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This episode covers the rule of the James I and the Union of the Crowns which saw both England and Scotland ruled by the same monarch. It covers James' early rule which saw the Gunpowder Plot and the attempts to create a religious consensus in England. James managed to keep England out of war but after his death in 1625 his son, Charles I saw to war with Spain and intervention in the Thirty Years' War. Charles was an abrasive king and his heavy handed rule and corruption led to opposition which culminated in the Bishops' Wars and set the stage for the English Civil War.

Recommended Books:

John Morrill - Stuart Britain: A Very Short Introduction. Very good introductory book and extremely cheap too, good for people new to the period. Much better at covering social and economic trends than the political and religious stuff but still very good.

Barry Coward and Peter Gaunt - The Stuart Age: England 1603-1714. Much more detailed (and expensive) and an extremely good work. Better for things like the personalities of James, Charles and Cromwell.

Ten Minute English and British History is a series of short, ten minute animated narrative documentaries that are designed as revision refreshers or simple introductions to a topic. Please note that these are not meant to be comprehensive and there's a lot of stuff I couldn't fit into the episodes that I would have liked to. Thank you for watching, though, it's always appreciated.

1603 and Queen Elizabeth I of England is dead.

Since she had no children, the throne passed to the nearest available male Protestant heir, James VI of Scotland, the first monarch of the House of Stuart.

By this point he was 36, married with 2 sons and had to deal with the difficulties that came with running 3 kingdoms.

The most pressing issue was war with Spain, which James was keen to end and did so in 1604.

James' accession was fairly uneventful, barring the main plot, which was 1 of the 2 plots which sought to overthrow him.

It notably led to the arrest of Sir Walter Raleigh, the noted explorer who was at first sentenced to death but this was commuted to life in prison.

James's reign marks the beginning of what is known as the Union of the Crowns.

England and Scotland were still distinct entities with their own parliaments but since kings controlled foreign policy it meant that they would no longer go to war with each other.

The England which James inherited was 1 which had over the past half a century seen continuous population growth from about 3 million to about 4.2 million.

Agriculture couldn't keep up, the price of food skyrocketed and so his early reign saw some famines but after this mass hunger largely disappeared from England.

Those who struggled relied on the Elizabethan poor rate which was a system of poor relief which gave things like food, wood for fuel and clothing to the poor.

This led many to move from rural areas to the city, continuing the trend of increasing urbanisation.

Cities had been growing steadily since the early Tudor period, 5 of which had populations over 10, 000 by the time James took the throne.

Unsurprisingly, London was the largest, boasting a population of about 200, 000 which dwarfed England's second city, Norwich, whose population was only 15, 000.

1 of the great issues facing James at his secession was the same as his predecessors – religion.

In 1604, the Hampton Court Conference was called to answer a petition by Puritans and decide on any outstanding matters of doctrine.

James was actually fairly responsive to the Puritans, who began to work within the structures of the church to achieve the reforms they wanted, instead of simply moaning all of the time.

The most important outcome of the conference was that it saw work begin on the authorised English translation of the Bible, better known as the King James Bible, which wasn't completed until 1611.

The religious divide in England was not something that could be fixed by a simple conference.

There were divisions amongst the Protestants, particularly between the Puritans and a newer group called the Arminians, which split the ruling classes.

Furthermore, James quickly began to punish recusancy, which was when a Catholic refused to abide by the rules of the Church of England.

James had made his position perfectly clear which had dashed the Catholic's hope of a more moderate monarch which in turn led to what was probably the most famous event of his reign, the Gunpowder Plot.

The Gunpowder Plot was a conspiracy by 13 men, the 2 most notable being Sir Robert Catesby, the ringleader, and Guy Fawkes, to blow up the houses of parliament whilst the king was addressing it.

The reasons for the plot aren't definitively known, but it was probably an attempt by hardline Catholics to kill a Protestant King as reprisal for their persecution.

Famously, King James wasn't blown up and Guy Fawkes was discovered with a bunch of gunpowder underneath Parliament and arrested.

He was subsequently tortured into revealing his accomplices who were shortly afterwards captured and executed.

The next year, James and Parliament passed harsh laws against Catholics but there was no intense persecution because he didn't want to upset the Catholic powers of Europe too much.

James also saw to the creation of stringent anti-witchcraft laws which banned people from making pacts with the devil.

Most of those accused of witchcraft were old single women, but men were accused too.

Courts were actually very sceptical of the accusation of witchcraft and convictions weren't hugely common.

A couple of years later saw a major event in the history of England and the world, the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown in what is now Virginia.

The English had tried before with a colony at Roanoke but it failed.

The next year would also see James appoint commissioners to oversee another colonial project, the plantations in Ireland.

These plantations were where the Irish were kicked off of their land and it was given to English and Scottish Protestant settlers to live on instead.

The idea was that this would make Ireland less prone to revolt since the native Irish would be poor and that eventually the Protestants would outnumber the Catholics.

James, like a lot of monarchs, was also having financial troubles and a man called Robert Cecil, the Lord High Treasurer, had attempted to balance his books.

He couldn't, so in 1610 he asked Parliament to levy taxes to help the King, which Parliament refused.

A compromise was instead proposed, called the Great Contract, which would see the king forfeit certain privileges in return for an annual allowance.

Ultimately the Great Contract failed because it meant that the king would no longer have to ask Parliament for money, which meant independence and also nobody knew where the money would come from.

James soon after dissolved Parliament in a huff and most of the next decade was fairly stable barring a few things.

In 1612 Cecil died, leaving a major competency gap in government, and in the same year James's eldest son Henry died, leaving Prince Charles as heir.

In 1614 James called another parliament, called the Adelard Parliament, due to it being completely pointless.

James wanted more money, parliament wasn't so sure, and so he gave up.

In 1616 Sir Francis Bacon was appointed Lord Treasurer and in 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was released on the condition that he find El Dorado.

During his voyage to find this non-existent city Raleigh attacked the Spanish which James had specifically forbidden him to do so and upon his return he was beheaded.

1618 was also a big year for European history since it saw the outbreak of the incredibly destructive 30 Years' War but it didn't really kick off until 1620.

In this same year Plymouth Colony was founded in North America by the Pilgrims, who were a bunch of radical Puritans that felt that the Church of England was corrupt and so they were out.

So James is seen by many as a peacemaker since he disliked war and saw it only as a last resort.

His reasons for staying out of the war, despite England being Europe's most populous Protestant power, were largely diplomatic and financial because war is expensive.

James was trying to get his son and heir Charles to marry the daughter of the King of Spain in return for a large dowry because he needed the money and also wanted to ensure peace with Spain.

Parliament and Prince Charles disagreed with the policy of peace and wanted war with Spain because glory was better than financial stability.

Generally speaking, the ministers who favoured war were Puritans, those who hadn't left for America anyway, and those who favoured peace were the Armenians.

Whilst they couldn't agree on war, they did agree on 1 thing, that Prince Charles shouldn't marry a Catholic.

In case you're wondering, this immense paranoia and distrust surrounding Catholics isn't going anywhere.

As King though, James was in firm control of foreign policy and so never declared war on Spain for the rest of his reign which ended with his death in 1625.

He was succeeded by Charles who was crowned Charles I.

As King, James was open to suggestions and understood the nuances of political life.

His abrasive authoritarian attitude combined with the fact that his court favourite George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, was corrupt meant that Parliament and many of the nobility fell out with the new king pretty quickly.

So upon the accession of a king, Parliament would grant them what was called the customs, whereby the king could collect custom duties on certain goods for their personal revenue.

This time Parliament decided no, but Charles collected them anyway.

Furthermore, Charles declared war on Spain, but he pledged that it would remain a naval war.

The first action was a raid on Cadiz here, and to say that it was a failure would be a colossal understatement.

Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, the English and Scottish contributions to the 30 Years' War were small.

It was mostly Scottish mercenaries who worked for the Danish and later Swedish forces but generally speaking the finances weren't available for any large scale intervention.

In order to raise the funds needed to continue fighting Charles went to Parliament but they refused to grant him these funds until Buckingham was impeached due to him being terrible.

Charles was furious about this and so he blocked Buckingham's impeachment and raised money through what is called a forced loan.

This was where the king demanded that his subjects lend him money during an emergency and if you refused you'd find yourself up in front of a court.

Also it wasn't much of a loan because good luck getting it back.

The threats worked and Charles raised enough revenue but managed to annoy everyone in the process.

To make matters worse, Buckingham used this money to assist the Protestants in France which led to France declaring war on England.

These wars didn't achieve anything except proving that Buckingham was incompetent and ruining England financially.

Buckingham would retire from politics in 1628, and by retire, I mean he was stabbed to death.

Angry with the murder of his favourite and believing that Parliament was acting against him unfairly, Charles dissolved it in 1629, beginning his personal rule.

Without a Parliament to levy taxes, Charles had limited means to raise money, of which he had too little.

He did this by trudging up old feudal laws that nobody had heard of and fining people for not adhering to them.

He also levied what was called ship money, which was where coastal regions were expected to provide ships with the money for them to the King for the defence of England.

This was challenged in court, it being argued that this was a tax and thus only parliament had the authority to raise it.

The court ended up siding with the king and afterwards he extended it to all of the inland counties and made a fair bit of money from doing so.

In 1633 Charles appointed a man called William Lord as the Archbishop of Canterbury who wanted to make some changes to the Church of England that were pretty upsetting to the faithful and in particular the Puritans.

The Puritans were opposed to the idea of there being a clergy who they believed had no right to stand between faithful believers and God.

They also felt that there were too many rituals which they considered to be superstitious and too Catholic.

So Lord and Charles believed that kings were an earthly representative of God and that his subjects were supposed to obey him without question.

Lord also sought to add more mystery and decoration to church ceremony, which led to some anxiety amongst the laity and the nobles who feared that England was creeping back towards Catholicism.

For many Puritans, the changes were too much and so they decided to leave places like Boston and head to North America where they founded Boston.

Puritans were not the most inventive bunch.

In the same year as Lord's appointment, Charles appointed Thomas Wentworth as Lord Deputy of Ireland, whose job it was to subdue the Irish and impose stricter English rule.

Wentworth's rule was harsh and he made promises to all groups that he couldn't keep and managed to unite all of Ireland against him, which was frankly impressive.

The plan was to destroy Catholicism in Ireland and begin further plantations here in Connaught which had been spared up until now.

This never happened because Charles was having an issue with his nobles in Scotland.

So Charles had attempted to introduce a modified book of prayer into the Scottish church which upset basically everyone who saw it as an attempt to make Scotland English.

A movement in opposition to this formed, the Covenanters, who demanded that these changes be reversed and furthermore that bishops were useless and needed to go.

Charles, ever the diplomat, decided that force would settle this and so raised an army, beginning the Bishop's War in 1639.

The Scottish army which contained many veterans of the 30 Years' War was much better prepared.

Basically no fighting happened and Charles agreed to what is called the Pacification of Berwick in which it was decided that another Scottish Church Assembly would decide on the fate of bishops.

This assembly met in Glasgow and declared that they were free of any and all royal control and so Charles decided that yet again force would fix this.

Charles decided to fight and in order to obtain the funds to crush the Scottish he would need to recall the English Parliament and end his 11 year personal rule.

He did this in 1640, but what came next wouldn't be easy, and Charles' reign would only get more difficult from here on out.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching, and a special thanks to James Bissonette for sponsoring the channel.

If you'd like to know more about the early Stuarts and the reigns of James and Charles I, then there are some book recommendations in the description below.


Speaker 0: 1603 and Queen Elizabeth I of England is dead. Since she had no children, the throne passed to the nearest available male Protestant heir, James VI of Scotland, the first monarch of the House of Stuart. By this point he was 36, married with 2 sons and had to deal with the difficulties that came with running 3 kingdoms. The most pressing issue was war with Spain, which James was keen to end and did so in 1604. James' accession was fairly uneventful, barring the main plot, which was 1 of the 2 plots which sought to overthrow him.

It notably led to the arrest of Sir Walter Raleigh, the noted explorer who was at first sentenced to death but this was commuted to life in prison. James's reign marks the beginning of what is known as the Union of the Crowns. England and Scotland were still distinct entities with their own parliaments but since kings controlled foreign policy it meant that they would no longer go to war with each other. The England which James inherited was 1 which had over the past half a century seen continuous population growth from about 3 million to about 4.2 million. Agriculture couldn't keep up, the price of food skyrocketed and so his early reign saw some famines but after this mass hunger largely disappeared from England.

Those who struggled relied on the Elizabethan poor rate which was a system of poor relief which gave things like food, wood for fuel and clothing to the poor. This led many to move from rural areas to the city, continuing the trend of increasing urbanisation. Cities had been growing steadily since the early Tudor period, 5 of which had populations over 10, 000 by the time James took the throne. Unsurprisingly, London was the largest, boasting a population of about 200, 000 which dwarfed England's second city, Norwich, whose population was only 15, 000. 1 of the great issues facing James at his secession was the same as his predecessors – religion.

In 1604, the Hampton Court Conference was called to answer a petition by Puritans and decide on any outstanding matters of doctrine. James was actually fairly responsive to the Puritans, who began to work within the structures of the church to achieve the reforms they wanted, instead of simply moaning all of the time. The most important outcome of the conference was that it saw work begin on the authorised English translation of the Bible, better known as the King James Bible, which wasn't completed until 1611. The religious divide in England was not something that could be fixed by a simple conference. There were divisions amongst the Protestants, particularly between the Puritans and a newer group called the Arminians, which split the ruling classes.

Furthermore, James quickly began to punish recusancy, which was when a Catholic refused to abide by the rules of the Church of England. James had made his position perfectly clear which had dashed the Catholic's hope of a more moderate monarch which in turn led to what was probably the most famous event of his reign, the Gunpowder Plot. The Gunpowder Plot was a conspiracy by 13 men, the 2 most notable being Sir Robert Catesby, the ringleader, and Guy Fawkes, to blow up the houses of parliament whilst the king was addressing it. The reasons for the plot aren't definitively known, but it was probably an attempt by hardline Catholics to kill a Protestant King as reprisal for their persecution. Famously, King James wasn't blown up and Guy Fawkes was discovered with a bunch of gunpowder underneath Parliament and arrested.

He was subsequently tortured into revealing his accomplices who were shortly afterwards captured and executed. The next year, James and Parliament passed harsh laws against Catholics but there was no intense persecution because he didn't want to upset the Catholic powers of Europe too much. James also saw to the creation of stringent anti-witchcraft laws which banned people from making pacts with the devil. Most of those accused of witchcraft were old single women, but men were accused too. Courts were actually very sceptical of the accusation of witchcraft and convictions weren't hugely common.

A couple of years later saw a major event in the history of England and the world, the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown in what is now Virginia. The English had tried before with a colony at Roanoke but it failed. The next year would also see James appoint commissioners to oversee another colonial project, the plantations in Ireland. These plantations were where the Irish were kicked off of their land and it was given to English and Scottish Protestant settlers to live on instead. The idea was that this would make Ireland less prone to revolt since the native Irish would be poor and that eventually the Protestants would outnumber the Catholics.

Fun fact, didn't work. James, like a lot of monarchs, was also having financial troubles and a man called Robert Cecil, the Lord High Treasurer, had attempted to balance his books. He couldn't, so in 1610 he asked Parliament to levy taxes to help the King, which Parliament refused. A compromise was instead proposed, called the Great Contract, which would see the king forfeit certain privileges in return for an annual allowance. Ultimately the Great Contract failed because it meant that the king would no longer have to ask Parliament for money, which meant independence and also nobody knew where the money would come from.

James soon after dissolved Parliament in a huff and most of the next decade was fairly stable barring a few things. In 1612 Cecil died, leaving a major competency gap in government, and in the same year James's eldest son Henry died, leaving Prince Charles as heir. In 1614 James called another parliament, called the Adelard Parliament, due to it being completely pointless. James wanted more money, parliament wasn't so sure, and so he gave up. In 1616 Sir Francis Bacon was appointed Lord Treasurer and in 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh was released on the condition that he find El Dorado.

He doesn't. During his voyage to find this non-existent city Raleigh attacked the Spanish which James had specifically forbidden him to do so and upon his return he was beheaded. 1618 was also a big year for European history since it saw the outbreak of the incredibly destructive 30 Years' War but it didn't really kick off until 1620. In this same year Plymouth Colony was founded in North America by the Pilgrims, who were a bunch of radical Puritans that felt that the Church of England was corrupt and so they were out. So James is seen by many as a peacemaker since he disliked war and saw it only as a last resort.

His reasons for staying out of the war, despite England being Europe's most populous Protestant power, were largely diplomatic and financial because war is expensive. James was trying to get his son and heir Charles to marry the daughter of the King of Spain in return for a large dowry because he needed the money and also wanted to ensure peace with Spain. Parliament and Prince Charles disagreed with the policy of peace and wanted war with Spain because glory was better than financial stability. Generally speaking, the ministers who favoured war were Puritans, those who hadn't left for America anyway, and those who favoured peace were the Armenians. Whilst they couldn't agree on war, they did agree on 1 thing, that Prince Charles shouldn't marry a Catholic.

In case you're wondering, this immense paranoia and distrust surrounding Catholics isn't going anywhere. As King though, James was in firm control of foreign policy and so never declared war on Spain for the rest of his reign which ended with his death in 1625. He was succeeded by Charles who was crowned Charles I. As King, James was open to suggestions and understood the nuances of political life. Charles did not.

His abrasive authoritarian attitude combined with the fact that his court favourite George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, was corrupt meant that Parliament and many of the nobility fell out with the new king pretty quickly. So upon the accession of a king, Parliament would grant them what was called the customs, whereby the king could collect custom duties on certain goods for their personal revenue. This time Parliament decided no, but Charles collected them anyway. Furthermore, Charles declared war on Spain, but he pledged that it would remain a naval war. The first action was a raid on Cadiz here, and to say that it was a failure would be a colossal understatement.

Meanwhile, in the rest of Europe, the English and Scottish contributions to the 30 Years' War were small. It was mostly Scottish mercenaries who worked for the Danish and later Swedish forces but generally speaking the finances weren't available for any large scale intervention. In order to raise the funds needed to continue fighting Charles went to Parliament but they refused to grant him these funds until Buckingham was impeached due to him being terrible. Charles was furious about this and so he blocked Buckingham's impeachment and raised money through what is called a forced loan. This was where the king demanded that his subjects lend him money during an emergency and if you refused you'd find yourself up in front of a court.

Also it wasn't much of a loan because good luck getting it back. The threats worked and Charles raised enough revenue but managed to annoy everyone in the process. To make matters worse, Buckingham used this money to assist the Protestants in France which led to France declaring war on England. These wars didn't achieve anything except proving that Buckingham was incompetent and ruining England financially. Buckingham would retire from politics in 1628, and by retire, I mean he was stabbed to death.

Angry with the murder of his favourite and believing that Parliament was acting against him unfairly, Charles dissolved it in 1629, beginning his personal rule. Without a Parliament to levy taxes, Charles had limited means to raise money, of which he had too little. He did this by trudging up old feudal laws that nobody had heard of and fining people for not adhering to them. He also levied what was called ship money, which was where coastal regions were expected to provide ships with the money for them to the King for the defence of England. This was challenged in court, it being argued that this was a tax and thus only parliament had the authority to raise it.

The court ended up siding with the king and afterwards he extended it to all of the inland counties and made a fair bit of money from doing so. In 1633 Charles appointed a man called William Lord as the Archbishop of Canterbury who wanted to make some changes to the Church of England that were pretty upsetting to the faithful and in particular the Puritans. The Puritans were opposed to the idea of there being a clergy who they believed had no right to stand between faithful believers and God. They also felt that there were too many rituals which they considered to be superstitious and too Catholic. So Lord and Charles believed that kings were an earthly representative of God and that his subjects were supposed to obey him without question.

Lord also sought to add more mystery and decoration to church ceremony, which led to some anxiety amongst the laity and the nobles who feared that England was creeping back towards Catholicism. For many Puritans, the changes were too much and so they decided to leave places like Boston and head to North America where they founded Boston. Puritans were not the most inventive bunch. In the same year as Lord's appointment, Charles appointed Thomas Wentworth as Lord Deputy of Ireland, whose job it was to subdue the Irish and impose stricter English rule. Wentworth's rule was harsh and he made promises to all groups that he couldn't keep and managed to unite all of Ireland against him, which was frankly impressive.

The plan was to destroy Catholicism in Ireland and begin further plantations here in Connaught which had been spared up until now. This never happened because Charles was having an issue with his nobles in Scotland. So Charles had attempted to introduce a modified book of prayer into the Scottish church which upset basically everyone who saw it as an attempt to make Scotland English. A movement in opposition to this formed, the Covenanters, who demanded that these changes be reversed and furthermore that bishops were useless and needed to go. Charles, ever the diplomat, decided that force would settle this and so raised an army, beginning the Bishop's War in 1639.

The Scottish army which contained many veterans of the 30 Years' War was much better prepared. Basically no fighting happened and Charles agreed to what is called the Pacification of Berwick in which it was decided that another Scottish Church Assembly would decide on the fate of bishops. This assembly met in Glasgow and declared that they were free of any and all royal control and so Charles decided that yet again force would fix this. Charles decided to fight and in order to obtain the funds to crush the Scottish he would need to recall the English Parliament and end his 11 year personal rule. He did this in 1640, but what came next wouldn't be easy, and Charles' reign would only get more difficult from here on out.

But more on that next episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching, and a special thanks to James Bissonette for sponsoring the channel. If you'd like to know more about the early Stuarts and the reigns of James and Charles I, then there are some book recommendations in the description below.

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Ten Minute English and British History #19 - The Early Stuarts and the Gunpowder Plot