The renowned historian Jenny Wormald was a ground-breaking expert on early modern Scottish history, especially Stewart kingship, noble power and wider society. She was most controversial in her book-length critique of Mary, Queen of Scots. Unfortunately, Jenny never got round to producing a similar monograph on a monarch she was infinitely more fond of, King James VI and I, before her untimely death in 2015.

In the absence of such a book, this volume brings together all the major essays by Jenny on James. She wrote on almost every aspect and every major event of James' reign, from the famous Gunpowder Plot, the Plantation of Ulster, the Gowrie Conspiracy, to the witchcraft panics, as well as James' extensive writings. She wrote extensively on James' Scottish rule, but she was also keenly interested in James as the first king of all of Britain, and many of her essays unpick the issues surrounding the Union of the Crowns and James' rule over all three of his kingdoms.

This book is an invaluable resource for any scholar on this crucial time in the history of the British Isles.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Foreword Diarmaid MacCulloch
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction Miles Kerr-Peterson
• Part 1: James’s Biography and Historiography
  • 1 James VI and I (1566–1625), King of Scotland, England and Ireland
  • 2 James VI and I: Two Kings or One?
• Part 2: James’s Rule of Scotland before the Union of the Crowns
  • 3 Scottish Politics 1567–1625
  • 4 James VI: New Men for Old?
  • 5 Ecclesiastical Vitriol: The Kirk, the Puritans and the Future King of England
  • 6 The Gowrie Conspiracy: Do We Need to Wait until the Day of Judgement?
• Part 3: James the Writer and Philosopher
  • 7 James VI of Scotland, I of England: Literary Biography
  • 8 James VI and I, Basilikon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies: The Scottish context and the English Translation
  • 9 The Witches, the Devil and the King
• Part 4: Making of the Union of the Crowns in 1603
  • 10 ‘A Union of Hearts and Minds?’ The Making of the Union between Scotland and England, 1603
  • 11 Royal Dunfermline to Royal Whitehall: The Stresses of Moving House
• Part 5: James’s Rule of Scotland after the Union of the Crowns
  • 12 No Bishop, No King: The Scottish Jacobean Episcopate, 1600–1625
  • 13 The Happier Marriage Partner: The Impact of the Union of the Crowns on Scotland
  • 14 The Headaches of Monarchy: Kingship and the Kirk in the Early Seventeenth Century
• Part 6: James as Ruler of Three Kingdoms
  • 15 Gunpowder, Treason and Scots
  • 16 The Union of 1603
  • 17 James VI, James I and the Identity of Britain
  • 18 O Brave New World? The Union of England and Scotland in 1603
  • 19 The ‘British’ Crown, the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster
• Epilogue: ‘Tis True I am a Cradle King’: The View from the Throne
• Appendices
  • 1 Maurice Lee, ‘James VI and the Aristocracy’
  • 2 Review of King James and Letters of Homoerotic Desire by David M. Bergeron
• Bibliographical Notes and Further Reading
• Index
• Picture Sections