The creation of britain: Multiple kingdoms or core and colonies?

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 2, Issue , 1992, Pages 175-194

  Wormald, Jenny ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84974069742     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3679104     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Commons, Journal, I, 367.
2. Calendar of State Papers Venetian 1603–7, 484, 485. The issue of residence in Scotland continued; on 30 May 1607, Giustinian reported that the Scots were still insisting that the king should spend more time in Scotland, but that they were not likely to be gratified: ibid., 501.
3. M. Lee Jr, James VI and the Revival of Episcopacy in Scotland, 1596 1600, Church History 43 (1974), 53-4; David Calderwood, The History of the Kirk of Scotland (8 vols., Wodrow Society, Edinburgh 1842–9), V, 443—535; John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, His Royal Consort, Family and Court (4 vols., London, 1828), II, 126—131
4. Ambassades de Monsieur de la Boderie en Angleterre (5 vols., Paris, 1750), II, 101; C.S.P. Venetian 1603–7, 509. Molins lengthy analysis of the state of England and its monarchy and government, from which this assertion comes, is conflicting; he also refers to Jamess laziness and preference for hunting rather than governing. But on the basis of some very dubious parliamentary history, he is in no doubt about the kings power.
5. C.S.P. Venetian 1603-7, 485; Stuart Royal Proclamations, eds. J. F. Larkin and P. L. Hughes (Oxford, 1973), I, 94–5 and 1356; Bruce Galloway, The Union of England and Scotland 1603–1608 (Edinburgh, 1986), 82–4 and plate at 88.
6. P.R.O., S.P. 14/1/3, A Discourse of the Descent of the K's Mty from the Saxons; K. Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586-1631; History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1979), 114–5. For James's speeches, The Political Works of James I, ed. C.H. McIlwain (reprint, New York, 1965), 271–3 and 290–305.
7. Henry E. Huntington Library, Bridgwater and Ellesmere MSS, EL 1210, ff. 4r-v, P.R.O., S.P 14/1 18, f. 38r.
8. Francis Bacon to Ellesmere, EL 126; the text of the letter but not the endorsement, is printed in The Life and Letters of Francis Bacon, ed. J. Spedding (7 vols., London 1861—74), III, 249–52. For Ellesmeres letter to the king, EL 162.
9. EL 160, f. Ir. Fenton at least recognised the limitations of his literacy; in a letter to John earl of Mar on 4 October 1616, in which he acknowledged a letter from Mars son lord Erskine, he pointed out that if I culd reid his letter he shuld have an answer. I thank God one of the name wrets noe better then my selfe: HM.C. Mar and Kellie Supplement, 69. Such disarming frankness, however, can hardly have consoled those who had to struggle with his own handwriting.
10. For admirable discussion of this case, see B. Galloway, Union 148–157.
11. C.S.R Venetian 1603–7, 485; Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, eds. T. Thomson and C. Innes (12 vols., Edinburgh, 1814 75), II, 507 and 515–6. The English were well aware of this legislation of 1558; it was included in the list of hostile laws whose repeal was another contentious issue: EL 1865.
12. EL 1215, Notes on Calvins Case, f. 3V; also EL 1868, f. 3V.
13. Ellesmeres speech is printed in L. A. Knafla, Law and Politics in Jacobean England: The Tracts of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere (Cambridge, 1977), 202-53; seen also ibid., 66–68.
14. The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. J. Spedding (7 vols., London 1858–61) VII, 665-6; James VI, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, in The Minor Prose Works of King James VI and I, eds. J. Craigie and A. Law (Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1982), 70; P.R.O. SP 14/34/10, f. 24.
15. Jenny Wormald, James VI and I, Basilikon Doron and The Trew Law of Free Monarchies-. the Scottish context and the English translation, J. P. Sommerville, James I and the divine right of kings: English politics and continental theory, and Paul Christianson, Royal and Parliamentary Voices on the Ancient Constitution, c. 1604-1621 in The Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Linda Levy Peck (Cambridge, 1991), 36–54, 55-70 and 71-95.
16. EL 1215, f. 2r.
17. Thomas Craig of Riccarton, De Unione Regnorum Britanniae Tractatus, ed. and trans. C. S. Terry (Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1909), and Scotlands Sovereignty Asserted, ed. G. Ridpath (Edinburgh, 1695). The Jacobean Union: Six Tracts of 1604, eds. B. R. Galloway and B. P. Levack (Scottish History Society, 1985): the three Scottish tracts, by Robert Point and John Russell, and the anonymous Treatise about the Union of England and Scotland, 1-142; also 241–244 for a summary of other Scottish tracts.
18. Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England, ed. J. Bruce (Camden Society, London, 1861), 56.
19. EL 451, ff. ir, iv; 473 f. ir, iv; 455 f. ir, 2r; 458 f. 2r, 451 were the notes for 1604, 473 and 458 for 1605, and 455 possibly for 1604, or for 1607.
20. EL 1215, f. 3V.
21. Galloway, Union, 157. H. Wheeler, Calvins Case (1608) and the McIlwain-Schuyler Debate, American Historical Review LXI (1956), 587–97, also discussed the relevance of the case to Ireland, and went on from there to argue for its appeal to the American colonists of the eighteenth century.
22. Conrad Russell, The British Problem and the English Civil War, History 72 (1987), 395–415, The British Background to the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Historical Research 61 (1988), 166-82, and The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford, 1990) and The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642 (Oxford, 1990), passim. Aidan Clark, Ireland and the General Crisis Past and Present 48 (1970), 79 99, The History of Poynings Law, Irish Historical Studies 18 (1972), 207–22, and chapters IX and X in A New History of Ireland, eds. T.W. Moody, F. X. Masters and F.J. Byrne, (Oxford, 1976), III, 243–69. M. Perceval-Maxwell, Ireland and Scotland, 1638-1648 in The Scottish National Covenant in its British Context, ed. J. S. Morrill, (Edinburgh, 1990), 193–211 and Ireland and the Monarchy in the Early Stuart Multiple Kingdom, Historical Journal 34 (1991), 279–95. On the church, see Morrill, introduction to The Scottish National Covenant, 7–11.
23. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, eds. J. H. Burton and others (Edinburgh, 1877-), VII, 536. This letter, written in August 1607, was still reiterating the appeals put forward by the Scots in the spring, that the king would divide his time equally between his two kingdoms. The letter and the Act anent the Union passed by the 1607 parliament show a profound unease, very different from the confident pride of the earlier act of 1604, which asserted That as the present Age is Ravisched in Admiration with sa fortunat begynning sua the Posteritie may rejoice in the fruitioun of sic ane effectuall unioun of twa sa famous and Ancient kingdomes Miracoulouslie accompleisched in the blude and persone of sa Rare ane Monarchic: A.PS. IV, 366—71 (1607); 263–4 (1604).
24. Craig, De Unione Regnorum Brianniae; John Major, A History of Greater Britain, ed. and trans. by A. Constable and A.J. G. Mackay (Scottish History Society, Edinburgh, 1892).
25. A. H. Williamson, Scotland, Antichrist and the Invention of Britain in New Perspectives on the Politics and Culture of Early Modern Scotland, eds. J. Dwyer, R. A. Mason and A. Murdoch, (Edinburgh, 1982), 39. Galloway, Union, 48–51. Knafla, Law and Politics, 87, suggests that Ellesmere regarded union with Scotland in the same light as the previous union with Wales., Understandably, this was an attitude not made clear to King James.
26. Proceedings in Parliament, 1610, ed. Elizabeth Read Foster (2 vols., New Haven, 1966), II, 109. A less polemical example of the English belief that a king of Scotland needed instruction in his new and greater role is the advisory letter written by Sir Edmund Ashfield on a wide range of subjects, from the common lawyers to foreign policy, before Jamess accession: B. L. Cotton MS Julius F VI, ff. 139-141.
27. For example, Francis Osborne, Traditional Memoyres of the Raigne of King James the First, and Anthony Weldon, A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland, in The Secret History of the Court of James I, ed. Walter Scott (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1811), I, 1–298, and II, 75–89. Even an author more favourable to the king was highly critical of the disorderly and beggarly covetousness of his Scottish subjects: Godfrey Goodman, The Court of King James, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1839).
28. G. Parry, The Golden Age Restord: the Culture of the Stewart Court, 1603–1642 (Manchester, 1981), 6–3.
29. Norman Davies, Gods Playground: A History of Poland (2 vols., New York, 1982), I, 115–55, 322–3, 413–20, 433-437.
30. John Robertson, Union, State and Empire: the European Context of British Union in 1707, to be published in A National State at War, ed. L. Stone, (forthcoming). I am extremely grateful to Dr Robertson for allowing me to cite his important paper before publication, and for discussions from which I have learned much.
31. Sir Thomas Wilson, The State of England (1600), ed. F. J. Fisher (Camden Miscellany 16: Camden Society, 3rd ser., LII, 1936), 1. The accession medal is illustrated in Mental World of the Jacobean Court, ed. Peck, plate 1 at 178. SP14/1/3, f. 9r-v; Parry, Golden Age Restord, 7.
32. EL 2628, f. 2v.
33. Recently Mark Greengrass has pointed out that while, by the eighteenth century, it is possible to see what he calls a kind of political Darwinism at work, in which the weaker went to the wall, the approach which concentrates exclusively on state-building from the centre misses the crucial dimension of awareness of the caution with which rulers dealt with deeply ingrained regional identities and differences; and this is surely a very fruitful revision: Conquest and Coalescence: The Shaping of the State in Early Modern Europe, ed. Greengrass, (1991), introduction, especially 4–7. Britain can be seen as an extreme case of regional identities, which has until now survived even incautious rulers.
34. This is due to the seminal work of Conrad Russell and John Morrill; see references in n. 21 above.
35. On the Scots, D. Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution: The Triumph of the Covenanters (Newton Abbot, 1973); M. Lee, Jr, The Road to Revolution: Scotland under Charles I, 1625–1637 (Illinois, 1985). To these can now be added the ground-breaking book by A.I. Macinnes, Charles I and the Covenanting Movement (Edinburgh, 1991), and P. H. Donald, An Uncounselled King: Charles/and the Scottish Troubles, 1687–1641 (Cambridge, 1990).
36. APS. VI, pt. i, 150-1; David Stevenson, The Early Covenanters and the Federal Union of Britain in Scotland and England, 1286-1815, ed. R.A. Mason (Edinburgh, 1987), 163–181.
37. W. Ferguson, Scotlands Relations with England: a Survey to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1977), 152–7. The comment, on p. 152, is exaggerated; M. Lee, Jr, The Cabal (Illinois, 1965), 43–69, has a very lucid account of this episode, and shows quite clearly the economic strains which lay behind it, a point which Ferguson in fact recognises. It was, however, an extremely limited affair, pushed hard by the dominant Scottish politician, Lauderdale, but a matter of indifference to everyone else, including, it appears, Charles II. For an admirable survey of all the plans put forward for union in the seventeenth century, B. P. Levack, The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland and the Union, 1603–1707 (Oxford, 1987).
38. Ferguson, Scotlands Relations, 219.