A Monument to Succession

This chapter begins by describing the monumentalisation of Elizabeth Stuart's grandmother Mary, Queen of Scots, on October 14, 1612. On October 16, the German Prince Frederick V arrived at Gravesend with one purpose in mind: to marry England's only princess, the daughter of a Scot and a Dane. However, the death of Elizabeth Stuart's brother Henry refocused attention on the problem of the succession, a problem that Elizabeth I's secretary Robert Cecil had sought to deal with in 1601 when he opened negotiations with King James over the fate of England's crown. The chapter details how Elizabeth I's refusal to indicate an heir caused problems and fear of a possible power vacuum. Reports vary as to her final words, but at some point the decision was made that, as expected, James VI of Scotland was to be crowned James I of England. When the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, made many of James's subjects fear for the succession as they had during the final years of his predecessor's reign, they would not look to Henry's brother Charles, the male heir, but to his elder sister, Elizabeth. The chapter then recounts Elizabeth Stuart's childhood and her transformation from Scottish to English Princess.

Royal Policies, Local Alternatives

This chapter explores the early decades of the seventeenth century, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England and controversy about worship and the structure of the state church erupted anew in Scotland. When James I succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603 and added England, Wales, and Ireland to his native Scotland, the hopeful and the admiring outnumbered the detractors, for the godly knew that in 1592 he had endorsed presbyterianism in Scotland and, more recently, had disparaged Catholicism and Dutch Arminianism. Their hopes aroused, a small group of English activists initiated a petition the king received as he made his way to London. The “Millenary Petition,” so named because of the assertion it was endorsed by a thousand ministers, complained of pluralism and nonresidency, singled out bishops as pluralists although otherwise saying nothing about episcopacy, and called for higher standards in admitting men to the work of ministry. The Millenary Petition signaled the persistence of Puritan sympathies in England despite the damage done to the movement in the 1590s. The chapter also considers “Dutch Puritanism,” a convenient shorthand for the more radical or safety-seeking laypeople and ministers who went to the Netherlands as early as the 1580s.

Millennial Alexander in the Making of Aceh

This chapter examines how the Acehnese appropriated Alexander the Great as a model of kingship and imitated Melaka in fashioning a royal mythic genealogy going back to Iskandar Zulkarnain. The discussion focuses on one Acehnese sultan, Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–36), whose name means Alexander the Younger and whose reign is considered Aceh’s golden age. The chapter explores Aceh’s parallel literary allusions to Alexander, incorporated into local literary genres, through an analysis of Iskandar Muda’s biography, Hikayat Aceh. It shows how Hikayat Aceh employs tropes of Timurid-Alexandrian kingship that are also found in diplomatic letters to European kings, including James I of England. It also describes Hikayat Aceh’s understanding of diplomatic relations as a complex entanglement and how the Acehnese turned to the global tradition of Alexander to reflect on intercultural relations with foreign others.

The Accession of James Stuart and the Kingdom of Great Britain, 1603–1610

The accession of James VI of Scotland as James I of England and Great Britain triggered a series of negotiations as to what the new British polity would be like and how far the Elizabethan settlement of religion might be subject to alteration. James manipulated the agendas of a range of interest groups in order to remodel both the court and, in some sense, to remake the (British) State. One crucial aspect of that process was the making of peace with Spain and an attempt to shadow the major European royal houses without getting drawn into the political conflicts which replaced the wars which had concluded in 1598. But the attempt to maintain a quasi-nonconfessional mode of politics inevitably encountered a Protestant critique of the king and court which James sought to defuse by tacking his public pronouncements on papal authority to his, arguably, absolutist readings of royal power.

Reginald Scot and King James I: The Influence of Skepticism

The witch trials were less robust in England than in contiental Europe and the efforts of England's first skeptic, Reginal Scot, may have contributed to the outcome. Scot's efforts to debunk witchraft in his book The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), were done so in a logical, methodical and theological manner. King James VI of Scotland felt the need call out the doubters of witchcraft, and named Scot specifially, in his own work Daemonologie (1597) and upon becoming King James I of England, he banned Scot's book. It is apparent, however, through the King's changing attitudes and eventual desire to reveal the hoaxes for what they were it becomes evident that the information Scot sought to reveal did in deed have an impact on the King.