From Tudor to Stuart: the succession of 1603

Since Elizabeth had no named heir, the privy council had to act while she was still alive to prevent a power vacuum – or, worse still, a disputed succession. With Cecil at the helm, the council drafted a proclamation naming James VI of Scotland as the rightful king of England, and arranged for leading members of the nobility and political elite to sign it. Seemingly, no one objected. So, when Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March, all was ready. At 9am Cecil read out the proclamation at Whitehall announcing James’s accession, and a deputation of lords, bishops, judges and officials processed into the City of London to promulgate it again. That same proclamation would be read out in towns and cities across England.

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Reactions to the news were mixed. In some quarters, there was almost disbelief. A few people expressed “dubtes of the authority of the said proclamacon”, before receiving further assurances that James’s accession was valid. For the most part, though, the proclamation was accepted “with great ioy and the generall aplause”, according to the mayor of Chester. The prevailing response was enormous relief that the transition had been managed efficiently and that James’s accession had passed unchallenged. For years, the spectre of a bloody war of succession had hung over the nation. Those fears had now been allayed. “God be thanked yt ys quietly and hapely setteled,” wrote one correspondent to Cecil, while the bishop of Chester was one of many to praise “the chiefe pillors of the state in preventinge so many dangers hanginge over our heads”.

Yet, mingled with relief were shock and sadness. Letter writers referred to their “great losse” and to “a heavye amasement in the people”. The dramatist Thomas Dekker famously compared the report of the queen’s death to “a thunder-clap”, which “tooke away hearts from millions”, because they “never sawe the face of any prince but her selfe”. At Elizabeth’s funeral on 28 April, “multitudes” turned up, and “there was such a general sighing, groning, and weeping as the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memory of man”.

Start of a new chapter

Despite some alarm at the thought of change, many – possibly a majority – wanted it. Seventeen years of war against Spain, a major rebellion in Ireland, a near decade of dearth and plague, and unpopular royal policies had left the realm ready – indeed desperate – for a new regime. Plenty of people were tired of Elizabeth’s rule and looking forward to an adult male king sitting on the throne for the first time since the death of Henry VIII in January 1547. One clergyman spoke for countless others when he maintained that “England under an aged queene did seeme to waxe olde” but now would “begin to flourish and to recover her youth againe”.

Even before the new king arrived in London, he was bombarded with petitions that requested reforms

Since the date of James’s accession marked the arrival of spring as well as the commencement of a new calendar year (25 March), it seemed to signify a fresh start. James encouraged such hopes, for in his Basilikon Doron, a treatise on government that was printed in England upon his accession, he had inveighed against oppression and injustice. Even before the new king arrived in London, he was bombarded with petitions for reform on a range of subjects: religion, enclosures, abuses in the administration, and royal finances.

More narrowly, some men and women who had lost favour or been denied patronage under Elizabeth rejoiced at what they hoped was a boost to their prospects under a new monarch. Persons of rank hurried north to greet the king, “to present their service” to him, and secure rewards. One letter writer noted wryly that these people were acting as if “preferment were a goale to be got by footmanship” and “first come, first served”.

At the same time, men who already held offices were apprehensive that they might lose them. According to the Venetian ambassador: “While advancing the Scotch and those English, to whom he says he is under obligation, the king shows small regard for the rest.” Many of these, he noted, grew “fearful, not merely lest they should lose their appointments but lest their end be a bloody one” because of their involvement in the execution of the king’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

Anti-Scottish sentiment became ingrained in Jacobean culture, expressed in plays and parliamentary speeches

This fear proved to be unwarranted: all 15 of the Elizabethan privy councillors remained in post. But fresh blood was brought onto the council when another 12 members were added in 1603. Five of the new men were Scots, but the two most important were English: the crypto-Catholic Henry Howard, later Earl of Northampton, and his nephew Thomas Howard, now made Earl of Suffolk – both of whom had been political outsiders under the late queen. Together with Cecil, who remained secretary of state and was raised to the peerage, this triumvirate were nicknamed a “trinitie of knaves” by the new king.

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Fresh faces also appeared at court. Scots monopolised James’s bedchamber, which was a new household department established in 1603. Even in the privy chamber, a semi-public space, two of the most favoured English gentlemen were courtiers who had been in disgrace during Elizabeth’s last years, namely William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (see box, below), and Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who had been imprisoned in the Tower for his part in the Earl of Essex’s 1601 uprising until James ordered his release. The court and council were thus transformed from a fairly homogenous elite of Protestant nobles and councillors into a heterogeneous group, differing in nationality, culture and religion.

Work hard, play hard

Elizabeth had relied most heavily on advice from leading privy councillors. The same cannot be said of James. He did not want Cecil and the Howards to give him counsel on policies concerning matters of state, but rather required them to sort out thorny problems, such as how to improve his finances or get unpopular policies through parliament. As for the remaining English privy councillors, James expected them to carry out only what he dubbed “his general errands”, the routine business of government.

James spent weeks at a time away from his council when at his favourite means of relaxation, hunting in the countryside.
His companions then were his bedchamber chums who had served him loyally in Scotland, and the only English privy councillor to attend upon him was the Earl of Worcester, the Master of the Horse. The others had to communicate with the king by letter.

Unquestionably, James’s hunting absences from London were deeply resented. As the Venetian ambassador reported, they suggested the king was “attending to nothing but his pleasures” and was “leaving all government in the hands of his ministers”, who were free to abuse their power without royal supervision.

It did not go unnoticed that the Scots who joined the king at the chase were the main recipients of royal bounty. Those closest to him soon became personally rich, built up landed estates, and exercised considerable patronage. As a result, anti-Scottish sentiment became deeply ingrained in early Jacobean culture, expressed in plays and ballads as well as parliamentary speeches.

In one scene of John Marston’s rollicking comedy The Dutch Courtesan, performed in 1605, the anti-hero assumed the role of a Scottish barber-surgeon with the name of Andrew Shark, who claimed (in another obvious pun) to have been “shaving” the court for “this two year”.

Yet while it was undoubtedly true that some select Scots benefited greatly from James’s largesse, he didn’t neglect government business while at the hunt. On one occasion, he jokingly told Cecil that the number of letters he had written that evening rivalled the number of hares he had killed “all this tyme”. On issues in which he took a particular interest, James micromanaged the paperwork, changing words and rephrasing sentences on drafts of documents. When there was important business to discuss or there were vital meetings to attend, James would rush back to one of his palaces on the Thames to deal with the matter.

In fact, James took his rule in England seriously, and wasted no time before paying attention to the grievances directed to him in 1603. One of his earliest acts was to revoke monopolies granted by Elizabeth “wher private gayne hath caused publick grievance”.

The king also immediately addressed complaints about the Church of England. In the summer of 1603, he intended to call
a conference at Hampton Court to hear and test criticisms made by Puritans in their petitions. At the same time, he heeded Catholic grievances. On his accession, he suspended the fines recusants had to pay for non-attendance at church and demanded an investigation into their claims that the Elizabethan collectors of fines had been bleeding them dry. A new start therefore did seem to be in the offing on all fronts.

However, it did not take long for these expectations to be dashed and “their vayne hopes deceaved”. It was bound to happen. James did not have enough bounty for everyone and besides he made mistakes in distributing it. When it came to reforms, as one court observer shrewdly observed, “to satisfie or please all... wold be more then a man’s work” – especially as the demands of bishops, Puritans and Catholics were largely incompatible. Puritans found offensive the rituals retained in the revised Prayer Book issued by the bishops in February 1604, a month after the Hampton Court conference, and were appalled that, as under Elizabeth, those who refused to conform were subjected to disciplinary action.

The hopes of Catholics were also punctured. In 1603, James resumed the collection of recusancy fines, and the following February he ordered the expulsion of all Catholic priests from the realm. Later, new oppressions were enacted in parliament after the gunpowder plot of November 1605 and the assassination of the French king Henry IV by a Jesuit in 1610.

As for secular reforms, although the first session of his first parliament in 1604 passed more legislation than any of Elizabeth’s parliaments, it failed to reform or abolish the burdensome royal exactions that many MPs had wanted. There was to be no overhaul of the inefficient and corrupt Elizabethan system of royal finances.

Unpopular policies

James’s accession did, however, bring about a new direction in policy on two major fronts, although neither was popular. First, he brought an end to Elizabeth’s war against Spain in the 1604 Treaty of London. Although the peace brought many benefits to England, merchants objected that the terms did not give them access to the Indies, an unrealistic demand anyway since it was unacceptable to the Spanish negotiators.

Second, James’s accession radically altered England’s relationship with Scotland. With the union of crowns, the northern realm instantly ceased to be France’s back door to England, and James immediately dismantled the military border between the two realms. People on both sides of the border saw benefits in this dynastic union. The English were pleased that their security seemed stronger at a lower cost; the Scots were relieved that the wars with England now appeared to be at an end.

Both the English and Scots, however, were suspicious of the prospect of a closer union. The Scots rejected any constitutional change that would amount to the incorporation of their ancient kingdom into England, whereas MPs in England rejected any closer union unless it followed a form of incorporation mirroring the relationship between England and Wales.

James did not have enough money to please all his subjects – and he made mistakes in distributing it

James was determined to bring about a closer union without incorporation. However, he failed dismally to cajole or coerce the House of Commons into passing laws that would change the name of England to Great Britain, remove commercial tariffs between England and Scotland, and allow the mutual naturalisation of his subjects.

Foiled by parliament, the king obtained much of what he wanted by other means. By proclamation, he received “the name and stile of king of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland”, which was used on coins, seals and medals. As the result of a judicial decision in 1607, all James’s subjects born after 1603 were judged to be automatically naturalised and have legal rights in both his realms.

These measures raised protests in England, but James continued to pursue his British agenda. When the Ulster plantation (the organised colonisation of the province by people from England and Scotland) began in 1609, he awarded about half the land grants to Scottish applicants; on sending 4,000 soldiers to the continent, to support two German Protestant princes in a succession dispute, he insisted a third of them be Scots so that the army would be seen as British.

So was 1603 really a watershed then? The transition from the Tudor to Stuart eras didn’t trigger a bloody war of succession, as some had feared. Nor did it bring about major changes in church and state. Even so, James’s Scottish roots, style of rule, and promotion of unpopular policies transformed political life once he had assumed the English throne, and caused new tensions in the state.

Susan Doran is professor of early modern British history at the University of Oxford. Her latest book is From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I (Oxford, 2024)

This article is from the July 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine