Introduction

Abstract

james VI, one of the most successful of all the rulers of Scotland, was at least a relative failure as James I of England. To ask why is to pose the most obvious general problem of the reign. By the time of his accession to the English throne in 1603 James had already made substantial progress in asserting his authority in Scotland in both the ecclesiastical and secular spheres. As the first two chapters of this book show, he had done so largely by skilful diplomacy. The success of his church policy will be familiar to those who have already read the other works of Professor Donaldson, but Mrs Brown breaks new ground in her discussion of his relations with the nobility, which she sees as the dominant secular issue of the reign in Scotland. The traditional picture of James struggling to suppress the intolerable ambitions and activities of an aristocracy which was one of the most lawless and difficult in Europe¹ is, she argues, a travesty of the truth. James indeed owed his success to cooperation with the magnates; ‘he was effective precisely because he had not attempted new and autocratic policies towards his nobility, because he had not tried to undermine their political position’ (see below, page 36), and he continued this policy with general success after 1603.