Details

Name

James

Brief Biography

1566 - 1625, Scottish

Occupation

Monarch

Description

King James VI of Scotland was born on 19 June 1566 in Edinburgh Castle to Mary, Queen of Scots and her second husband, Lord Darnley. Darnley was murdered in February 1567 and in July Mary was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son. A succession of regents ruled Scotland until 1576, when James became nominal ruler. In 1581 he assumed full powers and proved an effective ruler of Scotland's facrtious factional religious and political groups. In 1586, the Treaty of Berwick made he and Queen Elizabeth I of England allies. When his mother was executed the following year, James expected Queen Elizabeth to name him her successor and the Stuarts becoming the British royal family. In 1589, he married Anne of Denmark. Three of their seven children survived into adulthood: Henry, Charles and Elizabeth. In March 1603, Queen Elizabeth died and James did become King James I of England, Ireland and remained King James VI Scotland. This established the Stuart British monarchy which ended with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. King James I and VI moved to London. Although promising to visit Scotland every three years he came but once in 1617. He backed peace in Europe through a peace with Spain in 1604 and survived survived the Roman Catholic plot to blow him and Parliament up in 1605. King James I and VI looked to establish a British identity and uniformity. He approved the design of the British flag merging the England and Scottish flags ( the union flag), and he also looked to establish a uniformity in Anglican/Church of England worship which was harder to impose on Scottish Presbyterians and Roman Catholics. In 1611 he introduced the Authorised King James's Version of the Bible - the standard text for the next 250 years as indicative of his approach to uniformity or conformity in worship. In later years in 1613 his daughter Elizabeth married Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate, and was briefly Queen of Bohemia. She eventually settled in Holland in later life and through her the later Hanoverian monarchy had claim to the British throne. King James I and VI died on 27 March 1625 of natural causes. He was succeeded by his second son, Charles who became King Charles I - the same year that he married Henrietta Maria, a Roman Catholic daughter of King Henry IV of France.