James was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Danley. Eight months after James’s birth his father died when his house was destroyed by an explosion. After her third marriage, to James Hepburn, Earl of bothwell, Mary was defeated by Scottish lords and rejected the throne. James who was not even a year old at the time became king of Scotland on July 24, 1567; Mary left the kingdom on May 16, …show more content…
In 1589 James was married to Anne, the daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, who, in 1594, gave birth to their first son, Prince Henry. James’s rule of Scotland was basically successful. He was able to play off protestant and Roman Catholic factions of Scottish nobles against each other, and through a group of commissioners known as the Octavians (1596-97), he was able to rule Scotland almost as absolutely as Elizabeth ruled England. But in 1584 he secured a series of acts that made him head of the Presbyterian church in Scotland, with the power to set the church’s …show more content…
James practically doubled the debt left by Elizabeth, and it was hardly surprising that when his chief minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, tried in 1610-11 to exchange the kings feudal revenues for a fixed annual sum from Parliament, the negotiations over this so called Great Contract came to nothing. James dissolved Parliament in 1611.
The death of Cecil in 1612, marked the turning point of James’s reign; he was never to have another chief minister who was so experienced and so powerful. During the ensuing 10 years the king summoned only the brief unpopular expedients, such as the sale of monopolies, to raise funds. During these years the king succumbed to the influence of the incompetent Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. Carr was succeeded as the king’s favorite by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, who showed more ability as chief minister but who was even more hated for his arrogance and his monopoly of royal