Useful Notes / James VI and I

(aka: James The First)

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James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) of The House of Stuart was King of Scots 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. Under him and until the early eighteenth century, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, although both ruled by the same person in personal union. (With a short but significant interruption.)

James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and a great-great-grandson of Henry VII, King of England (through both his parents, who were half-cousins through their mutual grandmother Margaret Tudor, Henry VII's oldest daughter), uniquely positioning him to eventually accede to all three thrones. He took the throne of Scotland in his infancy after his mother had been forced to abdicate, and was raised with a Protestant education, making him the first Protestant King of Scots and cementing the Protestant character of Scotland (well, the lowlands at any rate). In 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era after him, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58.

He styled himself King of Great Britain and Ireland (and devised the Union Jack to fly on his ships and thus emphasise the unity of his realms), though each kingdom still had different crowns, different constitutions, and different parliaments. He was a major advocate of a single parliament for both England and Scotland, and also signed a peace treaty with the King of Spain, Philip III. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonisation of the Americas began. Jamestown, the first surviving British colony in what was later the US, was named for the reigning king. The Plymouth Colony (you know, the one with the Mayflower) was also established in his reign, as was the first permanent English settlement in Newfoundland (which England had claimed decades earlier but had never actually settled beyond seasonal fishing camps). Much of what is today the East Coast of the United States was charted during his reign, as shown by some of the naming of geographical features—the most prominent being the Charles River (at the mouth of which Boston would be founded in 1630), named for his son and heir, by his son and heir (John Smith having let the Prince of Wales run amok with a map of New England) and several features in Virginia (the James River is named for him, the Elizabeth River is named for his daughter, and Capes Henry and Charles are named for his sons).

At 57 years and 246 days, James's reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors, and to date has only been surpassed by George III, Victoria, and Elizabeth II, all of whom rate among the top 25 longest reigns in world history (at least among sovereigns whose reigns are known by an exact date). He 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, which would worsen under his son Charles I and erupt into the English Civil War. 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 (the last of whom was also a leading political figure of the day) contributing to a flourishing literary culture.

James sponsored the translation of the Bible that was named after him, the Authorised, or "King James" Version, which for around a century was the definitive English translation of the Bible. The new translation was an element of a wider adjustment of religious policy during his reign, and was particularly an effort to reconcile multiple earlier English translations of the Bible with each other and with the Church of England's structure and official doctrines. While mostly the work of a team of scholars, the King did take a personal interest in the project, which can be seen in a few places (particularly the absence of annotations, which he regarded as suspect both politically—since annotations in the earlier Geneva Bible were implicitly opposed to the divine right of kings—and theologically). The King James Bible remains hugely influential amongst certain branches of Protestantism, but also in the English language more broadly, as its style, particularly its elegant and pithy turns of phrase, were much imitated in the centuries that followed. He also wrote himself literature and poetry himself, among them a piece celebrating the Christian victory in the Battle of Lepanto. He also authored a tract condemning tobacco smoking, which had become fashionable in England during his predecessor's reign.

He has always been remembered for having a great intellect despite bad manners and a foul temper, but his actual competence and achievements as a ruler were viewed fairly negatively for many years. This earned him the sobriquet "the wisest fool in Christendom" in the early 17th century, which has been associated with him ever since. By the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise James's reputation and treat him as a serious and thoughtful monarch. Even his "bad manners" have been reevaluated, with historians noting that this reflected his reputation for casual and sometimes rough behaviour around courtiers—which was expected in the smaller, simpler, less hierarchical court of Scotland but distinctly off when translated to London.

Traditionally, historians and advocates of the Scots Language have viewed James as something of an arch-villain, attributing the decline of Scots' prestige in the 17th century to his decision to relocate the royal court from Scotland to England, which essentially meant that all patronage for works written in the language disappeared overnight. Once a passionate advocate for Scots, writing many books in it and celebrating its poetic superiority over English, James changed his tune upon ascending the English throne, reprinting his earlier Scots works in English and later claiming that Scots and English weren't even different languages. However, modern appraisals have been less scathing, arguing that James’ actions were far less damaging to the status of Scots than the later Act of Union.

He is also notable as one of the British rulers most generally agreed to have had homosexual inclinations; his four male "favourites" (Esmé Stewart,^note His distant cousin, in case you were wondering 1st Duke of Lennox; Richard Preston, 1st Duke of Desmond; Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset; and last and most especially George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham) (and yes, he gave each and every one of them new peerages) were the subject of gossip at the time and ever since. On the other hand, he was also known to be deeply infatuated with his wife Anne, impregnating her thirteen times (which sadly resulted only in three children who survived to adulthood), as well as having a mistress. Most historians commenting on his sexuality at least acknowledge the possibility that he was bisexual, (i.e. possibly being anywhere from a 2 to a 5 on the Kinsey Scale, with 4-5 being the consensus today). Whether he ever consummated any of his same-sex relationships, however, is a mystery for the ages for a variety of reasons—not least his aforementioned sincere Christian piety.

Depictions of James VI and I Stuart in fiction: