Adrienne Dillard reviews a new biography of Charles I

Leanda de Lisle's first book, After Elizabeth, was a fascinating account of the dying days of the Tudor dynasty and the subsequent transfer of power to the Scottish ruling house. Now, after best-selling accounts of the Grey and Tudor families, de Lisle has returned to the Stuarts, with a biography of King Charles I, the autocratic monarch whose reign ended in civil war, his execution, and the temporary abolition of the British monarchy. With new research from previously unused private documents and a focus on Charles's marriage to the unpopular French princess, Henrietta Maria, this biography is already garnering interest and applause amongst fans of royal and political biographies. 

The White King is released today in the United States and it is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Its British release date is on 11th January. I am delighted to host this review of The White King by American novelist Adrienne Dillard, who is the author of two novels set at the Tudor court - Cor Rotto, inspired by the life of Elizabeth I's cousin, Katherine Carey, and The Raven's Widow, based on the life of Catherine Howard's confidante Jane, Lady Rochford. 

The Martyr King: Adrienne Dillard's review of Leanda de Lisle's "The White King"

As a Tudor historian, it is nearly impossible to review works set during the time period without seeing the content through the jaundiced lens of your own biases.  More often than not, there is room for multiple interpretations of the documented evidence, but it can be hard to overcome the instinctual gut-reaction humans experience when faced with an opinion that differs from one they wholeheartedly embrace about historical figures they have come to cherish.  That uncomfortableness is invaluable when we seek academic growth, but it makes reading for pleasure a challenge.  Thankfully, I had few preconceived notions about England’s first Caroline king, and when I was offered the opportunity to review the latest take on his life, I leapt at the chance.  Few things can compare to the joy I feel when introduced to a new historical subject and this beautifully crafted biography did not disappoint.

The subtitle of Leanda De Lisle’s The White King calls the monarch a traitor, murderer, and martyr, but upon completion of the book, I have come away with the impression that the only fitting descriptor used is martyr.  The other titles seem far too subjective for this oft-misunderstood king.

Though Charles’ reign came many years after the death of the ginger-haired tyrant at the head of the Tudor court, the spectre of Henry VIII looms large throughout this biography.  His reign and personality are held against those of Charles I to show how vastly different they were and just how much the world had changed in the intervening years.  The charges of tyranny lodged against the latter monarch pale in comparison to the actual tyranny perpetrated by Henry VIII and his children, yet none of their reigns ended with the humiliation of the scaffold, as Charles’ did.  Even more striking are the parallels De Lisle makes with our current political climate – where “populism meets religious justifications for violence” and “the rise of demagogues, who whip up mobs by feeding off ethnic and religious hatreds.”

De Lisle brings the figures surrounding Charles I to life with the strident confidence that accompanies the historian who fully understand their subject.  All of their graces and foibles are fully explored; their ever-changing allegiances reported without a hint of sentimentality.  If their motivations are not revealed in the primary sources, they are left unexplained here, preserving the jarring atmosphere Charles must have felt during his reign.  Even the most historically savvy reader is never quite certain where loyalties lie or how often the tides will turn.  In the hands of a less experienced historian these twists would be rendered into a confusing mess, but De Lisle deftly navigates the murky waters with expert precision.

My favorite part of The White King was the focus on Robert and Henry Rich and their cousin, Lady Lucy Carlisle. Having spent the better part of the last decade researching Catherine Carey, Lady Knollys, it was refreshing to see the role her descendants played during this tumultuous time in English history. The fealty they showed their monarch was far from the devotional loyalty Lady Knollys was known for in her lifetime, but the Puritan proclivities of their great-grandfather, Francis, remained un-diluted. I often found myself wondering what their grandmother, Lettice, would have thought of their intrigues. Lady Carlisle appears the most like her ancestor. Like Lettice, she even bore an uncanny resemblance to the queen she served.

I thoroughly enjoyed De Lisle’s inclusion of the correspondence between the king and his wife, Henrietta Maria, recently unearthed from the Belvoir archives.  Through their words, the unjust depictions of the queen fall apart at the seams, and Henrietta Maria is finally given the recognition she deserves.  The emphasis on Charles family life is most touching here.  The love and devotion they showed to him speaks volumes about his character.

A well-written and impeccably researched biography, The White King seeks not to revise the history of England’s Civil Wars, but uncover the truth hidden beneath the grime of centuries of propaganda and myth.

Dominic Pearce on the Civil War Queen

I am delighted and excited that Dominic Pearce's biography of Henrietta Maria of France, wife of King Charles I, is available now from Amberley. Henrietta Maria's marriage coincided with the clash between parliamentarianism and absolutism in Britain, with the Queen's extravagance, Catholic faith and French upbringing cited by her husband's opponents as some of the causes for the civil war that cost thousands of lives and eventually toppled the monarchy in 1649. 

Dominic has kindly shared what attracted him to the story of the charismatic and controversial Bourbon princess, who was the younger sister of King Louis XIII of France, Queen Elisabeth of Spain and the mother of kings Charles II and James II.

By Dominic Pearce

When I started to research Henrietta Maria’s life I knew the story would be good. The queen was the muse of Anthony van Dyck, she survived two civil wars (the second one in France), outlived her husband and five of her children, and gave five monarchs to England – two children and three grand-children. To my delight I found an exceptional story that went a good deal further even than this. First there is the French background. Henrietta Maria was born in 1609. Her father was King Henri IV, a French national hero who saved his country from destruction at the end of the sixteenth century. Her mother was his second wife Marie de Médicis - famous as the builder of the Palais de Luxembourg, and for the cycle of paintings about her life by Rubens.

Henrietta Maria lived in France not only as a child but also from 1644 to 1660, and she died in France. The French history alone is mesmeric. It gives new insights into the queen’s life and the choices she made. It shines a new light on the English history of the period, so often viewed in isolation.

Second the queen’s character. Many of her letters survive. They are eloquent. She was strong, straightforward, intelligent, and filled with energy. She had a highly developed sense of fun. She was devoted to Charles I, utterly loyal. She was immensely courageous. I cannot say she was always the easiest person, but she is impressive, and she certainly had, when she chose, an irresistible charm.

Henrietta Maria with her husband, Charles I, departing for the hunt

Third the English Civil War. I discovered that, without Henrietta Maria, the conflict would not have started in the way it did. There was a real political problem in England (and Scotland) regardless of the queen. However she was at the heart of what happened – and not just as a victim. This is not the place to explain what she did during the war, but I can say she was nearly killed three times. There is more - her cultural patronage, the ups and downs of her marriage and family life, her sheer professionalism as a queen consort.

We can be close to Henrietta Maria. I have already said we have her letters. In the French court memoirs of the period we know how she appeared to her highly sophisticated compatriots. She is described in English letters, and appears in the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn. We have an eye witness account of her reaction, when she heard of the death of Charles I. We know what the furniture and ornaments were in the Château de Colombes, when she died (they were quite something). I was very lucky to have the opportunity to research this extraordinary woman who lived in such a period of history. She really is worth knowing more about.

Tudor coronations

The August edition of Tudor Life, a members e-magazine which I have the privilege to edit, is now available via the Tudor Society. 22nd August is the Feast of the Coronation of the Virgin in the Church calendar, which gave me the idea for an issue themed around coronations - along with articles from our regular contributors, including an analysis of Elizabeth I's iconic coronation portrait by Melanie Taylor, we also have some fantastic guest pieces from eminent historians.

Leanda de Lisle, best-selling author of After Elizabeth, The Sisters Who Would Be Queen and Tudor: The Family Story, writes about the coronation of Henry VII, the first Tudor king. Dominic Pierce took time off from his forthcoming biography of Queen Henrietta-Maria to reflect on the coronation of her mother as queen of France amid political chaos in 1610. Toni Mount, author of Everyday Life in Medieval London, Dragon's Blood and Willow Bark: The mysteries of medieval medicine and The Medieval Housewife, takes a look at the crowds watching the coronations and how they interpreted omens from what took place. Derek Wilson, author of some hugely successful and wonderful books on the Tudors, including A Brief History of Henry VIII: Reformer and Tyrant, In the Lion's Court and The Uncrowned Kings of England: The Black Legend of the Dudleys discusses the powerful women of the Protestant Reformation.

The Tudor Society, which publishes Tudor Life, is increasing its membership and drive. Along with the magazine, membership also brings access to video talks by historians and experts once a month, who then follow that up by conducting a live web chat with members. 

Next month's edition of the magazine will look at the Tudors in movies, music and the arts, for which I'll have contributed an article on Elizabeth Taylor and the casting of the Oscar-winning Anne of the Thousand Days.

You can find out more information about the magazine and the Society, here - www.tudorsociety.com.

A History of the English Monarchy

Henry V at Agincourt. Throughout the book, I am fascinated by the ways in which the legends of Camelot fuelled the monarchy's veneration of martial victory.

I am very excited to say that my new book A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I was released this week by MadeGlobal Publishing. I've been writing about the monarchy on this blog for a few years, so it was great fun to write the story of the Crown from its beginnings under Roman rule, right the way through to the accession of the first 'British', as opposed to English, sovereign in 1603. Thank you so much to everyone who has commented on my royal history posts in the past; for those who order History, I hope you enjoy it! Throughout, I was fascinated by the influence of the Arthurian legends in shaping how English kings, and their subjects, viewed and shaped the early monarchy. I was also particularly interested in telling the story of how the English Crown interacted with its Welsh, Scottish, and Irish neighbours, so chapters 3, 4, and 7 are heavy on exploring the often surprising story of how each part of the British Isles related to one another in that fascinating, bloody, compelling period of History. UK customers can order the book here; US and Canadian customers here.

The blurb reads: In A History of the English Monarchy, historian Gareth Russell traces the story of the English monarchy and the interactions between popular belief, religious faith and brutal political reality that helped shape the extraordinary journey of one of history’s most important institutions. From the birth of the nation to the dazzling court of Elizabeth I, A History of the English Monarchy charts the fascinating path of the English monarchy from the uprising of the Warrior Queen, Boadicea, in AD 60, through each king and queen up to the 'Golden Age' of Elizabeth I. Russell offers a fresh take on a fascinating subject as old as the nation itself.

INFORMATION: Each chapter is divided into sections, chronicling the monarchy’s story.

Chapter 1 - Conquest: The violent birth of the monarchy

* Britannia
* The Barbarian Conspiracy
* Seven Kingdoms
* Praying men, fighting men, and working men
* Edward the Confessor

Chapter 2 - God, Life and Victory: The coming of the Normans
* The Conqueror
* The Red King
* Beauclerc
* When Christ and His saints slept
* The Lioness in Winter


Chapter 3 - From Scotland to Spain: The empire of the Plantagenets
* Eleanor
* Henry
* Diarmait na nGall
* Murder in the Cathedral
* Family Strife
* Come, and see the place
* Sic Gloria Transit Mundi


Chapter 4 - Diluted Magnificence: The birth of Parliament
* The Wrath of God abideth upon him
* Crowned with a bracelet
* Know, Sire, that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is dead
* The Jewish Diaspora
* Until a king is provided


Chapter 5 - Enemies Foreign and Domestic: The fourteenth-century monarchy
* Our friends do fail us all
* The glory of the English
* Shameless fire was thus mixed with sacred flame


Chapter 6 - Spilled Blood Does Not Sleep: The Wars of the Roses
* Necessitas non habet legem
* This story shall the good man teach his son
* The lords in England kill their enemies
* The sun in splendour
* No more sons of the royal blood


Chapter 7 - As the Law of Christ Allows: The rule of the Tudors
* The Welsh Moses
* Bluff King Hal
* The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
* Deborah and Josiah
* The Queen of Scotland rises on the world
* That Good Old Princess

Epilogue - The word 'must'

The Black Dinner and the Rains of Castamere

PLEASE do not read this if you are currently reading A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin or if you're watching the television version of the series, Game of Thrones, by HBO. This article contains spoilers, by discussing the alleged real-life inspiration for the event known as "the Red Wedding."

I am currently writing a history of the British monarchy which will be out later this year. Luckily, it's been split into two volumes and volume one, And the Sword Gleamed, will be available soon. The book is predominantly Anglocentric due to time and space constrictions, but where possible I am doing my best to discuss the monarchies in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, too. (I'd love one day to go back and to tell the story of their monarchies in another book.) One of the things that has struck me so much as I'm researching it is how brilliantly George R.R. Martin has been inspired by European medieval history in writing his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. On the one hand, this is shown in his immaculate recreation of aristocratic culture - similar names, sigils, rivalry, treachery, arranged marriages, wardships and concepts of honour. In other ways, it's by more specific nods - like the comet that trails across the sky, seen by many as a good omen for the exiled princess Daenerys Targaryen, so similar to the comet that flew over England in 1066 before the arrival from beyond the sea of William the Conqueror. 

One of the series' most infamous moments is the so-called "Red Wedding," in which Robb Stark, one of the combatants in the novels' central conflict, the War of the Five Kings, is lured into a trap by an erstwhile ally, Lord Frey, when an arranged marriage designed to seal the peace between the houses sees Frey betray Robb Stark by butchering him, his mother Catelyn and thousands of their followers while they are under his hospitality at a wedding banquet. The Starks were an aristocratic clan who, under Robb, had become so sickened by the capricious incompetence and cruelty of the boy-king Joffrey that they had developed secessionist ambitions, hoping to forcibly remove the north from the kingdom of Westeros and re-establish independent monarchy in the region. Joffrey's maternal grandfather, Lord Tywin Lannister, a man of inexhaustible wealth and equally inexhaustible cruelty, liaises with the Freys and ends the Starks' mission by orchestrating a bloody massacre that has left fans of both book and TV show reeling, particularly after the incident was so brilliantly dramatized this week in the penultimate episode of season 3, The Rains of Castamere.

Oona Chaplin, Richard Madden and Michelle Fairley as members of the Stark family in "The Rains of Castamere"

The parallels between the fictitious Red Wedding and the real-life Black Dinner are fairly clear, although Westeros's Wedding has been augmented by Martin's great skills as a writer. In a recent interview with  EW, Martin stated that two events in Scottish history - the Black Dinner and the Glencoe Massacre - had inspired him to write of the Red Wedding in which Robb and Catelyn Stark lose their lives. 

In 1440, Scotland was ruled over by the ten year-old King James II and those around him struggled to see who could rule in his name. His father, King James I, had been stabbed to death in a plot led by his uncle and former ally, the treacherous Earl of Atholl, three years earlier. The young king's English mother, Queen Joanne (left; sometimes given as "Queen Joan"), had been wounded in the attack but had managed to escape back to Edinburgh, where she had managed to hold onto power for herself and her son. As an English aristocrat, Joanne's rule was not popular in Scotland and to bolster her political strength she allied herself to a man with the magnificently Westeros-sounding nickname of "the Black Knight of Lorn," whom she eventually married. In 1439, she had lost power and been replaced in government by her enemies.  By 1440, disagreements over the legacy of the queen-regent, the death of some of her strongest allies, the political fallout of the old king's assassination and out-of-control aristocratic infighting had all produced a fraught and dangerous political environment in which paranoia, dishonesty and violence were the dominant themes. 

One clan in particular who frightened the new regency government was the Douglas clan. Their late head, Archibald Douglas, had been a political ally of the queen mother's but after his death, she had fallen from power and the young king was now ruled by her enemies, Sir William Crichton, Sir Alexander Livingston and the earl of Avondale. By 1440, with the queen mother having been placed under house arrest, there were fears that Clan Douglas were preparing to seize more power for themselves and oust the triumvirate who were controlling the young James II. After Archibald Douglas's death, the new earl and head of the Douglas family was his 16 year-old son William, an age not too dissimilar to that of Robb Stark in the series. The royal household issued an invitation to the earl and his younger brother, 11 year-old David, to join the king at a banquet in Edinburgh Castle. As in Game of Thrones, the laws of hospitality in medieval Scotland were regarded as inviolable. The king's peace was an even more sacred concept and so the Douglas brothers attended the feast, safe in the knowledge that no self-respecting Christian or aristocrat could possibly besmirch his honour by harming them under those circumstances. At the climax, the regency's servants presented him with a dish covered in a white sheet. When the earl removed the sheet, he saw they had served him a black boar's head. It was a symbol of death and the musicians begin to beat on a single drum as William and his 11 year-old brother were dragged from the king's presence and executed on the castle's hill. Their sister, the beautiful Margaret, known as the Fair Maid of Galloway, was not present and did everything she subsequently could to rebuild the family's prestige.

A later event which Martin cited as inspiration for the Red Wedding was the Glencoe (above) Massacre of 1692. Two years earlier, the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland had seen the triumph of the Protestant Dutch prince, William of Orange (left), who had seized the British throne as William III, deposing his Catholic uncle, King James, in the process. The decision over which monarch to back had split many of the clans of the Highlands. On the one hand, William was a Protestant - the majority religion in Scotland by the seventeenth century; on the other hand, James was ancestrally Scottish and carried the name of the House of Stuart who had ruled over Scotland for centuries. The Campbell clan, who sided with William, saw his victory as the perfect opportunity to extirpate their rivals in the Highlands, Clan MacDonald, who had initially remained loyal to James. Forces loyal to the Campbells arrived in the Highlands, ostensibly on a mission to collect taxes for the Scottish parliament. Seeking shelter with the MacDonalds, the Campbells' men rose up one night and slaughtered thirty-eight of the MacDonalds, even stabbing some of them in their beds. Forty women and children subsequently died from exposure in the Highland winters after the vindictive Campbells burned their homes to the ground and evicted them. It had been a slaughter under trust and in violation of the hospitality that had been offered to them by the MacDonalds, who clearly placed the ancient customs of shelter and aristocratic protocol over the feud which the Campbells would use as an excuse to slaughter them. To this day, there are pubs in Scotland that deny the right of any member of a Campbell family to cross their threshold and groups as disparate as neo-Jacobite royalist movements and the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement still annually commemorate the massacre.

As Martin said to fan backlash about the savagery of the Red Wedding in Westeros: "No matter how much I make up, there's stuff in history that's just as bad, or worse." 

The other Catherine Howard

History records three Catherine Howards who enjoyed prominence at the early modern English court - the first, and most famous, was the fifth wife of Henry VIII, executed for her alleged adultery in February 1542. The second, the Countess of Notthingham, was a kinswoman and close friend of Elizabeth I, whose death in 1602 hastened the elderly queen's spiral into depression.  The third, born Catherine Knyvet in 1564, enjoyed fame and notoriety at the court of King James I, the first sovereign to rule over both England and Scotland. She was close to the royal family and knew many of their secrets, but her career ended in disgrace and allegations of financial corruption.

Born into the gentry early in the reign of Elizabeth I, Catherine Knyvet was married while still a very young teenager to Robert Rich, a minor lord. (It is often erroneously stated that only the great aristocratic heiresses were married off at a comparatively young age in this period.) Levels of mortality being what they were, she was left a widow at the age of sixteen, but her family soon arranged for her to marry Thomas Howard, a younger son of the 4th Duke of Norfolk. Marriage to the Howards, who were related to the reigning Queen on her mother's side, brought young Catherine a place in one of the oldest and most prestigious families of the English aristocracy. However, the Howards' continued adherence to the Catholic faith made many in Elizabeth's government view them with suspicion and Thomas's father had perished on the executioner's block for allegedly plotting to marry Elizabeth's cousin and Catholic heir-presumptive, the deposed Queen of Scots. 

Like Catherine, Thomas had been married before - to his stepsister, Mary Dacre. She too had died young, leaving Thomas without children. Thomas, handsome, aristocratic and in his early twenties, was a good match, if he could manage to exhibit the Howards' genetic knack for overcoming the political disgrace of a loved one; Catherine, beautiful and charming, also seemed like a good choice for the younger son of a great family. Children soon followed with annual regularity - one child per year for the first twelve years of their marriage. Theophilus, the eldest, born in 1582, followed by Elizabeth, Robert, Gertrude (who sadly died in the year of her birth), William, Thomas, Catherine, Emily, Frances, Charles, Henry and John. There were also two more children, born slightly apart from one another, Edward and Margaret. In total, Catherine Howard bore her second husband fourteen children in seventeen years. 

Luckily, this growing brood had access to royal favour, since Queen Elizabeth had restored the title taken from Thomas at the time of his father's execution for treason - he was now Lord Thomas Howard again, a courtesy title he was entitled to as the son of a duke. He commanded a ship in the attack against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and he was vice-admiral in charge of the fleet that attacked the Spanish port of Cadiz in 1596. He helped suppress the Earl of Essex's rebellion against Elizabeth's rule in 1601, by which stage the Queen had indicated her confidence in him by making him a Knight of the Garter. Catherine had been appointed one as one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, eventually being given the prestigious post of Keeper of the Jewels, which in the past had been held by women close to the queens they served - women such as Katherine Parr's younger sister, Anne.

In 1603, when Elizabeth died without children, Thomas and Catherine enthusiastically supported the accession of Elizabeth's third cousin, the King of Scots. A Presbyterian with sympathy for Anglicanism and a passionate belief in absolute monarchy, James lacked the late Elizabeth's tact and charisma, but he was nothing like the drooling, repulsive moron of later Whig imagination. In return for their support for his succession, James raised Thomas to the aristocracy in his own right, making him head of a collateral branch of the Howards as Earl of Suffolk in his own right. (Elizabeth had previously made him a baron, but the rank of an earl brought with it much greater prestige and much larger income.) James liked Thomas and the new Danish-born queen consort, Anna, warmed immediately to Catherine Howard. Like the queen, the new Countess of Suffolk was vivacious, extravagant, glamorous and had a penchant for intrigue. The two couples became very close, with Catherine apparently standing as godmother for the short-lived royal child, Princess Sophia.

Thomas and Catherine knew the royal family's secrets, particularly concerning the King's sexuality. James's association with the funding and publication of the great translation of the Bible that still bears his name has led generations of his enthusiasts to dismiss the allegations concerning his homosexuality out-of-hand, but the work of historians like Leanda de Lisle, whose excellent account of James's accession After Elizabeth should not be missed, and Michael B. Young, prove almost conclusively that James was involved in several, if not numerous, affairs with members of his own gender. Catherine, apparently, was in the know and not only knew but found it to her advantage to help the King along. According to one well-placed source, the countess was arranging liaisons between her sovereign and several "choice young men," all of which made the Suffolks increasingly indispensable to the monarch. What Queen Anna made of this, if she knew at all, is unknown.

Catherine, however, used her position as royal favourite to line her pockets - sowing the seeds of her own ruin. She accepted money and gifts like sable-lined muffs and jewels in order to work men into royal favour, persuade the government to remit fines on offending individuals and promote friends and clients. Her sympathy for Catholicism and an alliance with Spain marked her out as suspicious to the more puritanical members of James's court and she was accused, perhaps unfairly, of taking lovers herself. Her children were all married into the ranks of the aristocracy, securing Thomas and Catherine's own political ascendancy.

In 1619, Catherine's friend and patron, Queen Anna, died and Catherine herself contracted smallpox. She survived but her handsomeness was gone. The queen's death and the loss of the countess's beauty marked the start a year of disaster for the Suffolks, as their financial and political corruption led to them facing trial, after their enemies at court finally persuaded the King to move against them. They lost royal favour and were banished from court. At the time, it was Catherine who was blamed for leading the family astray, with her husband Thomas being viewed with sympathy, even by those who detested his wife and her greed. Whether this was a true reflection of Catherine Howard's role in the scandal or simply a case of the woman being re-cast as Eve to her husband's Adam is uncertain. Her children continued to make a name for themselves at the court of Charles I, and her daughter Frances was caught in one of the last great scandals of James I's time, but Catherine Howard herself died in her late sixties or early seventies over a decade after losing the lucrative favour of King James. 

Long to reign over us: A brief history of the British monarchy (Part 2)

Her Majesty the Queen is the second-longest reigning  monarch in British history, so far. She acceded to the throne following the death of her father, King George VI, in 1952 and she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

James VI of Scotland did not have an easy start in life. As parental dysfunction goes, James had parents who made Jason and Medea's marriage look like the front cover of House and Garden. When he was still a baby, his father Lord Darnley was found dead amidst the smoking ruins of a house on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Who authorised Darnley's assassination is probably one of the most famous unsolved murder mysteries in British history, but at the time suspicion fixed on James's mother - the ethereally beautiful and scandal-prone Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was already unpopular with many of her subjects; most of them had embraced the new hard-line form of Protestantism known as Presbyterianism and so they subsequently resented their stunning young queen for her French upbringing and Catholic faith. Shortly after James's first birthday, she was overthrown in a Presbyterian-led coup and fled to neighbouring England. Nineteen years later, she was executed for her alleged complicity in plotting the murder of her Protestant cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

Robbed of both his parents, little James VI found himself king before he could walk or talk. The Scottish monarchy was pitched into another period of prolonged instability, with coups, rebellions and counter-coups shaping the young king's life. It's hard to doubt that James's adult obsession with defending the Divine Right of Kings sprang from his childhood experiences, in which he had seen the consequences of a monarchy that had been reduced to being the plaything of ambitious politicians. Everywhere he went, James's personal skills were limited by the all-powerful Presbyterian Kirk and the aristocrats who supported it - the so-called "Lords of the Congregation." James himself was phenomenally bright and very well-educated, but he had precious few opportunities to employ his talents and even his personal life was subject to the whims of his Presbyterian minders. As a young teenager, he fell violently in love with his French cousin, the handsome and sophisticated Duke of Lennox, but the Presbyterian lords around him disapproved; they lured James to Ruthven Castle where they kidnapped him and then banished Lennox back home to France. Lennox died eighteen months later, allegedly of heartbreak, and James wrote a poem in his memory called An Ode to a Phoenix, in which he allegorised Lennox as a beautiful bird killed by the envy of others.

Six years later, James did his duty and married Anne, the daughter of the King of Denmark and Norway (then ruled by the same monarchy.) Anne of Denmark (left) was a vivacious and fun-loving blonde, who found life in Edinburgh almost as difficult as her husband did. Presbyterians have never exactly been famous for being flash with their cash and Lutheran-raised Anne resented the fact that her allowance as queen was so restrictive. Despite James's teen obsession with the late Duke of Lennox, as an adult he produced seven children with his Danish queen - Henry-Frederick, Elizabeth, Margaret, Charles, Robert, Mary and Sophia. In 1603, James received news that his elderly cousin, Queen Elizabeth, had passed away in London and he was now King James I of England and Ireland. He and the queen travelled south to London, where they were duly crowned and Anne was finally given free rein to spend as she liked in the magnificent palaces of the English royals - Whitehall (the largest palace in Europe at the time), Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court and Windsor Castle. Not content with these and the turtle-shell bed she felt was an essential purchase, Anne eventually decided she needed a little chez of her own and the King duly built the pretty riverside mansion called Queen's House in Greenwich for her, which stands to this day and was the sight for some of the equestrian events of the 2012 London Olympics. Dripping with jewels and spending like a maniac, I don't think Anne of Denmark missed life in the shadow of the Kirk too much. The lairds would have been even further riled to know that, in London, Anne openly expressed sympathy for the persecuted Catholic minority.

James, however, struggled with his new role as king of a united Britain. He had several key political aims - the first was to create a united British state, the second was to maintain the monarchy (rather than parliament) as the dominant political power in Britain and the third was to end England's long-running war with Spain. In the latter, he was certainly successful; with Elizabeth I and her old adversary, Philip II, both dead, their successors, James and Philip III, were able to end the hostilities that had persisted since the defeat of the Spanish Armada. With peace concluded, there was even talk of marrying James's son to Philip's daughter, Maria-Anna. (The talks fell through when pious Maria-Anna point-blank refused to marry a Protestant.) However, in his aims to create Great Britain, James was thwarted. England, Scotland and Ireland may all have had the same king, but each of them had their own parliaments that met in London, Edinburgh and Dublin; they had their own customs, needs and laws and they were reluctant to unify under one parliamentary system. Even the subject of a British flag was unpopular, despite James's enthusiasm for the idea. But perhaps his greatest failure as monarch was in trying to ameliorate the power of Parliament. Everything he did seemed to antagonise them.

As far as James was concerned, kings and queens were closer to God than they were to rest of mankind. Parliament's role was therefore simply to advise the king, but he was under absolutely no obligation to take that advice. When Parliament attempted to force the king to do things that he didn't want to do (like harsher measures against Catholics or an end to the extravagance of the royal court), then James would react with apoplectic fury. Where the late Queen Elizabeth had deftly manipulated Parliament by flattering them into voting her the money she needed, James I harangued them and demanded, not requested, their financial assistance. By the time James died in 1625, after twenty-two years on the British thrones, relations between Parliament and the monarchy were at an all-time low and James's twenty four year-old son, Charles I, inherited a particularly unenviable situation. 

It would therefore be easy to write James VI/I off as a political failure. However, whilst the British Isles could not be united legislatively, they had been united by the monarchy and it would be this unity which eventually gave birth to the United Kingdom and, through it, the British Empire. He was also responsible for the mammoth cultural task of translating the Bible into perfect English - thereby giving the world the hauntingly magnificent King James Bible. He had survived the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which aimed to blow up the King, his heir and the Houses of Parliament in retaliation for the penal laws in place against English and Welsh Catholics. He had been clever enough to balance the very different religious requirements of his kingdoms - he had been raised in the Calvinist-Presbyterian tradition in Scotland, but wisely did not attempt to impose the more liberal Anglican view of Christianity on them once he became Governor of the Church of England in 1603. He had admittedly done nothing to end the legal discrimination against Catholics or Puritans in England and Wales, but he had not caved in to populist demand that he start a kind of Protestant Inquisition against them, either. He had fathered heirs with his wife, despite the fact that he was far more attracted to his own gender. (After Lennox, he was obsessively devoted to the Earl of Somerset and, after him, the King got all in a fluster over the muscular legs of the gorgeous Duke of Buckingham, whom everybody else seemed to find insufferably annoying.) He had been a great patron of the arts, music, architecture and literature (Shakespeare received more backing from James I than he ever did from Elizabeth I.) He had overseen the expansion of British colonies in Ulster and America. And he had attempted to impose the new view of monarchy, prevalent with most European philosophers in the seventeenth century - that royal power should be absolute, that regional characteristics must be subordinated to a centralised culture and government, and that only a unified state could be a strong one. It's undeniable that James blundered and made many errors, but to dismiss his entire reign as a grotesque embarrassment is to misrepresent it. Whatever his failings, James I had arguably made the monarchy central to the emerging notion of being British. In doing so, he had successfully tied the Crown to a sense of national identity; the monarchy was, and arguably still is, far more central to the emotional identity of the British than parliament ever could be.

September 16th, 1701: The death of a deposed King

Stephanie A. Mann, author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation, marks the anniversary of James II's death in 1701. Having been overthrown in favour of his daughter and son-in-law in 1688, Britain's last Catholic monarch died in exile as a guest of his cousin, the King of France. He was survived by his second wife, Queen Maria-Beatrice, and their two children, Prince James-Francis-Edward and Princess Louisa-Maria-Theresa. In England, he was survived by his estranged daughter, Princess Anne, who had supported her father's deposition thirteen years earlier.

The late king was buried in Saint Edmund's Chapel in the Church of the English Benedictines, the main church of the English Roman Catholic community in Paris. Tragically, and as with most royal tombs in France, James's grave was desecrated during the French Revolution eight decades later and his body was destroyed.