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The Boy King
Background Information
James' childhood
James was born in Edinburgh Castle on 19 June 1566. Thirteen months later, after his mother Mary had been forced to leave Scotland, he was crowned King. James' upbringing was overseen by the Earl of Mar and his wife, who both exercised strict control. He had two tutors to educate him. One, Peter Young, was a kind man who remained the King's friend in later life. The senior of the tutors, George Buchanan, was a famous scholar and poet, yet often coarse in speech and manners. Buchanan controlled James' education from when the King was four years old until he was twelve. He was an elderly and severe man who held fierce Protestant views and strongly disliked James' Catholic mother. James proved to be an able student. As well as his skill in Latin and French, he built up a huge knowledge of history and geography, studied science and astronomy, and knew the Bible by heart. But his life was lonely and he lived in the overwhelmingly male environment of Stirling Castle. James grew to love hunting and hawking but was never physically strong and was always fearful of danger. Nor did his tutors train James in polished manners.
The Government of Scotland
Scotland was ruled by its monarchs and by regents if the reigning monarch was a child. It was not easy to govern a mountainous land and monarchs could not afford to keep large armies to enforce their will. Scottish nobles quarrelled frequently and violently (these quarrels were made worse by religious divisions between Catholics and Protestants) and kept bands of followers who acted as private armies. The regents who ruled for James often fell foul of hostile groups of nobles. The first regent, the Earl of Moray, was shot dead. His successor, the Earl of Lennox, was killed in a raid on Stirling, dying before James' horrified eyes. Morton served as regent from 1572 to 1578, following a pro-English policy that enabled him to call in English forces to crush the forces that supported the former Queen Mary. However, Morton was caught by enemies and executed.
Mary Stewart
James' mother, Mary, became Queen as a child in 1542, lived for a while in France, then returned to rule Scotland in 1561. She was a devout Catholic and had to cope with John Knox and the full force of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. Mary married Henry Darnley (James' father) but the marriage was not a happy one. Darnley was murdered in 1567 and Mary married a man said to be involved in his murder, the Earl of Bothwell (not the same man as the Bothwell in Programme 4). Her Catholic faith and the other nobles' hatred for Bothwell led to Mary being captured by Protestant lords and forced to abdicate. Although she escaped from imprisonment, she failed to defeat her enemies and had to flee to safety. She fled to England but was once more imprisoned, this time by Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, and was a Protestant. Catholics did not accept her right to rule. Henry had divorced his first wife in a way that Catholics did not regard as legitimate. Mary Stewart, a Catholic and a descendant of Henry VII, became the focus for Catholic plots to remove Elizabeth.
Social conditions
Scotland was not a wealthy country. The overwhelming majority of the half-million population lived in the countryside. They built simple homes from local materials and farmed the land with very basic tools. A small number of people lived in larger settlements called burghs, where traders and craftsmen gathered and markets were held. Dreadful diseases like smallpox flourished. In this period the plague returned to Scotland and killed many.
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