I have been interested in the Tudor period for many, many years and only now does it occur to me that something doesn’t make sense to me. When Elizabeth I died and James I (VI of Scotland) succeeded her, why wasn’t it like Scotland was taking over England? You would think that, with Scotland’s King being given the throne of England, it would be that Scotland was annexing England. Instead, it seems to be quite the opposite. How come?
Because England was a world power and Scotland was considered backward and cold. It also was probably part of the deal, if he accepted the offer and it may be that he actually wore two crowns. Henry II was King of England and Duke of Normandy at the same time, which made for a strange relationship with the King of France.
When James I (VI) took over he ruled England and Scotland separately with two courts; one at Westminster and one at Holyrood. The two didn’t formally join into a united kingdom until the Act of Union in 1707, about 100 years later.
That England would dominate the union was inevitable as it was by far the largest and most powerful of the two, but I would strongly disagree with Kniz when he says that Scotland was backwards.
He said “considered backwards.”
–Cliffy
Regnant dynasties very often saw their political positions as personal property. This explains a lot. Look a the aftermath of Emperor Charles V (Carlos, son of Isabella of Castille) for an example of a major patchwork dynastic settlement.
At the time, many in England did think that they were being taken over by the Scots. English fears of Scottish influence over English policy was one of the major reasons why James VI and I was unable to persuade the English Parliament that there should be a full union between the kingdoms.
The way to think about it is not to say that Scotland took over England or that England took over Scotland. Instead, simply say that James took over England. Both Scotland and England were subject kingdoms which happened to be ruled by the same king.
For the most part, the Stuarts were happy to rule both kingdoms as separate entities. They might have preferred it if the two kingdoms had been united to form one, but consistent opposition from the English ruled that out as an option until the 1700s. It is also true that when Scottish and English interests clashed, the Stuart monarchs tended to favour England (the debates on union during the seventeenth century being good examples), but that simply reflected the fact that England was much bigger and much wealthier. Nor were the Scots ever excluded from the decision-making processes in London. The most important of the Stuarts’ Scottish advisers, such as the 1st Duke of Hamilton or the 1st Duke of Lauderdale, were able to play significant roles in English politics.
The big complication was always religion but that doesn’t fall into a neat pattern either. Many Scots thought that James and Charles I were imposing English religious ideas on them, but, in both cases, those were really the personal preferences of the kings themselves and, in Charles I’s case, many of his English subjects felt just as strongly that those ideas weren’t very English either. One can also point out that, conversely, during the 1640s the Scots came very close to imposing their religious preferences on a reluctant English Parliament. Moreover, the eventual outcome of the religious struggles of the seventeenth century wasn’t that England or Scotland imposed their religion on the other but rather that they agreed to differ.
This is not quite a hijack, as it does have to do with the Stuarts . . . kind of . . .
Check out “Dagobert’s Revenge” magazine, at www.dagobertsrevenge.com. Remember “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” that book from late '70s, by three BBC journalists, about the theory that Jesus of Nazareth not only had children, but those children were ancestors of the Merovingian kings of the Franks and the Austrian Hapburgs? Sure you do! Well, apparently a lot of people have gotten interested in the idea – the magazine is about “Musick, Magick and Monarchism.” (It also pays a lot of attention to certain kinds of bands.) (Dagobert was a Merovingian king who was assassinated under mysterious circumstances – this, of course, was generations before Charlemagne.)
Apparently there are now several persons who publicly claim some connection with the “Grail Blood.” Only one, however, is an active royal claimant: Prince Michael of Albany! A Belgian who wants to be King of Scots! Website at www.royalhouseofstewart.org.uk. Prince Michael, or Michael Lafosse, claims he is the rightful heir of the Scottish Royal Stewarts (he spells the name in the original, Scottish way, rather than the Frenchified “Stuart”). His purported ancestor is Edward James Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie’s legitimate son (unknown to conventional history books) by his second marriage (likewise). Prince Michael claims to be descended from Jesus (or at least he has allowed his “historiographer royal,” Laurence Gardner, to make this claim for him, in Gardner’s book “Bloodline of the Holy Grail.”) However, he does not make much of this claim and seems to think being descended from Mary, Queen of Scots, is much more important to him than being descended from Jesus. He also claims, by the way, to be descended from the Prophet Mohammed.
Prince Michael, despite his foreign birth, is an ardent Scottish nationalist. He does not claim the crown of England and he seems to think it was a mistake for James VI of Scotland to accept the English crown in the first place. You can read about his views, and his version of Scottish history, in his book, “The Forgotten Monarchy of Scotland.”
Prince Michael’s claims are disputed by many, especially the more traditional “Jacobites” (at members.rogers.com/jacobite) who support the claim of Prince Franz von Wittelsbach, Duke of Bavaria (a collateral descendant of the royal Stuarts), to be the true and rightful king of England, Scotland, Ireland and (yes) France. A cursory web search can also easily turn up Evangelicals who regard Prince Michael as the Antichrist, or at least a good candidate for the role.
If you read Laurence Gardner’s books, royalty and government were first established on earth by the Anunnaki (Annunaki?) gods of Sumer, who were extraterrestrial or extradimensional beings, or else humans genetically modified by such. Thus, true royalty are not merely the descendants of generals or pirates who got lucky, they are descendants of superhuman beings. A lot of the “Dagobert’s Revenge” crowd seem to share this view.
Monarchism is fun!
For slightly over a hundred years after James IV & I took over there was no annexing either way. All it really did in effect was to mean the Scottish throne was usually unoccupied as the King would stay in England.
The Act of Union in 1707 was a primarily Scottish idea; the Scottish economy went tits up after a catastrophic financial bubble burst overseas somewhere (can’t remember what it was…), so hitching themselves to Engalnd’s much more powerful economy made good sense. England went along with it in no small part to rob France of a useful ally, as Scotland had been for the previous 5 or 600 years.
Supporters of the other Jacobite claimants obviously have a vested interest in debunking ‘Prince Michael of Albany’, but, for once, this is an issue on which they’re actually right. The man’s a fraud.
http://www.chivalricorders.org/royalty/fantasy/stuart.htm
http://members.rogers.com/jacobites/essays/lafosse.htm
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~seanjmurphy/chiefs/lafosse.htm
And let’s not get started on The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail nonsense.
Yes, let’s! Let’s get started on the “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” nonsense! It is just so wonderfully baroque! It delves into so much quaint and curious forgotten lore! Deserves its own thread – which I hope to post, shortly. Watch the boards.
Thanks, Cliffy that’s exactly how I meant it.
It was even better than that, actually…England agreed to pay Scotland a large sum of money, known as the “Equivalent.” (IIRC it was about L600,000, quite a sum in those days.)
I think the financial situation you’re referring to was the failed “Darien venture.” The Scottish nation planned to colonize Darien, in modern-day Panama, with the eye to transporting goods between the Pacific and Atlantic, a kind of “dry canal.” It bombed, as you can imagine–a cure for yellow fever hadn’t been devised yet, and the colonists were attacked by the natives and the Spaniards. Unfortuately, a lot of the Scottish elite had already sunk their fortunes into the project. Of course, the English didn’t take any lessons from the Scots’ failures, and had their own “bubble” only two decades after the Union.
James I & VI did propose a union in the first few years of his reign, but it didn’t fly.
Also, didn’t he try to assert that he was King of Great Britain when he first came to the throne, but had a run-in with Coke over it?
Duke, the large (well, absolutely huge sum for those days) sum of money paid to Scotland was their anticipated future share of the national debt.
MC: Quite right, I forgot about that little feature. Of course, after the South Sea Bubble hit home in the 1720’s, England’s national debt was a lot more than anticipated in 1707.
Which is why I had already mentioned that ‘English fears of Scottish influence over English policy was one of the major reasons why James VI and I was unable to persuade the English Parliament that there should be a full union between the kingdoms’. And, yes, he did try to call himself ‘King of Great Britain’.
That ‘England’s’ national debt increased in the years following 1707 was beside the point, as the Equivalent was compensation for the taxation imposed to raise the repayments on the English debts incurred before the Union. Not unreasonably, as they now had representation at Westminster, the Scots were deemed to be equally responsible with the English taxpayers for debts incurred after the Union. Moreover, it is wrong to say that the deal had nothing to do with the Darien disaster, as it was specified that the money be used, among other things, to compensate the Company of Scotland shareholders. The deal thus neatly dealt with two of the major Scottish grievances at once.