[1] Reference Books on this Period will be found in the Classified List of Books in the Appendix.  The pronunciation of names will be found in the Index.  The Leading Dates stand unenclosed; all others are in parentheses. [2] House of Orange-Stuart.

415.  Accession of James I.

Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor family (S376).  By birth, James Stuart, only son of Mary STuart, Queen of Scots, and great-grandson of Margaret, sister of Henry VIII, was the nearest heir to the crown.[3] He was already King of Scotland under the title of James VI.  He now, by act of Parliament, became James I of England.  By his accession the two countries were united under one sovereign, but each retained its own Parliament, its own National Church, and its own laws.[4] The new monarch found himself ruler over three kingdoms, each professing a different religion.  Puritanism prevailed in Scotland, Catholicism in Ireland, Anglicanism or Episcopacy in England.

[3] See Genealogical Table, p.207. [4] On his coins and in his proclamations James styled himself King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.  But the term “Great Britain” did not properly come into use until somewhat more than a hundred years later, when, by an act of Parliament under Anne, Scotland and England were legally united.  The English Parliament refused to grant free trade to Scotland and denied to the people of that counttry, even if born after James I came to the English throne (or “Post Nati,” as they were called), the rights and privileges possessed by natives of England.

416.  The King’s Appearances and Character.

James was unfortunate in his birth.  Neither his father, Lord Darnley, nor his mother had high qualities of character.  The murder of Mary’s Italian secretary in her own palace, and almost in her own presence (S395), gave the Queen a shock which left a fatal inheritance of cowardice to her son.  Throughout his life he could not endure the sight of a drawn sword.  If we can trust common report, his personal appearance was by no means impressive.  He had a feeble, rickety body, he could not walk straight, his tongue was too large for his mouth, and he had goggle eyes.  Through fear of assassination he habitually wore thickly padded and quilted clothes, usually green in color.  He was a man of considerable shrewdness, but of a small mind, and of unbounded conceit.  His Scotch tutor had crammed him with much ill-digested learning, so that he gave the impression of a man educated beyond his intellect.  His favorites used to flatter him by telling him that he was the “British Solomon”; but the French ambassador came nearer to the mark when he called him “the wisest fool in Christendom.”

The King wrote on witchcraft, kingcraft, and theology, and composed numerous commonplace verses.  He also wrote a sweeping denunciation of the new plant called tobacco, which Raleigh (S392) had brought from America, and whose smoke now began to perfume, or, according to James, to poison, the air of England.  His Majesty had all the superstitions of the age, and one of his earliest acts was the passage of a statute punishing witchcraft with death.  Under that law many a wretched woman perished on the scaffold, whose only crime was that she was old, ugly, and friendless.