King John of England

NAME King John of England, historically known as John Lackland (or Jean sans Terre) and also nicknamed "Softsword." 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR King John is most famous for sealing the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215, a foundational document of England's liberty that limited the absolute power of the monarch. He is also remembered for his legendary clashes with the Papacy and his own barons, his disastrous military campaigns that lost England its continental empire, and for losing the Crown Jewels and royal baggage train in the waters of the Wash.

BIRTH  John was born on December 24, 1167, at Beaumont Palace, a royal residence built just outside the north gate of Oxford, conveniently close to the royal hunting lodge at Woodstock. (1)

FAMILY BACKGROUND John was the youngest of five legitimate sons born to King Henry II of England and the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women of the medieval age. His older brothers were Henry the Young King, Richard (later Richard I, "the Lionheart"), Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany, and William, who died in infancy. Neither parent played a significant part in John's very early life — Eleanor was frequently absent or confined, and Henry was preoccupied with governing his vast Angevin empire. As the youngest son, John was expected to receive no territorial inheritance, which earned him the enduring nickname "Lackland." (2) 

John's parents, Henry II and Eleanor, holding court

CHILDHOOD John grew up largely in the care of others. Henry II initially considered having John educated for a career in the Church, which would have relieved the king of any obligation to provide him with lands. However, in 1171, Henry began negotiations to betroth John to Alais, daughter of Count Humbert III of Savoy, with the promise of inheriting Savoy, Piedmont, Maurienne, and the count's other possessions. This ended talk of John entering the clergy. Alais made the journey over the Alps to join Henry's court, but died before the marriage could take place, leaving John once again without a prospective inheritance. ((2)

EDUCATION Despite the rough political world into which he was born, John appears to have received a solid education. He developed a genuine love of reading, and unusually for the period, maintained a travelling library of books that accompanied him on his constant journeys. Records show that he read works including De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei by Hugh of St. Victor, Sentences by Peter Lombard, The Treatise of Origen, and a history of England — potentially Wace's Roman de Brut, itself based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. (3),

CAREER RECORD 1177: John was appointed Lord of Ireland by his father at the Council of Oxford, effectively giving him a political domain despite his lack of inherited English or continental lands. 

1185: He made his first personal expedition to Ireland to establish control; however, the trip was a political disaster as John insulted the local Irish rulers, mismanaged funds, and returned to England in disgrace within months.

1199: Following the death of his elder brother King Richard I (the Lionheart) on April 6, 1199, John claimed the throne against his young nephew, Arthur of Brittany. Backed by the English and Norman nobility and his mother Eleanor, he was officially crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 27, 1199. 

1200-1204: John waged a series of highly unsuccessful military defenses in France against King Philip II, ultimately leading to the total collapse of the Angevin Empire and the loss of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. 

1215: Facing a full-scale rebellion by his northern barons over excessive taxation and wartime failures, John met his critics at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, where he was forced to attach his royal seal to the Magna Carta. 

1215-1216: John repudiated the treaty with the help of the Pope, plunging England into the First Barons' War, during which a French army invaded England and captured London before John's sudden death ended his political career.

APPEARANCE John grew to approximately 5 ft 5 in (1.68 m) — average for the era. By middle age he was plump and balding, retaining a clump of curly dark-red hair and a full beard. Contemporary accounts describe him as physically vigorous in his youth but increasingly heavy-set in later life. (4)

King John presenting a church, painted c. 1250–1259 by Matthew Paris in his Historia Anglorum

FASHION John was notably well-dressed for his era. He wore coats made from luxurious and exotic furs, including sable, ermine, and even polar bear. (4)

He holds the distinction of being the first English monarch recorded as owning a dressing gown. (2)

CHARACTER John is one of history's most contested figures. His contemporary chroniclers — most of them monks and therefore hostile — painted him as cruel, treacherous, lustful, and irreligious. Modern historians have sought a more balanced picture: he was energetic, personally engaged in the administration of justice, and highly intelligent. Yet he was also capable of sudden cruelty, was deeply suspicious of those around him, and showed a consistent tendency to take politically ruinous short-term decisions. His submission to the Pope and his sealing of Magna Carta were both forced concessions he had no intention of honouring. (5)

SPEAKING VOICE John was said to have possessed a menacing voice, which contemporary accounts suggest he deployed to intimidating effect. (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR No direct accounts of John's humour survive in detail, though his intelligent and calculating nature suggests a man capable of dark wit. 

RELATIONSHIPS John's first wife was Isabella of Gloucester. Her father's sisters had been disinherited by Henry II in 1176 in order to concentrate the family's wealth, making Isabella a very desirable match. John and Isabella were betrothed at that point and married on August 29, 1189, at Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire. 

The marriage was childless. Isabella was reportedly in the habit of staying in bed until noon reading romances — a taste John shared, as he also liked rising late. 

When John discovered she had taken a lover, he had the man killed and his corpse strung above Isabella's side of the bed. 

John had the marriage annulled on grounds of consanguinity, either shortly before or after his accession to the throne in 1199, and Isabella was never recognised as queen. She went on to marry Geoffrey de Mandeville and later Hubert de Burgh.  (2)

On August 24, 1200, John married Isabella of Angoulême in Bordeaux Cathedral. She was around twelve to sixteen years old — some twenty years his junior — and was already celebrated for her beauty, being described as blonde and blue-eyed. John had effectively abducted her from her betrothed, Hugh IX of Lusignan, an act that would have long-lasting political consequences. 

Isabella eventually bore five children: two sons, Henry (the future Henry III) and Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall; and three daughters, Joan, Isabella, and Eleanor. 

Four years after John's death, Isabella married Hugh X of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, by whom she had nine more children. She died on June 4, 1246, having outlived her royal husband by thirty years. (2)

The effigy of Isabella of Angoulême, John's second wife, in Fontevraud Abbey in France

John is credited by the chroniclers of his age with a great talent for lechery. Even allowing for monastic embellishment and political bias, he fathered numerous illegitimate children. 

MONEY AND FAME John inherited a vast but financially strained empire. He aggressively exploited every avenue of royal revenue — scutage (a payment in lieu of military service), inheritance taxes, and fines — levied in ways the barons regarded as outside the bounds of feudal custom. This extractive approach to royal finance was a central grievance that led directly to Magna Carta. (5)

He also lost enormous personal wealth when his baggage train was swallowed by the tidal waters of The Wash in Lincolnshire in October 1216. Among the lost items were his crown and royal regalia, 52 rings set with rubies and sapphires, 132 silver cups, and an array of swords and valuables. (2)

FOOD AND DRINK According to some accounts, John's death was hastened — if not directly caused — by overindulgence. After the townspeople of Lynn in Norfolk were awarded a lucrative royal contract, they reportedly laid on a lavish feast in his honour, concluding with his favourite dessert: peaches in cider. John ate to excess, suffered violent stomach pains, and died a few days later. He was already weakened by dysentery. (6)

MUSIC AND ARTS John's court was a cultured one by the standards of its day. He patronised the arts in the conventional manner of medieval kings, though no specific musical preferences are recorded. His love of reading and book-collecting marked him as unusually intellectual among English monarchs of his era. (3)

LITERATURE  John maintained a travelling library, a highly unusual practice for the time. Records indicate that his personal traveling library included De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei by Hugh of St. Victor, Sentences by Peter Lombard, The Treatise of Origen, and an early history of England—potentially Wace's Roman de Brut, which was based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (2)

His first wife, Isabella of Gloucester, also shared his love of reading, reportedly spending her mornings in bed reading romances. (3)

NATURE John was a keen huntsman and spent much of his life on the move between his castles and hunting lodges. He particularly enjoyed hunting in the New Forest. 

Finding that insufficient game remained for his personal falconry, he issued a royal proclamation in 1209 forbidding the taking of wild fowl by any means throughout the kingdom. He also gave 10,000 acres of New Forest land to the Cistercian monks at Beaulieu after a dream commanded him to repent for having ordered his horsemen to ride down a group of Cistercian monks in Lincoln. This donation became the foundation of Beaulieu Abbey. (4)

King John on a stag hunt. Provided by the British Library

PETS John treasured greyhounds so highly that he was willing to accept them in lieu of money for the payment of fines or the renewal of grants. He also kept several hundred hunting dogs, which accompanied him on his constant travels. (4)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS John loved gambling, particularly playing backgammon for large monetary stakes. 

He was also a passionate hunter who rode out frequently in the New Forest, and he became the very first English monarch to keep dedicated racing horses in his royal stables. (2)

SCIENCE AND MATHS Though not a mathematician, John was a highly systematic legal and financial administrator who modernized the royal record-keeping system. He took a keen interest in the precise logistics of transport, architecture, and weight measures across his network of 72 castles and dozen hunting lodges. (2)

REIGN King John occupied the English throne from May 27, 1199, until October 19, 1216, and has spent most of the eight centuries since being remembered as history's answer to the office manager nobody wanted to sit next to. Thanks largely to Robin Hood films, he remains the go-to example of a bad king: sneering, grasping, and generally behaving as though every decision was made after a particularly disappointing lunch.

The reality, as historians are forever pointing out with the weary patience of people correcting a long-standing typo, was more complicated. John was not lazy, nor was he indifferent to government. Quite the opposite. He involved himself in legal cases, administrative details, and the daily machinery of the kingdom with an enthusiasm that must occasionally have left his officials longing for a king who spent more time hawking. His problem wasn't incompetence. It was that he had an extraordinary gift for alienating almost everyone who mattered.

His reign was a sort of medieval greatest-hits collection of disasters. He lost vast Angevin territories in France to the formidable King Philip II. He managed to quarrel with Pope Innocent III so thoroughly that England was placed under interdict and John himself was excommunicated — no small achievement in an age when being on good terms with the Church was considered almost as important as breathing. Then came a rebellion by his barons, who had finally had enough, followed by the First Barons' War, which ensured that the closing chapters of his reign were every bit as turbulent as the opening ones.

The most famous result of this unrest was Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede in June 1215. The document contained 63 clauses and, among other things, insisted that the king could not simply invent taxes whenever the mood took him. Much of it echoed principles already laid out in the Charter of Liberties more than a century earlier, but this version had the advantage of arriving attached to an armed uprising. Copies were dispatched throughout the kingdom, ensuring that everyone could keep track of exactly what the king was supposed to stop doing.

John never actually signed Magna Carta. Medieval kings generally authenticated documents by attaching their seal rather than scribbling their name at the bottom. In any case, he had no intention of keeping to it. Within weeks he persuaded the Pope to annul the agreement and promptly resumed hostilities, plunging the country into civil war.

When John died in 1216, he was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Henry III. There was, however, an awkward practical problem. John had recently lost the royal regalia while crossing The Wash, one of those episodes that sounds invented by a particularly mischievous novelist. As a consequence, England's new king was crowned not with the traditional crown but with his mother's bracelet. It is difficult to imagine a more fitting conclusion to the reign of a monarch whose talent for turning difficulties into catastrophes remained impressively consistent right to the end.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY John's relationship with the Church was combative and transactional. He refused to sanction Pope Innocent III's appointment of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1207 and expelled the Canterbury monks. In response the Pope placed England under interdict, suspending all public worship — a source of enormous distress to the devout peasantry. John retaliated by confiscating church property and cutting the clergy to near-starvation allowances, causing many churchmen to flee abroad. He reportedly threatened that any papal clerks found in England would be sent back to Rome with their eyes torn out and their noses split.

The consequence was excommunication. However, Innocent allowed some English churches to celebrate Mass privately, concerned about the long-term damage to faith. In 1213, facing invasion and baronial revolt, John capitulated, surrendering England to God and receiving it back as a papal fief, paying a substantial annual tribute in return for the restoration of public worship. Despite all this, John's dream about the Cistercian monks suggests that some genuine religious feeling existed beneath the cynical political exterior. (5)

POLITICS John's political legacy rests primarily on Magna Carta, whose long-term significance far outstripped anything he intended. The charter was a conservative document — a restatement of feudal rights — but its principle that the king could not tax without consent, and that free men could not be imprisoned without due legal process, planted a constitutional seed of extraordinary consequence. John himself regarded it as a humiliation to be overturned at the earliest opportunity.

His political difficulties stemmed partly from the structural weakness of a king who had lost his French territories and therefore lacked both the revenues and the military prestige of his predecessors. His heavy use of scutage and other feudal exactions alienated the barons without providing the military successes that might have justified them. (5)

SCANDAL John's reign generated scandal on multiple fronts. He is strongly suspected — by contemporaries and by modern historians — of having personally ordered the murder of his nephew Arthur of Brittany, a rival claimant to the throne who disappeared in 1203 while in John's custody. Arthur's sister Eleanor, known as the Fair Maid of Brittany, was imprisoned for the rest of her life — first in Bristol Castle, then in a nunnery at Amesbury, where she died in 1241.

John had his first wife Isabella of Gloucester's lover killed and hung the corpse above her side of the bed.

Contemporary chroniclers accused John of seducing the wives and daughters of his barons — a charge so widespread and consistent that it cannot be entirely dismissed as monastic invention.

When John suggested a second coronation to shore up his damaged reputation, the idea was so obviously futile that, according to Shakespeare's The Life and Death of King John, the Earl of Salisbury compared it to "painting the lily" — the origin of that well-known phrase. (5)

MILITARY RECORD John's military record was largely one of failure, earning him the contemporary nickname "Softsword." His inability to defend Normandy against Philip II of France resulted in the loss of most of the Angevin continental empire by 1204, including Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. His attempts to recover these territories — culminating in the campaign that ended at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214 — came to nothing. 

He was more effective in his early Irish campaigns (1210) and in suppressing baronial opposition within England, but these successes were overshadowed by the larger failures. The civil war triggered by his repudiation of Magna Carta was still in progress when he died. (2)

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS In his youth John was physically active and vigorous, an enthusiastic hunter and horseman. By his forties he had become overweight. He suffered from dysentery in the final weeks of his life, possibly aggravated by overeating, (6)

HOMES John owned 72 castles and a dozen hunting lodges across England and his remaining domains. These included the royal castle at Rochester, which he besieged during the First Barons' War. He was characteristically restless, rarely staying long in one place, moving constantly between residences in a pattern typical of medieval kingship but which John pursued with particular intensity. (4)

TRAVEL John was one of the most extensively travelled English kings, constantly in motion between his castles, hunting lodges, and courts. He employed an officer specifically charged with drying his wet clothes during these journeys, and was accompanied by several hundred hunting dogs at any given time. 

For sea travel, he retained a servant named Solomon Attefeld, whose official role was Royal Head Holder — his job being to hold the king's head steady to counter seasickness.(6)

DEATH John died in the early hours of October 19, 1216, at Newark Castle, Nottinghamshire, of dysentery. He had been ill for some days. According to tradition, the townspeople of Lynn in Norfolk, grateful for a lucrative royal contract, had laid on a lavish feast in his honour, finishing with his favourite dessert of peaches in cider; John ate to excess, was seized with violent stomach pains, and never recovered. He was fifty years old.

His body was escorted south by a company of mercenaries and buried at Worcester Cathedral, before the altar of St Wulfstan, where his tomb remains to this day. He was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, who was crowned Henry III — using his mother's bracelet in place of the lost crown. (6)

King John's tomb in Worcester Cathedral

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA John is one of the most frequently portrayed English monarchs in fiction, most often as a villain. He appears as a tyrannical figure in the Robin Hood legend, in which he is consistently cast as the oppressor against whom Robin Hood rebels.

In the 1968 film The Lion in Winter, John is portrayed as the weak and scheming youngest son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. In a memorable scene, a character comments on the prospect of marrying the young John, complaining that "he smells of compost." (7)

Shakespeare wrote The Life and Death of King John, in which John is a conflicted and ultimately tragic figure. The play contains the line that gave us the phrase "painting the lily," used to describe a pointless act of embellishment.

John has also appeared in Disney's animated film Robin Hood (1973), voiced by Peter Ustinov, as a thumb-sucking, self-pitying lion. 

ACHIEVEMENTS John's greatest unintended achievement was Magna Carta, sealed in 1215, which established the principle that even the king is subject to the law — a cornerstone of constitutional government in England and, by influence, across much of the democratic world.

 He also maintained the complex administrative machinery of the English royal government during years of acute crisis. His patronage of reading and his unusual travelling library marked him as one of the more intellectually curious English kings. 

Beaulieu Abbey, founded after his gift of 10,000 New Forest acres to the Cistercians, remains a notable historic site. He was the first English monarch to keep racehorses and the first recorded owner of a royal dressing gown. 

Sources: (1) Wikipedia – John, King of England (2) Encyclopaedia of Trivia – King John of England (3) Encyclopædia Britannica – John, King of England (4) History Extra – King John's Library (5) English Heritage – King John (6) Historic UK – King John (7) IMDB – The Lion in Winter (1968)

King James II of England

NAME James II of England and Ireland (James VII of Scotland).

WHAT FAMOUS FOR He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over England, Scotland, and Ireland. His attempts to establish religious liberty for his fellow Catholics and Protestant nonconformists ultimately backfired, leading to his deposition during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. His overthrow established the principle that Parliamentary sovereignty, rather than divine right, governed the British monarchy.

BIRTH James was born on October 14, 1633 (Old Style), at St. James's Palace, Westminster, London. He was baptised by William Laud, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, shortly after birth. (1) 

FAMILY BACKGROUND James was the second surviving son of King Charles I of England and his French queen, Henrietta Maria of France, a Catholic princess and daughter of King Henry IV of France. He was named after his grandfather James I of England. He was the younger brother of King Charles II, who preceded him on the throne. (2) 

At birth he was created Duke of York and invested with the Order of the Garter in 1642. 

James with his father, Charles I, by Sir Peter Lely, 1647

CHILDHOOD James was eight years old when the English Civil War broke out in 1642. He and his brother Charles were present at the Battle of Edgehill in October of that year and narrowly escaped capture by Parliamentarian cavalry. 

He spent much of the next four years in the Royalist wartime capital of Oxford, where he was made a Master of Arts by the University on November 1, 1642, and served as colonel of a volunteer regiment of foot. 

After Royalist Oxford surrendered in June 1646, James was taken to London and held at St. James's Palace with his younger siblings. In April 1648, on his father's orders, he managed to escape his guards and cross the North Sea to The Hague, in the care of his sister Mary and her husband, William II of Orange. 

Following the execution of Charles I in January 1649, James went into exile in France with his mother. His father's fate and his years in continental exile would render him, in the view of historians, more inflexible and authoritarian in outlook than his older brother, and less patient with the complexities of English politics. (3)

EDUCATION James was educated by private tutors alongside his older brother, the future Charles II, and the two sons of the Duke of Buckingham, George and Francis Villiers. His formative education was as much military and practical as academic: his years serving in the French and Spanish armies gave him a thorough grounding in the arts of war, naval administration, and statecraft.

He was made a nominal Master of Arts by Oxford University in 1642 during the Civil War. 

CAREER RECORD 1652: He entered French military service under Marshal Turenne, fighting against the Spanish forces during the Fronde civil wars and proving himself a brave and highly capable officer. 

1656: After his brother Charles II made an alliance with Spain, James changed sides and joined the Spanish army under the Prince of Condé, commanding the rebel English royalist forces in Flanders. 

1660: Following the restoration of the monarchy, he returned to England and was appointed Lord High Admiral. He completely reorganized the Royal Navy, showing great administrative talent and personally commanding the fleet during the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars. 

1673: He was forced to resign as Lord High Admiral due to the Test Act, which barred Catholics from holding public office following the public revelation of his conversion. 

1685-1688: He ascended the throne upon the death of Charles II on February 6, 1685. His brief reign was dominated by efforts to suspend penal laws against Catholics and dissenters, which alienated the political elite and resulted in his eventual deposition.

APPEARANCE  James was described as "something above middle stature, well-shaped, very nervous and strong." 

The Italian diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti, who observed him in 1667, gave a precise account: "His complexion may be called light in colour, all the outlines of his face are prominent: a square forehead, the eyes large, swollen, and deep blue, the nose curved and rather large, the lips pale and thick, and the chin rather pointed." 

Unlike his older brother Charles II, who was dark and swarthy, James had a noticeably fairer complexion, and wore a large, elaborate full-bottomed wig throughout his adult life, as seen in portraits by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller.

James was described as "something above middle stature, well-shaped, very nervous and strong." 

A 1702 anonymous account noted that "his outward carriage was a little stiff and constrained." (4) 

James II by Peter Lely

FASHION Like other Stuart monarchs, James dressed in the opulent fashion of the late 17th century, favouring rich fabrics, lace, and the full-bottomed wig that was the defining accessory of the period. Surviving portraits show him in ducal robes, armour as Lord High Admiral, and lavish court dress. (2) 

When he was depicted in his coronation robes in a full-length portrait held at the Royal Museums Greenwich, he wore a brown, full-bottomed wig with his right hand at his breast and his coronet resting on a table beside him — typical of the grandeur expected of a Stuart king. (5)

CHARACTER James was widely regarded as stubborn, hot-tempered, and inflexible — qualities that proved fatal to his reign. An anonymous account of 1702 noted that "his temper was naturally hot and choleric." (4) 

Where his brother Charles II was charming, pragmatic, and politically nimble, James was rigid, authoritarian, and unable to compromise.  His continental exile and the trauma of his father's execution had instilled in him a fierce belief in divine right and absolute monarchy that proved disastrously ill-suited to the England of his day. 

He was, however, genuinely brave in battle, and sincerely devoted to his religious faith and to those who served him loyally. Historians have debated whether he was primarily an absolutist tyrant or a sincere advocate of religious tolerance; most modern scholars take a middle ground. (3) 

SPEAKING VOICE No detailed account of James's speaking voice has survived, though his stiff and constrained public bearing suggests a formal manner of address in keeping with his character. (4) 

James was capable of direct and blunt speech: during his 1687 speaking tour of western England, he gave a notably plain-spoken speech at Chester comparing religious discrimination to imprisoning "all black men" as equally unreasonable — a remarkably direct analogy for the era. (6)

SENSE OF HUMOUR James was not noted for his wit or levity, in sharp contrast to his brother Charles II, who was famous for his easy charm and sharp humour. Where Charles cultivated his court with banter and bonhomie, James was earnest and serious. His character has been described as stiff and constrained, and contemporary accounts suggest he lacked his brother's natural gift for disarming people. 

RELATIONSHIPS James's first wife was Anne Hyde, daughter of Charles II's Lord Chancellor, Edward Hyde. She had been maid of honour to James's sister Mary. James had seduced her with promises of marriage while she was in his service, and she became pregnant in 1660. Though almost everyone at court — including Anne's own father — urged against the match, James honoured his promise. A visibly pregnant Anne married James in an official but private ceremony in London on September 3, 1660, following the Restoration. (2) 

The couple had eight children, but six died in early childhood. The two who survived to adulthood were Mary (born April 30, 1662), who later reigned as Mary II, and Anne (born February 6, 1665), who became Queen Anne, the first monarch of Great Britain. 

A portrait of Anne, James and their two daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Anne by Peter Lely

Anne Hyde died of breast cancer on March 31, 1671, aged 34, never recovering from the birth of her eighth child, Catherine, earlier that year. (1) (2)

James was also a notorious womaniser. His mistresses included Arabella Churchill, sister of the future Duke of Marlborough, and Catherine Sedley. Samuel Pepys noted drily in his diary that James "did eye my wife mightily." The sharp-tongued Bishop Gilbert Burnet memorably remarked that James's mistresses must have been "given [to] him by his priests as a penance." (7)

James married his second wife, Mary of Modena, a fifteen-year-old Italian Catholic princess, by proxy in a Catholic ceremony on September 20, 1673. Many British people, deeply distrustful of Catholicism, regarded the new Duchess of York as an agent of the Pope, and there was fierce opposition to James's potential succession to the throne. (2) 

With Mary, James had several children; most died in infancy, but the birth of a son, James Francis Edward Stuart (the "Old Pretender"), on June 10, 1688, was the event that triggered the Glorious Revolution, as it raised the prospect of a permanent Catholic dynasty. 

MONEY AND FAME After the Restoration, the office of Lord High Admiral, combined with revenues from post office and wine tariffs granted him by Charles II, gave James enough money to maintain a sizable court household. 

His position on ascending the throne was financially strong: he had standing armies of nearly 20,000 men and a revenue of around £2 million. Parliament granted him a generous life income including the proceeds of tonnage, poundage, and customs duties. (8) 

In exile, he depended entirely upon the generosity of Louis XIV of France, who provided him with a palace at Saint-Germain-en-Laye and a pension.

FOOD AND DRINK An illuminating glimpse into royal dining comes from the Lord Steward's accounts: when James II was camped at Hounslow Heath on annual military manoeuvres in 1686, he and his officers consumed twelve dishes of ice cream at £1 each — equivalent to roughly £80 (around $130) in today's money. (2) 

James II and his officers eating ice cream by Gemini

In his later years in exile, James adopted an increasingly ascetic and penitent lifestyle, in stark contrast to the luxurious court life of his earlier career. (5)

MUSIC AND ARTS James was a patron of the arts in keeping with the cultural richness of the Restoration court. He sat for numerous portraits, including works by Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller, some of the most celebrated painters of the era. His portraits by Kneller and Lely now hang in major collections including the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Royal Museums Greenwich. 

The Restoration court under both Charles II and James was notable for its love of music, theatre, and spectacle, though James himself was not particularly celebrated as a personal practitioner of the arts. 

LITERATURE James left behind several significant written works, most notably his autobiography and Memoirs, compiled from his own papers (later published as Life of King James II in 1816). 

In his final years in exile, he wrote a detailed memorandum for his son advising him on how to govern England, specifying the balance of Catholic and Protestant offices to be maintained.

His papers have been drawn upon extensively by historians seeking to understand his motivations and outlook.

NATURE James was an enthusiastic huntsman in the Stuart tradition, in keeping with the culture of the Restoration court where hunting was a primary aristocratic pursuit. (9)

His time on military campaigns and at sea gave him an affinity with the outdoors and the natural world, though he is not particularly noted for scientific or botanical interests.

PETS James shared the Stuart family's celebrated passion for small toy spaniels. He and his brother Charles II had an agreement to carry on breeding their spaniels in the event of either's death, and James was described by the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Club as "an owner and great lover of small toy spaniels." 

James and toy spaniels by Perplexity

The most famous episode involving James and his dogs was the wreck of HMS Gloucester on May 6, 1682, when the ship struck a sandbank off the Norfolk coast and sank within an hour, killing between 130 and 250 people. James's critics circulated stories that he had prioritised saving his pet dogs over the drowning crew, a claim that damaged his reputation severely. However, there is evidence this was largely anti-James propaganda: his dog Mumper apparently drowned in the disaster, suggesting the story was false. The real controversy was that James's delay in leaving the ship — royal protocol forbade anyone disembarking before him — cost many lives

HOBBIES AND SPORTS James was physically active and sporty. Like his brother Charles II, he enjoyed real (or royal) tennis, one of the most fashionable sports at the Restoration court. (9) 

His primary passion was the sea and naval affairs: he threw himself into the administration and command of the Royal Navy with genuine enthusiasm and was described by Samuel Pepys — who worked closely with him — as a diligent and capable administrator. (5)

In his years in Scotland he took a keen interest in horse racing on Leith Sands.

SCIENCE AND MATHS James had a practical, empirical interest in navigation, cartography, and naval technology, as befitted a man who commanded fleets in two wars. He was a fellow investor and active participant in several commercial enterprises, including the Royal African Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, which required a grasp of trade, geography, and logistics. (

REIGN James II managed the rare historical feat of losing three kingdoms in less time than it takes most people to renovate a kitchen. He reigned as King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from February 1685 until December 1688 — not quite four years altogether — yet in that brief and rather frantic interval he helped permanently redefine the relationship between monarchy and Parliament in Britain. It was one of those reigns that began with every appearance of stability and ended with the political equivalent of a piano falling through the ceiling.

When James came to the throne, he inherited a remarkably strong position. He had nearly 20,000 soldiers spread across his kingdoms, annual revenues of about £2 million, and — perhaps most importantly — a population exhausted by decades of civil wars, plots, panics, and religious hysteria. People wanted calm. James, at first glance, looked reassuringly solid, like a man who owned several hunting dogs and knew how to discipline servants with a glance.

His Catholicism was well known and widely distrusted, but most English subjects comforted themselves with the thought that it was only a temporary inconvenience. His heirs were his Protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, so England could simply endure a Catholic king for a while and then return to normal, much as one waits out a leaking roof.

His first challenge came almost immediately when the Duke of Monmouth — the illegitimate son of Charles II and a man with the unfortunate confidence common to handsome rebels — landed in the West Country and declared himself king. The rebellion ended at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685, the last pitched battle ever fought on English soil. Monmouth was captured, executed, and followed into oblivion by hundreds of supporters after Judge Jeffreys conducted the infamous “Bloody Assizes,” a judicial tour notable for combining legal procedure with the atmosphere of a public hanging festival. Around 250 rebels were executed and many hundreds more transported overseas.

The crushing of Monmouth’s rebellion convinced James of something disastrously wrong: namely, that the nation supported him wholeheartedly. This is a recurring problem in history. A ruler survives one crisis and immediately concludes he is a genius.

James interpreted his smooth accession and military success as permission to advance Catholic interests aggressively. He expanded the standing army and appointed Catholic officers in defiance of existing law, alarming Parliament, which already regarded standing armies with the same affection normally reserved for outbreaks of plague.

When Parliament objected, James simply prorogued it in November 1685 and never called it back again. This was bold in the manner of a man sawing through the branch on which he is sitting.

He proceeded to appoint Catholics to important offices throughout government, the military, and universities, overriding statutes at Oxford and Cambridge with cheerful disregard. In 1687 he issued the Declaration of Indulgence, suspending penal laws against Catholics and Protestant dissenters alike by royal prerogative. The idea of religious toleration was not itself unpopular; the problem was that James insisted on achieving it by behaving as though laws were optional suggestions.

Then came the affair of the Seven Bishops. When several Anglican bishops politely petitioned the king to reconsider forcing clergy to read the Declaration from their pulpits, James had them prosecuted for seditious libel. The bishops were acquitted to scenes of public jubilation so widespread that it became painfully obvious the king had managed the remarkable feat of alienating both religious extremists and moderates simultaneously.

For a while, many Englishmen still assumed matters would sort themselves out upon James’s death. Then, on June 10, 1688, Queen Mary of Modena gave birth to a son.

This changed everything.

A Catholic male heir meant that England now faced not a temporary Catholic monarch but the prospect of an enduring Catholic dynasty. Panic spread with astonishing efficiency. Within weeks, seven prominent politicians — Whigs and Tories together, proving that terror can achieve bipartisanship where reason cannot — secretly invited William of Orange to invade.

William landed at Devon on November 5, 1688. James still possessed a large army, but armies are only useful if they remain loyal, and his began evaporating with extraordinary speed. Commanders defected. Noblemen defected. Even James’s own son-in-law defected. It was less a military collapse than a prolonged public unfriending.

James himself appeared to suffer a complete emotional unraveling. He endured severe nosebleeds, bouts of indecision, and periods of paralysis that suggest a man watching his authority dissolve hour by hour. Finally, on December 23, 1688, he fled to France. Parliament obligingly interpreted his departure as an abdication and invited William and Mary to rule jointly in February 1689.

Thus ended one of the shortest and most consequential reigns in British history.

James was not quite finished. With French backing from Louis XIV, he landed in Ireland in 1689 in a final attempt to recover his throne. The Irish Parliament declared him the rightful king, and for a moment it looked as though the struggle might become a genuine European crisis.

Instead, it culminated at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690, where William III decisively defeated James’s forces. James promptly fled back to France

He spent the remaining eleven years of his life at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye as the pensioned guest of Louis XIV, growing steadily more devout and penitential, which is often what happens to deposed monarchs once they run out of armies.

James II failed as a king, but in doing so he transformed Britain permanently. His overthrow produced the Bill of Rights in 1689, which sharply limited royal authority and established Parliament as the dominant force in government. The Act of Settlement of 1701 barred Catholics from the throne, a provision whose echoes survive even now in the constitutional machinery of Britain.

In effect, James accomplished by failure what many rulers could not accomplish by skill: he convinced the British political class that monarchy needed rules, limits, and supervision. It was an extraordinarily influential disaster.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Religion was arguably the single most important force in James's life. Originally raised an Anglican, he was exposed to Catholicism during his years in exile in France, and both he and his first wife Anne Hyde were drawn to the Roman Catholic faith. James converted to Catholicism and received Catholic Eucharist in 1668 or 1669, though he kept his conversion secret for years and continued attending Anglican services until 1676. His conversion only became public when he resigned the post of Lord High Admiral rather than take the Protestant oath required by the 1673 Test Act. (2) 

His Catholic faith was the central and defining fact of his reign, driving his attempts to extend toleration to Catholics and ultimately causing his downfall. He was once heard to remark: "If occasion were, I hope God would give me his grace to suffer death for the true Catholic religion as well as banishment." (7)

In exile, he became ever more devout, living as an austere penitent; the Archbishop of Paris even heard evidence in 1734 to support his possible canonisation, though nothing came of it. 

POLITICS  James was a firm believer in the divine right of kings and in royal absolutism, modelled in part on the example of Louis XIV of France. 

His political career was dominated by the Exclusion Crisis of 1678–1683, during which Whig politicians — led by the Earl of Shaftesbury — repeatedly attempted to bar him from the succession by Act of Parliament. This crisis gave birth to the English two-party system: those who supported James and the legitimate succession were called "Tories," while those who supported the Exclusion Bill were called "Whigs." (2) 

As king, James attempted to pack Parliament with supporters, dismissed judges who ruled against him, and issued the Declaration of Indulgence (1687) using the royal prerogative to nullify Acts of Parliament — all moves that were seen as threats to the constitutional order. His attempts to promote Catholic officers in the army, to override university statutes, and to prosecute the Seven Bishops for merely petitioning him finally turned the political nation against him. (8)

SCANDAL The greatest scandal of James's life and reign was, in Protestant eyes, his conversion to Roman Catholicism — and his determination to impose Catholic toleration on a deeply Protestant nation by royal prerogative. 

His womanising was a further source of notoriety: his string of mistresses was remarked upon throughout his life, and Bishop Burnet's cutting quip that they must have been "given [to] him by his priests as a penance" became one of the most famous put-downs of the era. (

The "warming pan scandal" of 1688 — when Protestant opponents circulated rumours that the newborn Prince of Wales had been smuggled into Queen Mary's bed in a warming pan to fake an heir — was technically a scandal aimed at him, reflecting how completely he had lost the confidence of his subjects. 

MILITARY RECORD James was, by any measure, a genuinely brave soldier and capable naval commander. He served in the French army under Marshal Turenne from 1652, fighting in multiple campaigns across the Low Countries and gaining valuable battlefield experience. He was personally commended by Turenne as a soldier who "ventures himself and chargeth gallantly where anything is to be done," and was raised to Lieutenant-General by 1654. (7)

He later served with Spanish forces at the Battle of the Dunes in 1657. 

As Lord High Admiral after the Restoration, he commanded the English fleet in person at the Battle of Lowestoft (1665) and at the Battle of Solebay (1672), displaying conspicuous personal courage in both engagements — standing firm on the deck even as men were killed beside him. He was removed from active naval command after both battles, as Charles II was unwilling to risk losing the heir to the throne. 

After becoming king he crushed the Monmouth and Argyll rebellions in 1685. 

However, his military nerve famously deserted him in 1688, when — despite having a numerically superior army — he declined to engage William of Orange's invading force, panicked, and fled to France. His subsequent campaign to reclaim his throne via Ireland ended in defeat at the Battle of the Boyne on July 1, 1690. 

Battle of the Boyne by Huchtenburg

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS   His years of military campaigning, active naval service, hunting, and tennis all point to a man who remained physically capable well into middle age. He ascended the throne at 51 and was reportedly robust. 

HOMES James was born at St. James's Palace, London, and spent his early years between royal palaces. 

During the Civil War, he was held at St. James's Palace and later spent time in Oxford. He then lived for years at The Hague and at the French court in exile. 

After the Restoration, his primary residence as Duke of York was in London. 

As Lord High Commissioner of Scotland (1679–1682) he resided at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. 

As king from 1685, he occupied the royal palaces, including Whitehall Palace. 

After his flight in 1688, Louis XIV provided him with the magnificent royal Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside Paris, where he spent the last thirteen years of his life in exile. (

TRAVEL James's life was defined by movement and displacement. As a child he was shuttled between royal palaces; as a young man in exile he lived at The Hague, Paris, and with Spanish forces in Flanders. As Lord High Commissioner he travelled to Scotland. (

He visited the western counties of England on a speaking tour in 1687. 

After the Glorious Revolution, he travelled to France, then to Ireland in 1689 in his attempted reconquest, before making his final journey back to France after his defeat at the Boyne in 1690. 

DEATH James II died of a brain haemorrhage on September 16, 1701, at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in France, aged 67. 

His death was marked by the extraordinary disposal of his remains: his heart was placed in a silver-gilt locket and given to the convent at Chaillot; his brain was placed in a lead casket and given to the Scots College in Paris; his entrails were divided between two gilt urns sent to the parish church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and the English Jesuit college at Saint-Omer; and the flesh from his right arm was given to the English Augustinian nuns of Paris. 

The rest of his body was laid to rest in a triple sarcophagus (consisting of two wooden coffins and one of lead) at the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines, Rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, with a funeral oration delivered by Henri-Emmanuel de Roquette. Lights were kept burning around his coffin until the French Revolution, when his tomb was raided.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA  James II has appeared as a prominent character in numerous historical dramas focusing on the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution. He is portrayed in the 2003 BBC miniseries Charles II: The Power and the Passion (played by Charlie Creed-Miles) and features prominently in historical novels by authors such as Neal Stephenson in his Baroque Cycle series

James II appears in John Dryden's political allegory Absalom and Achitophel (1681), in which he appears thinly veiled as the Duke of York. 

ACHIEVEMENTS Despite the ultimately catastrophic nature of his reign, James's career contained genuine achievements: 

As Lord High Admiral, he oversaw a major rebuilding and reorganisation of the Royal Navy, earning the admiration of Samuel Pepys, and commanded fleets with personal bravery in two Dutch wars.

He expanded England's colonial reach, leaving a permanent legacy when the captured Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam was renamed "New York" in his honor as the Duke of York. 

He is credited by some historians as a genuine early advocate of religious toleration — his Declaration of Indulgence extended protections to Protestant dissenters as well as Catholics.

His deposition, paradoxically, was his most enduring contribution to history: the Glorious Revolution permanently established parliamentary supremacy, produced the Bill of Rights (1689), and set Britain on the path to constitutional monarchy.

His daughters Mary II and Anne both reigned as Queens regnant — an unusual dynastic legacy — and Queen Anne became the first monarch of Great Britain following the Acts of Union in 1707.

Sources: (1) Wikipedia — James II of England (2) Encyclopaedia of Trivia — James II of England (3) Encyclopedia Virginia — James II (1633–1701) (4) National Portrait Gallery — Later Stuart Portraits Catalogue (5) Royal Museums Greenwich — James II Portrait (6) Sowerby, Scott. *Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution*. Harvard University Press, 2013. (7) Miller, John. *James II*. Yale University Press (The English Monarchs Series), 2000. (8) The Royal Family — James II (9) Pleasure and Pastime: Leisure at the Court of Charles II

King James VI (of Scotland) and I (of England)

NAME James Charles Stuart. Known as James VI of Scotland and James I of England and Ireland. Sometimes referred to as "the wisest fool in Christendom," a phrase attributed to Henry IV of France. 

WHAT FAMOUS FOR James VI & I was the first monarch to rule both Scotland and England simultaneously, uniting the two crowns in 1603 upon the death of Elizabeth I. He is perhaps best remembered in the English-speaking world for commissioning the King James Bible (1611), one of the most influential works in the history of the English language. He also survived the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a Catholic conspiracy to blow up Parliament. His reign laid some of the groundwork — through his belief in the divine right of kings and his clashes with Parliament — for the English Civil War that would erupt under his son, Charles I. 

BIRTH Born June 19, 1566, at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland. (1), (2)

FAMILY BACKGROUND James was the only child of Mary I, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (formally styled Henry Stuart, Duke of Albany). 

Through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor — the eldest sister of Henry VIII of England — James had a strong claim to the English throne. 

His maternal grandmother was Mary of Guise, making him part of the powerful French-Scottish Catholic Guise dynasty on his mother's side, though James himself was raised Protestant. (1)

CHILDHOOD James's early life was shaped by political violence and instability. His father, Lord Darnley, was murdered on February 10, 1567, at Kirk o' Field in Edinburgh, in an explosion widely suspected to have been arranged by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. His mother Mary Queen of Scots then compounded the scandal by marrying Bothwell on May 15, 1567, making herself deeply unpopular. 

In June 1567, Protestant rebel lords arrested Mary and imprisoned her in Loch Leven Castle, forcing her to abdicate in favour of her infant son. James was crowned King of Scotland at Stirling Castle on July 29, 1567, when he was just thirteen months old, with a succession of regents governing in his name. He saw his mother only once after that, and she was eventually executed on the orders of Elizabeth I in 1587. 

As a boy, James was sickly and had a weakness of the legs, though he later became a bold horseback rider — reportedly needing to be tied into the saddle in the early years. A ceremony was held in Edinburgh on October 9, 1579, formally marking James VI's coming of age as an adult ruler. (2), (3)

Portrait of James as a boy, after Arnold Bronckorst, 1574

EDUCATION James received an exceptionally rigorous classical education overseen by the Scottish humanist scholar George Buchanan, one of the finest Latin scholars in Europe, though also a stern and sometimes harsh tutor. James was taught Latin, Greek, French, and the scriptures, and he became a genuinely accomplished scholar. Buchanan's strong Presbyterian views left a complex mark on James, who later rejected the political theory of limited monarchy that Buchanan espoused in favour of a belief in royal absolutism. (2)

CAREER RECORD 1567: Crowned King James VI of Scotland at the age of thirteen months following the forced abdication of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. A series of regents governed the fractured country during his minority. 

1579: An official ceremony was held in Edinburgh on October 9, 1579, marking his coming of age and his dynamic entry into personal rule as an adult monarch. 

1603: Inherited the English and Irish thrones following the death of Queen Elizabeth I on March 24, 1603. He traveled from Edinburgh to London in April, where he was greeted by massive, enthusiastic crowds, and was officially crowned at Westminster Abbey on July 25, 1603. 

1604: Presided over the Hampton Court Conference to address religious divides, leading to the enforcement of anti-Catholic penal laws and the commissioning of a new English Bible translation. 

1605: Survived the Gunpowder Plot on November 5, 1605, when Guy Fawkes and a group of provincial English Catholics attempted to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. 

1611: Oversaw the publication of the Authorized King James Version of the Bible, which became one of the most influential texts in the history of the English language. 

1621: Entered a period of severe political conflict with a hostile English Parliament, which refused to grant him necessary tax revenues, deeply crippling the crown's finance.

APPEARANCE James was of medium height with a thin, reedy build. He had fair reddish hair in youth that darkened with age, and somewhat watery blue eyes. His legs were notably weak — a feature remarked on throughout his life — and he walked with an ungainly gait. 

His tongue was considered too large for his mouth, which affected both his speech and his table manners, causing him to drool and slobber while eating. 

As he aged, he lost most of his teeth and his appearance became increasingly dishevelled. (4)

James I of England Attributed to John de Critz

FASHION James had little interest in elegant dress. He wore heavily padded, double-quilted waistcoats and doublets, reportedly out of fear of being stabbed — a not unreasonable concern given the violence surrounding his youth. He disliked new shoes intensely and preferred old, worn ones. In a notable eccentricity, rather than removing trousers when they wore through, he simply pulled a new pair on over the old ones. His wardrobe was generally described as shabby and neglected by the standards expected of a monarch, and he was frequently criticized for his slovenly appearance. (4)

CHARACTER James was a man of striking contradictions. Highly learned, witty, and capable of genuine intellectual brilliance, he was equally vain, cowardly, and prone to embarrassing favoritism. While he could be warm, affectionate, and generous to a fault with those he loved, he was often cold, dismissive, and carelessly cruel to those outside his favored circle.

He was famously nervous of drawn swords and deeply fearful of assassination — unsurprising given his turbulent upbringing. 

Contemporaries noted that he was often more comfortable with the company of men and horses than with formal court ceremony or the demands of governance. (2)

SPEAKING VOICE James spoke with a broad Scottish accent throughout his life, which English courtiers found difficult to understand and sometimes mocked. His speech was further impeded by his oversized tongue, which gave it a thick, slobbering quality. Despite this, he could be an eloquent and forceful speaker when motivated, particularly on theological or philosophical subjects. (2)

SENSE OF HUMOUR James had a sharp, sardonic wit and enjoyed wordplay and ribald humour. He is credited with a number of pithy remarks, including his defence of his relationship with George Villiers: "Jesus had his John, and I have my George." 

He was capable of genuine self-deprecating comedy but could also be coarse and undignified in his humour by the standards of the English court. (4)

RELATIONSHIPS James married Anne of Denmark by proxy in 1589. He then sailed to Denmark himself, and an official wedding ceremony was held on January 21, 1590 at Kronborg Castle in Helsingør during his visit. The marriage began warmly — James even wrote love poetry to Anne — but the couple gradually drifted apart. 

They had eight children together, of whom three survived infancy: Henry, Prince of Wales (who died young in 1612), Elizabeth (later Queen of Bohemia), and Charles (who became Charles I). One child was stillborn. After the death of their infant daughter Sophia, James and Anne effectively separated and lived apart. 

Anne died on March 2, 1619 at Hampton Court Palace and was buried at Westminster Abbey. (2)

Anne of Denmark 1605 portrait

James grew up in near-total isolation from normal human society, and his deepest emotional attachments were consistently directed toward men. The most notable of these relationships were with Esmé Stuart, whom he made Duke of Lennox; Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset; and above all George Villiers, whom he met in 1614. 

James nicknamed Villiers "Steenie" (after St. Stephen, who was said to have the face of an angel) and elevated him rapidly through the nobility, culminating in the dukedom of Buckingham in 1623 — the first non-royal dukedom created in over a century. It was openly joked in London at the time of James's accession that "Rex fuit Elizabeth: nunc est regina Jacobus" — "Elizabeth was King: now James is Queen." Upon the restoration of Apethorpe Palace, a secret passageway was discovered connecting the bedrooms of James and Villiers. (4)

MONEY AND FAME James arrived in England famously dazzled by its relative wealth compared to Scotland, but quickly acquired a reputation for financial mismanagement and was chronically short of money throughout his English reign. The refusal of the House of Commons to grant sufficient taxation crippled the royal finances, and James compounded the problem through lavish spending on favourites and an inability to manage the royal household's expenditure. 

His cultivation of unpopular favourites such as Robert Carr and George Villiers attracted widespread criticism and further damaged his standing with Parliament. (2)

FOOD AND DRINK James was a notoriously messy eater, largely due to his oversized tongue, which caused him to slobber his food across the table. 

He reportedly became a lifelong heavy drinker because his wet nurse was an alcoholic and he absorbed alcohol through her breast milk in infancy — a colourful claim that circulated widely, though it may be apocryphal. He drank increasingly heavily in later life.

He also had strong views on tobacco, which he despised (5)

MUSIC AND ARTS James was a patron of the arts, and the Jacobean era produced a flowering of English theatre and literature. He became the patron of Shakespeare's company, which was renamed the King's Men in 1603. 

His English coronation in 1603 featured elaborate allegorical entertainments written by dramatic poets including Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson. James also commissioned masques — elaborate court theatrical entertainments — many of them designed by Inigo Jones with scripts by Ben Jonson. 

He had less personal interest in music than his predecessor Elizabeth I, but maintained the royal musical establishment. (2)

LITERATURE James was a prolific and genuinely accomplished writer — unusual among monarchs. His works include:

The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), arguing for the divine right of kings. 

The True Law of Free Monarchies.

Basilikon Doron (1599), a manual of kingship for his son Prince Henry

Daemonologie (1597), a treatise on witchcraft and demonology

A Counterblast to Tobacco (1604), a fierce attack on smoking in which he wrote: "Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs"

His most enduring literary legacy is the King James Bible (1611), commissioned at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, which he authorized and took a close interest in. Widely regarded as one of the greatest works in the English language, it remained the standard English Protestant Bible for centuries. (5)

NATURE James had a passionate love of the countryside and outdoor life, particularly hunting. He often neglected the business of government to pursue field sports, and contemporaries noted that affairs of state were routinely delayed by his absences on the hunt. (2)

PETS James maintained a menagerie at the Tower of London that included eleven lions, two leopards, three eagles, two owls, two mountain cats, and a jackal. He also kept hounds for hunting. (2)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Hunting was the consuming passion of James's life and he pursued it to excess, frequently neglecting royal duties. 

He was an avid horseman, noted for his boldness in the saddle despite his weak legs. 

He was also a keen golfer — he is credited with introducing the sport to England, establishing a course at Blackheath in London around 1608, bringing the game south from Scotland. 

He was reportedly a keen curler; a toast proposed in 1844 in honour of the then Prince of Wales suggested James was "a keen curler who knew how to keep his own side of the rink and sweep." He also played bowls and advised his son to take up the game. 

In later life, he spent increasing amounts of time at Newmarket, indulging his love of horses and horse racing. ((4)

In 1618 he published The Book of Sports, a royal declaration listing the leisure activities — including dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, and May games — that were lawful on Sundays and holy days, in opposition to Puritan demands for strict Sabbath observance. (2)

SCIENCE AND MATHS James was a passenger during the first practical demonstration of a submarine. Designed by Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel, the vessel consisted of a wooden frame wrapped in greased leather to make it watertight, and was propelled entirely by oars. During a public demonstration on the River Thames—likely in the early 1620s—Drebbel successfully submerged to a depth of around fifteen feet and traveled several miles beneath the surface. James was among the fascinated spectators and reportedly went aboard for a brief underwater journey. (2)

Drebbel's first navigable submarine

REIGN James VI and I spent so long on the Scottish throne that by the time he arrived in England in 1603 he must have felt rather like a man who had successfully run a difficult provincial hotel being handed ownership of an entire chain. He had ruled Scotland for nearly 58 years — an astonishingly lengthy innings by Scottish standards, where monarchs traditionally survived about as comfortably as mayflies in a hurricane. By adulthood, James had become adept at managing quarrelsome nobles, suspicious clergy, and the sort of theological disputes that could, in the 16th century, lead perfectly respectable adults to scream at one another for six hours over the proper arrangement of a communion table.

Scotland during James’s minority had been chaotic enough to make a modern coalition government look serene. Yet once he took personal control, he brought a surprising degree of order to proceedings. He restrained the nobility, handled the formidable Presbyterian Kirk with a mixture of flattery and irritation, and presided over a kingdom that was, by contemporary standards, reasonably functional — which is to say people were only occasionally murdered for political reasons. This success convinced James that England would present little difficulty. It was the sort of confidence history usually punishes immediately.

When Elizabeth I died on March 24, 1603, James inherited the English throne as James I, thereby creating the first personal union between England and Scotland. He enthusiastically styled himself “King of Great Britain,” despite the awkward detail that Britain itself had not yet agreed to exist in any meaningful political sense. James envisioned a single kingdom with one Parliament, one legal system, and one national identity. The English Parliament regarded this proposal with the enthusiasm generally reserved for roof leaks and outbreaks of plague. They saw no earthly reason to dilute English privileges merely because their new king found maps aesthetically untidy.

Religious politics proved equally exhausting. England was still deeply bruised by the Reformation, and James inherited a nation in which Catholics distrusted Protestants, Protestants distrusted Catholics, and Puritans distrusted absolutely everybody. At the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, James listened to Puritan complaints before ultimately siding with the bishops of the Church of England. Catholics, meanwhile, found themselves facing tighter restrictions rather than the hoped-for tolerance. Their disappointment culminated in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which conspirators attempted to solve a constitutional problem with 36 barrels of gunpowder — a reminder that early modern politics often lacked subtlety.

One indisputably magnificent outcome of the Hampton Court Conference was the commissioning of the King James Version in 1611. Whatever James’s failings elsewhere, his Bible became one of the great monuments of the English language, furnishing centuries of English prose with rhythm, gravity, and a remarkable number of phrases later quoted by people who have never actually read it.

James’s most persistent difficulty was Parliament. He believed sincerely in the divine right of kings — the idea that monarchs answered to God alone — and regarded parliamentary interference with taxation and legislation as faintly absurd, like discovering the household servants had formed a committee to discuss the family finances. Parliament, meanwhile, believed equally sincerely in its ancient rights and privileges. The two sides talked past one another for years, generating endless financial crises and mutual resentment. James himself did not cause the later English Civil War, but he did lay much of the constitutional kindling that his son, Charles I, would eventually ignite with catastrophic enthusiasm.

The Jacobean court acquired a reputation for extravagance, disorder, and corruption that made Elizabeth’s court seem positively monastic by comparison. James lavished affection and influence upon male favourites, notably Robert Carr and later George Villiers. Carr became embroiled in the notorious murder of Thomas Overbury, a scandal that delighted pamphleteers for years. Buckingham, meanwhile, accumulated power on a scale that would later prove disastrous under Charles I. Yet while politics often looked shabby, the culture flourished magnificently. This was the age of William Shakespeare’s great tragedies, Ben Jonson’s masques, John Donne’s poetry, and Francis Bacon’s philosophical experiments. England may have been politically dysfunctional, but artistically it was having a splendid time.

In foreign affairs, James initially achieved something genuinely valuable by ending the long and costly Anglo-Spanish War in 1604. He preferred diplomacy to warfare and imagined himself as a wise European mediator, calmly arbitrating the continent’s increasingly explosive religious disputes. Unfortunately, Europe was moving toward the sort of catastrophe that pays little attention to thoughtful moderation. James’s attempt to arrange the so-called “Spanish Match” — marrying Prince Charles to a Spanish Catholic princess — proved wildly unpopular at home and eventually collapsed in embarrassment in 1623, nudging England toward conflict with Spain shortly before James died.

For all his weaknesses — vanity, extravagance, poor financial judgment, and an unfortunate talent for choosing problematic favourites — James presided over more than twenty years of relative peace and comparatively light taxation. His reign occupies an odd but pivotal place in British history: politically flawed, culturally brilliant, and constitutionally dangerous in ways that would only become fully apparent after he was gone. Above all, the King James Version endured, shaping English speech and Protestant worship so profoundly that generations who knew almost nothing about James himself nevertheless carried fragments. 

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY James was a committed Protestant, though not as radical as many of his Presbyterian Scottish subjects or the English Puritans. His theology was broadly Calvinist but he strongly supported the episcopate — the system of bishops — in the Church of England, resisting Puritan demands for a more Presbyterian structure.

 He articulated his political philosophy most fully in The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), arguing that kings derived their authority directly from God and were answerable to Him alone — the doctrine of divine right. 

James took a serious scholarly interest in theology, witchcraft, and demonology, as reflected in his Daemonologie (1597) (2)

POLITICS James was an intelligent but politically maladroit ruler in England. He had governed Scotland with reasonable success, but found the English Parliament far more resistant to his style of royal authority. His belief in the absolute divine right of kings put him on a collision course with a Parliament jealous of its own privileges. 

His financial mismanagement, heavy reliance on unpopular favourites (first Robert Carr, then George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham), and failure to manage Parliamentary relations effectively stored up the constitutional crises that would erupt in his son Charles I's reign. 

In 1604 he convened the Hampton Court Conference to address Puritan and Catholic grievances, navigating a path that pleased neither group fully, though the resulting King James Bible was a genuine achievement. 

His foreign policy was largely pacific; he ended the long war with Spain in 1604 and sought to position England as a mediating power in European affairs. (5)

SCANDAL James's openly affectionate and apparently physical relationships with male favourites were a source of constant gossip and scandal throughout his English reign. The elevation of Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset — who was later convicted with his wife of the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury in 1615 — caused enormous embarrassment to the Crown. The subsequent rise of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, provoked outrage in Parliament and among the public. 

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, though it failed, exposed the depth of Catholic disaffection with his rule.

 He also introduced a swear box at St. James's Palace, the proceeds of which went to the poor — suggesting that profanity was commonplace even in the royal household. (4)

MILITARY RECORD James had no appetite for military activity and was personally cowardly by the standards of the age. His reign in England was notable for its avoidance of major warfare. He concluded the Treaty of London in 1604, ending the Anglo-Spanish War that had persisted since the Armada of 1588. 

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS James was a sickly child with persistent weakness in his legs. Despite this he became a vigorous horseman and tireless hunter in adulthood. 

In later life, from around age fifty, he suffered increasingly from arthritis, gout, and kidney stones. He also lost most of his teeth and drank ever more heavily. He died during a violent attack of dysentery following a bout of tertian ague (a form of malaria) and a stroke. (2)

HOMES In Scotland, James resided principally at Stirling Castle (where he was raised), Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, and Falkland Palace.

In England, he used the full range of Tudor royal palaces, including Whitehall Palace (his principal London residence), Hampton Court Palace, Greenwich Palace, Windsor Castle, and the Tower of London. He was also fond of Apethorpe Hall in Northamptonshire, where he spent long periods hunting, and where the secret passageway connecting his apartments with those of George Villiers was discovered during twentieth-century restoration work. 

In later life he spent increasing amounts of time at Newmarket and at Theobalds Park in Hertfordshire, which he had acquired from the Cecil family in 1607. (3)

TRAVEL James left Scotland on April 5, 1603 to travel to London to take the English throne, promising to return every three years — a promise he fulfilled only once, in 1617. His journey south was triumphal, with local lords receiving him with lavish hospitality along the route;

He also traveled to Denmark in 1589–1590 to meet his bride Anne. His voyage was famously stormy, (see below) which he attributed to witchcraft — leading directly to the North Berwick witch trials. (2)

DEATH James died on March 27, 1625 at Theobalds Park, Hertfordshire, during a violent attack of dysentery, following a bout of tertian ague (malaria) and a stroke. He was 58 years old. 

He was buried in the Henry VII Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The location of his vault was subsequently lost and not rediscovered until the nineteenth century, when his coffin was found in the vault of Henry VII. (2)

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA James has been portrayed in numerous films, television productions, and novels. Notable portrayals include:

Gunpowder (BBC, 2017) — portrayed by Derek Riddell, depicting the Gunpowder Plot (6)

Mary Queen of Scots (2018 film) — portrayed by James McArdle

Elizabeth (1998) and various other productions dealing with the Elizabethan succession have included James as a character

He is a significant figure in countless historical novels dealing with the Jacobean court, the Gunpowder Plot, and the King James Bible (1), (7)

ACHIEVEMENTS James's most enduring legacy is the King James Bible of 1611, which profoundly shaped the English language and Protestant Christianity for centuries. 

He united the crowns of Scotland and England for the first time, laying the constitutional groundwork for the later union of the two kingdoms. 

He presided over a remarkable flowering of English literature and drama — the Jacobean age produced Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, the masques of Ben Jonson, and major works by John Donne and Francis Bacon. 

He ended the long Anglo-Spanish War in 1604. 

For all his flaws, he largely retained the affection of his people, who enjoyed uninterrupted peace and comparatively low taxation throughout the Jacobean era. 

Sources: (1) Wikipedia — James VI and I (2) Encyclopaedia of Trivia — King James VI of Scotland and I of England (3) Historic UK — King James VI of Scotland (4) Historic UK — James I of England (5) Encyclopædia Britannica — James I (6) IMDB — Gunpowder (2017)