GIACOMO I, king of ENGLAND. — Sixth king of Scotland, born in Edinburgh on 19 June 1566, died at Theobalds on 27 March 1625. Only son of Maria Stuarda and her second husband, Lord Darnley.
His teacher was Giorgio Buchanan, whom G. appreciated, even though he later rejected his doctrines. Buchanan aimed to make him a constitutional sovereign, subject to the control of what he called the people, but this was neither suited to the temperament of G. I nor permitted by the times.
Scotland was controlled by a powerful group of nobles, who exercised and sought to consolidate their ancient feudal rights and dominated Parliament. The only organization of a popular character was the Presbyterian Church, which gathered its adherents from the middle and lower strata of the population and was led by a clergy hostile both to the nobles and to the papacy. A strong central authority, which alone could quell the internal conflicts, was imposed by Morton during his regency; but he made enemies of both factions and was driven out in 1578, the year in which G. I nominally assumed power. Morton, pro-English, was succeeded by the duke of Lennox, a protégé of the Guises, who aimed to restore Scotland to the French alliance. But in 1582 the Protestant party seized the king, forcing Lennox to take refuge in Paris. In 1583 G. I, having regained his freedom, resumed Morton’s policy and set about subjecting both the nobles and the Protestant clergy to royal authority. In twenty years of rule he succeeded in dominating the anarchy of the barons, creating a strong central government to which he also subordinated the religious authorities. He achieved this through a policy of cunning rather than force between the opposing factions, taking advantage of their conflicts. Having to take sides in the struggle between his mother and Elizabeth, who represented the two great forces into which all Europe was divided, he preferred to join forces with Elizabeth and Protestantism, always because of his aspirations to the English throne, rather than ally himself with the Catholic powers that supported Maria Stuarda.
At Elizabeth’s death (1603), G., by virtue of the will of Henry VIII, was proclaimed king of England. His policy in the new kingdom encountered great hostility. Whereas in Scotland he had been able to give his policy an absolutist direction, in England the monarchy had already attained the height of its power, and the tendency was to limit its prerogatives. Insisting on the divine right of the sovereign, G. I could not become well regarded by his people, even though this insistence was prompted by the need to proclaim the independence of the monarchy both from the papacy and from Calvinism. On the religious plane, moreover, his policy was highly contradictory: while the Catholics were disappointed in their hopes of greater toleration, the Puritans reproached him for excessive benevolence toward
Catholicism. The fact is that attempts to find a modus vivendi between the two faiths were followed by abrupt anti-Catholic manifestations whenever the Catholics appeared to be gaining ground. A widespread conspiracy known as the “Gunpowder Plot,” aimed at a Catholic restoration (1605), was crushed by the death sentence imposed on all the conspirators. Motivated by aspirations for religious peace in Europe, his foreign policy likewise oscillated continually between various unpopular approaches toward the Catholic powers and interventions in support of the Dutch Protestants.
Cultivated and fond of literature, ecclesiastical controversies, and magic more than of attending to public affairs, he published numerous writings, among which several treatises in defense of his religious policy, and especially of the spiritual supremacy of the king and queen, which Catholics were required to swear to recognize, are particularly well known. Among his opponents, mention should be made of Cardinal R. Bellarmino, Father R. Persons, and Father F. Suárez. His royal absolutism led, as a consequence, to the persecution of Catholics, many of whom suffered death in prison or on the scaffold, guilty only of refusing to acknowledge the spiritual supremacy that G. arrogated to himself.