From the History of the British Monarchy
(Продолжение. Начало см. № 2,3, 6, 7, 2008; № 1,3, 6, 7,2009; № 1,3, 7, 9,2010;
№ 1,2011)
James I
Born: Edinburgh, 19 June 1566.
Ascended the Throne: 24 March 1603.
Coronation: Westminster Abbey, 25 July 1603.
Married: Anne, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark and Norway (1589).
Children : Three sons (including the future Charles I), and five daughters.
Died: Theobalds Park, Hertfordshire, 27 March 1625.
Buried: Westminster Abbey.
James I (1566-1625) was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Lord Darnley. When his mother abdicated in 1567, he became King James VI of Scotland. When his cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England died in 1603, he became king of England.
James was impractical and impolitic. King Henry IV of France is said to have called him "the wisest fool in Christendom". James believed strongly in his own divine right to rule and quarreled with Parliament. He was intolerant of Protestant dissenters.
The first permanent English colony in America was established in Virginia in 1607. It was named Jamestown in honour of James I. The Puritans, Protestant dissenters, migrated to New England later in his reign. A major achievement of James' reign was the translation of the Bible by a commission of churchmen, published in 1611. It has become known as the King James Version.
James married Princess Anne of Denmark in 1589. Their daughter Elizabeth married the German elector of the Palatinate, and one of their great-grandsons became King George I of England in 1715. James was succeeded by his son, Charles I.
"The young King was kept fairly isolated but was given a good education until the age of 14. The course had been rather narrow, mainly three languages, Greek, French, and Latin, always set within a biblical framework. His mother's books provided him with an introduction to the French poets. More useful than all his tutors' teaching was the library, of classical, religious, and, to a lesser extent, historical writings that his tutors assembled for him.
In his youth King James wrote poetry, with energy but slender talent. His works included a long translation from the French... , and in the whole series of the King's verse there is only one reference to Scottish scenery, to the cloud-topped Cheviot Hills. The young sovereign impressed the Scottish subjects considerably with his great knowledge.
When he grew to manhood he was slender and of average height. He was constantly on horseback and James I of England
loved the chase, hunting dogs, and horses, activities that endeared him to the people of Scotland. Later, however, his English subjects noticed his weak and spindly legs and his narrow jaw, which made it difficult for him to eat.
Even as a young man, he liked to influence those around him, an outgrowth of his conception of his great position. From the time he grew up his most salient quality was his pleasure in giving, accompanied, unfortunately, by an absence of any money sense. Through his life he also had a deep desire for peace.
....He retained through life a vivid belief in the power and enmity of the devil and was deeply harassed by this belief. Uncommunicative and brooding, he always kept to himself. He was very sure of his decisions. ...James was not appreciated in England as he had been in Scotland. He hardly understood the rights or the temper of the English Parliament and thus came into conflict with it. He had little contact with the English middle classes, and he suffered from the narrowness of his horizons. Elizabeth had travelled throughout her country and played her part before the nation; the crowds along the roadside all could hear her calculated loud asides. But James was domestic; perhaps his outdoor servants, his huntsmen, and the keepers of the hunting lodges were the only members of the rural working class with whom he came in contact. In his later years his judgement faltered".
(The New Encyclopaedia Britannica)
"James I was, in many ways, a highly successful king. This was despite some grave defects of character and judgement. He was the very reverse of Queen Elizabeth. He had a highly articulate, full-developed, and wholly consistent view of the nature of monarchy and of kingly power - and he wholly failed to live up to it. He was a major intellectual, writing theoretical works on government, engaging effectively in debate with leading Catholic polemicists on theological and political issues, as well as turning his mind and his pen to the ancient but still growing threat of witchcraft, and to the recent and menacing introduction of tobacco. He believed that kings derived their authority directly from God and were answerable to him alone for the discharge of that trust".
(The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain)
"To the Presbyterians, James I was a disappointment. As James VI he had been king of Scotland since the forced abdication of his mother in 1567 (when he was a year old), but though he came from a Presbyterian country, James hated Presbyterianism and admired the English ecclesiastical settlement. Having been responsible for reintroducing bishops to Scotland, he was hardly the man to get rid of them in England...
...James's claim that a king was answerable to none but God, though not a new doctrine in Europe, ran counter to the English tradition of consent, a tradition which, dating back to the Saxon Kings, had never been entirely suppressed even in Norman times".
("History of England" by D. Mountfield)
Compiled by A. Artemova, O. Leonovich
Сведения об авторах-составителях: 1. Артемова Анна Федоровна, д-р филолог. наук, профессор, зав. кафедрой теории и практики перевода Пятигорского государственного лингвистического университета.
2. Леонович Олег Анатольевич, канд. филолог. наук, профессор кафедры теории и практики перевода Пятигорского государственного лингвистического университета. E-mail: leonarte@yandex.ru
Ключевые слова: James I, Kings of England.
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