James VI & I: Kingship, Government and Religion

James VI and I: Politics, Government and Religion brings together early career and established scholars with a range of approaches to the reign. Their original, research-based essays on a series of broad and interconnected topics invite us to consider Jacobean kingship afresh.

King James VI and I (1566-1625) was the first monarch to rule over the three kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland. His practice of kingship - which often so skilfully played upon, and navigated between, the contradictory expectations of his contemporaries - provoked lively debate in his day. Four hundred years after James’s death, it still does. This book looks again at some of the hottest of the controversies that still define the historiography of the period. With chapters on James’s personal reign in Scotland before 1603, his government of Ireland, corruption, peace-making, and the parliamentary and religious politics of his kingship in England, the contributing authors present new archival discoveries, and more familiar materials and problems are reassessed.

This edited collection is a stimulating resource for students and researchers of Stuart monarchy and early modern British and Irish history.

Alexander Courtney is an independent scholar and Assistant Head (Teaching & Learning) at The Perse School, Cambridge, UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of James VI, Britannic Prince: King of Scots and Elizabeth’s Heir, 1566-1603 (2024).

Michael Questier is Hon. Chair in the Centre for Catholic Studies, Department of Theology, University of Durham, and the author and editor of several works on early modern political and religious history, including most recently Dynastic Politics and the British Reformations, 1580-1630 (2019) and Catholics and Treason: Martyrology, Memory, and Politics in the Post-Reformation (2022).