James I (1566–1625)

King of England from 1603 and Scotland (as James VI) from 1567. The son of Mary Queen of Scots and her second husband, Lord Darnley, he succeeded to the Scottish throne on the enforced abdication of his mother and assumed power in 1583. He established a strong centralized authority, and in 1589 married Anne of Denmark (1574–1619).

As successor to Elizabeth I in England, he alienated the Puritans by his High Church views and Parliament by his assertion of divine right, and was generally unpopular because of his favourites, such as Buckingham, and his schemes for an alliance with Spain. He was succeeded by his son Charles I.

As king of Scotland, he curbed the power of the nobility, although his attempts to limit the authority of the Kirk (Church of Scotland) were less successful.

Upon his accession to the English throne on the death of Elizabeth I, James acted mainly upon the advice of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, but on the latter's death all restraint vanished.

His religious policy consisted of asserting the supreme authority of the crown and suppressing both Puritans and Catholics who objected. The preparation of the Authorized Version of the Bible in English, published in 1611, was ordered by James.

Led by Robert Catesby, a group of Catholic gentry planned to blow up James at the opening of Parliament in 1605, but the plot was discovered. The anti‐Catholic reaction to the gunpowder plot gave James a temporary popularity, which soon dissipated. It was during his reign that the Puritan Pilgrims (or ‘Pilgrim Fathers’) sailed to the New World to escape persecution in England. His foreign policy, aimed primarily at achieving closer relations with Spain, was also disliked.

James's childhood and adolescence were unhappy, abnormal, and precarious; he had various guardians, whose treatment of him differed widely. His education, although thorough, was weighted with Presbyterian and Calvinist political doctrine, and his character – highly intelligent and sensitive, but also fundamentally shallow, vain, and exhibitionist – reacted violently to this.

His political philosophy turned to the theory of the divine right of kings, in striking contrast to the practical experiences of his childhood. He also sought solace with extravagant and unsavoury male favourites who, in later years, were to have a damaging effect on his prestige and state affairs. His economic opportunism, with its disastrous effects on commerce, alienated city interests. Puritan influence and political awareness were increasing fast among the rural landowners, whose influence James never appreciated. His willingness to compromise politically, even while continuing to talk in terms of absolutism, largely accounts for the superficial stability of his reign. However, the effects of many of his actions were long term, becoming fully obvious only after his death. The marriage of James's daughter Elizabeth to Frederic V, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, was to result in the eventual Hanoverian succession to the British throne.