James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567, and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603, until his death in 1625. Though he long attempted to get both countries to adopt a closer political union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained sovereign states ruled by James in personal union, with their own parliaments, judiciaries and laws.
James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England and Lord of Ireland, and thus a potential successor to all three thrones. He acceded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother was forced to abdicate. Although his mother was a Catholic, James was raised as a Protestant. Four regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1589, he married Anne of Denmark. Three of their children survived to adulthood: Henry Frederick, Elizabeth, and Charles. In 1603, James succeeded his cousin Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, who had died childless. He reigned in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era, until he died in 1625. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603, he based himself in England, returning to Scotland only once in 1617, and styled himself King of Great Britain and Ireland. He advocated for a single parliament for England and Scotland. During his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and the English colonisation of the Americas began.
At 57 years and 246 days, James's reign in Scotland was the longest of any Scottish monarch. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced great difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and conflicts with the English Parliament. Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James was a prolific writer, authoring works such as Daemonologie (1597), The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599). He sponsored an early translation of the Bible into English (later named for him as the Authorized King James Version), and the 1604 revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Contemporary courtier Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom" (wise in small things, foolish otherwise), an epithet associated with his character ever since.: "The label 'the wisest fool in Christendom', often attributed to Henry IV of France but possibly coined by Anthony Weldon, catches James's paradoxical qualities very neatly"; Anthony Weldon (1651), The Court and Character of King James I, quoted by : "A very wise man was wont to say that he believed him the wisest fool in Christendom, meaning him wise in small things, but a fool in weighty affairs." Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise James's reputation and treat him as a serious and thoughtful monarch.: "Historians have returned to reconsidering James as a serious and intelligent ruler"; ; : "In contrast to earlier historians, recent research on his reign has tended to emphasize the wisdom and downplay the foolishness". He was strongly committed to a peace policy and tried to avoid involvement in religious wars, especially the Thirty Years' War that devastated much of Central Europe. He tried but failed to prevent the rise of hawkish elements in the English Parliament who desired war with Catholic Spain. The first English king of the House of Stuart, he was succeeded by his second son, Charles I.
Early life
Birth
James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Mary and Darnley were each great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England through Margaret Tudor, the older sister of Henry VIII. Mary's rule over Scotland was insecure, and she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. During Mary and Darnley's difficult marriage,; . Darnley secretly allied himself with the rebels and conspired in the murder of the queen's private secretary, David Rizzio, just three months before James's birth.; .
James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. Five days later, the English diplomat Henry Killigrew saw the queen, who had not fully recovered and could only speak faintly. The baby was "sucking at his nurse" and was "well proportioned and like to prove a goodly prince".Joseph Bain, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1900), p. 290. He was baptised "Charles James" or "James Charles" on 17 December in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were Charles IX of France (represented by John, Count of Brienne), Elizabeth I of England (represented by Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford), and Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (represented by ambassador Philibert du Croc). Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as "a pocky priest", spit in the child's mouth, as was then the custom. The subsequent entertainment, devised by Frenchman Bastian Pagez, featured men dressed as satyrs and sporting tails, to which the English guests took offence, thinking the satyrs "done against them".
Lord Darnley was murdered on 10 February 1567 at Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for the killing of Rizzio. James inherited his father's titles of Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross. Mary was already unpopular, and her marriage three months later (on 15 May 1567) to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling toward her. In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Lochleven Castle; she never saw her son again. She was forced to abdicate on 24 July 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, as regent.; . This made James the third consecutive Scottish monarch to ascend to the throne as an infant.
Childhood at Stirling Castle
The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, "to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought"Letter of Mary to Mar, 29 March 1567, quoted by : "Suffer nor admit no noblemen of our realm or any others, of what condition soever they be of, to enter or come within our said Castle or to the presence of our said dearest son, with any more persons but two or three at the most." in the security of Stirling Castle.; . James was anointed King of Scotland at the age of thirteen months at the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling, by Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, on 29 July 1567. 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 Kirk. The Privy Council selected George Buchanan, Peter Young, Adam Erskine (lay abbot of Cambuskenneth), and David Erskine (lay abbot of Dryburgh) 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. 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. In 1573, the young king distributed Maundy money, and in 1577 he presented small gold rings to his companions as New Year's Day gifts. These annual rituals are among his first recorded acts of kingship.
Regencies In 1568, Mary escaped from Lochleven Castle, leading to several years of sporadic violence. The Earl of Moray defeated Mary's troops at the Battle of Langside, forcing her to flee to England, where she was subsequently kept in confinement by Elizabeth. On 23 January 1570, Moray was assassinated by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh.Spottiswoode, John (1851), History of the Church in Scotland, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, vol. 2, p. 120. The next regent was James's paternal grandfather, Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, who was carried fatally wounded into Stirling Castle a year later after a raid by Mary's supporters. His successor, the Earl of Mar, "took a vehement sickness" and died on 28 October 1572 at Stirling. Mar's illness, wrote James Melville, followed a banquet at Dalkeith Palace given by James Douglas, Earl of Morton.
Morton was elected to Mar's office and proved in many ways the most effective of James's regents,; . but he made enemies by his rapacity. He fell from favour when Frenchman Esmé Stewart, Sieur d'Aubigny, first cousin of James's father Lord Darnley, arrived in Scotland and quickly established himself as the first of James's powerful favourites.; . James was proclaimed an adult ruler in a ceremony of Entry to Edinburgh on 19 October 1579. Morton was executed on 2 June 1581, belatedly charged with complicity in Darnley's murder.David Calderwood quoted by : "So ended this nobleman, one of the chief instruments of the reformation; a defender of the same, and of the King in his minority, for the which he is now unthankfully dealt with." On 8 August, James made Stewart Duke of Lennox, the only duke in Scotland. The king, then fifteen years old, remained under the influence of the Duke for about one more year.; .
Rule in Scotland
James's favourite, the Duke of Lennox, was a Protestant convert, but he was distrusted by Scottish Calvinists who noticed the physical displays of affection between him and the king and alleged that Lennox "went about to draw the King to carnal lust". In August 1582, in what became known as the Ruthven Raid, the Protestant earls William Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie and Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus lured James into Ruthven Castle, imprisoned him, and forced Lennox to leave Scotland. On 19 September 1582, during James's imprisonment, John Craig, whom the king had personally appointed royal chaplain in 1579, rebuked him so sharply from the pulpit for having issued a proclamation so offensive to the clergy "that the king wept".
After James escaped from Falkland on 27 June 1583, he assumed increasing control of his kingdom. He pushed through the Black Acts to assert royal authority over the Kirk, and denounced the writings of his former tutor Buchanan.; . Between 1584 and 1603, he established effective royal government and relative peace among the lords, ably assisted by John Maitland of Thirlestane, who led the government until 1592. An eight-man commission known as the Octavians brought some control over the ruinous state of James's finances in 1596, but it drew opposition from vested interests. It was disbanded within a year after a riot in Edinburgh, which was stoked by anti-Catholicism and led the court to withdraw to Linlithgow temporarily.; .
One last Scottish attempt against the king's person occurred in August 1600, when James was apparently assaulted by Alexander Ruthven, the younger brother of John Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie at Gowrie House, the seat of the Ruthvens.; . Ruthven was run through by James's page John Ramsay, and the Earl of Gowrie was killed in the ensuing fracas; there were few surviving witnesses. Given James's history with the Ruthvens and the fact that he owed them a great deal of money, his account of the circumstances was not universally believed.; George Nicolson quoted by : "It is begun to be noted that the reports coming from the King should differ"; : "The two principal characters were dead, the evidence of eyewitnesses was destroyed and only King James's version remained"; .