James VI and I

The only child of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, James was born at Edinburgh Castle in June 1566 and became King of Scots at thirteen months, after his mother's forced abdication in July 1567. His minority was managed by a succession of regents amid factional violence, and he received a rigorous classical education under George Buchanan. He began to govern personally in the 1580s, gradually asserting royal authority over both the nobility and the Presbyterian church.

In 1589 James married Anne of Denmark, daughter of Frederick II of the Danish house of Oldenburg, sailing to Scandinavia in person to collect his bride. The marriage produced several children, including Henry, Prince of Wales, who died in 1612; the future Charles I; and Elizabeth, whose marriage in 1613 to Frederick V, Elector Palatine, established the line from which the House of Hanover later derived its claim to the British throne.

As great-great-grandson of Henry VII through Margaret Tudor, James was the nearest heir to the childless Elizabeth I, and on her death in March 1603 he succeeded peacefully as James I of England, joining the crowns of England and Scotland in his person. His English reign saw the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the establishment of the first permanent English settlement in Virginia, and the publication in 1611 of the Authorized Version of the Bible that bears his name.

A prolific writer on kingship, witchcraft, and tobacco, James articulated a theory of divine-right monarchy in works such as Basilikon Doron, and his relations with the English Parliament over finance and prerogative were frequently strained. His hopes of a formal union of his two kingdoms came to nothing, and a proposed Spanish marriage for his heir collapsed in 1623. James died at Theobalds in March 1625 and was succeeded in both kingdoms by his surviving son, Charles I.