Was James

Was James
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What did King James I do politically during his reign?

Was King James I a popular king?

Who were King James I’s favourites?

What was King James I’s relationship to religion?

Did King James I write the King James Bible?

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

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Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

By

David Mathew

•

Last Updated:

Jun 15, 2022

•
Edit History

Born:

June 19, 1566
Edinburgh
Scotland

... (Show more)

Died:

March 27, 1625 (aged 58)
England

... (Show more)

Title / Office:

king (1603-1625) , England
king (1567-1625) , Scotland

... (Show more)

House / Dynasty:

House of Stuart

... (Show more)

Notable Family Members:

spouse Anne of Denmark
father Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley
mother Mary
daughter Elizabeth Stuart
son Charles I

... (Show more)

What did King James I do politically during his reign?
Who were King James I’s favourites?
George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham
What was King James I’s relationship to religion?
Did King James I write the King James Bible?
Get hooked on history as this quiz sorts out the past. Find out who really invented movable type, who Winston Churchill called "Mum," and when the first sonic boom was heard.
James I, painting attributed to John de Critz, c. 1620; in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England.

Scientists believe fossilized skulls of elephant relatives found by ancient Greeks were the basis for the mythological Cyclops.
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James I was king of Scotland (as James VI) before he became king of both England and Scotland. He acceded to the English throne upon the death of the heirless Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. James’s ensuing reign was a controversial one, in part because of many political decisions that Parliament and the public found vexing: he spent lavishly, summoned Parliament only once between 1612 and 1622, levied an unpopular tax on imports and exports without Parliament’s consent, and tried to forge an alliance with Spain, a kingdom regarded with enmity by most in England.
James I was not a popular king. Although he had ruled as king of Scotland, he was unprepared for the challenges he faced upon assuming the English throne. A slew of politically ill-advised decisions—from imposing levies to attempting to forge an alliance with Spain—put him at odds with Parliament and the public and were partially to blame for his unpopularity. Other factors included his Scottish origins (glaringly obvious from his thick accent), his cultivation of favourites (often also of Scottish origins), and his widely recognized attraction to other men (which may have led him to confer honours upon his favourites).
King James I’s “favourites” were his closest courtiers and confidantes. They wielded a huge amount of influence in James’s court, which earned them the ire of many other members of the nobility and political establishment. The unpopularity of James’s favourites was not helped by the king’s openhandedness with them regarding court appointments, noble titles, and revenue. Some used their position to elevate those closest to them, as George Villiers did after his meteoric rise to power near the end of James’s reign. It has been surmised—both by James’s contemporaries and by later scholars—that James’s choice of favourites was sometimes motivated not only by political reasons but also by his attraction to other men.
James had been tutored by Presbyterians and publicly professed his support for Puritanism while sitting on the Scottish throne, but English Catholics hoped that he would also act tolerantly toward them, given his mother ’s religious beliefs. Instead, James continued the Elizabethan program of Catholic suppression after a group of Catholics orchestrated the Gunpowder Plot to seize control of the government in 1605. James also attempted to weed out nonconformity among the Puritans by calling the Hampton Court Conference and prosecuted Protestants who refused to adhere to the revised canons. In short, James I was more apt to pursue his own absolutist policies than to side with any particular faith, and he suppressed all who tried to undermine his total authority.
King James I did not write the King James Bible (also called the King James Version or the Authorized Version). He did commission it, however. James made the project his own after Puritans attending the 1604 Hampton Court Conference requested that a new translation of the Bible be made. Forty-seven scholars were enlisted to help, with the archbishop of Canterbury , Richard Bancroft , at their helm. The first edition was published in 1611. The King James Version turned out to be a resounding success, highly regarded for its unprecedented scholarliness and its literary beauty. It was adopted by numerous denominations and remains the translation of choice for some congregations today.
James I , (born June 19, 1566, Edinburgh Castle , Edinburgh , Scotland—died March 27, 1625, Theobalds, Hertfordshire, England), king of Scotland (as James VI) from 1567 to 1625 and first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625, who styled himself “king of Great Britain.” James was a strong advocate of royal absolutism, and his conflicts with an increasingly self-assertive Parliament set the stage for the rebellion against his successor, Charles I .
James was the only son of Mary , Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley . Eight months after James’s birth his father died when his house was destroyed by an explosion. After her third marriage, to James Hepburn, 4th earl of Bothwell , Mary was defeated by rebel Scottish lords and abdicated the throne. James, one year old, became king of Scotland on July 24, 1567. Mary left the kingdom on May 16, 1568, and never saw her son again. During his minority James was surrounded by a small band of the great Scottish lords, from whom emerged the four successive regents, the earls of Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton. There did not exist in Scotland the great gulf between rulers and ruled that separated the Tudors and their subjects in England. For nine generations the Stuarts had in fact been merely the ruling family among many equals, and James all his life retained a feeling for those of the great Scottish lords who gained his confidence.
The young king was kept fairly isolated but was given a good education until the age of 14. He studied Greek, French, and Latin and made good use of a library of classical and religious writings that his tutors, George Buchanan and Peter Young, assembled for him. James’s education aroused in him literary ambitions rarely found in princes but which also tended to make him a pedant .
Before James was 12, he had taken the government nominally into his own hands when the earl of Morton was driven from the regency in 1578. For several years more, however, James remained the puppet of contending intriguers and faction leaders. After falling under the influence of the duke of Lennox, a Roman Catholic who schemed to win back Scotland for the imprisoned Queen Mary, James was kidnapped by William Ruthven, 1st earl of Gowrie , in 1582 and was forced to denounce Lennox. The following year James escaped from his Protestant captors and began to pursue his own policies as king. His chief purposes were to escape from subservience to Scottish factions and to establish his claim to succeed the childless Elizabeth I upon the throne of England. Realizing that more was to be gained by cultivating Elizabeth’s goodwill than by allying himself with her enemies, James in 1585–86 concluded an alliance with England. Thenceforward, in his own unsteady fashion, he remained true to this policy, and even Elizabeth’s execution of his mother in 1587 drew from him only formal protests.
In 1589 James was married to Anne , the daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, who in 1594 gave birth to their first son, Prince Henry. James’s rule of Scotland was basically successful. He was able to play off Protestant and Roman Catholic factions of Scottish nobles against each other, and, through a group of commissioners known as the Octavians (1596–97), he was able to rule Scotland almost as absolutely as Elizabeth I ruled England. The king was a convinced Presbyterian , but in 1584 he secured a series of acts that made him the head of the Presbyterian church in Scotland , with the power to appoint the church’s bishops.
When James at length succeeded to the English throne on the death of Elizabeth I (March 24, 1603), he was already, as he told the English Parliament , “an old and experienced king” and one with a clearly defined theory of royal government. Unfortunately, neither his experience nor his theory equipped him to solve the new problems facing him, and he lacked the qualities of mind and character to supply the deficiency. James hardly understood the rights or the temper of the English Parliament, and he thus came into conflict with it. He had little contact with the English middle classes, and he suffered from the narrowness of his horizons. His 22-year-long reign over England was to prove almost as unfortunate for the Stuart dynasty as his years before 1603 had been fortunate.
There was admittedly much that was sensible in his policies, and the opening years of his reign as king of Great Britain were a time of material prosperity for both England and Scotland. For one thing, he established peace by speedily ending England’s war with Spain in 1604. But the true test of his statesmanship lay in his handling of Parliament, which was claiming ever-wider rights to criticize and shape public policy. Moreover, Parliament’s established monopoly of granting taxes made its assent necessary for the improvement of the crown’s finances, which had been seriously undermined by the expense of the long war with Spain. James, who had so successfully divided and corrupted Scottish assemblies, never mastered the subtler art of managing an English Parliament. He kept few privy councillors in the House of Commons and thus allowed independent members there to seize the initiative . Moreover, his lavish creations of new peers and, later in his reign, his subservience to various recently ennobled favourites loosened his hold upon the House of Lords . His fondness for lecturing both houses of Parliament about his royal prerogatives offended them and drew forth such counterclaims as the Apology of the Commons (1604). To parliamentary statesmen used to Tudor dignity, James’s shambling gait, restless garrulity, and dribbling mouth ill befitted his exalted claims to power and privilege.
When Parliament refused to grant him a special fund to pay for his extravagances, James placed new customs duties on merchants without Parliament’s consent, thereby threatening its control of governmental finance. Moreover, by getting the law courts to proclaim these actions as law (1608) after Parliament had refused to enact them, James struck at the houses’ legislative supremacy. In four years of peace, James practically doubled the debt left by Elizabeth, and it was hardly surprising that when his chief minister, Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury , tried in 1610–11 to exchange the king’s feudal revenues for a fixed annual sum from Parliament, the negotiations over this so-called Great Contract came to nothing. James dissolved Parliament in 1611.
The abortive Great Contract, and the death of Cecil in 1612, marked the turning point of James’s reign; he was never to have another chief minister who was so experienced and so powerful. During the ensuing 10 years the king summoned only the brief Addled Parliament of 1614. Deprived of parliamentary grants, the crown was forced to adopt unpopular expedients, such as the sale of monopolies, to raise funds. Moreover, during these years the king succumbed to the influence of the incompetent Robert Carr, earl of Somerset . Carr was succeeded as the king’s favourite by George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham , who showed more ability as chief minister but who was even more hated for his arrogance and his monopoly of royal favour.
In his later years the king’s judgment faltered. He embarked on a foreign policy that fused discontent into a formidable opposition. The king felt a sympathy, which his countrymen found inexplicable, for the Spanish ambassador, Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, count of Gondomar . When Sir Walter Raleigh , who had gone to Guiana in search of gold, came into conflict with the Spaniards, who were then at peace with England, Gondomar persuaded James to have Raleigh beheaded. With Gondomar’s encouragement, James developed a plan to marry his second son and heir Charles to a Spanish princess, along with a concurrent plan to join with Spain in mediating the Thirty Years’ War in Germany. The plan, though plausible in the abstract, showed an astonishing disregard for English public opinion , which solidly supported James’s son-in-law, Frederick, the Protestant elector of the Palatinate, whose lands were then occupied by Spain. When James called a third Parliament in 1621 to raise funds for his designs, that body was bitterly critical of his attempts to ally England with Spain. James in a fury tore the record of the offending Protestations from the House of Commo
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