The Wisest Fool in Christendom

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A crypto-Catholic was someone who outwardly conformed to Protestantism but remained a Catholic in private. a b Bucholz & Key 2004, p.208: "... his sexuality has long been a matter of debate. He clearly preferred the company of handsome young men. The evidence of his correspondence and contemporary accounts have led some historians to conclude that the king was homosexual or bisexual. In fact, the issue is murky." Steenie,” however, succeeded in making himself as thoroughly unpopular in Spain as he had made himself in England. Charles returned home with him at the end of eight months with no match made; the sum result of their achievements was that Villiers felt that he had been so insulted (whereas the reverse was true) that he was determined to lead England into a war against Spain. e.g. Young, Michael B. (2000), King James and the History of Homosexuality, New York University Press, ISBN 978-0-8147-9693-1; Bergeron, David M. (1991), Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland, University of Missouri Press; Murphy, Timothy (2011), Reader's Guide To Gay & Lesbian Studies, Routledge Dearborn Publishers, p.312.

It is very likely that Overbury was the victim of a 'set-up' contrived by the earls of Northampton and Suffolk, with Carr's complicity, to keep him out of the way during the annulment proceedings. Overbury knew too much of Carr's dealings with Frances and he opposed the match with a fervour that made him dangerous, motivated by a deep political hostility to the Howards. It cannot have been difficult to secure James's compliance, because he disliked Overbury and his influence over Carr. [163] John Chamberlain reported that the king "hath long had a desire to remove him from about the lord of Rochester, as thinking it a dishonour to him that the world should have an opinion that Rochester ruled him and Overbury ruled Rochester". [164] Now, as James and his Queen continued to fritter away money wastefully and as the King’s private conduct and his habit of preferring his favourites to the men who were most fitted to govern began to alienate him from his Parliament, there began that great struggle for power between the King and the Commons that was to last almost until the end of the century. Two years later, he married Anne of Denmark. Happy together at first they had three sons and four daughters, but gradually drifted apart. James quoted by Willson 1963, p.131: "Kings are called gods by the prophetical King David because they sit upon God His throne in earth and have the count of their administration to give unto Him." DRPS:Course Catalogue: School of History, Classics and Archaeology: Postgraduate (History, Classics and Archaeology)

Behind the masque

Stewart, Alan (2003), The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I, London: Chatto and Windus, ISBN 978-0-7011-6984-8 The way to do this, he thought, was to arrange a marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta Maria of Spain and so, on a mission half of business and half of pleasure, Charles set out to Spain accompanied by the King’s faithful “Steenie.” They went, surprisingly, not as Prince and nobleman, but as two common travellers, and once the Spanish had got over this peculiarity they were well received. Queen Elizabeth of England was the last of the children of Henry the Eighth who remained alive, and when she died at Richmond in 1603 James, as the great-grandson of Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, was the heir to the throne. When the news of Elizabeth’s death reached Scotland James, who was now 37, prepared to go south to claim his new kingdom. His childhood was constantly disturbed by the struggles of the nobles who vied for control of him. Given a demanding academic education by his tutor George Buchanan (who tried to teach him to hate his mother) and advised by four successive regents, he grew up to be a shrewd, wary intellectual who managed to reconcile the warring factions among his nobility with such success that he has been described as 'the most effective ruler Scotland ever had'. A Scottish king becoming a ruler of England was a big deal to the people and James embarked on a grand and ostentation strategy to win hearts and minds. When his procession travelled down from Scotland to England crowds turned out to see what he looked like as well as his courtiers, who he dragged down from the north. When he took his procession through Newcastle he fired off canons and freed all the prisoners in the city apart from the murderers and the Catholics. Like a 16th Century Santa Claus, he showered the streets with gold coins while in fancy dress as ‘Robin Hood’, aping a mythical character from a medieval folktale.

demonstrate in research reports and essays an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship concerning the ideas and writings of James VI & I and their comparative context, primary source materials concerning these and conceptual discussions about intellectual history He was so crafty and cunning in petty things, as the circumventing of any great man, the change of a Favourite, &c. insomuch as a very wise man was wont to say that he believed him the wisest fool in Christendom, meaning him wise in small things, but a fool in weighty affairs. On the morning of 15 May 1607 a hundred and forty-three men (there were no women in this expedition) disembarked from having been crowded aboard Captain Christopher Newport's three ships during the past four months of their tedious sea passage. They found themselves on an island near the north bank of a tidal river, where they then set about establishing the first permanent English settlement in North America. With their exuberant native patriotism having bounded with them onto the shore of this largely-unknown continent, these alien settlers immediately named both the sparkling river and their little fortress settlement for their young sovereign of the Stuart dynasty, James I of England (also known as James VI of Scotland). Whenever King James was living in Scotland he dutifully worshipped with the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland- a group he did not especially like- and whenever he was living in England he rather disdainfully worshiped in the Anglican Church- a group which overwhelmingly distrusted him... and vice versa. Remark to the Spanish Ambassador, as quoted in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume Two: The New World (1956) by Winston Churchill, p. 157a b Cummings, Brian, ed. (2011). The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662. Oxford World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.737. Other opinions were more mixed; David Hume wrote that 'many virtues ... it must be owned, he was possessed of, but no one of them pure, or free from the contagion of the neighbouring vices,' whilst Henri IV of France called James 'the wisest fool in Christendom'. develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form in seminar discussions, presentations, research reports and essays by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course The occasion was the opening of the Scottish Parliament. In those days the Scots liked to have their king on view, no matter how young he was, so James, at four, was obliged to perform the royal opening before the M.P.s. From his throne the little fellow silently and curiously summed up his surroundings, and among other things he noticed a hole in the roof of the hall, where probably a slate had slipped. When he was required to make his speech he recited it with astonishing gravity and precision, and added to it, in the same tone, the words, “There is one hole in this parliament.” In 1540, James V had toured the Hebrides, forcing the clan chiefs to accompany him. There followed a period of peace, but the clans were soon at loggerheads with one another again. [60] During James VI's reign, the citizens of the Hebrides were portrayed as lawless barbarians rather than being the cradle of Scottish Christianity and nationhood. Official documents describe the peoples of the Highlands as "void of the knawledge and feir of God" who were prone to "all kynd of barbarous and bestile cruelteis". [61] The Gaelic language, spoken fluently by James IV and probably by James V, became known in the time of James VI as "Erse" or Irish, implying that it was foreign in nature. Parliament decided that Gaelic had become a principal cause of the Highlanders' shortcomings and sought to abolish it. [62] Scottish gold coin from 1609–1625

Basilikon Doron was written as a book of instruction for the four-year-old Prince Henry and provides a more practical guide to kingship. [70] The work is considered to be well written and perhaps the best example of James's prose. [71] James's advice concerning parliaments, which he understood as merely the king's "head court", foreshadows his difficulties with the English House of Commons: "Hold no Parliaments," he tells Henry, "but for the necesitie of new Lawes, which would be but seldome". [72] In the True Law, James maintains that the king owns his realm as a feudal lord owns his fief, because kings arose "before any estates or ranks of men, before any parliaments were holden, or laws made, and by them was the land distributed, which at first was wholly theirs. And so it follows of necessity that kings were the authors and makers of the laws, and not the laws of the kings." [73] Literary patronage [ edit ] Postgraduate Course: 'The wisest fool in Christendom': the Ideas and Writings of James VI & I (PGHC11478) Course Outline School Then, leaving his wife in tears in Edinburgh High Street, he set off, a tall gangling man with straggling sandy hair and a straggling beard. demonstrate in research reports and seminar participation, an ability to understand and apply specialised research or professional skills, techniques and practices considered in the course

Akrigg, G. P. V. (George Philip Vernon), ed. (1984), Letters of King James VI & I, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California, ISBN 978-0-5200-4707-5 See for example Rhodes, Neil (2004), "Wrapped in the Strong Arm of the Union: Shakespeare and King James", in Maley, Willy; Murphy, Andrew (eds), Shakespeare and Scotland, Manchester University Press, pp. 38–39.

Rhodes, Neil; Richards, Jennifer; Marshall, Joseph (2003), King James VI and I: Selected Writings, Ashgate Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7546-0482-2 Towards the end of his life, James was known as a slobberer and semi-incoherent speaker – his tongue was too big for his mouth. He was also known as the ‘wisest fool in Christendom’, but he was far wilier than his ‘fool’ tag suggests. James I was the most academically gifted monarch, being both stoic and practical. He had once hoped to bring peace to Europe but had to settle with peace between England and Scotland. Perhaps his finest legacy is the The King James Bible, published in English in 1611. This was the authorised version of the Bible in English, translated by bands of scholars. It was a hugely influential outcome of the 1604 Hampton Court conference, called by the King to debate differences in religion. Barrels of gunpowder were hidden in the vaults of Parliament House and a Catholic soldier named, as everyone knows, Guy Fawkes, was hired to do the deed. But when warning was brought from an informer to the King “that Parliament shall receive a terrible blow,” James remembered how his father, Lord Darnley, was murdered in a gunpowder plot in Scotland, and he had the cellars searched and the conspirators arrested, tortured and executed.Stewart 2003, p.348: "A 1627 mission to save the Huguenots of La Rochelle ended in an ignominious siege on the Isle of Ré, leaving the Duke as the object of widespread ridicule."