Hi people! I'm currently writing a paper (not an extremely long and detailed one) about James VI's rise to the English throne. I have really been struggling to find good reliable sources about the topic. I already researched how James VI is related to the Tudors by his great-grandmother that was the daughter of Henry VII. In terms of information I fell good about, it ends right there. I saw about how he exchanged secret correspondence with Elizabeth I that secured his place as the successor but I have only a general idea about that yet. The paper is 6 (digital) pages to have an idea of the scope of the information I plan to include. I also wanted to include some of the difficulties that he faced when he rose to the throne of England. I found about the Gunpowder Plot and just started reading about it, still, something extra about it would be appreciated. The only relatively good sources that I have at the moment is the Britannica Encyclopedia. I just have the internet and that was all I managed to pull off. I'm sorry that my question is not the best, I am getting this post up quite early in my research process since I need to have my sources figured out by September 1st. This is my first post here so excuse me if I committed any mistakes.
Hi, /u/Caobkw!
James VI’s succession to the throne of England is a really interesting topic. In hindsight, it seems to have happened really smoothly and easily, as if he was the obvious and inevitable heir. In fact, things seemed much less certain at the time.
James himself was certainly worried about it—he persistently tried to persuade Elizabeth to appoint him as her heir, but she refused.
Lots of Englishmen, especially Catholics, looked to alternative heirs. For some these went as far as Isabella Clara Eugenia, the daughter of England’s great enemy Philip II, the very Catholic king of Spain.
A fun primary source to flick through is Doleman, A Conference on the Succession (1595), probably written by an English Jesuit called Robert Persons. He pretends to give an impartial overview of all of the different potential heirs and goes through the strengths and weaknesses of each one, before inevitably deciding that the Spanish infanta would be best after all. Along the way he goes off on a few (supposedly) random tangents, include why being part of a massive empire would totally be better than being a small independent country, guys.
The book was suppressed in England, of course, but it still feels like practically everyone had read it—including James, whom it terrified. He started having his own books published setting out his own claim to the throne, supposedly written by concerned Englishmen.
I won’t go into more detail than that, but there are some interesting twists and turns, including spies, secret messengers, plots, and treason.
The best starting point is the book Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England, edited by Susan Doran and Paulina Kewes (Manchester University Press, 2014). It has a whole load of really interesting articles which tackles the subject from a variety of perspectives.
An older but still useful book specifically on the succession is Helen Stafford, James VI of Scotland and the Throne of England (New York, 1940). It’s a bit spotty in its coverage but goes into some events in a lot of detail.
Susan Doran’s article in Tudor England and Its Neighbours (edited by Glenn Richardson and herself, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) is a really good look at how Anglo-Scottish relations continued to be rocky throughout Elizabeth’s lifetime, partially because of James’ uncertainty over the succession.
If you’d like to do some background reading on the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign, John Guy’s Elizabeth: the Forgotten Years is a lively, readable account (although he’s wrong on at least one point regarding the succession: he says that the Earl of Essex sent Sir Henry Lee, the queen’s champion, as a secret envoy to James in 1600; it was actually someone else of the same name).
There are not a huge amount of academically rigorous biographies of King James, or at least ones that pay much attention to his time before becoming king of England. I’d hesitate to suggest any as being particularly useful for your purpose, but if I recall correctly I quite enjoyed reading Alan Stuart’s The Cradle King (London, 2003).
Rayne Allison has written at least a couple of articles on the correspondence of Elizabeth and James which might be useful for you:
Finally, John Bruce (ed.), Correspondence of James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil (Camden Society, 1861), has a lot of transcripts of original letters. Obviously they largely focus on Sir Robert Cecil, the queen’s principal secretary, but there are some other interesting documents in there.
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