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James VI and I (June 19, 1566 – March 27, 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from July 24, 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from March 25, 1603 until his death in 1625. Although he wanted to bring about a closer union, the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained individual sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciaries, and laws, both ruled by James in personal union.

James was the son of Queen Mary I of Scotland and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. James was a great-great-grandson of King Henry VII of England and Lord of Ireland, through Margaret Tudor, his daughter and the older sister of Henry VIII, and thus a potential successor to all three thrones.

James was born on June 19, 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son and heir apparent of the monarch he automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. He was baptised “Charles James” or “James Charles” on December 17, 1566 in a Catholic ceremony held at Stirling Castle. His godparents were King Charles IX of France (represented by John, Count of Brienne), Queen Elizabeth I of England (represented by the Earl of Bedford), and Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (represented by ambassador Philibert du Croc). Mary refused to let the Archbishop of St Andrews, whom she referred to as “a pocky priest”, spit in the child’s mouth, as was then the custom.

Queen Mary’s rule over Scotland was insecure, and she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by Protestant noblemen. During Mary’s and Darnley’s difficult marriage, Darnley secretly allied himself with the rebels and conspired in the murder of the queen’s private secretary, David Rizzio, just three months before James’s birth.

Lord Darnley was murdered on February 10, 1567 at Kirk o’ Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for the killing of Rizzio. James inherited his father’s titles of Duke of Albany and Earl of Ross. Mary was already unpopular, and her marriage on May 15, 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Darnley, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her. In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Lochleven Castle; she never saw her son again. She was forced to abdicate on July 24, 1567 in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent. This made King James VI of Scotland the third consecutive Scottish monarch to ascend to the throne as an infant.

Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1603, he succeeded Queen Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, who died childless. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era, until his death in 1625.

After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England (the largest of the three realms) from 1603, returning to Scotland only once, in 1617. 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 in both realms. “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 his request to be titled “King of Great Britain” on legal grounds. 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” and the title was not used on English statutes. James forced the Scottish Parliament to use it, and it was used on proclamations, coinage, letters, and treaties in both realms.

He was a major advocate of a single parliament for England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and English colonisation of the Americas began.

Throughout his youth, King James VI was praised for his chastity, since he showed little interest in women. After the loss of the Earl of Lennox, 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, younger daughter of Protestant King Frederik II of Denmark and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow.

Princess Anne at age 14, married James at age 23. 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 in what historian David Harris Willson called “the one romantic episode of his life”. The couple were married formally at the Bishop’s Palace in Oslo on November 23. James and Anne returned to Scotland on May 1, 1590. By all accounts, James was at first infatuated with Anne and, in the early years of their marriage, seems always to have shown her patience and affection.

They had three children who survived infancy: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who predeceased his parents; Princess Elizabeth, who became Queen of Bohemia; and James’s future successor, Charles I. Anne demonstrated an independent streak and a willingness to use factional Scottish politics in her conflicts with James over the custody of Prince Henry and his treatment of her friend Beatrix Ruthven. Anne appears to have loved James at first, but the couple gradually drifted and eventually lived apart, though mutual respect and a degree of affection survived.

At 57 years and 246 days, James’s reign in Scotland was the longest of any Scottish monarch. 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. Under James, the “Golden Age” of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture.

James himself was a prolific writer, authoring works such as Daemonologie (1597), The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron (1599). He sponsored the translation of the Bible into English later named after him, the Authorized King James Version, and the 1604 revision of the Book of Common Prayer. Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed “the wisest fool in Christendom”, an epithet associated with his character ever since.

Since the latter half of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise James’s reputation and treat him as a serious and thoughtful monarch. He was strongly committed to a peace policy, and tried to avoid involvement in religious wars, especially the Thirty Years’ War that devastated much of Central Europe. He tried but failed to prevent the rise of hawkish elements in the English Parliament who wanted war with Spain. He was succeeded by his second son, King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland.