Is James I an Underrated King?

We dive into the reign of the first Stuart monarch of England, his political savvy, and the controversies that shaped his rule. From the Gunpowder Plot to the King James Bible, we ask whether history has judged him too harshly - or not harshly enough. Historian, author and broadcaster Anna Whitelock joins us for a fresh take on the man who united the crowns of England and Scotland. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore. Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask! Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:54Dan Snow?

  Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. By some accounts, King James I of England, the Sixth of Scotland, was a sort of ludicrous king. He was stereotyped as dull and uncharismatic, obsessed with strange, pedantic, religious and philosophical debates, and toilet humour, and more interested in witchcraft than the traditional pursuits of a king, which is basically going to war against your enemies and making an even grander and more expansive realm. And that reputation certainly wasn't helped by the fact that his son Charles I, well, presided over a catastrophe as England, Wales, Scotland, Britain, Ireland descend into a series of savage civil wars. So James and Charles, in the years afterwards, were subjected to an absolute tirade, an

• 2:39Dan Snow?

  outpouring of anti-monarchical propaganda. It seems to me that, for many people, James I is a bit of a footnote, doesn't even deserve that much scrutiny. He comes in the wake of two very famous, very illustrious, popular queens, his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. He's also unfortunately squeezed between the Tudor era and that of the Civil War. So perhaps James doesn't get quite the attention he might deserve. But say we're going to put that right, we're going to ask if history's been unkind to poor James I and VI, does he deserve this tarnished reputation? Or is he one of the most underrated kings in British history? Was he a bumbling, slobbering king with a tongue too big for his mouth? Or was he rather far sighted?

• 3:22Dan Snow?

  Was he a peacemaker, a unifier of crowns, a patron of culture? Someone who at least attempted a smidgen of religious tolerance in a deeply intolerant age? Joining me to help work it out is Anna Whitelock, she's a brilliant historian, she's an author, professor of the history of monarchy at City University of London. She has just written a wonderful new book called The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain. She's been on this podcast before many times, and it's wonderful to have her back. She's going to stand up for King James, see if you agree. Enjoy.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  T minus 10.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Never to go to war with one another again. And flip off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

• 4:13Dan Snow?

  Anna Whitelock, good to see you.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  Dan Snow, very good to see you.

• 4:16Dan Snow?

  James the First and Sixth of Scotland, so he's King of, well, complicated, he's King of two kingdoms at the same time.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 4:22Dan Snow?

  And a bit of Ireland. But anyway, he gets squeezed because we, everyone loves Elizabeth, widely regarded as top of the charts. And then people are interested in Charles the First, his hapless son, and the civil war. When you set out on this project, what's the public perception of James the First, if we have one?

• 4:37Speaker 05

  Well, I think it's slobbering idiot, tongue too large for his mouth.

• 4:42Dan Snow?

  And that's actually a thing?

• 4:44Speaker 05

  These are the cliches of the period, largely from an ousted courtier, Anthony Weldon, who was out of favour for writing a scurrilous tract against the Scots and then decided to kind of turn the tables and then write a piece about James, which really had cemented for a long time, really through until the 1970s, historical reputation, where he fiddled with his codpiece, he drank too much, his tongue was too large for his mouth. We think that's kind of perhaps just because he's, I don't know, people say, well, his Scottish accent just was different from an English one. And so people just felt like he wasn't enunciating his words properly. And yeah, just corrupt.

• 5:25Dan Snow?

  Very lewd sense of humour, is that we get that one?

• 5:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, very lewd, effeminate, relationships with male favourites. I mean, even that, I think, hasn't really garnered the kind of attention that, of course, all the love affairs, rumoured or otherwise, of Elizabeth I have garnered. So I was, in a way, when I started writing my book, it was very much about the Tudor bandwagon suddenly stops on the death of Elizabeth and so much popular interest in the Tudors. And then it just drops off a cliff.

• 5:55Dan Snow?

  It's a guillotine.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. And no one's particularly interested in what comes next until the civil war. And I was thinking, but that's bonkers, because of course, the day that Elizabeth died is the day that James becomes King of England. And what's that like? What happens when a new royal family arrives at court after, you know, a long reign of a, a single woman? And then I thought, well, so maybe I could tell James's story. As part of a story of the emergence of sort of Britain in the world. And so it was much more ambitious, meant that I had to travel to all kinds of places that I wasn't familiar with in any way. And in that sense, it's sort of a unique telling of James that moves away from the caricature. So I don't really talk about his love life, his affairs,

• 6:40Speaker 05

  all of that. Instead, I'm talking about how he's intersecting with the wider world as a diplomat, as a politician, and supporting travel and trade.

• 6:50Dan Snow?

  Yeah, so lots of things that we think about happening in the Tudor period, sort of happened under James. That includes Shakespeare writing many of his most famous plays. But it also, the genesis of the British Empire, yes, Francis Drake is claiming it's a land and the stuff going on in the late 16th century, but a lot of it really gets going in the 17th century under James and the early Stuart monarchy, right?

• 7:11Speaker 05

  Exactly. So people, I think, probably from school know that, you know, there were the circumnavigation of the globe, and they think Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake, and we think about new world exploration. But of course, no permanent colonies were established during Elizabeth's reign. And it was, you know, the East India Company that becomes so significant was chartered by Elizabeth in 1601. But actually, the first ships returned within months of James's accession. And really, we see with the peace with Spain, which James brokers soon after his accession, we see trade really open up and be, you know, in a way, James was re-establishing contact with the European continent after essentially the first Brexit, if you like, the break with Rome. And the Tudors, of course, long

• 7:56Speaker 05

  at war with Spain, and he decided it was time to reconnect with Europe and forge an alliance, or at least a peace with Spain.

• 8:04Dan Snow?

  Okay, well, let's appraise James afresh here. Born in Scotland.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Born in Scotland.

• 8:10Dan Snow?

  Son of Mary, Queen of Scots.

• 8:12Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 8:12Dan Snow?

  Again, a very popular figure who fits nicely into that kind of Tudor princessy world of fandom.

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 8:19Dan Snow?

  But no one thinks about a little boy.

• 8:20Speaker 05

  No one thinks about a little boy. And of course, the little boy who became king, just barely months old. So Mary, of course, was forced to abdicate. And James is this infant in arms, babe in arms, who becomes King of Scotland. You're absolutely right. You know, the Scottish part is often just a footnote to James as King of England. But actually, what we see in Scotland. As he grows up, him being quite a capable agile manipulator of factions. You'd have to be. Exactly. To survive. Exactly. I mean, it was a hotbed of conspiracy, assassinations, murders. He was imprisoned for a time, kidnapped.

• 8:59Speaker 05

  So he had to be pretty wily to survive and also impose his will against the nobles and the Scottish Church. And he also, and again, often overlooked that he was really pushing for Scotland to be recognised as a significant power in Europe. He traded with the Baltic States, but he was basically saying to the big kingdoms of France and Spain, you know, I'm one to do business with. And partly that was because James wanted to curry friends for when he claimed the English throne. But he also had this vision to reunite Europe, to bring together Protestants and Catholics.

• 9:42Speaker 05

  And so reunite Christendom, which effectively was Western Europe. Now, how much of this was principle and how much of it was really smart pragmatism? Because of course, by talking lots about peace, it meant that he could avoid as far as possible committing to war. Because war was very costly. And so we see, I mean, in the first stage of that, it comes to fruition where he is at least not opposed to the English crown. So Spain don't put forward, they don't get their act together, putting forward their own claimant when Elizabeth dies.

• 10:23Speaker 05

  And so James inherits the throne, having played quite a blinder in Scotland to hang on to that throne. And establish himself as a significant European figure.

• 10:35Dan Snow?

  So he's king of Scotland in his own right, survives a very difficult childhood, establishes himself, as you say, just sits and waits for Queen Elizabeth to die. She is very cagey, but she dies and he is the presumed heir. Although she ever acknowledge him or she ever invites him to London and.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  No, they don't have a kind of handover. She does give him a pension, so she tries to kind of keep him sweet. She absolutely doesn't promise the succession to him because she has a very clear sense, the minute you nominate and name your heir, all attention focuses on that. She played that part during the reign of Mary Tudor. So she never explicitly names James, but she turns at least a blind eye to secret correspondence that went on between the Earl of Essex and Robert Cecil with James.

• 11:22Dan Snow?

  They're sort of, they're doing a bit of an unofficial handover to a transition committee. Okay.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  Absolutely. So draft proclamation sent, getting James to approve it, that's all ready. So that when the moment comes, they're ready to go, they're waiting for it. And so despite the fact that there was a real sense of fear in London, and I think we can often underestimate that because it all turned out okay. But the end of Elizabeth's reign, beginning of James's reign, London was in lockdown, there was a plague, theatres were closed, people were fleeing London or staying in their homes, but also the ports were blockaded, the nobles put their treasure in the tower. There was a real sense that there could be an invasion. And as it turned out, it was okay. But I would argue, you know, Elizabeth had set up what could have been a very difficult position.

• 12:11Dan Snow?

  But James, because we're talking about his surprising successes, he manages succession. That is a success.

• 12:17Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 12:17Dan Snow?

  We're going to chalk that up.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  I mean, and he was a Scottish king coming to the English throne. I mean, you know, you know, all the battles between England and Scotland over the centuries.

• 12:25Dan Snow?

  I don't even know them all. There's been so many, they cannot all be known.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  I don't believe you don't know them.

• 12:29Dan Snow?

  They cannot all be known.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  Well, one day you will know them. But yeah, so here we have a Scottish king marching, well, not marching, meandering is probably a better word, wandering down the A1 to London, hunting as he went, stopping off, partying, being hosted. Lots of English courtiers going to him, looking to curry favour. Puritans petitioning him, ready for change. Catholics petitioning him. Everybody basically looking to James to answer all their hopes and dreams because that in a way had been his great skill. He had been anything to anyone. He had promised the world to everybody and by doing that had managed to kind of maintain a position where everybody hoped in him for something.

• 13:11Dan Snow?

  He got lucky. He avoided being blown up in the Gunpowder Plot.

• 13:13Speaker 05

  He did.

• 13:14Dan Snow?

  So well done him. But let's take the different areas. Let's talk about the war. You mentioned Elizabeth's locked in a long and just extremely costly, nightmarish war with Spain. The famous bits that the English like to remember are the Spanish Armada and the more swashbuckling bits. But really, it was a lot of it was going on in Ireland. It is just a catastrophe. Monstrous crimes, famine, awful fighting, very, very costly. Indeed, Elizabeth looks like she's going to lose occasionally. James resolves that, doesn't he?

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So England has been at war for like 18 years with Spain. I mean, as you say, it's just become a war of attrition and the impact at home, taxes, is just extraordinary. I mean, it's created such profound economic hardship and it just can't be sustained any longer. And one of the things that is really interesting is when James does come to London, inherits the throne, people look to him as a source of peace. You know, they go, oh, thank goodness, you are going to, we've seen that you've, of course, as King of Scotland, he was not at war with Spain. And so they see him as this sort of peacemaker figure. And although there's all the sort of eulogies to Elizabeth, they're also saying, among the clouds of fear for Elizabeth's death, the sun is rising.

• 14:24Speaker 05

  James is going to come and he's going to bring peace, which is what he does. He achieves peace in the Treaty of London, negotiated at Somerset House, and finally manages to bring to an end this big conflict, which was costly, as you say, but also was costly in terms of trade and access to the continent. Because for many people, Catholic Europe had been a no-go area. There was no significant trade because of embargoes, there was no significant travel. And so after the peace in 1604, the continent is opened up once again. And you begin to see young gentlemen, and of course, it was gentlemen going on, I suppose at the time, what we would call today gap years, but sort of grand tours where they

• 15:09Speaker 05

  would go and there would all be this kind of cultural flourishing and they would bring back. Cultural products and, you know, artworks and stuff, and it became this sense of sort of conspicuous consumption. And indeed, James's son, his elder son, Prince Henry, the Prince of Wales, who was a source of great hope and aspiration and ambition. He sent members of his household because, you know, it wasn't seen as safe for him to travel there, but he'd have his friends going and reporting back and giving him a flavour of Europe. So suddenly, after sixteen oh four, Europe opens up again, and that becomes a really big deal. And particularly also for merchants, because the taxes against English goods get lifted,

• 15:50Speaker 05

  and there is once again, uh, ability to trade with Spain and Catholic Europe.

• 15:55Dan Snow?

  Uh, speaking of Catholics, what about the domestic side of like religious side? Because England, we know since the Reformation, there are Catholics, Elizabeth persecuting Catholics, but there's also sort of radical Christians, Protestants, evangelicals who are causing problems. They don't want any bishops, they don't want to establish church, they might not even want a monarch, you know, they're sort of living in these flatter kind of communities, aren't they, where the only thing is the word of the gospel and they elect their own preachers and things. How is he trying to sort this religious tumult out in England?

• 16:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, Elizabeth had tried to hold things in check up to a point, and then by the end of her reign in the fifteen seventies and eighties, it was starting to get, there was real hardline action against Catholics. And of course, the hopes that James had engendered by his accession and before it, when he'd promised all things to all men, literally went up in smoke in the gunpowder plot, because Catholics were just like, well, what the hell, you know, you haven't done anything for us. And of course, for extreme Puritans, he hadn't done much for them either. He decides to have a big religious convention, the Hampton Court Conference. And in a way, I think this is a prototype to what he wants in Europe. He talks a lot about wanting an ecumenical council whereby Catholics and Protestants

• 17:06Speaker 05

  would come together. He's happy for the Pope to preside over it, and he believes that religious reconciliation, reconciliation from the split of the Reformation. Can be achieved, and this is a means to establish peace and stability and therefore prosperity in Europe. Now, this of course goes against really the currency of the times where it's all about war and

• 17:28Dan Snow?

  The other side are going to burn in hell.

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Precisely. And so, I mean, at Hampton Court, the thing that we know was most significant about it is the King James Bible. James decides that he wants a text which gets rid of all the kind of open to interpretation of the Geneva Bible and so on. And instead, it's going to be the Word of God. But really, it is, as the title suggests, King James's Bible. It will be really one of the first significant defining features of the British Empire, ultimately, that this exported text goes around the world, establishing the English language with all kinds of phrases, "apple of your eye" in the St. James Bible. All of these phrases that we think of today, so many of them, date back to the James Bible.

• 18:11Dan Snow?

  I'm glad that was the one that came to mind when you looked at me.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  I know, exactly, exactly.

• 18:14Dan Snow?

  There's a lot worse you could have chosen.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  Well, I love

• 18:16Dan Snow?

  So, because before that, there were just Bibles being translated by any old people and printed in Geneva and printed elsewhere, and they were just all spreading among the population.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  Pretty much. And it was this sense of like, people had their own sense of interpretation. And James was like, no, you know, this is about uniformity. And part of it is his conception of this sort of fledgling idea of Britain, that he wanted to have a clear sense of this is the language, it's under my authority as king. And so, the King James Bible, the legacy of that is hugely significant. And we shouldn't forget that when we think of James. I mean, at the time, it took a huge amount of work. James was quite involved with it. Committees were established with Oxford and Cambridge scholars and so on. I mean, it was many years it took. And James was quite involved because he was a scholar, as well as being, what I would argue, as a politician.

• 19:05Dan Snow?

  Did it reconcile? Did it sort of buy off these more evangelical Protestants a little bit? Or

• 19:09Speaker 05

  Not really. It didn't. The splits remained. And in a way, we see them sort of develop in different ways. So when we think about James's policy in Ireland and the plantation of Ulster, obviously, we see, you know, Catholic tensions being hugely inflamed by the actions of James in Ireland. But then, of course, we also see the impact of James's policy on religion with the separatists ultimately who established the Plymouth Colony, who of course decide they just want to create their own, you know, religious utopia. They were from Lincolnshire, the pilgrims, of course, the Mayflower, these things that are sort of familiar to people. And that's one of the things that I think was quite interesting when I was working on

• 19:52Speaker 05

  James, because I thought, oh, Pocahontas, Mayflower, Hampton Court Conference, all of these things which are sort of standalone events in many ways, are really, really part of the narrative of his reign, but also then have this wider significance in different ways in terms of the global impact.

• 20:13Dan Snow?

  Listen to Dan Snow's history at more on King James coming up.

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• 23:45Dan Snow?

  So like Elizabeth, he fails to reconcile these different religious groups in his kingdom, in kingdoms, and that will eventually help to destroy the rule of his son Charles.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Yes, so in the sense of, you know, and this is often the question is where were the seeds of the civil war planted? Yes, you can see them back in James's reign. Yes, you can see them in Elizabeth's reign. But James's view was that if Catholics could be loyal subjects, he was relatively chilled about it. His issue was with the Pope. And we see this in his writings when he was King of Scotland. And then increasingly, he became sort of cause célèbre for his writings against the Pope. He talked about him as the Antichrist.

• 24:30Dan Snow?

  Yeah, surprise, surprise. Kings don't like Popes.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. Kings, I mean, he was on to a winning sort of...

• 24:35Dan Snow?

  It's a sovereignty dispute.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  He was a winning campaign, really, to be seen as the spokesman for monarchs in Europe. But he was like, you know, the Pope shouldn't have deposing power. And so, again, he really pushed himself forward to be the leading European spokesman for this. Now, again, I think part of that was principle. I mean, he thought that was outrageous. And the divine right of kings, which we've attached very much when we think of James, that also evolved to become very much against the papal Antichrist and the ability of the Pope to depose monarchs.

• 25:06Dan Snow?

  Let me pick you up on that, because that's what lots of people talk about this period, the divine right of kings. So James believed that he was on the throne, touched by the divine?

• 25:14Speaker 05

  Touched by the divine. I mean, it was also about what that meant in terms of the position that he had had relative to others.

• 25:20Dan Snow?

  There's no Pope above him. There's nothing between him and God.

• 25:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. In temporal matters, he believed so that hence Parliament not being able to have a freedom of speech, you know, ultimately, it was down to him. And so the idea became particularly evolved for James when the Pope was, for example, in dispute with the Republic of Venice. I mean, there was this great sense of James basically was like, this is the time where we all need to come together, European leaders, and push against the Pope. But of course, what James's role in this was, was very much the rhetoric. He did the spin. He didn't want to commit to any kind of military action. And I think this is where you have seen James as sort of having a kind of effeminate attitude. He didn't want to engage in war.

• 26:08Speaker 05

  And people, historians have also said, yeah, well, there was a real tension between James and his son, Henry, Prince of Wales, who died prematurely at eighteen. But he, in his sort of eighteen years, was everything that James wasn't. I mean, he was this young warrior king. He wanted to to sort of go into battle. And so many of the hopes of former military men of Elizabeth's reign were projected on to the young Henry Prince of Wales. But I think there's evidence to suggest that James actually curated and cultivated that idea of Henry being, in good time, England would be this leading force in Europe.

• 26:49Dan Snow?

  Yeah, because James also inherited an empty treasury, didn't he?

• 26:52Speaker 05

  Precisely.

• 26:53Dan Snow?

  The cupboard was bare.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  The cupboard was bare. He inherited kind of like a year's debt, peacetime revenue. I mean, he had no money. I mean, initially, when he came to England, he was kind of like, oh, my goodness, this is like manna from heaven. Because, of course, compared to Scotland, England did have money. And he was, I think he knighted about a hundred and ninety people on his way down from Scotland to London. Some of it was dodgy dealings, but I mean, he was known for his largesse. I mean, and again, that's part of the caricature of James. But I think there's evidence that he was pretty pragmatic. He knew that England could not afford, or his fledgling Britain could not afford war. He knew that people would not pay taxes. There just wasn't an appetite for war anymore.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  And so, I mean, the only way he could try to raise money, which he did, through forced loans on the city, he also, through customs duties, that became a really big source of revenue for him. One of the conclusions that I came to, I think, is that actually, James really broke the mould in many ways of being. A king where it was all about military might and plaudits through battle. And his drive being all about war. James, I think, was a man ahead of his times and actually he sought to forge his reputation as a politician and as a diplomat. He was kind of punching above his weight. He was talking the talk, knowing that he wasn't able to actually deliver a significant military force.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  But actually, he talked up Britain's position at a time when it really had no money. And in that sense, I think he was pretty successful and in many ways a kind of modern type of leader, more than the sort of medieval type of king that had preceded him.

• 28:40Dan Snow?

  So he's thinking about ruling philosophies, divine right of kings, his legitimacy. He is talking about peace across Europe, as you say. So, so yes, he's using, there's a lot of soft power here.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 28:52Dan Snow?

  And then there's on top of that presumably culture, British culture at the time, Shakespeare, plays, architecture, all that kind of stuff.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  Exactly. So, I mean, the relations with Europe and the ability for people to travel and trade meant that Europe is opened up. And so, yeah, the sort of culture of Europe moves more readily through into Britain. As you said, I mean, William Shakespeare, who so many people associated with Elizabeth, I mean, he was one of the king's men. He was the king's playwright and the first Christmas that the Stuarts have a court. Shakespeare is there putting on plays. So he's absolutely the heart of the court. And also, of course, James and his wife, Anna of Denmark, loved to stage these elaborate court masks. So theatre was really important, writing was really important.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  So there was this kind of flourishing of art under James and both his sons, actually, first Prince Henry and then Charles, were great art collectors, they built up libraries. Architecture becomes a big thing, of course, banqueting house was burnt down and then the new banqueting house was built. People like Indigo Jones. So there really was a flourishing of architecture and art, literature and drama, the sorts of things that people associate with Elizabeth, but were happening very much under James too.

• 30:10Dan Snow?

  So to deny greatness on the battlefield, he sort of pivoted and he developed soft power, a bit like Britain in the late 20th century. So with ideas and culture, he found greatness in other ways.

• 30:18Speaker 05

  Absolutely. I mean, that's what to me was really interesting. If people thought about it, Britain had no standing army. There was no regular revenue for the Crown, regular taxation. But he was really up there as one of the most significant European statesmen. He would be publishing these treaties against the Pope, about the Pope. People would be looking to Britain, looking to Prince Henry, his son, before his death as being a future great warrior leader. And then, of course, James's other tactic alongside the spin, which was really what it was, the rhetoric, the principle, his diplomacy, was how he planned to use the marriages of his children. So the marriages

• 31:02Speaker 05

  of his children were going to be the capstone of his policy of religious reconciliation. So essentially, he was going to marry one of his children, his daughter Elizabeth, to a Protestant, and he did, the elector Frederick of the Palatine. And he was then going to marry his son, first Prince Henry, and then when he died, Prince Charles, to a Catholic. So he would basically create this balance in Europe by a Protestant and a Catholic marriage. And he thought that, again, this would be a means by which Europe could be reconciled. And he really did talk a lot about that. And it wasn't an idea that was completely dismissed at the time, this idea of a religious reconciliation. And it wasn't

• 31:44Speaker 05

  simply because James was a bit effeminate and a bit weak and didn't like war. First of all, he was pragmatic about the money. But also, I think there's evidence to suggest that his big focus was on the Ottoman Turks. So actually, he thought Europe needs to be united or reunited and stable, and then we can really go against the Ottoman Turks. He wasn't purely a sort of pacifist just for the sake of it. I think he was principled, he was pragmatic. And in that sense, I think has been, as you said, overshadowed by the stereotypes. And in so many ways, he really doesn't conform and breaks the stereotype. Because, of course, his son, Prince Charles, who becomes Prince of Wales after his brother's

• 32:25Speaker 05

  death. And the great drama, I suppose, at the end of his reign is that James, who has been this great peacemaker, His daughter marries the Elector Frederick and it's great. This is the first stage of a big, you know, if the Protestant marriage and the Elector Frederick leading the Protestant Union, it's all good. And James, of course, is, this is only step one, there's going to be a marriage to a Catholic. But then what happens? His son in law goes a bit rogue.

• 32:53Dan Snow?

  The Thirty Years' War happens.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  The Thirty Years' War. He accepts the Bohemian Crown and suddenly it's like, goodness me, what is going on? You were not supposed to do that.

• 33:02Dan Snow?

  A massive religious war.

• 33:04Speaker 05

  A massive religious war. And what was amazing really is reading the letters from Elizabeth, Elizabeth Stuart, who for a very short time is the Winter Queen, her husband, the Winter King, Queen of Bohemia. They were only there and then they got thrown out of Bohemia. And she's basically for a very short time and then she goes into exile with her husband in The Hague. And they're writing to James going, you can't leave me. What kind of father are you? And James is like, hold on a second, you know, my whole plan for peace is completely going up in flames here. Because of course, he had been this great champion of peace and Europe was absolutely imploding. And James's solution, rather than kind of think, actually, I'm just going to have to lean into this and send an army,

• 33:49Speaker 05

  is no, no, no, let me just push for a marriage for Prince Charles with the Infanta Maria

• 33:54Dan Snow?

  Yeah, that'll sort it.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  of Spain. Because then that will be a marriage. And as part of the prenup, he'll just get Philip to sort out the Austrian Habsburgs, we'll get them to sort out and bring an end to this nasty conflict in Europe. That doesn't happen. And so by the end of his reign, James has been really wrong footed by his children. Because Elizabeth is putting pressure on her brother, Prince Charles, who has got very close to James's favourite, George V, as the Duke of Buckingham. And really Buckingham and Charles are by the end of the reign. Pushing Parliament and really in command of Parliament much more than James. And get to the point that shortly after James's death, there is an army being sent to the continent.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  But James can say that he preserved peace throughout his reign, which in that sense is no small feat.

• 34:42Dan Snow?

  And James could also say, if he was alive here with us now, you see what happened after I died? Because those armies that Charles, King Charles the First sent to the continent were an absolute catastrophe.

• 34:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, it proves his point. I mean, exactly. We were never going to be able to sustain a significant military force. It was always going to be a disaster. And whereas James had promised a lot, never really been tested, but through his rhetoric had been seen as this really like smart, forward thinking statesman. Actually, Charles just completely pulled that kind of edifice down. And the rest is history, as they say.

• 35:19Dan Snow?

  More King James coming up after this, folks. Don't go away.

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• 36:59Dan Snow?

  So a generation of historians, a hundred years ago, who thought, we like the monarchs who fought Europeans and extended empires, like Elizabeth, they seemed to have done. That's why James has been a bit overlooked, because he was a bit out of fashion presumably, in a world where surely you want to be taking it to the Spanish and raiding them and establishing new colonies everywhere.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  Exactly, I think that's exactly it. And so he was dismissed as simply effeminate. And then, of course, it was conflated with the fact that he had these very close, possibly, probably homosexual relationships with male favourites. And it was just seen as, and then he's such a pacifist, so we had this monarch who just simply wasn't interested in war, and it was stereotype and cliche. But of course, when you actually look with a more global gaze, you see, for example, during James's reign, the first ambassador being sent to India, you see permanent colonies being established in the New World, you see attempts to establish trade in Japan, and indeed to reach China for trade. Now,

• 38:02Speaker 05

  of course, the question is, well, how much did James have anything to do with that? Well, I mean, ultimately, James wanted to profit from trade. So he created the conditions, he chartered the companies, and in that sense, gave Crown support because he wanted to profit from them. And then ultimately, over time, and particularly with the Virginia Company and in the New World, the colonies, ultimately, by the end of his reign, such was the disorder of the Virginia Company, that he took over, and essentially, it becomes a royal colony. So actually, maybe not that impressive in Europe in terms of expansion of territory, but in terms of expansion of trade routes and territories in a more global way.

• 38:43Dan Snow?

  It's all going to happen.

• 38:44Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 38:45Dan Snow?

  Britain, England, Scotland, remained separate kingdoms, but he does a lot to try and create a British culture, doesn't he, a British elite? Is that a success?

• 38:52Speaker 05

  I mean, not really. I mean, of course, he wants to create a union. He wants one king, one law. He wants it all to be unified. He's like, look, guys, we're all one island. How can I be? He doesn't want to be bigamous. He said, I don't want to be a king of Scotland and a king of Wales. I need to be a king of Britain because otherwise I'm a bigamous king. And then he talks about God created, there's nothing separating England and Scotland. So how, why are we opposing division that God hadn't created? But in a nutshell, the English parliament were like, we're not going to have a load of Scots. A, they're not as good as us. B, they're going to come here and take our jobs and take our money. We're not interested. And the Scots were like, well, we want to be absolutely on equal par with England. We're not going to be the junior partner in this.

• 39:35Speaker 05

  And so all of James's plans to have a common currency and common law and common institutions, that all went by the by. But he proclaims himself king of Great Britain. And indeed, when ambassadors or kings are writing back to James, they do refer to him as king of Great Britain. So there is this sense of Britain abroad. He also creates the Union Jack and he also manages to get through birthright citizenship. So he again argues against his parliament that if you are born in Scotland after his accession, you also have rights in England as well. So he goes some way to establish Britain.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  But also, I think what we do see and what again was really interesting is that an identity emerges, particularly when his daughter and the Protestants are under such peril in Europe. We see this sense of people going, come on, let's come together and fight as Britons. And actually, they see that the fact that this union could be amazing as a Protestant force. And at the same time, we also see the sort of rise of newspapers and real interest in Europe because people were so interested in the plight of the king's daughter. So a kind of unified identity emerges in a way, not in a way that James would perhaps have wanted, but as a sense of a sort of Protestant Britain and what it could do

• 41:00Speaker 05

  in relation to the continent and the plight of the Protestants there.

• 41:04Dan Snow?

  Tough time, tough neighbourhood. King James after him came the deluge. Terrible civil war ripped Britain apart, arguably Britain's bloodiest war per capita in its history. Does he deserve the blame for that, or was it just the time, his slightly useless son, lots of Protestant headbangers, massive war in Europe, problems hung over from the Tudor settlement in terms of finances and religion? I mean, was it just an unmanageable?

• 41:27Speaker 05

  I think it probably was inevitable. I think James's reign saw cracks emerging, you know, the relations with Parliament, Parliament asserting its voice, wanting a role in, well, just freedom of expression really, wanting to have its say. I mean, the genie was out of the bottle in many ways during James's reign, but I don't think necessarily is a product of what James did. I think the religious tensions that we see in Elizabeth's reign through James's reign, unresolved issues in Scotland and Ireland, it was kind of inevitable, I think. And I'm not sure that James could necessarily have done much to put the genie back in the bottle.

• 42:06Dan Snow?

  It all came down to his poor son, who definitely didn't have the firepower to do it.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  Absolutely not.

• 42:12Dan Snow?

  Anna White, look, thank you very much for coming on this podcast.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  Pleasure. Thank you so much.

• 42:17Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out.

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• 43:51Dan Snow?

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