The Stuart Monarchy and the Idea of Britain

Abstract

The idea of modern Britain could be said to have originated in the ambitions of James VI of Scotland to be recognised as king of England and Ireland in succession of Queen Elizabeth. His achievement of that ambition made him a monarch who accomplished what Edward I or the Tudor monarchs had never achieved, which was the unity of all of the island of Britain under one monarch. His coinage when he first went to England bore the Latin inscription ‘Henry [VII united] the Roses, James the kingdoms’.1 Thus would the poor king of an equally poor kingdom, peripheral not just in European but also in British terms, become the founder of a Protestant dynasty which would exceed the glory of the Tudors as monarchs of an imperial state of European and world consequence, through its influence over Protestantism as a religious cause and its wealth as a trading nation.2 James succeeded in uniting Britain under one monarch, after a fashion, but he failed in his efforts to bring about a union between his native kingdom of Scotland and his new kingdom of England and Wales.3