing by God can't be defiled by man, . . . Honour were it to you to spare when it's least looked for; honour were it to you...to take me and all other princes in Europe eternally beholden unto you in granting this my so reasonable request, and not (appardon, I pray you, my free speaking) to put princes to straits of honour wherethrough your general reputation and the universal (almost) misliking of you may dangerously peril both in honor and utility your person and estate.
Elizabeth referred to Mary's execution as a "miserable accident." In another letter, Elizabeth reassured James of her positive intentions towards him, writing, "For your part, think you've not in the world a more loving kinswoman nor a more dear friend than myself, nor any that will watch more carefully to preserve you and your estate" .
In another letter, James responded to Elizabeth:
Madame and dearest sister, Whereas by your letter . . . ye purge yourself of your unhappy fact, . . . together with your many and solemn attestations of your innocency -- I dare not wrong you so far as not to judge honourably of your unspotted part therein; so on the other side, I wish that your honourable behavior in all times hereafter may fully persuade the whole world of the same. And as for my part I look that ye will give me at this time such a full satisfaction in all respects as shall be a mean to strengthen and unite this isle, establish and maintain the true religion, and oblige me to be as of before I was, your most loving . . ."
Some might question James's sincerity, but regardless of his true thoughts on Elizabeth, he became the undisputed monarch of both England and Scotland. In 1612, James had his mother's body exhumed from its original place of burial at
Peterborough Cathedral and reinterred at Westminster Abbey.
Gunpowder plot
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
faggots, not far from thirty-six 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". 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.
King and Parliament
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 won't thank where I feel no thanks due," he'd remarked in his closing speech. "...I am not of such a stock as to praise fools...You see how many things you didn't well...I wish you'd make use of your liberty with more modesty in time to come".
As James's reign progressed, his government faced growing financial pressures, due partly to creeping inflation but also to the
profligacy and financial incompetence of James's court. In February 1610 Salisbury, a believer in parliamentary participation in government, 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. 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". 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. 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.
Spanish match
Charles, Prince of Wales and the
Spanish Infanta, Maria. 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. 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. 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. The Commons on the one hand granted subsidies inadequate to finance serious military operations in aid of Frederick, 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. James flatly told them not to interfere in matters of
royal prerogative or they'd risk punishment, which provoked them into issuing a statement protesting their rights, including freedom of speech. James ripped the protest out of the record book and dissolved Parliament once again.
In 1623, Prince Charles, now 23, and Buckingham decided to seize the initiative and travel to Spain incognito, to win the Infanta directly, but the mission proved a desperate mistake. 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. 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. To raise the necessary finance, they prevailed upon James to call another Parliament, which met in February 1623. 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, who pressured the king to declare war and engineered the impeachment of the
Lord Treasurer,
Cranfield,
Earl of Middlesex, when he opposed the plan on grounds of cost. 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.
Religious challenges
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 an act which would require every citizen to take an
Oath of Allegiance, incorporating a denial of the Pope's authority over the king. James was conciliatory towards Catholics who took the Oath of Allegiance, and he tolerated crypto-Catholicism even at court. 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, James was at first strict in enforcing conformity, inducing a sense of persecution amongst many Puritans; 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 of the
Bible, completed in 1611, which became known as the
King James Bible, considered a masterpiece of Jacobean prose. 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. In 1618, James's bishops forced his
Five Articles of Perth through a General Assembly; but the rulings were widely resisted. James was to leave the church in Scotland divided at his death, a source of future problems for his son.
Favourites
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, unfitted for the responsibilities thrust upon him and often dependent on his intimate friend
Sir Thomas Overbury for assistance with government papers, 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. In summer 1615, however, it emerged that Sir Thomas Overbury, who on 14 September 1613 had died in the Tower of London, where he'd been placed at the king's request, had been poisoned. 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 a young man called
George 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. The subsequent downfall of the Howards left George Villiers, now
earl of Buckingham, unchallenged as the supreme figure in the government by 1618.
Personal relationships
Throughout his life James had close friendships 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. There has been debate among historians about the nature of these relationships: "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) In
Basilikon Doron, James lists sodomy among crimes "ye are bound in conscience never to forgive". At age twenty-three, James and three hundred of his men performed a dramatic rescue of Anne of Denmark when she was stranded on the coast of Norway. They married and bore seven children, some sources say nine children, only three of whom survived. James also had a documented two year affair with Anne Murray, later Lady Glamis, to whom he wrote poetry.
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. In early 1625, James was plagued by severe attacks of
arthritis,
gout and fainting fits, and in March fell seriously ill with tertian 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. 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'd lived about sixty years...and so you know did King James".
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". The earl prayed in vain: once in power,
Charles and
Buckingham sanctioned a series of reckless military expeditions that ended in humiliating failure. 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. 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.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles and styles
As King of England and Scots, James's full style was
His Majesty, James VI, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, 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
Children
Henry, Prince of Wales (19 February 1594 – 6 November 1612). Died, probably of typhoid fever, aged 18.
Elizabeth of Bohemia (19 August 1596 – 13 February 1662). Married 1613, Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Died aged 65.
Margaret Stuart (24 December 1598 – March 1600). Died aged 1.
Charles I of England (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649). Married 1625, Henrietta Maria. Executed aged 48.
Robert Stuart, Duke of Kintyre (18 January 1602 – 27 May 1602). Died aged 4 months.
Mary Stuart (8 April 1605 – 16 December 1607). Died aged 2.
Sophia Stuart. (Died in June 1607 within 48 hours of birth.)
Ancestry
Further Information
Get more info on 'James I Of England'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://james_i_of_england.totallyexplained.com">James I of England Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
