James VI & I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scots as James VI from 1567 to 1625, and King of England and Ireland as James I from 1603 to 1625. He became King of Scots as James VI on 24 July 1567, when he was just thirteen months old, succeeding his mother Mary, Queen of Scots. Regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1581.[1] On 24 March 1603, as James I, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue.[2] He then ruled the Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland for 22 years, often using the title King of Great Britain, until his death at the age of 58.[3] 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 contributing to a flourishing literary culture.[4] James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597),[5] True Law of Free Monarchies (1598),[6] and Basilikon Doron (1599).[7] Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom", an epithet associated with his character ever since.[8] James Charles Stuart was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He was a descendant of Henry VII of England through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, older sister of Henry VIII. He was King James I of England and King James VI of Scotland.[9] Mary's rule over Scotland was insecure, for both she and her husband, being Roman Catholics, faced a rebellion by the Protestant population. Lord Darnley secretly allied himself with the rebels and murdered the Queen's private secretary, David Rizzio.[10] James was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, and as the eldest son of the monarch and heir-apparent, automatically became Duke of Rothesay and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. Elizabeth I of England, as godmother in absentia, sent a magnificent gold baptismal font as a christening gift.[11] James's father, Henry, was murdered on 10 February 1567 at the Hamiltons' house, Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, perhaps in revenge for Rizzio's death. Mary was already an unpopular queen, and her marriage on 15 May 1567 to James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely suspected of murdering Henry, heightened widespread bad feeling towards her.[12] In June 1567, Protestant rebels arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle; she never saw her son again. She was forced to abdicate on 24 July in favour of the infant James and to appoint her illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray, as regent.[13] James was known to be superstitious.[14] The care of James was entrusted to the Earl and Countess of Mar, "to be conserved, nursed, and upbrought"[15] in the security of Stirling Castle.[16] The boy was formally crowned at the age of thirteen months as King James VI of Scotland at the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling, on 29 July 1567.[11] The sermon was preached by the Calvinist John Knox. And, in accordance with the religious beliefs of most of the Scottish ruling class, James was brought up as a member of the Protestant national Church of Scotland, his education supervised by historian and poet George Buchanan, who subjected him to regular beatings but also instilled in him a lifelong passion for literature and learning.[17] In 1568 Mary escaped from prison, leading to a brief period of violence. The Earl of Moray defeated Mary's troops at the Battle of Langside, forcing her to flee to England, where she was subsequently imprisoned by Elizabeth. On 22 January 1570, Moray was assassinated by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, to be succeeded as regent by James's paternal grandfather, Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, who a year later was carried fatally wounded into Stirling Castle after a raid by Mary's supporters.[18] The next regent, John Erskine, 1st Earl of Mar, died soon after banqueting at the estate of James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, where he "took a vehement sickness", dying on 28 October 1572 at Stirling. Morton, who now took Mar's office, proved in many ways the most effective of James's regents,[19] but he made enemies by his rapacity.[20] He fell from favour when the Frenchman Esmé Stewart, Sieur d'Aubigny, first cousin of James's father Lord Darnley, and future Earl of Lennox, arrived in Scotland and quickly established himself as the first of James's powerful male favourites.[21] Morton was executed on 2 June 1581, belatedly charged with complicity in Lord Darnley's murder.[22] On 8 August, James made Lennox the only duke in Scotland.[23] Then fifteen years old, the king was to remain under the influence of Lennox for about one more year.[24] Although a Protestant convert, Lennox was distrusted by Scottish Calvinists, who noticed the physical displays of affection between favourite and king and alleged that Lennox "went about to draw the King to carnal lust".[20] In August 1582, in what became known as the Ruthven Raid, the Protestant earls of Gowrie and Angus lured James into Ruthven Castle, imprisoned him,[25] and forced Lennox to leave Scotland. After James was freed in June 1583, he assumed increasing control of his kingdom. He pushed through the Black Acts to assert royal authority over the Kirk and between 1584 and 1603 established effective royal government and relative peace among the lords, ably assisted by John Maitland of Thirlestane, who led the government until 1592.[26] One last Scottish attempt against the king's person occurred in August 1600, when James was apparently assaulted by Alexander Ruthven, the Earl of Gowrie's younger brother, at Gowrie House, the seat of the Ruthvens.[27] Since Ruthven was run through by James's page John Ramsay and the Earl of Gowrie was himself killed in the ensuing fracas, James's account of the circumstances, given the lack of witnesses and his history with the Ruthvens, was not universally believed.[28] In 1586, James signed the Treaty of Berwick with England. That and the execution of his mother in 1587, which he denounced as a "preposterous and strange procedure", helped clear the way for his succession south of the border.[29] During the Spanish Armada crisis of 1588, he assured Elizabeth of his support as "your natural son and compatriot of your country",[30] and as time passed and Elizabeth remained unmarried, securing the English succession became a cornerstone of James's policy. Throughout his youth, James was praised for his chastity, since he showed little interest in women; after the loss of Lennox, he continued to prefer male company.[31] A suitable marriage, however, was necessary to reinforce his monarchy, and the choice fell on the fourteen-year-old Anne of Denmark (born December 1574), younger daughter of the Protestant Frederick II. Shortly after a proxy marriage in August 1589, Anne sailed for Scotland but was forced by storms to the coast of Norway. On hearing the crossing had been abandoned, James, in what Willson calls "the one romantic episode of his life",[32] sailed from Leith with a three-hundred-strong retinue to fetch Anne personally.[33] The couple were married formally at the Old Bishop's Palace in Oslo on 23 November and, after stays at Elsinore and Copenhagen, returned to Scotland in May 1590. By all accounts, James was at first infatuated with Anne, and in the early years of their marriage seems always to have showed her patience and affection.[34] But between 1593 and 1595, James was romantically linked with Anne Murray, later Lady Glamis, whom he addressed in verse as "my mistress and my love". The royal couple produced three surviving children: Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died of exhaustion, after playing a game of "real tennis" having not fully recovered from pneumonia, in 1612, aged 18; Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia; and Charles, the future King Charles I of England. Anne died before her husband in March 1619. In 1597–98, James wrote two works, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies and Basilikon Doron (Royal Gift), in which he established an ideological base for monarchy. In the Trew Law, he sets out the divine right of kings, explaining that for Biblical reasons kings are higher beings than other men, though "the highest bench is the sliddriest to sit upon".[35] The document proposes an absolutist theory of monarchy, by which a king may impose new laws by royal prerogative but must also pay heed to tradition and to God, who would "stirre up such scourges as pleaseth him, for punishment of wicked kings".[36] Basilikon Doron, written as a book of instruction for the four-year-old Prince Henry, provides a more practical guide to kingship.[37] Despite banalities and sanctimonious advice,[38] the work is well written, perhaps the best example of James's prose.[39] James's advice concerning parliaments, which he understood as merely the king's "head court", foreshadows his difficulties with the English Commons: "Hold no Parliaments," he tells Henry, "but for the necesitie of new Lawes, which would be but seldome".[40] In the Trew Law James maintains that the king owns his realm as a feudal lord owns his fief, because kings arose "before any estates or ranks of men, before any parliaments were holden, or laws made, and by them was the land distributed, which at first was wholly theirs. And so it follows of necessity that kings were the authors and makers of the laws, and not the laws of the kings."[41] From 1601, in the last years of Elizabeth I's life, certain English politicians, notably her chief minister Sir Robert Cecil,[42] maintained a secret correspondence with James in order to prepare in advance for a smooth succession. In March 1603, with the Queen clearly dying, Cecil sent James a draft proclamation of his accession to the English throne. Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March, and James was proclaimed king in London later the same day.[43] As James headed south on April 3 with his courtiers and advisors, his new subjects flocked to see him, relieved that the succession had triggered neither unrest nor invasion.[44] When he entered London on May 7 he was mobbed.[45] He then stayed for several nights at the Tower of London. His English coronation took place on 25 July, with elaborate allegories provided by dramatic poets such as Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson, though an outbreak of the plague restricted festivities.[46]