James I

Eager to be first in line, the astute James VI of Scotland responded to the question of the English succession with a war of words.

The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham by Lucy Hughes-Hallett picks through the fragments of George Villiers, James VI & I’s favourite mistake.

All His Spies: The Secret World of Robert Cecil and Spycraft: Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration bring Tudor and Stuart espionage in from the cold.

Following his accession, the majority of James I’s new English subjects accepted their Scottish king with ‘comforte and contentmente’. Such sentiments would not last.

When England’s search for a Northwest Passage via sea failed, an audacious plan to forge a land route was hatched by the Muscovy Company.

The accusation that James VI of Scotland and I of England was murdered by his favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, may have been a false one but it was widely believed.

Alan Haynes describes the Flemish weavers imported to London in the reign of James I and how, throughout the seventeenth century, their work continued.

William Seymour describes how a large area of Dorset and Wiltshire, abounding in deer, was hunted by King John and granted to Robert Cecil by James I.

Cecil secured the peaceful accession of the Stuarts and strove with near success, Joel Hurstfield writes, to solve the vexatious problems that confronted the new dynasty in England and upon the European scene.

G.R. Batho introduces Henry Percy, the “Wizard Earl”, a man of great gifts and eccentric character who proved a quarrelsome husband and a difficult and unaccommodating parent.