James I of England (James VI of
Scotland)
(1566–1625)
King of Scotland who succeeded the last
Tudor monarch, Queen Elizabeth in 1603
as King James I. The first monarch of the
Stuart dynasty, he was the son of Mary,
Queen of Scots, and the Duke of Albany.
When Mary abdicated her throne in 1567,
James became by right of inheritance the
king of Scotland, although he was only
one year old at the time. Royal power in
Scotland was in the hands of several re-
gents, while the country was divided be-
tween Catholics, who sought an alliance
with France, and Protestants, who wanted
closer relations with England. James as-
sumed authority over Scotland in 1583 and
proved a skilled diplomat, especially in his
dealings with England and Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth permitted the execution
of his mother Mary, James did nothing in
order to prove his loyalty. This action, and
descent from the sister of King Henry VIII,
earned James the throne of England on
Elizabeth’s death in 1603.
After succeeding Elizabeth, however,
James ruled with a heavy hand over the
English Parliament, toward which he
showed hostility and indifference. At the
Hampton Court Conference, he refused to
allow religious tolerance for English Puri-
tans, a stand that eventually drove many
of the Puritans to exile and settlement in
North America. There were several plots
against his life and reign, with the most
famous being the Gunpowder Plot of 1605,
when Guy Fawkes was arrested while
caught with dozens of barrels of gunpow-
der underneath the House of Lords. Two
years later, Parliament prevented the union
of Scotland and England, which James
supported. The king indulged himself with
expensive luxuries and reigned over a
court of incompetent and corrupt minis-
ters, giving rise to an anti-Stuart rebel-
lion that finally flared into civil war in
the 1640s, during the reign of his son
Charles I.
Under James, England began establish-
ing colonies in North America in Massa-
chusetts and Virginia. James was the au-
thor of several works on politics and
government, includingThe True Law of
Free Monarchy, in which he explained his
belief in the divine right of kings to rule
by their own will. He is also known for
commissioning a translation of the Bible
into English. This King James Version, first
published in 1611, has remained the stan-
dard text of the Bible for the Protestant,
English-speaking world to the present day.SEEALSO: Elizabeth I; England; ScotlandJews .................................................
Jews had been a persecuted minority
throughout the Middle Ages, and the hu-
manism and questioning of Christian doc-
trine during the Renaissance did little to
improve their status. Many European cities
forbade them to pass through their gates
at all; most others severely restricted their
movements, their professions, and the
neighborhoods in which they lived. From