James VI and I: the story on HearLore

James VI and I

James Charles Stuart entered the world on the 19th of June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. His birth was a precarious event in a kingdom teetering on the edge of civil war, as his parents were Roman Catholics ruling a nation that had largely turned to Protestantism. Just three months before James was born, his father had secretly allied with rebels to murder the queen's private secretary, David Rizzio, setting a tone of treachery that would define his early life. Five days after his birth, the English diplomat Henry Killigrew observed the infant sucking at his nurse, noting he was well-proportioned and likely to become a goodly prince, yet the political storm surrounding his family was already brewing. His godparents included the monarchs of France, England, and Savoy, represented by proxies, highlighting the international stakes of his existence. The baptism ceremony held at Stirling Castle on the 17th of December 1566 was a Catholic affair, but the subsequent entertainment featuring men dressed as satyrs offended English guests, signaling the cultural divides that would plague his reign. By the time he was thirteen months old, his mother had been forced to abdicate on the 24th of July 1567, and James was anointed King of Scotland at the Church of the Holy Rude in Stirling, becoming the third consecutive Scottish monarch to ascend as an infant. His childhood was spent in the security of Stirling Castle under the care of the Earl and Countess of Mar, separated from his mother who was imprisoned at Lochleven Castle and never saw her son again.

Regents And Rulers

The early years of James's life were governed by a succession of regents who fought for control of the kingdom, each meeting violent or untimely ends. The first regent, James's maternal half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was assassinated on the 23rd of January 1570 by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, a crime that left the throne vulnerable to further instability. His successor, James's paternal grandfather Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, was carried fatally wounded into Stirling Castle a year later after a raid by Mary's supporters. The Earl of Mar followed, dying of a vehement sickness on the 28th of October 1572 after a banquet at Dalkeith Palace, a death that James Melville attributed to foul play. James Hamilton, Earl of Morton, emerged as the most effective regent, yet his rapacity made him enemies, and he was executed on the 2nd of June 1581, belatedly charged with complicity in the murder of James's father, Lord Darnley. The political landscape shifted again when Esmé Stewart, Sieur d'Aubigny, arrived in Scotland and became the first of James's powerful favourites, establishing a new dynamic of influence. James was proclaimed an adult ruler on the 19th of October 1579, but the power struggle continued until the Ruthven Raid in August 1582, when Protestant earls William Ruthven and Archibald Douglas imprisoned the king and forced Lennox to leave Scotland. James escaped from Falkland on the 27th of June 1583, assuming increasing control of his kingdom and pushing through the Black Acts to assert royal authority over the Kirk. He denounced the writings of his former tutor George Buchanan, who had subjected him to regular beatings but also instilled a lifelong passion for literature and learning. Between 1584 and 1603, James 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 and was disbanded within a year after a riot in Edinburgh. One last Scottish attempt against the king's person occurred in August 1600, when James was apparently assaulted by Alexander Ruthven at Gowrie House, an event shrouded in mystery with few surviving witnesses and James's account not universally believed.

When was James VI and I born and where did his birth take place?

James Charles Stuart was born on the 19th of June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle. He was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

Who were the regents that governed James VI and I during his childhood?

The early years of James's life were governed by a succession of regents including James Stewart, Earl of Moray, Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, James Hamilton, Earl of Morton, and Esmé Stewart, Sieur d'Aubigny. These regents fought for control of the kingdom and met violent or untimely ends.

When did James VI and I become King of England and what was the date of his coronation?

James was proclaimed king in London on the 24th of March 1603 following the death of Elizabeth I. His English coronation took place on the 25th of July at Westminster Abbey.

What happened during the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and when was it discovered?

A dissident Catholic named Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the parliament buildings on the night of the 4th to the 5th of November 1605. Fawkes was guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder intended to blow up Parliament House and destroy the state.

When did James VI and I die and what was the cause of his death?

James died at Theobalds House in Hertfordshire on the 27th of March 1625. He died during a violent attack of dysentery after suffering from severe arthritis, gout, and a stroke.

The Danish Bride

Throughout his youth, James was praised for his chastity, showing little interest in women, and after the loss of his favourite Esmé Stewart, he continued to prefer male company. A suitable marriage, however, was necessary to reinforce his rule, and the choice fell on fourteen-year-old Anne of Denmark, the younger daughter of the Protestant Danish king Frederick II. Shortly after a proxy marriage in Copenhagen in August 1589, Anne sailed for Scotland but was forced by storms to the coast of Norway. On hearing that the crossing had been abandoned, James sailed from Leith with a 300-strong retinue to fetch Anne personally, an event historian David Harris Willson called the one romantic episode of his life. This journey led to a mutual acquaintanceship between James and the future king of Denmark, Christian IV, which would be strengthened between the kings after Christian IV visited London twice. Anne and James were married formally at the Bishop's Palace in Oslo on the 23rd of November, and James received a dowry of 75,000 Danish dalers and a gift of 10,000 dalers from his mother-in-law, Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow. After stays at Elsinore and Copenhagen and a meeting with Tycho Brahe, James and Anne returned to Scotland on the 1st of May 1590. By all accounts, James was at first infatuated with Anne, and in the early years of their marriage, he seems always to have shown her patience and affection. They attended the wedding celebrations of courtiers and danced in masque costume. The royal couple produced three children who survived to adulthood: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died of typhoid fever in 1612, aged 18; Elizabeth, later queen of Bohemia; and Charles, James's successor. Anne suffered from recurrent bouts of sickness and was seriously ill from 1617. James visited Anne only three times during her last illness, and she died before her husband, in March 1619. After Anne's death, James remained in good standing with Denmark-Norway, and in 1613, two of his diplomats to Scandinavia, Scotsmen James Spens and Robert Anstruther, helped mediate a peace between Denmark and Sweden.

Witchcraft And Kingship

James's visit to Denmark, a country familiar with witch-hunts, sparked an interest in the study of witchcraft, which he considered a branch of theology. He attended the North Berwick witch trials, the first major persecution of witches in Scotland under the Witchcraft Act 1563. Several people were convicted of using witchcraft to send storms against James's ship, most notably Agnes Sampson. James became concerned with the threat posed by witches and wrote Daemonologie in 1597, a tract inspired by his personal involvement that opposed the practice of witchcraft and that provided background material for Shakespeare's Macbeth. James personally supervised the torture of women accused of being witches, yet after 1599, his views became more sceptical. In a later letter written in England to his son Henry, James congratulates the prince on the discovery of a little counterfeit wench, advising him to be wary judges in trusting accusations. In the Highlands and Islands, James VI authorised the Gentleman Adventurers of Fife to civilise the most barbarous Isle of Lewis in 1598, writing that the colonists were to act not by agreement with the local inhabitants, but by extirpation of them. Their landing at Stornoway began well, but the colonists were driven out by local forces commanded by Murdoch and Neil MacLeod. The colonists tried again in 1605 with the same result, although a third attempt in 1607 was more successful. The Statutes of Iona were enacted in 1609, which required clan chiefs to provide support for Protestant ministers to Highland parishes, to outlaw bards, to report regularly to Edinburgh to answer for their actions, and to send their heirs to Lowland Scotland, to be educated in English-speaking Protestant schools. So began a process specifically aimed at the extirpation of the Gaelic language, the destruction of its traditional culture and the suppression of its bearers. In the Northern Isles, James's cousin Patrick Stewart, Earl of Orkney, resisted the Statutes of Iona and was consequently imprisoned. His natural son Robert led an unsuccessful rebellion against James, and the Earl and his son were hanged. Their estates were forfeited, and the Orkney and Shetland islands were annexed to the Crown. In 1597, 98, James wrote The True Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron, in which he argues a theological basis for monarchy, setting out the divine right of kings and explaining that kings are higher beings than other men for Biblical reasons. 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. Basilikon Doron was written as a book of instruction for the four-year-old Prince Henry and provides a more practical guide to kingship, considered to be well written and perhaps the best example of James's prose.

The Union Of Crowns

From 1601, in the last years of Elizabeth's life, certain English politicians, notably her chief minister Robert Cecil, maintained a secret correspondence with James to prepare in advance for a smooth succession. With the queen clearly dying, Cecil sent James a draft proclamation of his accession to the English throne in March 1603. Elizabeth died in the early hours of the 24th of March, and James was proclaimed king in London later the same day. On the 5th of April, James left Edinburgh for London, promising to return every three years, a promise that he did not keep, and progressed slowly southwards. Local lords received him with lavish hospitality along the route, and James was amazed by the wealth of his new land and subjects, claiming that he was swapping a stony couch for a deep feather bed. James arrived in the capital on the 7th of May, nine days after Elizabeth's funeral, and his new subjects flocked to see him, relieved that the succession had triggered neither unrest nor invasion. On arrival at London, he was mobbed by a crowd of spectators. James's English coronation took place on the 25th of July at Westminster Abbey, but an outbreak of plague restricted festivities. The Royal Entry to London with elaborate allegories provided by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson was deferred to the 15th of March 1604. The kingdom to which James succeeded, however, had its problems, with monopolies and taxation engendering a widespread sense of grievance, and the costs of war in Ireland having become a heavy burden on the government, which had debts of £400,000. James survived two conspiracies in the first year of his reign in England, the Bye Plot and Main Plot, which led to the arrest of Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham and Walter Raleigh, among others. Those hoping for a change in government from James were disappointed at first when he kept Elizabeth's Privy Councillors in office, as secretly planned with Cecil, but James soon 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 in England was tightly managed by the shrewd 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 bigger 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. James was ambitious to build on the personal union of Scotland and England to establish a single country under one monarch, one parliament, and one law, a plan that met opposition from both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. In April 1604, the Commons refused his request to be titled King of Great Britain on legal grounds, though in October 1604, he assumed the title King of Great Britain instead of King of England and King of Scotland, though Francis Bacon told him that he could not use the style in any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance. James forced the Scottish Parliament to use it, and it was used on proclamations, coinage, letters, and treaties in both realms. James achieved more success in foreign policy, never having been at war with Spain, and he devoted his efforts to bringing the long Anglo, Spanish War to an end, and a peace treaty was signed between the two countries in August 1604, thanks to the skilled diplomacy of the delegation, in particular Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, now Earl of Northampton.

Gunpowder And Parliaments

A dissident Catholic, Guy Fawkes, was discovered in the cellars of the parliament buildings on the night of the 4th to the 5th of November 1605, the eve of the state opening of the second session of James's first English Parliament. Fawkes was 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 his person, nor of his wife and posterity also, but of the whole body of the State in general. The sensational discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly became known, aroused a mood of national relief at the delivery of the king and his sons. The Earl of Salisbury exploited this to extract higher subsidies from the ensuing Parliament than any but one granted to Elizabeth. Fawkes and others implicated in the unsuccessful conspiracy were executed. The co-operation between monarch and Parliament following the Gunpowder Plot was atypical, and 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. On the 7th of July 1604, James had angrily prorogued Parliament after failing to win its support either for full union or financial subsidies, remarking that he would not thank where he felt no thanks due. As James's reign progressed, his government faced growing financial pressures, partly due to creeping inflation but also to the profligacy and financial incompetence of James's court. In February 1610, Salisbury 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 the 31st of December 1610, telling Salisbury that their greatest error had been that they 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 nine weeks when the Commons hesitated to grant him the money he required. James then ruled without parliament until 1621, employing officials such as the merchant Lionel Cranfield, who were astute at raising and saving money for the crown, and sold baronetcies and other dignities, many created for the purpose, as an alternative source of income. Another potential source of income was the prospect of a Spanish dowry from a marriage between Charles, Prince of Wales, and Infanta Maria Anna of Spain. The policy of the Spanish match, as it was called, was also attractive to James as a way to maintain peace with Spain and avoid the additional costs of a war. Peace 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. The policy was supported by the Howards and other Catholic-leaning ministers and diplomats, together known as the Spanish Party, but deeply distrusted in Protestant England. When Walter Raleigh was released from imprisonment in 1616, he embarked on a hunt for gold in South America with strict instructions from James not to engage the Spanish. Raleigh's expedition was a disastrous failure, and his son Walter was killed fighting the Spanish. On Raleigh's return to England, James had him executed to the indignation of the public, who opposed the appeasement of Spain. James's policy was further jeopardised by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, especially after his Protestant son-in-law, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, was ousted from Bohemia by the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II in 1620, and Spanish troops simultaneously invaded Frederick's Rhineland 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 Spanish gold shipments, called for a war directly against Spain. In November 1621, roused by 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 would 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. In early 1623, Prince Charles, now 22, and Buckingham decided to seize the initiative and travel to Spain incognito, to win Infanta Maria Anna directly, but the mission proved an ineffectual mistake. Maria Anna detested Charles, and the Spanish confronted them with terms that included the repeal of anti-Catholic legislation by Parliament. Though a treaty was signed, Charles and Buckingham returned to England in October without the infanta and immediately renounced the treaty, much to the delight of the British people. Disillusioned 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 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, who pressured the King to declare war and engineered the impeachment of Lord Treasurer Cranfield, by now made Earl of Middlesex, when he opposed the plan on grounds of cost. The outcome of the Parliament of 1624 was ambiguous, James still refusing to declare or fund a war, but Charles believing the Commons had committed themselves to finance a war against Spain, a stance that was to contribute to his problems with Parliament in his own reign.

Favourites And Scandal

In his later years, James suffered increasingly from arthritis, gout and kidney stones. He also lost his teeth and drank heavily. The king was often seriously ill during the last year of his life, leaving him an increasingly peripheral figure, rarely able to visit London, while Buckingham consolidated his control of Charles to ensure his own future. One theory is that James suffered from porphyria, a disease of which his descendant George III exhibited some symptoms. James described his urine to physician Théodore de Mayerne as being the dark red colour of Alicante wine, though the theory is dismissed by some experts, particularly in James's case, because he had kidney stones which can lead to blood in the urine, colouring it red. In early 1625, James was plagued by severe attacks of arthritis, gout, and fainting fits, and fell seriously ill in March with tertian ague and then suffered a stroke. He died at Theobalds House in Hertfordshire on the 27th of March, aged 58, during a violent attack of dysentery, with Buckingham at his bedside. James's funeral on the 7th of May was a magnificent but disorderly affair, with Bishop John Williams of Lincoln preaching the sermon, observing that King Solomon died in Peace, when he had lived about sixty years, and so you know did King James. The sermon was later printed as Great Britain's Salomon. James was buried in Westminster Abbey, and the position of the tomb was lost for many years until his lead coffin was found in the Henry VII vault, during an excavation in the 19th century. James was widely mourned, and for all his flaws, he had largely retained the affection of his people, who had enjoyed uninterrupted peace and comparatively low taxation during the Jacobean era. As he lived in peace, so did he die in peace, and I pray God our king may follow him, remarked the Earl of Kellie. The Earl prayed in vain, as once in power, King Charles I and the Duke of Buckingham sanctioned a series of reckless military expeditions that ended in humiliating failure. A 1627 mission to save the Huguenots of La Rochelle ended in an ignominious siege on the Isle of Ré, leaving the Duke as the object of widespread ridicule. James had often neglected the business of government for leisure pastimes, such as the hunt, and his later dependence on favourites at a scandal-ridden court undermined the respected image of monarchy so carefully constructed by Elizabeth I. Under James, the Plantation of Ulster by English and Scots Protestants began, and the English colonisation of North America started its course with the foundation of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and Cuper's Cove, Newfoundland, in 1610. During the next 150 years, England would fight with Spain, the Netherlands, and France for control of the continent, while religious division in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics has lasted for 400 years. By actively pursuing more than just a personal union of his realms, James helped lay the foundations for a unitary British state. According to a tradition originating with anti-Stuart historians of the mid-17th century, James's taste for political absolutism, his financial irresponsibility, and his cultivation of unpopular favourites established the foundations of the English Civil War. James bequeathed his son Charles a fatal belief in the divine right of kings, combined with a disdain for Parliament, which culminated in the execution of Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy. Over the last three hundred years, the king's reputation has suffered from the acid description of him by Anthony Weldon, whom James had sacked and who wrote treatises on James in the 1650s. Often witty and perceptive but also prejudiced and abusive, their status as eye-witness accounts and their compulsive readability led too many historians to take them at face value. Other influential anti-James histories written during the 1650s include Edward Peyton's Divine Catastrophe of the Kingly Family of the House of Stuarts, Arthur Wilson's History of Great Britain, Being the Life and Reign of King James I, and Francis Osborne's Historical Memoirs of the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. David Harris Willson's 1956 biography continued much of this hostility, and in the words of historian Jenny Wormald, Willson's book was an astonishing spectacle of a work whose every page proclaimed its author's increasing hatred for his subject. Since Willson, however, the stability of James's government in Scotland and in the early part of his English reign, as well as his