About Scotland

James V
1513–1542

As so often in Scottish history, James was just a child — seventeen months old — when he inherited the throne. At first he was left with his mother, an English Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. But she was widely distrusted by the Scots, so James was often kept away from her as he grew up.

He received little formal education after the age of twelve, which put him as a disadvantage compared to other monarchs. He was disliked by the Scottish nobility, who thought him greedy and vindictive, but was more popular with peasants, who appreciated his firm government. James often moved among them disguised as a farmer, listening to the their opinions and seducing their daughters.

Following the rupture between Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic church in the 1530s, Henry tried in vain to enlist James V on the side of fundamental ecclesiastical reform and to secure an end to the Franco-Scottish alliance. The Protestant Reformation shortly began to gain headway in Scotland, and the Protestants tended to oppose the connection with France. In 1538 James V married Mary of Guise, a member of the French royal family. Both hiss sons died in 1541, leaving him distraught. James followed them a year later, after failing to rally the nation for a battle against the English at Solway Moss in 1542.

Mary, Queen of Scots
1542–1567

James’s daughter Mary was less than a week old when her father died. She spent most of her childhood in France, marrying the heir to the French throne at fifteen. A year later he declared himself King of Scotland, a move that effectively ended the Auld Alliance. and provoked the spread of anti-French sentiment in the kingdom. The return to Scotland, in 1559, of John Knox, a Protestant leader who had been exiled, added to the political ferment and gave impetus to the Reformation. The general hostility to Mary of Guise, regent, was deepened by the marriage, in April 1558, of Mary to the Dauphin of France. In 1559, following the queen mother’s denunciation of Protestants as heretics, Knox and his followers resorted to open rebellion. Elizabeth I of England began at once to provide the insurgents with financial and military aid. Mary of Guise died in June 1560. In the same year, the Scottish Protestant leaders, assembled in a special parliament, abolished the Roman Catholic church in Scotland and adopted a Calvinistic Confession of Faith.

In August 1561 Mary returned to Scotland. A loyal Roman Catholic and the heir presumptive to the English crown, Mary became the central figure of the Counter Reformation in Scotland and, later, in England. The final contest between Scottish Protestantism and Roman Catholicism was marked by conspiracy, murder, rebellion, and civil war. In 1567, after Mary’s army was defeated in battle, she was forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James VI, born in 1566 of her second husband, Lord Darnley. Darnley himself was then murdered, to be succeeded as Mary’s next husband by the unsuitable Lord Bothwell. The exasperated Scots forced Mary to abdicate. She fled to England, but was executed in 1587.

James VI/I
1567–1625

• The Scottish index is given first, then the English, in the case of monarchs reigning over both Scotland and England

James was born in 1566, three months after the murder of his mother’s companion, Rizzio, by his jealous father, Lord Darnley. Mary was forced to abdicate when James was only one. He never saw her again.

Until 1578 Scotland was ruled by successive regents, all staunchly Protestant and pro-English, and later by factions capable of dominating the young king. By 1586, however, James VI had control of his government at the age of sixteen, in the firm belief that monarchs had a divine right to rule and had concluded a military alliance with Elizabeth, his mother’s cousin, who died childless in 1603, and James moved down to London to become James I of England. He was a capable administrator and made the power of the monarchy dominant in Scotland.

In religion, he tried to steer a middle course, allowing a Presbyterian form of church government at the local level, but appointing bishops who represented royal authority over the church as a whole. Despite being the first king to rule over both countries he returned to Scotland only once during the rest of his life. James took a shine to the English, doing his best to promote a union of his two kingdoms — an idea emphatically rejected by both countries. In 1611 he authorised the translation of the bible into English and nine years late the Mayflower pilgrims left for America. James died in 1625.

• Photos of many of the places mentioned in the text can be found in the Photo-tour.