By: James Aitchison

When James Stuart was born in 1566, Scotland was far from being a remote, barbaric kingdom to England’s north.  Sixteenth century Scotland was, in fact, a flourishing centre of intellectual activity.

Young Scots travelled and studied in Europe, while Europeans visited Scottish courts, cities and universities.  It was an enviable two-way flow of knowledge, social prestige and political contacts.  One Scot even met Galileo and purchased a manuscript of Dante’s Divine Comedy.  The Universities of St Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen entered a circuit of major European universities such as Paris, Padua and Copenhagen. 

Scotland celebrated a European Renaissance and the king himself, James Stuart, the “most writerly” of all monarchs, reigned over a golden age of culture, knowledge and literature culminating in the publication of the King James Bible.

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James the Sixth of Scotland was the son of Mary Queen of Scots and great-great-grandson of King Henry the Seventh of England and Ireland.  Mary was a Catholic and famously executed by Queen Elizabeth the First.  (Ironically, James’s own son, Charles the First, would be executed by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War.)

James the Sixth was brought up a Protestant.  He ruled as James the Sixth of Scotland until his cousin Elizabeth the First of England died childless, marking the end of the Tudor period.  From 1603 he then ruled as King James the First of England and Ireland.  He reigned over all three kingdoms for 22 years; this Union of the Crowns became known as the Jacobean era.

Under James, the golden age of English literature continued with Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson and Francis Bacon. 

Not surprisingly, the young James Stuart had a contemporary European outlook.  His linguistic ability spanned Latin, Greek, French and Italian.  In his own words, “they gar me speik Latin ar I could speik Scotis” (“they had me speak Latin before I could speak Scottish”).

James enjoyed the company of poets and writers.  In the 1580s, he pursued his own literary ambitions as an active Scottish poet.  One such poem praises the month of May:

          “Haill, mirthfull May, the moneth full of joye!

          Haill mother milde of hartsume herbes and floweres!

          Haill fostrer faire of everie sporte and toye

          And of Auroras dewis and summer showres!”

His decorative prose, alliteration (“heartsome herbs” and “fosterer fair”) and use of repetition accord with the style of the day.

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King James was obsessed with witchcraft, the supernatural and its evils.  He was involved in the North Berwick witch trials of 1590.  In 1597, he published Dæmonologie, a comprehensive study of demonology, witchcraft, sorcery and necromancy (communicating with the dead).  In it,

demonic entities are categorised according to their methods and torment.  It begins by addressing: “The feaefull abounding at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devil …”

It is said that William Shakespeare used the king’s book as source material for his play Macbeth, incorporating many quotes, rituals, Scottish themes and settings.

So opposed was he to witchcraft, legend states that the King personally led troops to arrest and execute the notorious Sawney Bean.  Bean lived in a cave in Bennane Head near Ballantrae, with his wife Black Agnes and inbred children, all cannibals.  They had escaped detection because the entrance to their cave was blocked by water at high tide.  The family thrived on ambushing unsuspecting travellers, robbing, murdering and then eating them.  King James and his men found the clan, surrounded by human remains, body parts, barrels of limbs and piles of stolen jewellery.  All the Beans were burned alive.

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By the end of the sixteenth century King James was working on Basilikon Doron, a treatise on government.  The book’s title means a “Royal Gift” in ancient Greek.  Originally only seven copies were printed in Scotland in 1599; published in London in 1603, it sold in the thousands.

The book outlined how an efficient monarch should govern, describing a king’s duty to God as a Christian, his roles and responsibilities of office, and his proper behaviour in daily life.  The King, he wrote, should not be a tyrant; rather, he should do all in his power to boost the economy of his realm. 

No detail was too small for inclusion: the King must not drink and sleep excessively, his clothes should always be clean and proper, he should speak to his citizens in plain language, and eat meat to gain strength for travel in wartime.  

The treatise earned King James the reputation as a serious, thoughtful monarch.

Unfortunately, it claimed the divine right of kings, repeated later in another book, The True Law of Free Monarchies.  Arguably, his son Charles the First was beheaded by clinging to this belief.

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In 1604, King James the First embarked on the project for which he is most famous: the publication of the English Bible which bears his name.

Forty-seven scholars worked in committees of six, translating the New Testament from Greek and the Old Testament from Hebrew.  As the preface stated, the King James Bible had been “translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s special commandment”. 

Published in 1611, the King James Bible, also known as the King James Version and the Authorised Version, has been described as much “an act of power as of piety”.  That said, the King James Bible is revered as a masterpiece of Jacobean literature, noted for its richness of language and majesty of style.

Many idiomatic phrases had their genesis in this Bible, phrases we still use in everyday life.

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When James the First died on 27 March 1625, he left a united kingdom which had enjoyed uninterrupted peace, low taxation and religious tolerance; under James’s rule, the colonisation of North America had begun with the establishment of Jamestown, Virginia.

Arguably, his greatest, most enduring gift was to his kingdom’s literature.