The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the Government of England, 1603-1605, and: James I: The Masque of Monarchy (review)

With the four-hundredth anniversary of James VI of Scotland's accession to the throne of England only just behind us, the reign of one of Britain's most intelligent, complex and enigmatic monarchs has been receiving a considerable amount of attention. Diana Newton's The Making of the Jacobean Regime and James Travers' James I: The Masque of Monarchy are two recent contributions to an expanding body of literature. While quite dissimilar in approach and style, they both attempt to address how an adult king, with over thirty years' experience of Scottish government under his belt, adapted to the difficult task of assuming power over a very different country from the one he had grown up in. Dr Newton's offering is a detailed and scholarly account of the first two years of James's English reign when, as she asserts, the foundations for the next two decades were laid down. In contrast to James Travers, Dr Newton explicitly eschews yet another discussion of what she calls 'the edited highlights', in favour of seeing these formative years 'in the round' (p.4). Given the volumes of material and hours of television time devoted to Gunpowder Plot, this is a welcome approach. The crux of the book is the Northamptonshire petition of February 1605, when a group of well-connected gentlemen with puritan sympathies protested against the king's domestic religious policies. Exploration of the religious and diplomatic context of the petition, and James's response, is discussed in detail. These chapters create a convincing picture of the delicate balancing act required by James's attempts to keep radicals at both ends of the religious spectrum isolated from mainstream Anglicans. This lucid account of James's awakening to the complexity of English church affairs, with its attendant ramifications for his own authority, is the strongest part of the book. Dr Newton's analysis is generally judicious and while she is clearly impressed by her subject's political acumen, James does not manage to escape criticism entirely. Although Dr Newton underestimates the extent to which James's appeasement of Catholics during the 1590s created political problems in Scotland, while simultaneously overestimating monarchic control of the Scottish church by 1603, she is credible on the way James applied his experience of militancy in the Kirk to the conditions he discovered south of the border. She hints that James's studied ambiguity on religion as Elizabeth's reign waned created expectations that could not possibly be fulfilled, although it is difficult to see how an increasingly nervous James, still fearing his claim would have to be upheld through force of arms, could have behaved any other way. Where this highly readable account has less success is in assessments of the long-term significance of these events. It was not clear from this work that a 'distinctive' Jacobean government was created, especially in the localities, where James, in fact, seems to have retained much of the infrastructure inherited from his Tudor predecessors. Crucially, although James enthusiastically fired off bundles of instructions on a myriad of subjects as soon as he was ensconced on the throne, there is very little discussion of how these edicts were received in the localities or of whether there was sustained government interest thereafter. One obvious example, cited by Dr Newton, is the borders commission. There was intense and ruthless activity for about four years, but in 1611 the border guard was prematurely disbanded. It may have achieved some of its most pressing objectives, but the commission was far from 'consistently addressing the problems of the region' (p.102). This points towards one of the only substantial shortcomings of this work. Dr...