James I
19 June 1566 - 27 March 1622. James VI King of Scots 1567-1625. James I King of England 1603-1625.
As the son of Mary, Queen of Scots and her second husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, James became King of Scots on 19 July 1567 at the age of 13 months. When Elizabeth I died childless in 1603, James succeeded her on the English throne as James I of England. He was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 25 July 1603 becoming the first Stuart King to unite the English and the Scottish Crowns. His attempt to unite the governments, however, was not successful.
James married Anne of Denmark in 1589 and had eight children with her, of whom only three survived infancy. After the death of this oldest son Henry, his second son Charles succeeded him on the throne. The marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Friedrich von der Pfalz was later the foundation for the Hanoverian succession to the English throne.
James was intelligent and sensitive and interested in various forms of art and in philosophy, writing a number of works himself. In 1597-1598 he wrote The True Law of Free Monarchies in which he compared the king to a father and his subjects to his children. He was convinced to be monarch by the grace of God and reiterated his notions of the Divine Right of Monarchs. He commissioned the construction of the Banqueting House, Whitehall the ceiling of which shows the painting Apotheosis of James I by Peter Paul Rubens.
James commissioned a new translation of the Bible known as the Authorised King James's Version. He was a tolerant King as far as religion was concerned and only imposed penalties on Roman Catholics after Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. On the more intolerant side, however, he published tracts against both tobacco and witchcraft.