ABSTRACT
All multiple kingdoms are composite monarchies, but not all composite monarchies are multiple kingdoms. The confusion between the two seems to have been perpetrated by James VI and I, in his speech to the English Parliament in 1607. James compared the relations between the two sovereign kingdoms of England and Scotland (a multiple kingdom) with the fact that England, whatever its myths might say, did not have a single uniform system of law, but had particular laws in, for example, Kent and the County Palatine of Chester (a composite monarchy).1 England did not have the single uniform system of law characteristic of the single state, and might therefore, with a little effort, be regarded as a composite monarchy: it was not a multiple kingdom.
