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James I of England

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History
1500-1750; Monarchs of Great Britain

   King James VI and I
   King of Scots, King of England, and King of Ireland
   Reign 24 July 1567 - 27 March 1625 (Scotland)
   24 March 1603 - 27 March 1625 (England and Ireland)
   Born June 19, 1566
   Edinburgh Castle
   Died March 27, 1625 (aged 58)
   Theobalds House
   Buried Westminster Abbey
   Predecessor Mary, Queen of Scots (Scotland)
   Elizabeth I (England)
   Successor Charles I
   Consort Anne of Denmark
   Issue Henry Frederick, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Margaret Stuart, Charles
   I, Robert Stuart
   Royal House Stuart
   Father Lord Darnley
   Mother Mary, Queen of Scots

   James VI and I (James Stuart) ( June 19, 1566 – March 27, 1625) was
   King of Scots, King of England, and King of Ireland. He was the first
   to style himself King of Great Britain. He ruled in Scotland as James
   VI from 24 July 1567 when he was only a year old. Regents ruled in his
   stead until early 1581 when James was aged 14. From the ' Union of the
   Crowns', he ruled in England and Ireland as James I, from 24 March 1603
   aged 36, until his death aged 58. He was the first monarch of England
   from the House of Stuart, succeeding the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth
   I, who died without issue.

   James was a successful monarch in Scotland, but was burdened with great
   difficulties ruling England. He was involved in many conflicts with an
   active and hostile English Parliament. According to a long-established
   historical tradition originating with historians of the
   mid-seventeenth-century, James's taste for political absolutism, his
   inability to manage the kingdom's funds and his cultivation of
   unpopular favourites established the foundation for the English Civil
   War—which ended with the trial and execution of James's son and
   successor, Charles I. During James's own life, however, the governments
   of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were relatively
   stable, and recent historians have treated James as a serious and
   thoughtful monarch. James exercised a degree of religious tolerance
   until the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, after which he reinforced strict
   penalties on Roman Catholics; but he later returned to a tolerant
   approach to religious conformity.

   Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama
   continued, with writers such William Shakespeare, 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), The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), Basilikon
   Doron (1599) and A Counterblaste to Tobacco (1604). Sir Anthony Weldon
   recalled 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 was the only child of Mary I, Queen of Scots and her second
   husband, Henry Stuart, Duke of Albany, commonly known as Lord Darnley.
   James was a descendant of Henry VII through his great-grandmother
   Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. Mary's rule over Scotland was
   insecure, for both she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a
   rebellion of 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's marriage on 15 May, also in 1567, to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of
   Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering him, increased her
   unpopularity. 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 illigitemate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as
   regent.
            British Royalty
            House of Stuart
             James VI & I
       Henry, Prince of Wales
       Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia
      Charles I
       Robert, Duke of Kintyre
               Charles I
      Charles II
      James II & VII
       Henry, Duke of Gloucester
       Mary, Princess Royal
       Henrietta, Duchess of Orléans
              Charles II
            James II & VII
      Mary II
       Anne
       James Francis Edward Stuart
   Grandchildren
       Charles Edward Stuart
       Henry Benedict Stuart
         Mary II & William III
              William III
                 Anne
       William, Duke of Gloucester

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 19
   July 1567. The sermon was preached by the Geneva Calvinist John Knox.
   And, in accordance with the religious beliefs of most of the Scottish
   ruling class, James was brought up as a member of the Protestant
   National Church of Scotland, his education supervised by historian and
   poet George Buchanan, who subjected him to regular beatings but also
   instilled in him a lifelong passion for literature and learning.

   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 favourites. On 2 June 1581, Morton was executed on
   belated charges of complicity in Lord Darnley's murder. On 8 August,
   James made Lennox a duke, the only one in Scotland. Now fifteen years
   old, the king was to remain under the influnce 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". 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, and forced Lennox to leave Scotland. After
   James was freed in June 1583, he assumed increasing control of his
   monarchy. 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 Scottish 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 Rithven 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.

   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, the
   securing the English succession became a cornerstone of James's policy.

Marriage

   Anne of Denmark
   Anne of Denmark

   Throughout his youth, James was praised for his chastity, since he
   showed little interest in women; and after the loss of Lennox, he
   continued to prefer male company. A suitable marriage, however, was
   necessary to reinforce his monarchy, and the choice fell on the
   fourteen-year-old Anne of Denmark (born October 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 Oslo.
   On hearing the news, James, in what Willson calls "the one romantic
   episode of his life", sailed from Leith with a three-hundred-strong
   retinue to fetch her personally. The couple were married formally at
   the Old Bishops' Palace in Oslo on 23 November and, after a stay in
   Copehagen, 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. The couple
   produced three surviving children: Henry, Prince of Wales, who was to
   die 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.

Witchcraft

   James's visit to Denmark, a country familiar with witchhunts, may have
   encouraged his interest in the study of witchcraft, which he considered
   a branch of theology. Soon after his return from Denmark, he attended
   the trial of the North Berwick Witches, in which several people were
   convicted of using witchcraft to send a storm against the ship that had
   carried James and Anne from Denmark. James became obsessed with the
   threat posed by witches and witchcraft and in 1597 wrote the
   Daemonologie, a tract in favour of the existence of witchcraft; but
   later, his views became less extreme, tending more towards scepticism
   on the matter.

The English Throne

Proclaimed King of England

   From 1601, in the last years of Elizabeth I's life, certain English
   politicians, notably her chief minister Sir Robert Cecil, maintained a
   secret correspondence with James in order to prepare in advance for a
   smooth succession. Cecil advised James not to press the matter of the
   succession upon the queen but simply to treat her with kindness and
   respect. The approach proved effective: "I trust that you will not
   doubt," Elizabeth wrote to James, "but that your last letters are so
   acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield
   them you in grateful sort." In March 1603, with the queen clearly
   dying, Cecil sent James a draft proclamation of his accession to the
   English throne. Strategic fortresses were put on alert, and London
   placed under guard. Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March.
   Within eight hours, James was proclaimed king in London, the news
   received without protest or disturbance.

   On 5 April 1603, James left Edinburgh for London, promising to return
   every three years, and progessed slowly from town to town, in order to
   arrive in the capital after Elizabeth's funeral. Local lords received
   James with lavish hospitality along the route; and James's new subjects
   flocked to see him, relieved above all that the succession had
   triggered neither unrest nor invasion. As James entered London, he was
   mobbed. The crowds of people, one observer reported, were so great that
   "they covered the beauty of the fields; and so greedy were they to
   behold the King that they injured and hurt one another." James's
   coronation took place on 11 July, with elaborate allegories provided by
   dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, though the
   festivities had to be restricted because of an outbreak of the plague.
   Nevertheless, all London turned out for the occasion: "The streets
   seemed paved with men," wrote Dekker. "Stalls instead of rich wares
   were set out with children, open casements filled up with women".

   The kingdom to which James succeeded was, however, not without its
   problems. The oppressive system of monopolies and taxation, for
   example, had engendered a widespread sense of grievance, and the costs
   of the war in Ireland had become a heavy burden on the government.

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 complete and permanent union of the
   two realms 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". A disappointed James retorted: "I am not ashamed of my
   project, neither have I deferred it (I be to deal plainly) out of a
   liking of the judges' reasons or uses". 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". The decision was a sign
   that where he lacked the consent of the Commons for his policies, James
   intended, unlike his predecessor, to resort to the royal prerogative.

   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, which
   caused constant dilemmas for James, distrusted abroad for repression of
   Catholics and at home for tolerance towards them.

King and Parliament

   James's difficulties with his first parliament in 1604 ended the
   initial euphoria of his succession. On July 7, he prorogued the
   parliament, having achieved his aims neither for the full union nor for
   the obtaining of funds. "I will not thank where I feel no thanks due,"
   he 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 liberty with more modesty in time to come". The
   parliament of 1604 may be seen as shaping the attitudes of both sides
   for the rest of the reign, though the difficulties owed more to mutual
   incomprehension than conscious enmity. On the eve of the state opening
   of the next parliamentary session on 5 November 1605, a soldier from
   the Netherlands called Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the
   parliament buildings guarding a pile of faggots, not far from about
   twenty 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". A Catholic conspiracy
   led by a disaffected gentleman called Robert Catesby, the Gunpowder
   Plot, as it quickly became known, had in fact been discovered in
   advance of Fawkes's arrest and deliberately allowed to mature in order
   to catch the culprits red-handed and the plotters unawares.

   James's difficulties with the Commons and his waning public popularity
   notwithstanding, the sensational discovery of the Gunpowder Plot
   aroused a potent wave of national relief at the delivery of the king
   and his sons and inspired in the ensuing parliament a mood of loyalty
   and goodwill which Salisbury astutely exploited to extract higher
   subsidies for the king than any but one granted in Elizabeth's reign.
   In his speech to both houses on 9 November, James expounded on two
   emerging preoccupations of his monarchy: the divine right of kings and
   the Catholic question. He insisted that the plot had been the work of a
   few Catholics and not of the English Catholics as a whole. And he
   reminded the assembly to rejoice at his survival, since kings were gods
   and he owed his escape to a miracle.

Catholics

   The Gunpowder Plot, the third Catholic conspiracy against his person in
   three years, forced James to reconsider his tolerant policy towards
   English Catholics; and for a while he sanctioned stricter measures to
   control them. In May 1606, Parliament passed an act which could require
   any citizen to take an Oath of Allegiance, entailing a denial the
   pope's authority over the king. James believed that the Oath was merely
   concerned with civil obedience, a secular transaction between king and
   subject; but it provoked opposition in Rome and in Catholic countries,
   where any denial of papal authority was deemed heretical. In early
   1606, the Venetian ambassador reported James as saying: "I do not know
   upon what they found this cursed doctrine that they are permitted to
   plot against the lives of princes". The Oath did not make James a
   persecutor of Catholics; he insisted no blood be spilled and that
   subversive Jesuits and seminary priests should simply be asked to leave
   the country. He regarded persecution, he wrote to Cecil, "as one of the
   infallible notes of a false church". In practice, James proved lenient
   towards Catholic laymen who took the Oath of Allegiance, and he
   tolerated Catholicism and crypto-Catholicism even at court.

Theory of monarchy

   In 1597–8, James had written 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:

     "[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."

   James I
   James I

Great Contract

   As James's reign progressed, his governemnt faced growing financial
   pressures. Some of those resulted from creeping inflation and the
   decreasing purchasing power of the royal income, but James's profligacy
   and financial incompetence substantially contributed to the mounting
   debt. Salisbury took over the reins as Lord Treasurer himself in 1608
   and, with the backing of the Privy Council, introduced a programme of
   economic reforms which steadily drove down the deficit. In an attempt
   to convince James to curb his extravagance, he wrote a series of frank
   tracts on the matter, and he tried to induce the king to grant limited
   pensions to his courtiers, rather than showering them with random
   gifts. A believer in the necessity of parliamentary contribution to
   government, Salisbury proposed to the Commons, in February 1610, an
   ambitious financial scheme, known as the Great Contract, whereby
   Parliament would grant a lump sum of £600,000 to pay off the king's
   debts in return for ten royal concessions, plus an annual grant of
   £200,000. Though the Commons agreed to the annual grant, the
   negotiations over the lump sum became so protracted and difficult that
   James eventually lost patience and dismissed the parliament on 31
   December 1610. "Your greatest error," he told Salisbury, "hath been
   that ye ever expected to draw honey out of gall". Salisbury, however,
   made it clear that without parliamentary subsidies, he could do little
   more to manage the Crown's financial crisis.

Rise of the favourites

   Salisbury died in 1612, and was little mourned by those who jostled to
   take his place at the head of government. Northampton, who took over
   the day-to-day running of government business, spoke of "the death of
   the little man for which so many rejoice and few do as much as seem to
   be sorry." Until Salisbury's death, however, the Elizabethan
   administrative system over which he had presided had continued to
   function with reasonable efficiency; from this time forward, however,
   James's government entered a period of decline and disrepute.
   Salisbury's passing at last gave James an opportunity to govern in
   person, and he decided to act as his own chief Minister of State,
   employing his handsome Scottish favourite, Robert Carr, Viscount
   Rochester, to carry out the duties of Principal Secretary, though
   without that title. The experiment was soon undermined by James's
   continued preference for living in the country and an inability to
   attend closely to official business which left the government prey to
   factionalism.

   The Howard party, consisting of Northampton, Suffolk, Suffolk's
   son-in-law Lord Knollys, and Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham,
   along with Sir Thomas Lake, were soon in control of much of the
   government. And the powerful Carr, unfitted for the role thrust upon
   him and often dependent on his close friend Sir Thomas Overbury for
   assistance with government papers, before long fell into the camp of
   the Howard faction himself, when he began an affair with the married
   Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, daughter of the earl of Suffolk.
   This powerful group won James's support for an annulment of Frances
   Howard's marriage to Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, so that she could
   marry Carr. With James's assistance, the marriage was duly annulled on
   25 September 1613 on the grounds of her husband's impotence, despite
   his opposition to the charge. On 26 December that year, in the court
   event of the season, Frances Howard and Robert Carr, now the earl of
   Somerset, were married. The Howard family's rise to total power seemed
   complete.

   In summer 1615, it emerged that Sir Thomas Overbury, who on 14
   September 1613 had died in the Tower of London, where he had been
   placed at the king's request in advance of Frances Howard's annulment
   case, had been poisoned. At the time of his marriage to Frances Howard,
   Carr had still enjoyed the king's favouritism, but during 1615, their
   relationship became tempestuous when James began replacing Carr in his
   affections with a new, attractive young favourite called George
   Villiers, with whom he appeared infatuated. Frances Howard, who
   admitted a part in Overbury's murder, and Carr, who did not,were both
   found guilty, sentenced to death, and placed in the Tower. Four others
   accused were executed, but the Somersets were pardoned and eventually
   released. The implication of the king in such an unseemly case
   stimulated much public conjecture and literary creativity and
   irreparably tarnished his court with an image of corruption and
   depravity.

   The Howard faction now fell rapidly from power. In 1618, Frances
   Howard's mother, Catherine Knyvet, and her father, Suffolk, were
   prosecuted for corruption and found guilty of using their social and
   political ascendancy to extort bribes on a massive scale. Suffolk's
   fall was followed by that of Secretary of State Sir Thomas Lake, whose
   wife and daughter were involved in a sordid trial involving accusations
   of incest and impotence. The removal of the Howards left George
   Villiers, now earl of Buckingham, unchallenged as the supreme figure in
   the government.

   A new Parliament had to be called in 1614 to obtain approval for new
   taxes. This Parliament was known as the Addled Parliament because it
   failed to pass any legislation or impose any taxes. James dissolved
   Parliament after it refused to carry out his wishes. He then ruled
   without Parliament for seven years. Faced with financial difficulties
   he sought to enter into a profitable alliance with Spain by marrying
   his eldest surviving son, Charles, Prince of Wales, to the daughter of
   the King of Spain. The proposed alliance with a Roman Catholic kingdom
   was not well received in Protestant England. The execution of Sir
   Walter Raleigh also increased James' unpopularity.

Religious challenges

   Upon James I’s arrival in London, he was almost immediately faced by
   religious conflicts in England. He was presented with the Millenary
   Petition, a document which it is claimed contained one thousand
   signatures by Puritans requesting further Anglican Church reform. He
   accepted the invitation to a conference in Hampton Court, which was
   subsequently delayed due to the Plague. In 1604, at the Hampton Court
   Conference, James was unwilling to agree to most of their demands. He
   did, however, agree to fulfil a request which was to have far-reaching
   effect by authorizing an official translation of the Bible, which came
   to be known as the King James Bible (published in 1611).

   During this year, James broadened Elizabeth's Witchcraft Act to bring
   the penalty of death without benefit of clergy to any one who invoked
   evil spirits or communed with familiar spirits. That same year, he
   ended England's involvement in the twenty year conflict known as the
   Anglo-Spanish War by signing the Treaty of London.

   In 1612, the Baptist leader Thomas Helwys presented the King with a
   copy of his book, "A Short Declaration on the Mystery of Iniquity",
   possibly the first ever English text defending the principle of
   religious liberty. He died in prison for his pains. Also in 1612, two
   other Protestant dissenters, Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman,
   were burnt at the stake for heresy. "Both men emerge as the victims of
   a complex series of events: the king's desire to be seen as orthodox in
   the light of the Vorstius affair; the in-fighting for control of the
   ecclesiastical establishment on the elevation of George Abbot to the
   archbishopric of Canterbury; and the campaign of the emerging
   anti-Calvinist group around Bishop Richard Neile against puritans".

Later years

Continuing problems with Parliament

   The third and penultimate Parliament of James' reign was summoned in
   1621. The House of Commons agreed to grant James a small subsidy to
   signify their loyalty, but then, to the displeasure of the King, moved
   on to personal matters directly involving the King. The practice of
   selling monopolies and other privileges was also deprecated. The House
   of Commons sought to impeach Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, who
   was implicated in the sale of such privileges during his service as
   Lord Chancellor, on charges of corruption. The House of Lords convicted
   Bacon, who was duly removed from office. Although the impeachment was
   the first in centuries, James did not oppose it, believing that
   sacrificing Bacon could help deflect parliamentary opposition. In the
   end, James released Bacon from prison and granted him a full pardon.

Thirty Years' War

   From 1618 onwards, the religious conflict known as the Thirty Years'
   War engulfed Europe. James was forced to become involved because his
   daughter, Elizabeth, was married to the Protestant Frederick V, Elector
   Palatine, one of the war's chief participants. He was also put under
   pressure to join the religious war because England, at the time, was
   one of the major Protestant nations.

   A new constitutional dispute arose as a result. James was eager to aid
   his son-in-law, the Elector-Palatine, and requested Parliament for a
   subsidy. The House of Commons, in turn, requested that the King abandon
   the alliance with Spain. When James declared that the lower House had
   overstepped its bounds by offering unsolicited advice, the House of
   Commons passed a protest claiming that it had the right to debate any
   matter relating to the welfare of the Kingdom. James ordered the
   protest torn out of the Commons Journal, and dissolved Parliament.

Relationship with Spain

   In 1623, the Duke of Buckingham and Charles, the Prince of Wales,
   travelled to Madrid in an attempt to secure a marriage between the
   latter and the Infanta. However, they were snubbed by the Spanish
   courtiers, who demanded that Charles convert to Roman Catholicism. They
   returned to England humiliated, and called for war with Spain. When
   James's Spanish marriage plot failed, a humiliated Prince Charles and
   George Villiers urged James and his parliament to go to war.
   Financially, James could not afford to go to war with Spain. England
   would eventually join the war after James had died.

The Church in Scotland

   In Scotland, James's attempt to move the Church, whose form of worship
   tended to be based on free-form Calvinism, in a more structured High
   Church direction with the introduction of the Five Articles of Perth,
   met with widespread popular resistance. Always the practical politician
   in Scottish matters, the king, while insisting on the form of the law,
   did little to ensure its observance.

Personal relationships

   Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, 1603–1609.
   Portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, 1603–1609.

   Throughout his life James had close relationships with his male
   courtiers, beginning with his older relative Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of
   Lennox. James adopted a severe stance towards sodomy using English law.
   His book on kingship, Basilikon Doron, lists sodomy among those
   “horrible crimes which ye are bound in conscience never to forgive”. He
   also singled out sodomy in a letter to Lord Burleigh giving directives
   that Judges were to interpret the law broadly and not issue any pardons
   saying that "no more colour may be left to judges to work upon their
   wits in that point." Jeremy Bentham, in an unpublished manuscript,
   denounced James as a hypocrite after his crackdown: "[James I], if he
   be the author of that first article of the works which bear his name,
   and which indeed were owned by him, reckons this practise among the few
   offences which no Sovereign ever ought to pardon. This must needs seem
   rather extraordinary to those who have a notion that a pardon in this
   case is what he himself, had he been a subject, might have stood in
   need of." Other nobles with whom James was physically close, though not
   necessarily sexual, included Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, and
   George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham.

Death

   James lapsed into senility during the last year of his reign. Real
   power passed to Charles and to the Duke of Buckingham, although James
   kept enough power to ensure that a new war with Spain did not occur
   while he was King. James died at Theobalds House in 1625 of 'tertian
   ague' probably brought upon by kidney failure and stroke, and was
   buried in the Henry VII Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey. Charles,
   Prince of Wales, succeeded him as Charles I. James had ruled in
   Scotland for almost sixty years (though 13 of these were as a
   child-king with the rule of Scotland committed to regents); the only
   English, Scottish or British monarchs to have surpassed this mark have
   been Victoria and George III.

Legacy

   James I wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter for the above
   portrait by Daniel Mytens (1621).
   James I wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter for the above
   portrait by Daniel Mytens (1621).

Historical

   Almost immediately after James I's death, Charles I became embroiled in
   disputes with Parliament. The disputes escalated until the English
   Civil War began during the 1640s, culminating in Charles I's execution
   for treason. The following Parliamentary period lasted for eleven
   years, 1649-1660. The Stuart dynasty was restored in 1660 with Charles
   I's son, Charles II coming to the throne. Some historians, particularly
   Whig historians, blame James for the Civil War. However, the general
   view now is that Charles I was more responsible for the state of
   affairs in 1640 than his predecessor.

Religious and Literary

   James I’s religious tolerance, compared with that of his predecessors,
   permitted the continued existence of Catholicism in England and
   Scotland, the continuation of Calvinism in Scotland and the growth of
   Puritanism in England, while encouraging liturgical formality and "High
   Church" practices.

   On the other hand, James’ paranoia over witchcraft eventually
   contributed, during the Parliamentary period, to the appointment of
   Matthew Hopkins, known as the Witch-finder General, and the execution
   of many people, mostly women, often for no greater crime than being
   widowed and owning a cat.

   William Shakespeare continued to write under James I as he had in the
   reign of Elizabeth. It is not surprising that one of his most popular
   plays, Macbeth, shows a would-be monarch beset by witches.
   Shakespeare’s witches, however, fulfil a prophetic role; it is personal
   ambition that causes the ensuing chaos, not spells and incantations.

   The king also designed the British flag in 1603 by combining England's
   red cross of St. George with Scotland's white cross of St. Andrew. It
   is possible that the term Union Jack may have originated from "Jacobus"
   which is Latin for James. Technically, the term Union Jack is incorrect
   as "Jack" is a nautical term, thus the term is only appropriate at sea.
   The correct name of the flag is the Union Flag. Charles II issued a
   proclamation that the Flag only be flown as a Jack, a small flag off
   the bowsprit, on British vessels.

Geographical

   In the Virginia Colony in the New World, the Jamestown Settlement,
   established in 1607, and the James River were named in honour of James
   I. In 1611, Sir Thomas Dale named his new promising "Citie of Henricus"
   (sic) in honour of his son, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died
   in 1612. Although Henricus was wiped out in the Indian Massacre of
   1622, its naming survives as Henrico County, Virginia in modern times.

Popular culture

   King James was played by Dudley Sutton in the 1992 film Orlando and by
   Jonathan Pryce in the 2005 film The New World. Jim Cummings voiced
   James in Disney's direct-to-video film Pocahontas II: Journey to a New
   World, which (quite un-historically) portrayed James as a pompous
   idiot. In Actus Fidei, a play by Steven Breese that premiered in 2007
   at Christopher Newport University, James is portrayed as flamboyant
   autocrat.

Criticism and revisionism

   Lacey Baldwin Smith in "This Realm of England” talks about James’s
   paternalism and political absolutism, including the breaking of
   traditional ties between the monarchy and old families, in order to
   decrease the political power of Catholicism. Despite his unpopularity
   with both Catholics and Puritans, Lacey Baldwin Smith indicates that it
   was his currying favour with those whom he felt could politically help
   him that earned the title of “The wisest fool in Christendom.”
   Traditionally, historians such as Samuel Rawson Gardiner and D. H.
   Wilson viewed James I as a poor king. This interpretation was almost
   solely depended on the writings of Sir Anthony Weldon. Weldon,
   dismissed by James for his writings against Scotland, wrote 'The Court
   and Character of King James'. This book influenced early 20th century
   historians who overlooked Weldon's bias.

   Miriam Allen deFord, in her study, The Overbury Affair, writes “This
   slobbering, lolling King, …. a glutton and a spendthrift … came to
   England as a man comes to a banquet; he left government to others and
   occupied himself with processional visits, routs, and masques. And
   freed from the firm hand of Elizabeth, the courtiers ran riot, and
   provided under James’s influence one of the most corrupt and dissolute
   courts in English history.” (5)

   Recent historical revisionism has argued to the contrary. Historians
   Gordon Donaldson and Jenny Wormald have argued for a revision of
   opinion towards James in the light of his successful rule in Scotland.
   A changed view of him has emerged since the 1970s. Also the historian
   Barry Coward has said 'of all the political problems in James I's
   reign, he dealt with religious non-conformity most successfully.'

Style and arms

   Formally, James was styled "James, King of England, Scotland, France
   and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." (The claim to the Throne of
   France, which had been maintained since the reign of Edward III, was
   merely nominal.) By a proclamation of 1604, James assumed the style
   "James, King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland, Defender of the
   Faith, etc." for non-statutory use.

   James's English arms, whilst he was King of England and Scotland, were:
   Quarterly, I and IV Grandquarterly, Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or (for
   France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for
   England); II Or a lion rampant within a tressure flory-counter-flory
   Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for
   Ireland). James also introduced the unicorn, a symbol of Scotland, as
   an heraldic supporter in his armorial achievement; the other supporter
   remained the English lion. In Scotland, his arms were: Quarterly, I and
   IV Grandquarterly, Or a lion rampant within a tressure
   flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); II Azure three fleurs-de-lis
   Or (for France) and Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for
   England); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland), with one
   of the unicorns of Scotland being replaced as a heraldic supporter by a
   lion.

Ancestors

   CAPTION: James VI and I's ancestors in three generations

   James VI and I Father:
   Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley Paternal Grandfather:
   Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox Paternal Great-grandfather:
   John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Lennox
   Paternal Great-grandmother:
   Elizabeth Stewart, Countess of Lennox
   Paternal Grandmother:
   Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox Paternal Great-grandfather:
   Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus
   Paternal Great-grandmother:
   Margaret Tudor
   Mother:
   Mary I, Queen of Scots Maternal Grandfather:
   James V of Scotland Maternal Great-grandfather:
   James IV of Scotland
   Maternal Great-grandmother:
   Margaret Tudor
   Maternal Grandmother:
   Mary of Guise Maternal Great-grandfather:
   Claude, Duke of Guise
   Maternal Great-grandmother:
   Antoinette de Bourbon

Issue

   James' wife, Anne of Denmark, gave birth to nine of his children.
   Name Birth Death Notes
   Henry, Prince of Wales 19 February 1594 6 November 1612 died of typhoid
   fever aged 18
   Unnamed child July 1595 July 1595
   Elizabeth Stuart 19 August 1596 13 February 1662 married 1613,
   Frederick V, Elector Palatine; had issue; died aged 65
   Margaret Stuart 24 December 1598 March 1600 died in infancy in second
   year
   Charles I 19 November 1600 30 January 1649 married 1625, Henrietta
   Maria; had issue; executed aged 48
   Robert, Duke of Kintyre 18 February 1602 27 May 1602 died in his fifth
   month
   Unnamed son May 1603 May 1603
   Mary Stuart 8 April 1605 16 December 1607 died in infancy in third year
   Sophia Stuart 22 June 1606 28 June 1606 died a few days after birth

   See also Descendants of James I of England.

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