ABSTRACT

King James VI of Scotland liked to consider himself a deeply religious monarch with a more than common understanding of theology and harboured, in the words of his biographer D.H. Willson, ‘a pardonable ambition to make these qualities more generally known’.1 However, for a sixteenth-century ruler religion was inevitably not only a matter of theology or even of personal faith, but also one of politics. For James, religion and politics were inextricably linked both in terms of internal Scottish affairs and foreign policy. His tense relationship with certain ministers of the Presbyterian Kirk – who never entirely trusted this son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots – was made even more problematic by James’s ideas about the relationship between church and state; as he advised his son in his kingship manual Basilikon Doron (1599), it was a monarch’s task to control the church and never allow it ‘to meddle … with the estate or pollicie’.2 The Kirk, on the other hand, considered it a duty to ‘meddle’, and its ministers were openly critical of James whenever they disagreed with his policies or the company he kept. They tended to be especially ready to denounce any ‘Catholic sympathies’ they detected in their king; a tendency which irritated James, not in the last place because such rumours might damage the impeccably Protestant reputation he was in the process of building. This essay will focus primarily on two texts written by James to help strengthen his image as a Protestant monarch: Ane Frvitfvll Meditatioun contening ane Plane and Facill Expositioun of ye 7.8.9 and 10 versis of the 20 Chap. of the Reuelatioun in forme of ane sermone (1588) and Ane Meditatioun vpon the xxv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, and xxix verses of the xv Chapt. of the first buke of the Chronicles of the Kingis (1589).3 Like James’s later writings on kingship, these early theological works were

1 D. Harris Willson, King James VI and I (London: Jonathan Cape, 1956), p. 63.