HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/people/james-vi-and-i Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:30:05 GMT en hourly 1 Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices https://www.historyextra.com/membership/who-is-the-most-overrated-person-in-history-9-experts-reveal-their-choices/ Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:30:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/who-is-the-most-overrated-person-in-history-9-experts-reveal-their-choices/ In the first of a new monthly series, we asked an expert team of historians to tackle one of the big questions about the past Homer

Composite figment of imaginations

The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated historical figure. That’s mostly because it’s likely that there was no one person called Homer.

Careful study of those works, as well as other surviving epic fragments, has shown that they weren’t written at a single time by one person. Instead, it is likely that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed over generations by poetry performers known as rhapsodes. Each of these improved on the work of their predecessors, curating these epics and honing them to a point of perfection. From that time, probably around 700 BC, these works started to be transmitted in a more stable format. By around 550–500 BC, they were written down for the first time.

By then, the belief was circulating that their genesis lay with one particular poet, Homer – not least because the idea of a single, genius author is simpler and more attractive than a slow process of evolution involving hundreds. A whole narrative was woven about the likely fictitious Homer: that he lived on Chios, that he was blind, even that he may have had some divine parentage.

In fact, the notional Homer became so popular that later rhapsodes, doing performances of these now ‘finished’, stable poems, liked to claim themselves as ‘sons of Homer’ to give themselves more gravitas and fame. Ancient historians even wrote biographies of Homer as a historical figure, and busts were created of him. Yet, as a single man, he probably never existed at all.

Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick

Charles Dickens

Verbose Victorian who distorted views of his era

At the risk of being tarred and feathered next time I show my face at a Victorian history conference, I’d have to say that Dickens is overrated.

It’s not that I dislike his work. Critics usually object to his long-winded prose, or baulk at the mawkish sentimentality of characters such as Little Nell, but I enjoy his writing. The callous way he treated his wife is harder to forgive – but his claim to greatness never rested on his qualities as a husband.

No, my objection to Dickens is one that he – always a relentless self-publicist – might actually enjoy. He is simply too famous. Dickens is often feted as the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol have been inflicted on generations of schoolchildren and adapted into endless period dramas (the best of which feature Muppets).

As a result, many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty. I’ve spent my career as a historian trying to reveal the lighter sides of Victorian life – to prove that things weren’t as miserable as some of Dickens’ more pointed critiques suggest.

Dickens was just one of many great writers who made their names in the Victorian era. I’m not suggesting that we consign him to the dustbin of history – but perhaps the time has come to stop him from hogging all of the limelight.

Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University

Mary, Queen of Scots

Unwise architect of her own downfall

Some historical figures, such as Richard III and Anne Boleyn, attract a cult following. Mary is another. She’s typically presented as a tragic heroine: a woman of courage who battled against adversity throughout her life, only to have it savagely cut short by her cold-hearted cousin, Elizabeth I.

Yet the truth is far removed from this beguiling image. Yes, Mary was dogged by tragedy in her life, but much of it could have been avoided if she had shown greater wisdom and restraint. Instead, she made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life.

After a pampered upbringing in France, Mary returned to her native Scotland in 1561, aged 18. She then married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, one of the most unsuitable consorts in history, before eloping with the chief suspect in his murder, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell.

• Read more | Mary, Queen of Scots: your guide to her life and times

Having lost all credibility, and been forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James, Mary fled to England, naively expecting that Elizabeth would help her regain her throne. She spent almost 19 years a prisoner there, during which time she was involved in numerous plots against the English queen, finally leaving a paper trail exposing her parts in conspiracies.

Mary’s execution in 1587 propelled her to the status of Catholic martyr and tragic heroine. In truth, she was not the hapless victim of circumstance but the architect of her own downfall.

Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster

Petrarch

Painted a dim picture of the Middle Ages

The writing of early Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) is certainly not overrated. He was responsible for an exquisite body of lyric poetry, an extraordinary scholar who rediscovered the letters of Cicero, and one of the greatest contributors to the Italian language. Reading or listening to his poetry truly feeds the soul.

As a medieval historian, though, I am bound to take issue with Petrarch’s comments on the nature of history – because these truly are overrated. His remarks have long misled and deceived, producing a vision of world history that has become embedded in the European and American historiographical imagination.

It was Petrarch who came up with the idea of the ‘Dark Ages’. He described the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual obscurity in which the glories of the great Roman empire had been forgotten, inhabited by benighted and stupid people. “This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever,” he opined. “When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.”

This condemnation of 800 years of history was taken up by 16th-century Protestants and then 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. It’s still common today, with the Middle Ages often dismissed as poorly documented, boring and dogmatic. It’s just not true! These were centuries of extraordinary intellectual discovery, of philosophical thinking about the nature of the self and society, of artistic vibrancy and sophisticated political theory. The Middle Ages matter: we study them to challenge our assumptions and better understand our common humanity.

Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

Cicero

Rome’s most shameless self-promoter

The first-century BC Roman statesman and writer is often hailed as the voice of Republican virtue and a defender of democracy, justice and reason in a corrupt age. But this reputation owes more to his own words than to his actual achievements. In truth, Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of history’s most successful self-publicists.

Cicero was elected consul in 63 BC. It was a remarkable achievement for a novus homo (‘new man’ without aristocratic ancestry) – and he never stopped reminding people of it. That same year, he crushed a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, and had several citizens executed without trial – an act he later declared showed moral courage. In reality, it was a serious abuse of power, and deeply divisive.

Despite his modest background, Cicero consistently sided with Rome’s conservative elite, opposing reforms that might have redistributed wealth or power to the poor. He praised virtue, yet defended the clearly guilty Milo on a murder charge. He was undeniably a gifted speaker and writer, but as a statesman he was relatively irrelevant. He had no army, no loyal faction and little influence over the major figures of his time, such as Caesar, Pompey and Octavian (later Augustus).

More than 800 of his letters and 58 speeches survive, far more than those left by any contemporary, giving his version of events an over-amplified voice. Through them he cast himself as the Republic’s moral guardian – but without them he’d be remembered as what he truly was: a gifted lawyer with more bluster than power.

Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author

Winston Churchill

A flawed leader who could never live up to his idealised image

Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes. He’s the subject of countless movies and television shows. His statue stands in Parliament Square. In a nationwide poll in 2002, he was voted the greatest figure in British history. Ever.

Though I have great respect for Churchill as a symbol of British courage and determination during the Second World War, the man himself cannot possibly live up to this image. In many ways, he was a terrible politician. Even by the standards of the time, his views were objectionable. He actively opposed equal rights for women, and he frequently made racist comments – particularly about Indians, calling them a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. During most of the 1930s he was shunned by the political establishment, including many in his own party. He was often drunk on the job.

There is no question that Britain needed a leader with Churchill’s energy to see it through the war. Yet his own Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, claimed that Churchill often made it impossible for the armed forces to do their work. He came up with ridiculous plans, then acted “like a spoilt child” when military experts pointed out that they were impossible.

• Read more | Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history?

Churchill was certainly a heroic figure. He was one of the very first to oppose Hitler, and his inspiring speeches galvanised the country in its hour of need. But can he live up to our idealised image of him? Of course not. How could anyone?

Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

Erik Bloodaxe

Spectacular nickname, underwhelming legacy

I love a Viking-Age hero with a dramatic nickname as much as the next person, but let’s not kid ourselves: they were masters of their own propaganda. Look for the men behind the myths (and we are mostly talking men here) and the historical reality can be a little… underwhelming. Take Erik Bloodaxe, twice ruler of Northumbria in the mid-10th century. Most of what we think we know about his colourful life comes from the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, recorded long after his lifetime.

In these, he’s portrayed as a larger-than-life character: favourite son of King Harald Fairhair, slayer of his own brothers, locked in a bitter feud with Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrimsson. His wife, Gunnhild, is depicted as a shapeshifting, murderous sorceress said to have commissioned another source for Erik’s life – or, rather, afterlife – the poem Eiríksmál (‘The Lay of Erik’), in which the god Odin orders his warriors and Valkyries to prepare Valhalla for the arrival of this great hero.

But beyond the vivid details of his legend, what do we know about the historical figure? Coins and chronicles tell us that he was a key political player in 10th-century Northumbria. But his brief reigns (947–48 and 952–54) were turbulent, to say the least, challenged by Anglo-Saxon Wessex to the south and Viking Dublin to the west. In 954, he came to a sticky end, driven from York and ambushed in the wilds of Cumbria. His death brought an end to Viking rule in the north of England. So, not a brilliant legacy. But still a great nickname.

Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024)

Ronald Reagan

Seemingly a candidate for sainthood – but with questionable principles

Making heroes out of historical figures requires some selective forgetting. In the US, where the cult of Ronald Reagan has many adherents, forgetting is almost an art form. Popular writing treats Reagan as a principled example of free-market rectitude who ended the Cold War and heralded morning in America. Critics of the contemporary Republican Party often invoke Reagan to signal how far his heirs have gone astray. The GOP is “no longer the party of Reagan”, critics lament in publications such as The Washington Post, Time or USA Today. Rhetorically, harking back to Reagan makes a claim of legitimacy and ideological fidelity. To invoke Reagan is to touch the hem of the saints.

This gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his, and overlooks wrongdoing that was. Did Reagan end the Cold War? Many would argue that dynamics within the USSR – Mikhail Gorbachev’s embrace of democratic socialism, for example – sparked the transformation of the Soviet Union more than any external force did. Was Reagan’s administration principled? Anyone recalling the manipulative illegality of the Iran–Contra Affair might marvel at the question.

• Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'?

Did Reagan mean “morning in America” to apply to all Americans? As candidate, he gave a speech celebrating “states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Mississippi near where three voting rights activists had been murdered in 1964. For years, he publicly ignored the decade-defining public health crisis that was the HIV epidemic. He scaled back on social programmes while intensifying the war on drugs. He busted unions while preaching ‘trickle-down’ economics.

Without selective forgetting, the Reagan era feels less like the antithesis of our present and more like its progenitor.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University

Simon de Montfort

A history of violence

Some 760 years after his death, Simon de Montfort still enjoys a fairly sturdy reputation as a social reformer – the man who summoned what’s claimed to have been the first English parliament. A portrait of him is carved above the doors of the US House of Representatives, among a pantheon of democratic worthies. An English university was named after him as recently as 1992.

But this reputation rests almost entirely on modern myth. Kings of England had been summoning consultative assemblies for hundreds of years before Montfort did so in 1265, and were calling them parliaments as early as 1236. Montfort’s contribution was long reckoned to have been the introduction of representation by including knights and townsmen, but both these groups had already been attending parliaments for several decades.

Montfort was undoubtedly a skilled politician – clever, persuasive and quick-witted – but his preferred method of getting things done was usually violence. He had put himself into power in 1263 by leading attacks on the supporters of his brother-in-law, Henry III, and he reduced Henry to a puppet the following year by defeating him in battle.

Montfort was also a pioneering antisemite. As soon as he became Earl of Leicester in 1231, he expelled all of the Jews from that town – the first such expulsion in England – and in the 1260s he led violent massacres of other Jewish communities. A capable warrior and a charismatic leader, Montfort was expert at exploiting the grievances of others for his own ends. A founder of parliamentary democracy he was not.

Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster

This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine

]]> Michael Wood on the rise and fall of Asian empires https://www.historyextra.com/membership/michael-wood-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-asian-empires/ Fri, 28 Nov 2025 09:00:39 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/michael-wood-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-asian-empires/ "Emperor Jahangir and Shah Abbas literally bestride the world like colossi", writes Michael Wood Watching the recent spectacle of those latter-day emperors President Xi of China and India’s Narendra Modi hugging each other at the summit in Tianjin, my mind cast back to an earlier image of a pan-Asian summit.

There’s a wonderful painting from 1618 of the Mughal emperor Jahangir embracing Shah Abbas of Iran – one of several such pictures painted for the Indian ruler. These heads of two superpowers were in fact not bosom buddies but intense geopolitical rivals, especially in the Kandahar region of south-west Afghanistan, then under Mughal control. Framed by a huge golden halo, in an image of peace, one stands on a lamb, the other on a lion, both on a globe whose surface extends from the strait of Gibraltar to the South China Sea: they literally bestride the world like colossi. In the foreground of the map, a product of the new science of cartography, are shown north Africa, India and south-east Asia, with the Nile, the Ganges and the Yangtze accurately depicted. The painting is allegorical; the hoped-for meeting never actually took place. But the timing, and the details, have much to tell us.

In the painting, western Europe lies, unseen, over the horizon. Yet at that moment the small, aggressive maritime powers on the edge of the Eurasian landmass were already extending their influence and carving up the New World – and were now threatening the old powers in the Asiatic heartland of civilisation. The Spanish had begun colonisation of the Philippines in 1565, the Portuguese leased Macao in 1557, the English East India Company was founded in 1600, and the Dutch East India Company was established two years later. Elizabeth I had earlier sent an ambassador to Jahangir’s father, Akbar, to negotiate trade links. In another painting, Jahangir greets a Sufi mystic in the presence of the Ottoman Sultan and King James VI & I – not an imaginary likeness but one taken from a portrait brought to India by the ambassador Thomas Roe in 1616. In an uncanny touch by the painter, James stares coolly out of the picture, straight at the viewer, as if to say: “Our time has come.” And it had.

• Read more | Gulbadan Begum: the Mughal Jane Austen

The Mughal artist Abu al-Hasan, who painted that magnificent picture of Jahangir and Abbas, cannot have imagined that his world – the world stretching from the Mediterranean to the Yellow Sea, created by the great Asiatic civilisations – was about to be shaken to its core by the violent energies, the inventiveness and the sheer ambition of the Europeans.

Jahangir never got his summit with Shah Abbas. Nor did he meet the ailing Wanli Emperor, who was destined to die a couple of years later in Beijing. Since then, the turning of the wheel of history has been astounding: empires, world wars, the colonisation of entire continents, the triumph of capitalism – changes so huge that it is hardly possible to take them all in. The world has been remade in our likeness. And now, in 2025, President Xi hosts a summit calling for an alternative world order – “a more just and equitable global governance system”.

We may not like President Xi’s choice of friends, but such is the realpolitik of our age. And to be sure, some would say that the American empire has accumulated enough misdeeds of its own to merit a reaction. Xi, in particular – an avid reader of history books (the Chinese translation of Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads reportedly among them) believes in the destiny of China. He thinks that China’s time has come, after the ‘Century of Humiliation’ at the hands of western powers. Eighty years on from the Second World War, Xi now says that China’s rise to global leadership is “unstoppable”.

So back to these images of empire: Jahangir and Abbas, Modi and Xi. Some would say that they represent wish fulfilment: a rebuke to what President Xi’s baleful friend Putin calls “outdated Eurocentric and Euro-Atlantic models”. But behind the hugs and the photo ops, behind that amazing piece of diplomatic grandstanding in the giant military parade in Beijing celebrating China’s role in the Second World War, perhaps there is more than that: a vision of the future, uncomfortable though it may be to us in the west. As for Jahangir’s globe, the painting was a dream. But there are few images from the past that more powerfully distil what might have been. And now, as Shakespeare put it, “the whirligig of time brings in his revenges”.

This column was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> The lie of succession: did James I steal Elizabeth I's crown? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-lie-of-succession-did-james-i-steal-elizabeth-is-crown/ Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:00:19 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-lie-of-succession-did-james-i-steal-elizabeth-is-crown/ Did James I ‘steal’ Elizabeth I’s crown? Tracy Borman considers evidence that the transition from Tudor to Stuart dynasties may not have been quite as seamless as we’ve been led to believe Richmond Palace, 22 March 1603. Elizabeth I – the self-proclaimed Virgin Queen who had ruled England for 44 years, seeing off the Armada, healing religious divisions and creating a court so magnificent it was the envy of Europe – lay dying. Her anxious advisers clustered around her bedside, urging her to do the thing she had resisted throughout her long reign: name her successor.

Rousing herself from her stupor, the 69-year-old queen declared: “I will that a king succeed me, and what king, but my nearest kinsman, the king of Scots?” Wanting to make completely sure, her chief minister, Robert Cecil, asked whether that was her “absolute resolution” – to which she irritably retorted: “I pray you trouble me no more, I’ll have none but him.”

That “kinsman” was James VI of Scotland, son of Elizabeth’s old rival Mary, Queen of Scots. Her closest surviving blood relative, he had emerged as the front runner in the race for the English crown. He had the support of Cecil and most of his fellow privy councillors, who had been working behind the scenes to smooth James’s path to the throne. The queen, too, had shown him favour, sharing the pearls of her monarchical wisdom during their 20-year correspondence, as if grooming him as her successor. But she had always flinched from actually naming him as such. Now, almost with her last breath, she had. Elizabeth died two days later – and the Tudor dynasty gave way peacefully to the Stuarts.

This dramatic depiction of Elizabeth’s last-gasp naming of the Scottish king as her heir is based solely on an account by the contemporary historian and antiquarian William Camden. He had begun writing his monumental work Annales: The True and Royall History of the Famous Empresse Elizabeth (first published in Latin in 1615) during Elizabeth’s lifetime. Camden was close to some senior members of the queen’s court, and had access to the voluminous state papers of her reign, so historians have relied on his manuscript as one of the most important and accurate sources for the period.

However, none of those present at Elizabeth’s deathbed testified that she had spoken the words Camden quoted in his account, only that the dying queen had raised her hand to her head when James’s name was mentioned – an ambiguous gesture at best.

Rewriting history

Now, groundbreaking new analysis of Camden’s original manuscript by a team at the British Library has revealed that key passages were covered over and rewritten after Elizabeth’s death to make them more favourable to her successor. No fewer than 200 pages have been pasted in, 65 of which replaced original text with a new version. The use of imaging technology has enabled researcher Helena Rutkowska to see the words underneath for the first time in 400 years. Among the findings are that Elizabeth’s naming of James as her heir was a work of fiction, designed to make his accession appear more predetermined than it had been. In fact, she had been the only monarch in English history not to make provision for the succession.

• Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love

If this had been more widely known at the time, it might have had profound repercussions for the Stuart dynasty. Rather than welcoming James as the king to whom ‘Good Queen Bess’ had given her blessing, the people of England might have refused to accept him. After all, England and Scotland had been bitter enemies for centuries, with fleeting periods of peace cut short by the clash of arms or threat of invasion. And James was by no means the only candidate with a strong claim to Elizabeth’s throne.

Holding on by his fingertips

Camden had first been commissioned to write his history of Elizabeth’s reign in 1596 by William Cecil (Robert’s father), Lord Burghley – Elizabeth’s most trusted advisor, whom she dubbed her ‘Spirit’. It was not a task that the author had embraced with any alacrity, grumbling about the “piles and heaps of papers and writings of all sorts” that had been placed at his disposal. He made only a faltering start during Elizabeth’s lifetime and, as soon as she died, he quietly set down his quill, hoping that the idea would be forgotten.

Fast forward to 1607 and James VI & I had been on the English throne for four years. The initially peaceful transition from Tudors to Stuarts had given way to turbulence and uncertainty, conspiracy and persecution, witchcraft and gunpowder. With the accession of England’s first Stuart monarch, everything had been transformed – from court culture to royal ceremony, religious tolerance to parliamentary authority, morality to witch-hunting. Two countries that had been fierce rivals for centuries were now forged into an uncomfortably united kingdom. The fleeting popularity that James had enjoyed as the “bright star of the north” had been extinguished, and he was holding onto his new crown by his fingertips.

It was at this moment that James heard about Camden’s stalled biography of his predecessor, and spied an opportunity. To have a published account of Elizabeth’s reign – and, in particular, the succession – written by one of the most esteemed historians of the age would help silence any whispers of usurpation. If, that is, the author was prepared to write it to the king’s satisfaction.

It was with good reason that Camden expressed reluctance when first approached by the king to restart his history of Elizabeth. Quite apart from the heavy burden of research it entailed, writing the history of a queen who, even in death, was eclipsing her unpopular successor was fraught with difficulty. Camden knew that James would not want an unbiased appraisal but one written in his favour. Only the previous year, the king had ordered an account of the gunpowder plot to be rewritten so that it was even more complimentary towards him.

Restarting the history of Elizabeth was the very definition of a poison chalice, and Camden tried everything to avoid drinking from it. But James gave him no choice. At the king’s command, work on the book resumed in 1608. Camden was his subject to command, and the succession was his to rewrite.

Reviving the queen

By the time Camden again took up his quill, rewriting sections to James’s benefit, the cult of ‘Gloriana’ was already in full swing. Elizabeth’s former subjects were quick to forget that they had grown tired of “an old woman’s government” and had longed to have a king ruling over them. One contemporary reflected that, a few short years after Elizabeth’s death, “when we had experience of the Scottish government, then… in hate and detestation of them, the queen did seem to revive. Then was her memory much magnified.”

It was not long before praising the last Tudor queen became a powerful weapon used to attack her Stuart successor. Donning their rose-tinted glasses, her former subjects harked back to a halcyon time when England had enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity, triumphed over the might of Spain, and was presided over by a glorious queen and her court. The anniversary of Elizabeth’s accession day, 17 November, began to be celebrated each year with “joyful ringing of bells, running at tilt, and festival mirth… in testimony of their affectionate love towards her”.

• Read more | Why was King James VI and I obsessed with witch hunts?

But this sentimental reverence masked the intense uncertainty that had been generated by the persistent refusal of ‘Good Queen Bess’ to name her heir. It’s worth revisiting the history of this reticence and the concerns it had fomented among court and populace.

On 10 February 1559 Elizabeth had told the first parliament of her reign that “in the end this shall be for me sufficient: that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin”. She then declared that God would provide for the succession and would name an heir “peradventure more beneficial to the realm than such offspring as may come of me”.

This was all very well but, without the wisdom of hindsight, Elizabeth’s subjects had no idea that she would reign longer and more successfully than any of the other Tudor monarchs. Her three predecessors, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey and Mary I, had reigned for six years, nine days and five years, respectively, and there was no reason to suppose Elizabeth would escape the ill health that dogged the Tudor dynasty. Indeed, nearly four years into her reign she almost died of smallpox. This catapulted the succession to the forefront of people’s minds and, once there, it would not be forgotten. “Now all the talk is who is to be her successor,” reported the Spanish ambassador, Bishop Álvaro de la Quadra, in 1562.

Elizabeth’s determination not to name her heir was born of direct experience. Being heir presumptive during her sister Mary’s brief, bloody reign had placed her in great jeopardy, including a spell in the Tower under threat of execution. “I stood in danger of my life, my sister was so incensed against me,” she told a delegation from parliament in 1566 that had been sent to persuade her to settle the succession. Elizabeth feared that, as soon as she named her heir, the individual chosen would be the focus of plots and rebellions, just as she herself had been during Mary’s reign. “Think you that I could love my winding-sheet?” she demanded to an ambassador, likening a named heir to a shroud.

Fierce rivalry

In remaining tight-lipped about the succession, Elizabeth gave rise to fierce rivalry between the blood claimants to her throne. Principal among them were Mary, Queen of Scots and her son James VI; his cousin Arbella Stuart; Lady Katherine Grey and her descendants; Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon; and the Infanta Isabella, daughter of Philip II of Spain. As Elizabeth’s reign progressed, most of the rival claimants fell by the wayside, either through natural death, disinheritance or execution. In the race for Elizabeth’s throne, it was less a case of ‘who dares wins’, more ‘survival of the fittest’.

In 1600, the English government official and keeper of records Thomas Wilson opined: “This crown is not like to fall to the ground for want of heads that claim to wear it.” Although he admitted that it was “straightly prohibited” to discuss the succession, he went on to give an account of at least 12 people with some kind of claim to the English throne who, in his words, “gape for” Elizabeth’s death. Of these, eight were home-grown candidates and four were from overseas. James VI might have emerged as the odds-on favourite, but his accession was by no means certain.

As her long reign wore on, Elizabeth showed through her subtle, steady guiding of the king of Scots that he was, if not her ideal candidate, then at least the best of a bad lot. In the years leading up to her death, she did as much as she could to secure the succession without placing herself in danger by naming an heir. For all the anxiety, intrigue and rivalry that this engendered, the wisdom of her policy was proved by the fact that, to her last breath, her personal power in England had not been challenged by any “rising sun”.

But the ultimate success of Elizabeth’s plan depended on James following the advice she had drip-fed him over the years. And that is where it fell apart. It soon became clear that the king had paid only lip service to Elizabeth’s guidance, and proceeded to flout it altogether when he took her throne. He refused to “play the king”, as she had urged, by investing in the magnificence of his court and public appearances, and instead spent most of his time in private with just a handful of favourites.

Parliamentary revolt

More ominously, James had no intention of sustaining the delicate relationship between crown and parliament that had been the cornerstone of Elizabeth’s success. Instead, he stood firmly by the Stuart belief in the divine right of kings, which in his view gave him the right to ride roughshod over the wishes of his people and his parliaments.

This soon sparked resistance from his new English subjects. After a series of bad-tempered exchanges, parliament refused to agree to James’s plan for a formal union between his two kingdoms. Undeterred, he announced that a shared currency would be issued – a 20-shilling piece known as the ‘unite’ – and commissioned a new flag, the ‘Union Jack’ (for Jacobus, or James). Thereafter, rather than working in partnership with his government, he abandoned it altogether, spending his days hunting and cavorting with his favourites. One contemporary noted that this was “the cause of indescribable ill-humour among the king’s subjects, who in their needs and troubles find themselves cut off from their natural sovereign”.

• Read more | King James VI and I: your guide to the first Stuart monarch of England

Meanwhile, growing popular resentment against the king erupted in numerous conspiracies to remove him from the throne. In June 1603, just three months after his accession, the ‘Bye’ plot came to light, involving a group of Catholics who planned to kidnap the king and secure concessions for the practice of their religion. More serious was the ‘Main’ plot to oust James and replace him with his cousin Arbella Stuart.

The most dangerous conspiracy of all came in 1605, when a group of Catholics led by Robert Catesby schemed to blow up the king and his parliament. It was only thanks to an anonymous tip-off that Westminster was searched by the royal officials, and Guy Fawkes was discovered with a huge cache of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliament just hours before he was due to light the fuse.

Lessons not learned

All of this might have made James pause to consider that perhaps he ought to follow his predecessor’s advice after all. Instead, he doggedly continued his preferred style of monarchy, no matter the cost. Worse still, in preparing his son and heir, Charles, for the throne, James passed on none of the lessons that Elizabeth had tried to teach him. Charles would be a king in the mould of his Stuart father, not his Tudor predecessor. He took his divine right to even greater extremes than his father, and dissolved parliament whenever it refused to carry out his will.

As Charles’s turbulent reign wore on, the spectre of uncertainty over the Stuarts’ right to the Tudor throne – uncertainly that, we now know was all too valid – was thrown into sharp relief. By 1642, he had pushed the supremacy of the royal will too far on both sides of the border. The kingdom was plunged into bitterly fought civil wars that culminated in Charles’s execution and the destruction of the monarchy. In the space of half a century, the crown that had glittered so brightly on Elizabeth’s head had been consigned to the flames. 

CONTENDERS FOR THE CROWN

There was no shortage of people with designs on Elizabeth I’s English throne. But who had the best chance of success?

The Scottish thorn

Mary, Queen of Scots had the strongest blood claim to Elizabeth’s throne. She was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, who married James IV of Scotland. As a Catholic, she enjoyed considerable support among those in England who opposed their queen’s Protestant faith. But Henry VIII’s will had barred his Scottish relatives from inheriting the crown of England. Furthermore, a law passed in 1350, during the reign of Edward III, decreed that “aliens” (those not born on English soil) could not inherit any land there. Nevertheless, Mary campaigned tirelessly to be named heir, and was executed for trying to take the English throne by force. (Contender rating: 6 out of 10)

The front runner

James VI of Scotland, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to his mother’s throne when she was ousted from it in 1567. He also inherited her claim to Elizabeth’s throne, though Mary’s execution in 1587 threw that into jeopardy, because those related to a convicted traitor were tainted by association. In his favour was the fact that by the time of Elizabeth’s death he had a proven track record of ruling a kingdom and, even better, was male. He also enjoyed the strongest support within the English government, and the tacit support of Elizabeth herself – though Henry VIII’s and Edward III’s statutes meant that James’s accession in 1603 was technically illegal. (Contender rating: 7 out of 10)

The arrogant orphan

Like James, Arbella Stuart was the great-granddaughter of Henry VIII’s elder sister, Margaret, but had the advantage of being born on English soil. Team Arbella was also bolstered by the efforts of her two indomitable grandmothers, Lady Margaret Douglas (Henry VIII’s niece) and Bess of Hardwick, who promoted the claim of “poor orphan Arbella”. Arbella, though, was her own worst enemy. Haughty and arrogant, she alienated Queen Elizabeth, and her unstable temperament made her ill-suited for the throne. During James’s reign, she secretly married another blood claimant, William Seymour, grandson of Lady Katherine Grey (see below), and spent the rest of her life a prisoner in the Tower. (Contender rating: 5 out of 10)

The marrying type

Henry VIII had decreed that, in the event that his three children died without issue, the crown would pass to the descendants of his younger sister Mary. This gave Katherine Grey (Mary’s granddaughter) and her descendants the strongest legal basis for their claim, strengthened by the fact that Edward VI had made the Greys his primary heirs. Katherine sought to boost her chances further by secretly marrying Edward Seymour, the nephew of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. But this backfired: Elizabeth condemned Katherine to life behind bars, and had her two sons declared illegitimate. However, they and their descendants continued to be seen as strong contenders for Elizabeth’s throne for years afterwards. (Contender rating: 6 out of 10)

The "nearest in blood"

Lady Margaret Stanley was the daughter of Eleanor Brandon, younger daughter of Henry VIII’s sister Mary. Margaret alleged that her cousins were debarred from the succession because of Lady Jane Grey’s treason, leaving her next in line by Henry VIII’s will and “as the nearest in blood… legitimately of English birth”. Also in her favour was the fact that she had two living sons, Ferdinando and William. She was, though, Catholic. (Contender rating: 4 out of 10)

The uninterested Yorkist

Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon was of the old Yorkist line. His great-great-grandmother was Lady Margaret Pole, niece of King Edward IV. His grandfather had for a time been a close personal friend of Henry VIII. In stark contrast to all the other contenders, though, Hastings showed no interest in the crown, and spent his life in loyal service to Elizabeth. Still, she didn’t trust him, and it was only after years in the political wilderness that she finally appointed him to office. (Contender rating: 5 out of 10)

The Spanish princess

When his own attempts to seize Elizabeth’s throne by force failed, Philip II of Spain promoted those of his daughter, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia. She was said to be “of the ancient blood royal of England” through her mother, Elisabeth of Valois. As such, she was a legitimate descendant of John of Gaunt, the fourth son of Edward III, whereas the Tudors were descended from his illegitimate line. But the people of England were notoriously xenophobic, viewing even James of Scotland as an “alien”, and unlikely to ever accept a Spanish queen. (Contender rating: 3 out of 10)

]]> Reshaping narratives, repatriation and Richard III : 25 lessons we've learnt from history in the last 25 years https://www.historyextra.com/membership/a-quarter-century-of-bbc-history-magazine-25-lessons-weve-learnt-from-history-in-the-last-25-years/ Wed, 18 Jun 2025 08:00:37 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/a-quarter-century-of-bbc-history-magazine-25-lessons-weve-learnt-from-history-in-the-last-25-years/ To celebrate a quarter-century of BBC History Magazine, we asked 25 expert contributors to nominate the most important historical discoveries and revelations since the publication launched in 2000 1. Women played major roles in the Viking Age

Just 25 years ago, there seemed to be little new to say about the Vikings – and that was particularly the case for Viking women. The centuries-old consensus was that Viking wives and daughters stayed at home, passively watching as the Viking Age unfolded around them.

New technologies have forced a rethink, though, completely revolutionising what we know about Viking women. The first significant discovery came from a systematic survey of a nationwide database of metal-detected female dress jewellery. This demonstrated for the first time that Scandinavian women migrated to England in substantial numbers. Next, isotope analysis of teeth from the graves of Viking women showed that they had formed a key part of the migration process elsewhere, too, moving across the Viking world alongside their families.

The most dramatic and most debated discovery, however, came through analysis of ancient DNA. In Birka, Sweden, an individual buried in a high-status warrior grave turned out to be biologically female. This led to a worldwide discussion of the roles of Viking women: we now agree that, though many certainly did stay at home, some played active roles in trade, craft and manufacturing processes, and even held military positions.

Cat Jarman is an archaeologist, author and TV presenter. Her books include The Bone Chests: Unlocking the Secrets of the Anglo-Saxons (William Collins, 2023)

2. Britain has been culturally diverse for far longer than most believed

The murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020 signalled a turning point in the way the histories of people of African descent were taught and perceived across Europe. From that moment, the British press and institutions felt that they had to engage better with narratives about minority ethnic communities.

A renewed interest in personal histories and trajectories of people of African descent in Britain showcased stories about their links to major events – from the celebrated story of the British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole during the Crimean War to the experiences of black British football player Walter Tull and other soldiers of Caribbean and African descent who fought for Britain during the world wars.

We also saw a number of new black history courses launched in UK universities, and school classes featuring black, Asian and minority ethnic histories. Uncovering these multiple trajectories further highlights how culturally diverse Britain has been over many centuries, and why sharing stories about a common past can bring communities together.

Olivette Otele is a distinguished research professor at SOAS University of London. Her books include African Europeans: An Untold History (Hurst, 2020)

3. The Tudors got Richard III wrong

We learned many things from the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton beneath a Leicester car park 13 years ago. We learned about the king’s physique, his diet and the injuries he sustained while fighting for crown and country at Bosworth against a foreign-backed invader.

But, for me, two lessons in particular stand out from the discovery. The first is that history can make no progress unless it’s ready to test and deconstruct generally held traditions and assumptions – even those held by historians and archaeologists. Those of us working on the Looking for Richard Project trusted only our own painstaking, personal research in primary sources.

Second, we learned that Shakespeare’s hunchback and withered arm never existed. Analysis of Richard’s skeleton – which had lain underfoot and peacefully undisturbed for 500 years – revealed that his limbs were sound, and that his spine showed a scoliosis that was invisible to onlookers. Richard’s makeshift burial in the wake of his defeat at Bosworth, in a grave cut too short, was hugely revealing. It speaks across the centuries of a victor’s disrespect for a fallen king.

Philippa Langley is a historian, author and producer. Her latest book is The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case (The History Press, 2023)

• Read more | The final mystery of Richard III: how 21st-century science cracked a 500-year-old cold case

4. Magna Carta was only part of a truly revolutionary settlement

King John’s Magna Carta is perhaps the best-known document in world history, generally regarded as the first attempt to place kingship itself under the rule of law. Not surprisingly, it has been much studied. Yet a torrent of new evidence has been brought to light over the past 20 years, transforming understanding of both the document and its wider context.

We now know of many more ‘original’ Magna Cartas (from its subsequent reissues) than were previously dreamed of. And incidental discoveries in archives from Paris to New England have reshaped our appreciation of what actually happened in 1215.

A fortuitous discovery in Lambeth Palace Library, for example, reveals that the charter was part of a truly revolutionary settlement, with the barons briefly permitted dual control of local government in tandem with the king. We know, too, that John himself made no attempt to publish the charter. On the contrary, it was the bishops who ensured its distribution, preservation and even, in some cases, its physical copying.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, is unmasked not so much as an honest broker between king and barons but as an ideologically committed adherent of the anti-royal party. By such means can new evidence help us rewrite the past – even for the oldest and best-known stories.

Nicholas Vincent is professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. His books include John (Allen Lane, 2020)

5. We ignore the past at our peril

Most compellingly, the past 25 years have reminded us that history matters. Every life-sapping conflict since the millennium – Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Ukraine, Gaza – has its roots deep in the past.

Of course, the past does not determine the future, but the future is shaped by the past. Merely railing against adversaries or shouting ‘victory’ from the rooftops may make for good headlines but, in the absence of some understanding of ‘how we got from there to here’, such indulgence is vacuous grandstanding.

The past has never been ‘another country’. This is especially true of Europe, where the tectonic plates did not stop shifting with the end of the Second World War in 1945 or the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The events of the past 25 years have demonstrated only too cruelly that our continent is inherently, and sometimes alarmingly, unstable.

All leaders claim to act in what they believe to be the national interest. The. less they make ill-judged declaratory statements of intent and the more they demonstrate a realistic vision of the future, based on a clear awareness of the past, the better it will be for all of us. History is a great mentor.

Jonathan Dimbleby is a historian, biographer and broadcaster. His latest book is Endgame 1944: How Stalin Won the War (Viking, 2024)

6. Hitler tapped into hard-wired emotions to stir up hatred

For my new book, I found it tremendously helpful to talk to academic psychologists and neuroscientists about the insights we can gain, in general terms, from their disciplines. For instance, I learned how Hitler – without knowing the science behind his actions – tapped into a profound truth about the way the brain works.

In stirring up hatred against Jews and Bolsheviks, Hitler targeted the amygdala – the part of the brain that immediately processes feelings of anxiety, fear and anger. These powerful emotions are produced almost instantly, because it’s the amygdala that helps us avoid sudden danger. It’s a survival mechanism that, as the neuroscientist Professor Robert Sapolsky explained to me, is “hard-wired into us… and we’ll never get rid of it”.

Hitler capitalised on this neurobiological tendency, and in the process did his best to subdue the parts of the brain that offer a more logical analysis. Indeed, he seemed to confirm that he was well aware of the immense power of this approach when he remarked, during a private speech to the Hamburger Nationalklub in 1926, that “the only stable emotion is hate”.

Laurence Rees is a historian, author and documentary film-maker. His new book is The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History (Viking, 2025)

7. Hunter-gatherers and farmers joined in wild rituals 12,000 years ago

Around the turn of this millennium, in a remote south-eastern corner of Turkey, an astonishing discovery was being made – one that stretched the story of humanity back more than 12,000 years.

Still today, only about 5 per cent of the archaeological site known as Karahantepe has been excavated – but even that tiny fraction is changing our understanding of the beginning of society as we know it. Emerging from the earth is a giant chamber with 11 huge stone phallus columns, overlooked by the face of a man with a splendid handlebar moustache and the body of a snake. The head of a big cat is visible in the centre, and carvings on 250 obelisks in the area could be mistaken for gargoyles on any medieval cathedral.We expect the female equivalent of the chamber to be unearthed soon.

Karahantepe, it turns out, is just one site in a constellation of a hundred or so – the Taş Tepeler – which together are rewriting the story of human collaboration. The orthodoxy used to be that hunter-gatherers invented farming, then settled down, then manifested religion to establish common mores to live by. But the discoveries seem to show that hunter-gatherers and the very first farmers gathered together in huge, collective spaces for wild ritual parties to share know-how and ideas.

This is one of the joys of history: it is constantly protean. Every year, new finds reveal earlier and earlier evidence of human achievement and sophistication.

Bettany Hughes is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her latest book is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (W&N, 2024)

8. Returning stolen artefacts to Africa is no longer a naive dream

Some 25 years ago, when I was starting my career in museums, a sense of optimism and renewal imbued the sector – yet the restitution of stolen African objects did not seem a realistic possibility. Today, the culture has changed profoundly. My old employer, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, has returned its contested Benin plaques; the Dutch, Germans and French have either begun programmes of return or discussed the possibility. In Britain, the Horniman has returned ownership of its Benin plaques, and the V&A and the British Museum (both restricted by law from giving collections permanently) have entered into long-term loan agreements with the Asante royal family in Ghana.

Conversations that were inconceivable a generation ago – about ethics, about custodianship, about narrative, about ghosts – have begun to happen. We have to find ways to tell complex stories of empire, enslavement and colonialism more effectively and inclusively. It’s important that museums can craft their curatorial narratives with moral confidence, and the resolution of such thorny, long-term issues is vital.

There is still much to do. Our museums must go further in building partnerships and programmes with museums across the African continent. We need to learn from African expertise – and in turn we must share our resources and expertise to improve the telling of these rich and amazing histories everywhere.

Gus Casely-Hayford is a curator, historian and broadcaster. His books include The Lost Kingdoms of Africa (Bantam, 2012)

9. Anne Boleyn was a proto-feminist heroine

Anne Boleyn is unique among English queens, and her story is remarkable, but much of the modern fascination with that tale lies in perceptions of her fuelled by films and novels. She is now revered as a feminist heroine – a concept I would once have dismissed as anachronistic. When I said as much to the historian Sarah Gristwood, she replied: “Well, actually…” and very generously allowed me a preview of her research for her marvellous book Game of Queens (Oneworld, 2016), which inspired me to find out more.

Feminism was unknown in Tudor England. But in early 16th-century Europe, where Anne spent her formative years, there was an intellectual debate that questioned traditional attitudes to women, and looked forward to an era – the ‘reign of virtue’ – in which they would enjoy more power and equality.

In this age of female rulers, Anne had two shining examples to study: Margaret of Austria and Marguerite of Valois, both of whom she served or knew. We have to study her in this European context in order to understand the cultural influences to which she was exposed, giving her the confidence to pursue her brilliant career.

Alison Weir is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Cardinal: The Secret Life of Thomas Wolsey (Headline, 2025)

10. Mary Seacole was a true heroine of the Crimean War

One of the most significant changes over the past 25 years is the extent to which researching and writing black history has opened up. This is partly down to the dedication of historians determined to extend knowledge of the black experience by digging deeply and stubbornly into little-consulted sources.

In my own case, 20 years of concerted searching across digitised newspapers and in genealogical archives gave the lie to the till-then widely perpetuated view that Mary Seacole had been wildly overrated and undeserving of the ‘Greatest Black Briton’ sobriquet awarded her in 2004.

For decades, detractors dismissed her as a colourful but largely irrelevant presence who had done little more than ‘sell tea and buns’ to the soldiers in Crimea. But my searches, enabled by digitisation of sources, brought me to a more complete view of a woman who deserves to be viewed as a heroine. She journeyed 1,600 miles to Crimea under her own steam and at her own expense to set up shop in the middle of a war zone – a lone black woman facing prejudice and risking her own safety to help the wounded, sick and dying.

Delving into previously unseen sources over an extended period enabled me to challenge the conventional sanctification of ‘the black Florence Nightingale’ and present
a fully rounded personality.

Helen Rappaport is an author and historian. Her latest book is The Rebel Romanov (Simon & Schuster, 2025)

11. Public history can play a major role in understanding the past

One great change over the last 25 years has been the huge growth in public history – not just as an academic discipline, though of course it rests on the work of professional historians, archivists and museum workers.

Public history is the product of us all. It is about public interaction with the past, its interpretation and popularisation – changing our understanding not only of the past but also of our own times. It’s about the link between historians and the general public. Films, podcasts, radio, heritage societies, living archaeologists, local history and re-enactment groups – even readers of this magazine – are all part of it.

Good popularisation is the necessary link between professionals and the population at large, without which history becomes a closed debate between historians. And in a democracy, that link is vital: it’s part of a healthy information ecosystem, our reality check in the face of the tide of fake history on social media. Perhaps not surprisingly, in Trump’s America the US National Council on Public History is becoming more important in keeping minds open. When I hear people argue that you can’t rewrite history – though that is our actual collective job as makers of history! – it makes me think that perhaps we should have one here, too.

Michael Wood is professor of public history at the University of Manchester. Read his column from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine here

12. Charles I wasn’t so very chaste

Traditional accounts of Charles I, the so-called ‘martyr king’, have always presented him as a grave, austere and chaste figure – the very opposite of his indecorous, bawdy father, James VI & I, and his dissipated, promiscuous son, Charles II. Charles’s marriage to his wife, Henrietta Maria, was undoubtedly a happy one and, until the royal couple were torn apart during the Civil War, he does indeed appear to have remained true to her alone.

However, in an article published in 2006, the historian Sarah Poynting revisited a series of encrypted letters written by Charles in late 1647 and 1648, while he was imprisoned in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight after his defeat by the parliamentarians. Previous attempts to decipher these letters had not been entirely accurate, Poynting showed, and in fact one of them revealed that Charles had been attempting to inveigle the royalist agent Jane Whorwood into his bed.

Using the frankest language, Charles went so far as to suggest to Jane that she should secretly conceal herself in the ‘stool-room’ adjoining his chamber while he was out on his daily walk so that, after his return, he could dally with her at length. It was a remarkable discovery – and one that suggested previous characterisations of the king as “blamelessly uxorious” may well have been a little wide of the mark.

Mark Stoyle is professor of history at the University of Southampton. His latest book is A Murderous Midsummer: The Western Rising of 1549 (Yale University Press, 2022)

• Read more | "Tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy": was Charles I really that bad?

13. Mesolithic Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes

One of the major scientific advances in archaeology over the past 25 years has been the ability to extract and analyse DNA from the remains of long-dead people from the distant past. Such ancient DNA can shed light on how people were related to one another, on a family or population scale, and provide insights into the migration and movement of people over time. It can also tell us what diseases they had and – perhaps most compelling – what they looked like.

In 2018, researchers at the Natural History Museum revealed that one of the inhabitants of Mesolithic Britain, a man who lived around 10,000 years ago, had dark skin and blue eyes. This individual – known as ‘Cheddar Man’, because his remains were discovered in a cave in Cheddar Gorge in Somerset – is represented by one of the oldest complete skeletons ever identified in Britain. Earlier results from remains found from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary confirm that most hunter-gatherers in Mesolithic Europe looked this way.

The genes for lighter skin pigmentation arrived thousands of years later, in waves of migration from the east during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. In addition, natural selection over time favoured lighter tones that allow more Vitamin D synthesis in the skin, essential in northerly climes.

Susan Greaney is a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Exeter

14. Premodern Japan was surprisingly progressive

One of the most fascinating and dynamic periods of Japanese history was the Meiji Restoration, which began with the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and ended with the death of the Meiji Emperor in 1912. Japan opened up as never before to diplomatic and trading relationships with the west and, over little more than four decades, modernised its economy and society at an astonishing rate. By 1912, it had become one of the world’s great powers.

For a long time, this explosion of activity was contrasted with the preceding 250 years of the Tokugawa shogunate. That system was regarded as feudal, backward and badly out of date, requiring rescue at the hands of modernising and westernising reformers. Much though this view of history suited western historians across the 20th century, and flattering as it was to western modernity, since 2000 historians have increasingly been exploring the myriad achievements of the shogunate.

Across two and a half centuries of peace, Japanese commerce, intellectual life and the arts enjoyed extraordinary growth and creativity, from theatre through to a tourism industry and a publishing boom. Without the commercial and technical expertise, high literacy rates and great bustling cities that developed under the shogunate, the Meiji Restoration could not have happened in the way that it did.

Christopher Harding is senior lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh and creator of the IlluminAsia newsletter and podcast (illuminasia.org). His latest book is The Light of Asia: A History of Western Fascination with the East (Allen Lane, 2024)

15. Egypt’s great pyramids at Giza weren’t built by foreign slaves

Dominating the Giza Plateau for almost five millennia, the great pyramids still capture imaginations around the world. For centuries, archaeologists and historians have tried to determine how these magnificent monuments, including the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World, were created – and now we know who built them.

Contrary to popular depictions, construction wasn’t completed by foreign slaves but by Egyptian employees. Excavations of a workers’ village over the past couple of decades, and the discovery of builders’ tombs in 2009, have transformed the narrative.

The village, dating from the Fourth Dynasty (starting c4,600 years ago), boasted bakeries, breweries, butchers and a hospital. In the burial sites, skeletons show signs of hard labour, as one might expect, but they’re also accompanied by jars of bread and beer, ready for the afterlife. There are female skeletons, too, confirming that women played roles in building the pyramids.

Hieroglyphs suggest a system of skilled labourers and artisans, from “overseer of the side of the pyramid” to “inspector of the craftsmen”. It’s also clear that villagers from surrounding areas came here to work in construction, usually in three-month stints. Their graffiti indicates that each cadre might associate themselves with one particular pharaoh or pyramid: the “friends of Khufu”, for example, or “drunkards of Menkaure”.

The inscriptions confirm that the pyramid builders were Egyptian. And the manner and location of the burials, in the shadow of the great pharaohs, puts the slave myth to bed.

Islam Issa is professor of literature and history at Birmingham City University. His latest book is Alexandria: The City that Changed the World (Sceptre, 2023)

16. Personal links to empire can reshape old narratives

Astonishingly, I completed my entire education without learning about the British empire. I don’t even have a recollection of hearing the world ‘empire’ mentioned at school – and I studied History A-level! I now know that my experience is not unique.

In the past 10 years or so, though, I have gained a growing understanding of not only what happened and how it shaped Britain today, but also of my own personal connection to empire and its tumultuous end. I feel lucky to be making programmes and writing books at a time when there is a greater interest in knowing about Britain’s imperial past – not that it is without complications or controversies.

And things continue changing: a new generation of historians is exploring archives and asking different questions. Teachers are choosing to explore empire in all its complexity, and conversations are being had between people in the diaspora and their family members about a time when they were subjects of empire. I am learning that, just because an area of history is overlooked or not spoken of, it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Kavita Puri is a journalist and broadcaster for BBC Radio 4. Read her Hidden Histories column from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine here

17. Stonehenge was built in an already sacred area

The past two and a half decades have seen a transformation in our understanding of one of the most iconic ancient monuments in Britain and, indeed, the world: Stonehenge.

Archaeological research has revealed that the 4,500-year-old prehistoric ‘temple’ stood at the heart of a sacred landscape infinitely richer than previously thought. Scores of ritual monuments have been discovered in a vast halo scattered across the countryside around the monument.

Even more extraordinarily, tests have revealed that one of Stonehenge’s most important stones was transported all the way from what’s now northern Scotland – and that a large number of the smaller stones had probably originally formed part of another stone circle in south-west Wales before being brought here. And research shows that some of the Neolithic people buried at Stonehenge did not come from the area but from western Britain, possibly from modern-day Wales – significant, given the origins of many of its smaller stones.

We now know, too, that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were active in the Stonehenge area some 5,000 years before the monument existed. This remarkable new information, together with earlier evidence that a series of Mesolithic wooden obelisks may have stood adjacent to the site of Stonehenge, suggests that the area had been sacred for millennia.

David Keys is the archaeological correspondent for The Independent

18. The tide seems to have turned against the British empire

By the year 2000, the British empire – formerly a global superpower – had been transformed into an organisation with entirely voluntary membership, the Commonwealth. At the time, academic assessment of this extraordinary transformation resulted in a number of books – including my own – which concluded that British imperialism had been overall, and in a remarkable variety of ways, both a blessing and a curse.

In the 25 years since that relatively benign consensus, however, there has been a profound anti-imperial swing resulting in a wholesale condemnation of British imperial history – shifting the dial remarkably.

It is, however, vital to understand that, even at its Victorian zenith, the empire faced trenchant criticism from within. Anti-imperial attitudes were commonplace on the left wing of the Liberal Party, the infant Labour Party and the generally hostile Irish Nationalist Party. Nonconformist churches – Methodists, Congregationalists and, above all, Quakers – voiced criticisms of imperial aims and methods. Internal opposition, from resentful Afrikaners, French Canadians and diverse displaced and conquered Indigenous peoples, also inevitably arose.

To cope with such internal opposition, and to prolong its existence, the imperial system undertook much self-correction – a process that led to mass devolution, the end of empire and the birth of today’s Commonwealth. In short, we are now keenly aware that there is no neat and fireproof analysis of the nature, governance and purpose of the British empire. It was such a huge, complex and long-lived organisation that almost every criticism, as well as almost every justification, has some validity somewhere and at some time.

Denis Judd is professor emeritus of imperial and Commonwealth history at London Metropolitan University, and author of Empire (IB Tauris revised paperback edition, 2012)

19. The world is in danger of reverting to its darkest days

After the collapse of Soviet-style communism in Russia and eastern Europe in 1989–91, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book called The End of History and the Last Man. In it, he predicted optimistically that the demise of the Soviet system meant that western liberalism would roll out across the world, and that the future belonged to progressive democracy, with no rivals to challenge it.

In fact, since the first issue of BBC History Magazine was published in 2000, history has evolved along a drastically different path to the one that Fukuyama predicted. So far, the 21st century has belonged to resurgent strongmen. In country after country, authoritarian regimes led by dictatorial rulers have come to power – and stayed there, with scant regard for democracy. Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, Erdogan’s Turkey, Kim’s North Korea and Sisi’s Egypt are leading examples of a worldwide trend that shows no sign of ending.

So what we have learned from history in this century is a rather troubling lesson. After the terrors of the 20th century, the world is not moving into broad, sunlit uplands but is in danger of reverting to the darkest days of the past.

Nigel Jones is a historian, journalist and former reviews editor of BBC History Magazine. His latest book is Kitty’s Salon: Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich (John Blake, 2023)

20. Technology enables deep-sea shipwreck discoveries – but we should beware hubris

In recent years, sophisticated modern technologies have allowed humans to dive deeper, explore the seabed autonomously, and locate shipwrecks. Lost in 1915 in the Weddell Sea, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s polar vessel Endurance made headlines when its wreck was rediscovered in 2022. Recovering or even visiting the wreck, which lies at a depth of 3,000 metres, are major challenges. But submersible robots were able to photograph the Endurance from every angle, enabling scientists to create a digital model of the whole vessel as well as many artefacts preserved just as they were when the crew abandoned ship.

The wreck of the Gloucester, lost in 1682 after hitting a sandbank while transporting James, Duke of York and his court, was discovered in 2007. Future excavation of the site could provide an unprecedented opportunity to explore a Restoration royal court frozen in time. Just as the Mary Rose Museum has captured the public imagination, making Henry VIII’s warship part of British national conversations, telling the Gloucester’s stories could transform public understanding of a historical period that laid the constitutional foundations of modern Britain.

In 2025, mid-point in the United Nations ‘Ocean Decade’, a key task is to meaningfully integrate Britain’s remarkable maritime cultural heritage into ocean governance to help create a sustainable blue economy.

Nonetheless, humanity should remain humble in the face of the ocean’s uncontrollable forces. The implosion in 2023 of the submersible Titan on its expedition to the wreck of the Titanic – resulting in the death of all on board – is a cautionary tale. Some 3 million shipwrecks around the world prove that the sea – so elemental, so powerful – shouldn’t be disrespected.

Claire Jowitt is professor of Renaissance studies at the University of East Anglia

21. We now know how many enslaved African people were trafficked across the Atlantic

The transatlantic slave trade was one of the largest forced movements of people in world history – yet for decades it was difficult to quantify. Then, in the early 1990s, an international team came together to solve this problem. The result was the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which showed that 12.5 million people were transported. Of those, 10.7 million survived the journey and arrived in the Americas.

Many people, particularly in the US and the UK, assumed that most enslaved people were trafficked to the United States. In fact, the database showed that fewer than 400,000 Africans were forcibly taken directly to mainland North America; about 4.8 million arrived in South America and 4.7 million in the Caribbean.

First published as a CD-ROM in 1999, the database was greatly expanded in the early 2000s to include the Portuguese trade in the South Atlantic. Re-released as an open-access website in 2008, including details of an additional 7,000 journeys, it has been described as one of the greatest historical achievements of the 21st century. Though the database does not give us a rich picture of the experiences of enslaved peoples, it has been critical to understanding the scale of one of the world’s worst human-rights violations.

Hannah Cusworth is a historian, curator and history education consultant

• Read more | The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation

22. Richard III was behind the disappearance of the princes in the Tower… probably

It’s history’s most compelling missing persons case: what happened to Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, after they were placed in the Tower in 1483 on the orders of their uncle, who soon afterwards seized the throne as Richard III?

The mystery has been the subject of intense debate ever since. Some three decades later, Thomas More had established the narrative that Richard had his nephews murdered with the help of his henchman, James Tyrell. There was no shortage of other suspects but, though every scrap of evidence has been pored over by generations of historians since, the trail was already cold.

Recently, Tim Thornton, professor of history at the University of Huddersfield, took a novel approach. Rather than researching the events leading up to the princes’ disappearance, he traced the lives of those involved in the years that followed – and found links between Thomas More and the two men he claimed had carried out the murder for Tyrell. Then, last year, Thornton came across a book of wills in the National Archives that included one made in 1516 by a wealthy London widow, Margaret Capel, half sister-in-law of Sir James Tyrell. Among her chattels listed in the will was “the chain of Edward V” – the only one of the boys’ possessions referenced in sources after their disappearance. The fact that it turned up in the family of the prime suspect makes it close to a ‘smoking gun’.

Tracy Borman is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her documentary The Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery is on My5

23. History can help veterans cope with PTSD

A remarkable discovery made this century is that history can be hugely therapeutic for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It might seem deeply counterintuitive but when veterans undertake top-level archaeological research on battlefields, rather than re-igniting their traumas it often tends to work in positive ways for them psychologically, and can be a useful step on their road to recovery.

The work done by the organisation Waterloo Uncovered, founded in 2015 by former Coldstream Guards captain (and PTSD sufferer) Mark Evans, has been instrumental in this regard. Its mental-health experts found that, after helping to discover facts that are useful to military historians – the musket-ball scatter-pattern outside the orchard at the Hougoumont farmhouse in a key sector of the Waterloo battlefield, for example – veterans often saw improvements in their mental conditions.

There are various theories about the mechanisms of this effect. Perhaps such work reminds veterans that their predecessors two centuries ago encountered much the same kind of perils they did themselves in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Evans also noted that the project provided a safe and structured environment in which veterans with shared experiences could start to open up to one another about the challenges they faced. Whatever the reason, history is helping in a tangible way today.

Andrew Roberts’ latest book, with General David Petraeus, is Conflict: The Evolution of War-fare from 1945 to Gaza (William Collins, 2024)

24. Technology has revolutionised how historians work and collaborate

One of the great things about historical research is that it keeps on moving.

When I was a young historian, looking back in time required me to handle complex written materials and work out how to supplement them with reference material culture, to archaeology or to finds such as coins and lead seals.

The past quarter-century has revolutionised the tools available to historians. Huge advances in the sciences, combined with plunging costs, mean that we now have access to data sources that don’t just provide new insights into topics such as human migration or the spread and lethality of pandemic diseases, but also enable us to do so with increasing accuracy. These are tools we must learn to rely on.

Many of these new materials are related to climate archives, enabling historians to reconstruct past periods of environmental change – or even, in some cases, to better understand the effects of single, one-off extreme events such as floods, storms or volcanic eruptions.

That, in turn, has changed how historians work, not least in the ways we can collaborate more often and more meaningfully with colleagues across research groups. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a historian – to be part of the community of people interested in the past.

Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at Oxford University. His latest book is The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (Bloomsbury, 2023)

25. Powerful female leaders weren’t the sex-crazed failures of (manmade) myth

Our understanding of queenship has, thankfully, moved forward in the past 25 years – just as women’s history has also moved forward.

Female rulers such as Cleopatra and Mary, Queen of Scots have all too frequently been cited as cautionary tales about what follows when you give women power: sex and death. But in recent years, revisionist historians such as Kara Cooney, Joyce Tyldesley and Joann Fletcher have written brilliant accounts of Cleopatra, challenging the perception of her as a sex-mad failure.

Mary, Queen of Scots was surrounded by men attempting to seize her power – and, when she had a son, she was set on a course that led to her being deposed in favour of him. Lord Bothwell made her go back to his castle, where he assaulted her in an attempt to force her to marry. Past historians framed her for setting up this event. Today, though, we understand that a woman who had been seized and sexually assaulted was expected to agree to marry the man who attacked her. In Mary’s case, all of the lords were in agreement with that course of action – so what choice did Mary have?

As we are increasingly coming to understand, female rulers need to be seen in context. If they lost to the powerful men of the time or, indeed, the Roman empire, we need to grasp why that happened. Such insights can shape perceptions of the past – and a future with women in power.

Kate Williams is professor of public engagement with history at the University of Reading. Her latest book is The Royal Palaces: Secrets and Scandals (Frances Lincoln, 2024)

This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> Scotland's season of the witch https://www.historyextra.com/membership/scotlands-season-of-the-witch/ Fri, 02 May 2025 08:00:54 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/scotlands-season-of-the-witch/ In 16th and 17th-century Scotland, many hundreds of ‘witches’ were put to death – 10 times the proportion executed in England. Martha McGill asks what drove the killings In November 1590, a servant named Geillis Duncan from East Lothian was interrogated by her employer, David Seton. According to Newes from Scotland, a 1591 pamphlet that included a report of the case, Geillis used to sneak out of her master’s house at night. She also “took in hand to help all such as were troubled or grieved with any kind of sickness or infirmity” and performed “many matters most miraculous”.

Suspicions aroused, Seton questioned Duncan about how she worked her cures. When she gave no answer, he tortured her with thumbscrews and by “binding or wrenching her head with a cord or rope”. Still she remained silent. Finally, Seton and others searched her for a ‘devil’s mark’ – a blemish or insensitive spot created by Satan – and found one on her throat. She broke down and confessed “that all her doings were done by the wicked allurements and enticements of the devil, and that she did them by witchcraft”.

Witchcraft had been criminalised in 1563, and there had been a handful of prosecutions since. But Duncan’s confession kicked off something new – Scotland’s first large-scale witch-hunt. What’s striking about this panic over supposed black magic is just how much more intense and lethal it was than witch-hunting in other European countries – perhaps most notably England.

• Read more | Why was King James VI and I obsessed with witch hunts?

Following her interrogation (involving torture), Geillis Duncan claimed to have participated in a night-time witches’ gathering, also known as a sabbat, at North Berwick kirk. She alleged that other locals were present, and as many as 70 people were ultimately accused. Their confessions detailed bizarre and alarming practices. Supposedly they had sailed across the sea in sieves, meeting at the kirk to dance and sing. The devil had preached from the pulpit, and they had kissed his buttocks. Some of the accused also claimed to have attacked King James VI, casting spells to harm him or raising storms to sink his ships.

Newes from Scotland reported that the devil considered James VI “the greatest enemy he hath in the world” – a statement designed to flatter a monarch who believed himself divinely appointed. But James was also fearful of the devil’s designs on him, and involved himself directly in the interrogation of the accused witches. Blame began to make its way up the social scale, and the king’s own cousin, the Earl of Bothwell, was accused of heading a conspiracy against the monarch. Although he was eventually acquitted, Bothwell’s political career was ruined, and he was forced into exile. The last executions resulting from the North Berwick trials were in 1592, but the fallout from the witch-hunt endured far longer. The idea of the threat of witchcraft had been promulgated from the highest social echelons, and was further publicised in 1597 when James VI published Daemonologie, a book about the devil’s wiles. Mass witch-hunts swept Scotland again in 1628–30, 1649 and 1661–62. The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, a database recording known prosecutions, has identified 3,837 accused. Execution rates are difficult to establish but may have been in the region of two-thirds. By these metrics, Scotland’s execution rate per head of population may have been about five times the European average, and 10 times that in England.

Who were the ‘witches’?

Those accused of witchcraft were usually of middle age or older. Though rarely wealthy, they were not typically destitute. People from society’s middling ranks had the strongest economic ties to their neighbours, and were most likely to become embroiled in quarrels. Sometimes local healers or cunning folk were targeted, but most of the accused were not magical practitioners of any kind.

Men were sometimes prosecuted for witchcraft. One of the victims of the North Berwick trials was a Haddington schoolmaster called John Fian. According to Newes from Scotland – the primary focus of which was Fian’s case – he confessed under torture to having served as the devil’s clerk at witches’ meetings. Other crimes ascribed to him by Newes from Scotland and the trial transcript included throwing cats into the sea to raise storms and magically lighting up a horse’s ears while travelling by night.

Perhaps the oddest story told how Fian became obsessed with the sister of one of his pupils. When she rejected his attentions, he asked the boy to bring him three of the girl’s pubic hairs, promising in return to refrain from beating him in the classroom. The boy’s attempt to take the hairs awoke his sister, who complained to their mother. After a sound beating, the boy confessed the scheme. His crafty mother substituted the desired pubic hairs with three strands from a cow. When Fian eagerly brewed up a love spell, the cow reportedly came barging in, “leaping and dancing upon him, and following him forth… to what place so ever he went”.

Fian was something of an outlier: about 85 per cent of those convicted of witchcraft in Scotland were female. Women were more likely to work in domestic spaces and to be blamed for domestic misfortunes. Misogyny was another factor. In the late 17th century, lecturers at Aberdeen University taught that women were more susceptible to demons because they “believe more easily, discern less, and are more driven by desires for revenge and pleasure”. Men who became witches, the lecturers added, were “often effeminate, timid, credulous, fickle, and disturbed in judgment like women”.

The Scottish kirk was also a patriarchal institution. The Calvinist leader John Knox, who was probably involved in drafting the 1563 act that made witchcraft a capital offence, did have circles of female confidants. Yet he is better remembered for The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558), in which he asserted that women were “weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish”. But Scotland was not any more misogynistic than other parts of Europe; indeed, women actually made up a higher proportion of those accused in England. Misogyny can’t explain the relative severity of witch-hunting north of the border.

Capital punishment

Legal frameworks provide a crucial starting point for understanding the differences between witch-hunting in England and Scotland. England’s 1563 and 1604 witchcraft acts prescribed different penalties according to the severity of the offence. By the terms of the Scottish act, any use of “witchcraft, sorcery and necromancy” was punishable by death. So, too, was consulting witches, though this was not enforced. Some convicted witches were given other sentences, such as banishment, but Scottish punishments remained harsher than those typically meted out south of the border.

In addition, Scottish interrogators made more use of torture to extract confessions. This practice was illegal unless authorised by a warrant from the privy council, the main executive governmental body, but zealous ministers and lairds sometimes overlooked that prohibition. Physical torture of the kind used against Geillis Duncan seems to have been relatively uncommon, but sleep deprivation was probably widely employed.

Another coercive interrogation method was witch-pricking, by which the accused was searched and pricked with pins to find a ‘devil’s mark’. Martha Semple (or Sempell), a “well-favoured and genteel” girl of 17 or 18 from Renfrewshire, was investigated for witchcraft in 1697. According to one record, she was twice searched for the devil’s mark, and “the pricker missed not to search the very soles of her feet and other more secret places, for when there was any difficulty to find the mark they did quite unclothe them”. In a society that prized women’s modesty, this ritual would have been deeply humiliating.

• Read more | The Pendle Witches: what happened in the infamous Lancashire witch trial?

Trials also differed between England and Scotland. English judicial processes were largely centralised, and witch trials were typically held in county assize courts presided over by judges appointed by the crown. Before 1662, most accused witches in Scotland were tried in haphazard local courts overseen by commissioners who might have little or no legal training. Though the central court was relatively lenient, execution rates in local trials may have been higher than 90 per cent.

Mary Cunningham was tried in Culross in 1644. Her advocate “gave in such defences as could not be answered by the procurator fiscal, who had no skill of law”. The commissioners admitted defeat, and petitioned the privy council to have her tried at the central court in Edinburgh instead. Mary was lucky. Most accused witches did not have the resources to hire a lawyer, and they were not permitted to speak in their own defence.

Creating a godly state

Particular political and religious contexts underpinned Scottish witch-hunts, which sometimes erupted during periods of economic hardship or political unrest when community tensions ran higher and the authorities were keen to appease God’s wrath. More broadly, they reflected a drive on the part of both church and state to transform Scotland into a godly nation. Following the 1560 Reformation, kirk sessions were established to enforce religious conformity and tackle sins such as blasphemy, swearing, drunkenness, profaning the Sabbath and illicit fornication.

Ministers did not believe every accusation. In Ayr in 1633, Margaret McCall accused Agnes Dunschit of being “a rank witch who should be burnt quick”. McCall claimed that Dunschit had come to her house on a thundery night and told her to renounce her baptism. Yet the accuser could offer no proof, and the kirk – bearing in mind that McCall was “a drunkard and keeps a bad house” – ordered her to declare publicly that she had lied.

Sometimes, however, ministers or local lairds did take accusations seriously. This was particularly likely if accusations covered a long period and were voiced by multiple people, or during periods of mass witch-hunting. Arrest and interrogation typically followed, at which point the nature of the accusations might evolve.

Neighbours commonly accused each other of acts of maleficium, or magical harm. In Kirkcaldy in 1633, Janet Allan testified that she had refused to give Alison Dick some sour bakes, after which the latter had declared that Allan’s children would beg and that tadpoles would nest in her husband’s hair. The husband was later lost at sea and their children were left destitute, leading Allan to suspect that Dick had cursed the family. The accused woman was executed a month later.

In the eyes of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, witches targeted not just individuals but entire communities. Accused witches had entered into covenants with Satan, with the ultimate aim of dismantling godly society. As James VI explained it, witches used a variety of methods, but all worked towards “the enlarging of Satan’s tyranny”. Interrogators were often less concerned with investigating specific acts of maleficium and more with posing leading questions about diabolic pacts.

Thus Janet Barker, tried in Edinburgh in 1643, confessed that the devil promised her a red petticoat and gown, so that “she should be as trimly clad as the best servant in Edinburgh”. She thereupon “condescended to be his servant for half a year”. Others detailed sexual encounters with Satan, who might take the form of a man or a beast. In 1662, Jonet Braidheid from Nairn described how the devil sucked the blood out of her mark and spat it out over her head to rebaptise her, then had sex with her. He was “as cold as spring well water” inside her. He paid her afterwards, but the money turned red.

English scepticism

The Scottish privy council wielded significant power over witch-hunts, being able to grant or refuse commissions for local trials. There was no comparable state authorisation in England. Even James VI lost much of his fervour for witch-hunting after he inherited the English throne and moved to London in 1603. English elites had been known to mock the barbaric, superstitious ways of the Scots, and James was perhaps cautious of appearing credulous to his English courtiers. Moreover,
it seems that he became genuinely more sceptical. In the years following his move south, he personally investigated a handful of cases of demonic possession and, in deeming them fraudulent, saved the lives of several women accused of summoning the offending demons.

Nor was the English church involved in witch-hunting to the same degree as the kirk in Scotland. The English Reformation was instigated by Henry VIII, whose motives were more political than ideological. The church remained highly centralised, and, though parish churches were important hubs, they did not develop the same powers of social control as kirk sessions. In Scotland, the Reformation was a relatively radical grassroots movement dedicated to refashioning the nation into a place of unrivalled godliness. It introduced a Presbyterian structure that placed significant power in the hands of local elders.

The relatively limited role of English clergymen in witch-hunting, as well as the more effective prohibition of torture, meant that English witchcraft trials remained largely focused on maleficium – the act of causing harm – rather than the more explicitly religious crime of diabolism. Demonological ideas were explored in popular pamphlets but were rarely voiced in courtrooms. An exception came during the 1640s in the chaos of the Civil War, when the infamous ‘Witchfinder General’ Matthew Hopkins spearheaded England’s bloodiest witch-hunt. In general, though, accused witches in Scotland were blamed for more dramatic and far-reaching crimes against Christendom than their English counterparts.

The phenomenon fades

By the late 17th century, witchcraft prosecutions were declining across Europe, and elite attitudes in Britain reflected that trend. Consider the large-scale Scottish witch-hunt in 1661–62, which involved at least 600 accusations and likely hundreds of executions. The privy council granted commissions for waves of trials, but officials soon began to worry that matters were getting out of hand. In April 1662, the council issued a proclamation declaring that “a great many persons… have been apprehended and hurried to prisons, pricked, tortured and abused… by such persons as have no warrant or authority so to do.” The council was taking aim at ministers and other local elites who had overstepped their commissions or neglected to secure them.

The privy council subsequently became more reluctant to grant commissions for local trials. A growing proportion of those accused of witchcraft were tried centrally or by trained judges from Edinburgh operating in circuit courts, and defence lawyers increasingly challenged the evidential basis for witchcraft, resulting in far higher acquittal rates. The council also made efforts to clamp down on the illicit use of torture.

The lawyer George Mackenzie, lord advocate 1677–86, exemplifies the growing scepticism of legal professionals. He wrote in 1678 that he did not doubt the reality of witches, but believed that many “poor ignorant creatures” had been unfairly prosecuted in Scotland. He attributed confessions to the use of torture, and recounted speaking with an impoverished woman who avowed that she had confessed because she expected to starve otherwise; having been accused of witchcraft, she imagined that “all men would beat her, and hound Dogs at her, and… therefore she desired to be out of the World”.

Prosecutions petered out in the early 18th century; the last is usually considered to be that of Janet Horne in 1727. She was reputedly accused of riding her daughter, who took the form of a pony, to pay homage to the devil; both were reportedly tried by the local sheriff and found guilty. The daughter escaped, but Horne was burned to death in a barrel of pitch. However, the evidence is uncertain. If this episode did take place, it may have been a lynching rather than a formal trial, without authorisation from the central authorities.

Witchcraft was decriminalised in 1736, bringing an end to what Walter Scott called a “dark chapter in human nature”. However, the witch-hunts remain a culturally relevant and emotive subject. As recently as 2022, the Scottish government and the Church of Scotland made formal apologies for their historical
roles in witch-hunting. And the attitudes and concerns that drove these persecutions are still germane today. Witch-hunting grew out of specific religious, political and cultural contexts – but reflected an enduring human tendency to turn largely powerless victims into enemies of state and society.

Martha McGill is a research associate at the University of Cambridge. She helped develop two games exploring historical perceptions of witchcraft. You can download them here

This article is from the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> The rise of James VI & I: when Britain went global https://www.historyextra.com/membership/rise-of-james-vi-i-podcast-anna-whitelock/ Wed, 30 Apr 2025 06:30:14 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/rise-of-james-vi-i-podcast-anna-whitelock/ Anna Whitelock explores how the death of Elizabeth I and rise of James VI & I launched Britain onto the global stage Was Elizabeth I holding England back from establishing itself upon the global stage? Speaking to James Osborne, Professor Anna Whitelock explores how the accession of the new king James VI & I, and the arrival of the Jacobean era, tilted Britain's gaze toward the future.

Anna Whitelock is the author of The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of a Global Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025)

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]]> George Villiers: from royal favourite to enemy number one https://www.historyextra.com/membership/george-villiers-podcast-lucy-hughes-hallett/ Mon, 03 Feb 2025 07:30:10 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/george-villiers-podcast-lucy-hughes-hallett/ George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, had charm and political ambition that made him a favourite of King James I and VI. Lucy Hughes-Hallett discusses his life, and ultimate downfall George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, had charm and political ambition by the bucketload – and his rise as a favourite of King James I and VI in the late 16th century was meteoric. Speaking to Elinor Evans, Lucy Hughes-Hallett discusses the brief but action-packed life of Villiers, whose dazzling beauty and political influence brought him from obscurity to the highest ranks of power in the courts of two kings – before seeing him fall foul of public anger.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham (HarperCollins, 2024)

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]]> How to build a radical: what the Gunpowder Plot can teach us about extremism today https://www.historyextra.com/membership/gunpowder-plot-fifth-of-november-guy-fawkes-extremism-today/ Thu, 23 Jan 2025 11:09:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/gunpowder-plot-fifth-of-november-guy-fawkes-extremism-today/ The experiences that shaped Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot co-conspirators into violent extremists seem all too familiar today. Lucy Worsley tells a story of religious clashes, state-sanctioned torture and comrades-in-arms willing to die for the cause Towards the end of 1605, a man was being interrogated in a smallish building deep within the fortress of the Tower of London. It was here, in the most secure place in Britain, that the state dealt with its enemies.

This particular enemy of the state was named Guy Fawkes. The records of that interrogation are today among the treasures of the National Archives, and going there to film them for the new series of Lucy Worsley Investigates was an unbelievable thrill.

It’s evident that a secretary recorded Fawkes’s words, and that the conspirator was asked to sign his name to verify that the record was accurate. On one page, his signature is clear and confident: Guido Fawkes. Two days later, though, his name is no more than the faintest of scrawls. Historians generally agree that this difference is because, in the time between scribbling the two signatures, he’d been tortured and had lost the use of his hands.

A few weeks later, he would also lose his life.

Guy Fawkes and his Gunpowder Plot conspirators

It’s quite extraordinary to think that, 400 years later, this tale of violence has morphed into an annual occasion for family-friendly fun. The reason for lighting bonfires and fireworks on the fifth of November is now largely forgotten. Technically, we’re celebrating the foiling of a plot against King James VI & I, planned by Catholic extremists whom many would call terrorists.

• Read more | Remember remember the 5th of November: why Bonfire Night is a 400-year-old political hot potato

If you step off a London Underground train at Charing Cross, you can admire an enormous tiled image of the gunpowder plotters that takes up the whole height of the platform wall. Seen by thousands of commuters, tourists and schoolkids on a London day out, the image of the conspirators – with their tall hats, flowing locks and furtive body language – makes them look like a rather stylish rock band.

But with violence and religious extremism wreaking havoc round the globe today, it seems timely to revisit what might be mistaken for a cosy old story of plots and plotters. Because when we compare our knowledge of radicalisation in the modern world with what happened to Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, many similarities become clear.

Perhaps because the name of Guy Fawkes is so well known today, many people don’t realise that he wasn’t the most significant of the conspirators. The plot’s mastermind was actually a Warwickshire gentleman called Robert Catesby, whose role has been rather overshadowed by the dramatic circumstances of Fawkes’s capture and subsequent torture.

What the Charing Cross tube picture does do accurately is give the sense that the group felt a strong social connection – like a band of brothers, which some of them were, literally: among the conspirators were two sets of siblings, including Christopher and John Wright.

• Read more | Why did the 1605 gunpowder plot fail? 9 big questions about the conspiracy to blow up parliament

They were among Fawkes’s fellow plotters who had known each other during their childhoods in the city of York. There, the Catholic faith was alive and well – and subject to intense persecution – in the later years of the reign of the Protestant queen Elizabeth I.

Guy was himself baptised a Protestant in 1570 but in his teens, it seems, he embraced Catholicism with all the fervour of a convert. His journey towards radicalisation could have begun as early as 1586, when he may have witnessed the appalling public execution of a York woman, Margaret Clitherow. Having been caught sheltering priests of the outlawed Catholic faith, she was crushed to death with heavy weights.

In the eyes of her fellow Catholics, her death turned Margaret into a martyr. A brown and shrivelled hand, purportedly one of Margaret’s, is venerated today in the Bar Convent in York as a holy relic. It seems likely, then, that Fawkes and the Wrights would have realised early on that life would not be easy for them unless they gave up on Catholicism – or on the government.

Guy Fawkes: an extremist abroad

In his early twenties, Fawkes made a big life change. He sold his possessions near York and travelled to mainland Europe to fight as a paid soldier for the Catholic cause.

Many modern-day extremists make similar life choices. Learning the trade of warfare abroad, surrounded by young men with the same beliefs and removed from the calming influence of family and community at home, the world view of a soldier fighting in the name of faith often narrows to black and white.

Jason Burke, The Guardian’s international security correspondent, knows all about this process. An extremist fighter, he explains, is ‘best’ trained over several weeks in a special camp. It’s vital to prevent the wannabe soldier from going home each evening to see mum.

• Read more | Guy Fawkes “is like a modern-day jihadist,” says counter-terrorism expert

In Europe, Fawkes was soon on the payroll of Catholic Spain, learning skills that would, in time, make him attractive to the plotters. In particularly, he became familiar with gunpowder and explosions. Meanwhile, another young man was also being radicalised – Robert Catesby, whose idea it later was to blow up the House of Lords in order to kill the king, some of his family, his members of parliament and the whole seat of power.

Catesby had long been dissatisfied with the way England was governed. Under Elizabeth, his family had paid the fines exacted for refusing to attend Protestant church services.

More dangerously, he got himself caught up in the Essex Rebellion of 1601. This wasn’t specifically a Catholic plot but, rather, involved a grouping of disaffected people of various stripes who aimed to change the power constellations at court. That uprising was unsuccessful, and Catesby was forced to pay a huge fine for his part in it.

Then, in 1603, Elizabeth died and James VI of Scotland inherited her crown. It seems that Catesby had high hopes of the new regime.

England under James VI & I

The new king knew that his succession as James I of England might well be challenged – so, being a clever politician, he tried to appeal to a wide base of potential supporters in England, hinting strongly that he’d be more sympathetic than Elizabeth to those of his future subjects who were Catholics. After all, he had a Catholic wife, Anne of Denmark.

When James came to the English throne, though, those who knew him best perhaps weren’t surprised to find that the hinted-at new policy of tolerance never materialised – quite the opposite, in fact. Catesby and other Catholics were chagrined to find the new king proclaiming in parliament that he was never going to tolerate their religion. Another staging post on the journey towards direct action was passed.

Catesby did not know Guy Fawkes at this stage, but they had one key thing in common: Fawkes’s new friends, the Spanish.

Spanish archives contain correspondence from Fawkes, reporting from the European mainland on what he understood about the situation in England. The new king’s regime was not stable, Fawkes claimed, arguing that it was justifiable to use violence to promote the ‘right’ kind of religion. Fawkes was clearly ripe for recruitment as a Catholic conspirator.

And so we come to vital documents for the history of the gunpowder plot: the records of the confessions made by the surviving conspirators after it was all over. I looked at one set, held at Hatfield House Archives, which take us right into the room during some of the plotters’ meetings, allowing us to overhear those dangerous conversations.

• Read more | Traitor or Faithful: British history's most notorious treason cases

One of the conspirators, Thomas Wintour (sometimes spelled Winter), described the moment when Catesby told him that he’d thought of a way of restoring Catholicism to England. His idea was to blow up parliament on the day of its opening session, killing the king and all of the MPs who had passed unjust laws against Catholics. Chillingly, Catesby believed that those actions were reason enough for them to die.

Catesby had a task for Wintour. He was to travel to Europe to find some “confident” gentleman – meaning one in whom they could have confidence – to act as the plot’s technician. He’d heard that a certain Guy Fawkes might be a suitable candidate – and one who also offered another important advantage.

Having lived abroad for so many years, few people in England would remember Fawkes’s face. Catesby was already on the authorities’ radar, but Fawkes might walk down the street in Westminster without being recognised. To further obscure his identity, Fawkes also did something common in modern-day extremism: he adopted a war-name. He would now go by the moniker John Johnson.

The failure of the Gunpowder Plot

The plot was taking shape. After the planned explosion in Westminster, Catesby intended to take advantage of the chaos. With James’s regime in disarray, a great uprising would be launched in Catesby’s native Midlands, and Catesby would snatch James’s daughter, Elizabeth, to place her on the throne as a puppet queen.

But time ticked on. There was a delay when the opening of parliament was postponed, and soon there were just too many people in on the secret. Then there was a leak. One plotter, anxious that Catholics present in parliament on the key day would also lose their lives, wrote an anonymous warning: the Catholic Lord Monteagle received a letter telling him not to attend.

• Read more | Alternate history: what if… the gunpowder plot had succeeded?

This missive, known as the Monteagle Letter, made its way into the hands of the authorities, where it caused much concern. Was the threat real? Many questions remain about how much the authorities already knew at that point, but certainly an extra patrol was laid on in Westminster.

As every schoolkid now knows, Fawkes was found hiding in a cellar with his dark lantern, his barrels of gunpowder and the fuse to ignite an explosion that would very likely have transformed Britain’s religion.

Interrogation and torture of Guy Fawkes

Captured and taken to the Tower, Fawkes next experienced something else still common worldwide: interrogation. I asked psychologist Laura Farrugia, assistant professor at Northumberland University, who helps to train police in carrying out ethical and effective interviews, to assess the techniques used on Fawkes.

She noted that the initial questions posed by authorities at the Tower, who were accustomed to interrogating suspects, were concise, targeted, comprehensible. Whenever Fawkes knew or guessed that the authorities already knew the answers, he gave them freely.

• Read more | 9 places associated with Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot

However, Fawkes didn’t name his fellow conspirators. So the king himself stepped in, drawing up a list of less-successful, more ‘clever’, complicated questions that would have been difficult and confusing for any suspect to answer. Unsurprisingly, this approach failed. Nevertheless, Fawkes did say something that provides perhaps the first and the last piece in the jigsaw of his radicalisation: he would not betray his friends.

Extremists were, and are, social creatures. They rely on friendship and camaraderie. This, as well as their political and religious beliefs, keeps them going.

The king ordered torture, and Fawkes did eventually crack. Ironically, though, the authorities didn’t need his information. They had followed other leads, tracking Catholics who had left London suddenly just before the attack, and eventually caught up with the key plotters in a safe house in the Midlands.

Thomas Wintour’s confession recounts a scene, just before the authorities stormed in, that would have been romantic – if it were not acted out by men who’d been willing to take hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. They agreed to die together. And when the local sheriff entered, guns blazing, Catesby did just that, taking a bullet that killed him. Fawkes and a few other surviving conspirators were hanged, drawn and quartered in London.

The plotters would perhaps have been mortified to know that their plot not only failed in its aims but even helped to secure James’s regime. It turned him into a survivor – someone with God on his side. He insisted that his personal achievement in defeating this plot be commemorated on its anniversary every year. Four centuries later, many Britons are still obeying him – even though most have forgotten exactly why.

This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> From Tudor to Stuart: the succession of 1603 https://www.historyextra.com/membership/succession-tudor-stuart/ Tue, 03 Sep 2024 16:35:05 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/succession-tudor-stuart/ The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI & I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, writes Susan Doran, it wasn’t long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects Early March 1603 found Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth I’s secretary of state, wracked by anxiety. The queen had become “ill disposed”, rapidly losing appetite and energy. It was reported that she could no longer "abide discourses of government and state", but preferred to hear "old Canterbury tales".

On 11 March, matters worsened dramatically. An abscess burst in the queen’s throat, causing consternation among her attendants and sparking fears that she might be dying. A week later, her demise seemed imminent.

Since Elizabeth had no named heir, the privy council had to act while she was still alive to prevent a power vacuum – or, worse still, a disputed succession. With Cecil at the helm, the council drafted a proclamation naming James VI of Scotland as the rightful king of England, and arranged for leading members of the nobility and political elite to sign it. Seemingly, no one objected. So, when Elizabeth died in the early hours of 24 March, all was ready. At 9am Cecil read out the proclamation at Whitehall announcing James’s accession, and a deputation of lords, bishops, judges and officials processed into the City of London to promulgate it again. That same proclamation would be read out in towns and cities across England.

• Read more | Elizabeth I's accession day celebrations

Reactions to the news were mixed. In some quarters, there was almost disbelief. A few people expressed “dubtes of the authority of the said proclamacon”, before receiving further assurances that James’s accession was valid. For the most part, though, the proclamation was accepted “with great ioy and the generall aplause”, according to the mayor of Chester. The prevailing response was enormous relief that the transition had been managed efficiently and that James’s accession had passed unchallenged. For years, the spectre of a bloody war of succession had hung over the nation. Those fears had now been allayed. “God be thanked yt ys quietly and hapely setteled,” wrote one correspondent to Cecil, while the bishop of Chester was one of many to praise “the chiefe pillors of the state in preventinge so many dangers hanginge over our heads”.

Yet, mingled with relief were shock and sadness. Letter writers referred to their “great losse” and to “a heavye amasement in the people”. The dramatist Thomas Dekker famously compared the report of the queen’s death to “a thunder-clap”, which “tooke away hearts from millions”, because they “never sawe the face of any prince but her selfe”. At Elizabeth’s funeral on 28 April, “multitudes” turned up, and “there was such a general sighing, groning, and weeping as the like hath not beene seene or knowne in the memory of man”.

Start of a new chapter

Despite some alarm at the thought of change, many – possibly a majority – wanted it. Seventeen years of war against Spain, a major rebellion in Ireland, a near decade of dearth and plague, and unpopular royal policies had left the realm ready – indeed desperate – for a new regime. Plenty of people were tired of Elizabeth’s rule and looking forward to an adult male king sitting on the throne for the first time since the death of Henry VIII in January 1547. One clergyman spoke for countless others when he maintained that “England under an aged queene did seeme to waxe olde” but now would “begin to flourish and to recover her youth againe”.

Since the date of James’s accession marked the arrival of spring as well as the commencement of a new calendar year (25 March), it seemed to signify a fresh start. James encouraged such hopes, for in his Basilikon Doron, a treatise on government that was printed in England upon his accession, he had inveighed against oppression and injustice. Even before the new king arrived in London, he was bombarded with petitions for reform on a range of subjects: religion, enclosures, abuses in the administration, and royal finances.

More narrowly, some men and women who had lost favour or been denied patronage under Elizabeth rejoiced at what they hoped was a boost to their prospects under a new monarch. Persons of rank hurried north to greet the king, “to present their service” to him, and secure rewards. One letter writer noted wryly that these people were acting as if “preferment were a goale to be got by footmanship” and “first come, first served”.

At the same time, men who already held offices were apprehensive that they might lose them. According to the Venetian ambassador: “While advancing the Scotch and those English, to whom he says he is under obligation, the king shows small regard for the rest.” Many of these, he noted, grew “fearful, not merely lest they should lose their appointments but lest their end be a bloody one” because of their involvement in the execution of the king’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

This fear proved to be unwarranted: all 15 of the Elizabethan privy councillors remained in post. But fresh blood was brought onto the council when another 12 members were added in 1603. Five of the new men were Scots, but the two most important were English: the crypto-Catholic Henry Howard, later Earl of Northampton, and his nephew Thomas Howard, now made Earl of Suffolk – both of whom had been political outsiders under the late queen. Together with Cecil, who remained secretary of state and was raised to the peerage, this triumvirate were nicknamed a “trinitie of knaves” by the new king.

• Read more | Elizabeth I's personality: the unfathomable queen

Fresh faces also appeared at court. Scots monopolised James’s bedchamber, which was a new household department established in 1603. Even in the privy chamber, a semi-public space, two of the most favoured English gentlemen were courtiers who had been in disgrace during Elizabeth’s last years, namely William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (see box, below), and Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who had been imprisoned in the Tower for his part in the Earl of Essex’s 1601 uprising until James ordered his release. The court and council were thus transformed from a fairly homogenous elite of Protestant nobles and councillors into a heterogeneous group, differing in nationality, culture and religion.

Work hard, play hard

Elizabeth had relied most heavily on advice from leading privy councillors. The same cannot be said of James. He did not want Cecil and the Howards to give him counsel on policies concerning matters of state, but rather required them to sort out thorny problems, such as how to improve his finances or get unpopular policies through parliament. As for the remaining English privy councillors, James expected them to carry out only what he dubbed “his general errands”, the routine business of government.

James spent weeks at a time away from his council when at his favourite means of relaxation, hunting in the countryside.
His companions then were his bedchamber chums who had served him loyally in Scotland, and the only English privy councillor to attend upon him was the Earl of Worcester, the Master of the Horse. The others had to communicate with the king by letter.

Unquestionably, James’s hunting absences from London were deeply resented. As the Venetian ambassador reported, they suggested the king was “attending to nothing but his pleasures” and was “leaving all government in the hands of his ministers”, who were free to abuse their power without royal supervision.

It did not go unnoticed that the Scots who joined the king at the chase were the main recipients of royal bounty. Those closest to him soon became personally rich, built up landed estates, and exercised considerable patronage. As a result, anti-Scottish sentiment became deeply ingrained in early Jacobean culture, expressed in plays and ballads as well as parliamentary speeches.

In one scene of John Marston’s rollicking comedy The Dutch Courtesan, performed in 1605, the anti-hero assumed the role of a Scottish barber-surgeon with the name of Andrew Shark, who claimed (in another obvious pun) to have been “shaving” the court for “this two year”.

Yet while it was undoubtedly true that some select Scots benefited greatly from James’s largesse, he didn’t neglect government business while at the hunt. On one occasion, he jokingly told Cecil that the number of letters he had written that evening rivalled the number of hares he had killed “all this tyme”. On issues in which he took a particular interest, James micromanaged the paperwork, changing words and rephrasing sentences on drafts of documents. When there was important business to discuss or there were vital meetings to attend, James would rush back to one of his palaces on the Thames to deal with the matter.

In fact, James took his rule in England seriously, and wasted no time before paying attention to the grievances directed to him in 1603. One of his earliest acts was to revoke monopolies granted by Elizabeth “wher private gayne hath caused publick grievance”.

The king also immediately addressed complaints about the Church of England. In the summer of 1603, he intended to call
a conference at Hampton Court to hear and test criticisms made by Puritans in their petitions. At the same time, he heeded Catholic grievances. On his accession, he suspended the fines recusants had to pay for non-attendance at church and demanded an investigation into their claims that the Elizabethan collectors of fines had been bleeding them dry. A new start therefore did seem to be in the offing on all fronts.

However, it did not take long for these expectations to be dashed and “their vayne hopes deceaved”. It was bound to happen. James did not have enough bounty for everyone and besides he made mistakes in distributing it. When it came to reforms, as one court observer shrewdly observed, “to satisfie or please all... wold be more then a man’s work” – especially as the demands of bishops, Puritans and Catholics were largely incompatible. Puritans found offensive the rituals retained in the revised Prayer Book issued by the bishops in February 1604, a month after the Hampton Court conference, and were appalled that, as under Elizabeth, those who refused to conform were subjected to disciplinary action.

The hopes of Catholics were also punctured. In 1603, James resumed the collection of recusancy fines, and the following February he ordered the expulsion of all Catholic priests from the realm. Later, new oppressions were enacted in parliament after the gunpowder plot of November 1605 and the assassination of the French king Henry IV by a Jesuit in 1610.

As for secular reforms, although the first session of his first parliament in 1604 passed more legislation than any of Elizabeth’s parliaments, it failed to reform or abolish the burdensome royal exactions that many MPs had wanted. There was to be no overhaul of the inefficient and corrupt Elizabethan system of royal finances.

Unpopular policies

James’s accession did, however, bring about a new direction in policy on two major fronts, although neither was popular. First, he brought an end to Elizabeth’s war against Spain in the 1604 Treaty of London. Although the peace brought many benefits to England, merchants objected that the terms did not give them access to the Indies, an unrealistic demand anyway since it was unacceptable to the Spanish negotiators.

Second, James’s accession radically altered England’s relationship with Scotland. With the union of crowns, the northern realm instantly ceased to be France’s back door to England, and James immediately dismantled the military border between the two realms. People on both sides of the border saw benefits in this dynastic union. The English were pleased that their security seemed stronger at a lower cost; the Scots were relieved that the wars with England now appeared to be at an end.

Both the English and Scots, however, were suspicious of the prospect of a closer union. The Scots rejected any constitutional change that would amount to the incorporation of their ancient kingdom into England, whereas MPs in England rejected any closer union unless it followed a form of incorporation mirroring the relationship between England and Wales.

James was determined to bring about a closer union without incorporation. However, he failed dismally to cajole or coerce the House of Commons into passing laws that would change the name of England to Great Britain, remove commercial tariffs between England and Scotland, and allow the mutual naturalisation of his subjects.

Foiled by parliament, the king obtained much of what he wanted by other means. By proclamation, he received “the name and stile of king of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland”, which was used on coins, seals and medals. As the result of a judicial decision in 1607, all James’s subjects born after 1603 were judged to be automatically naturalised and have legal rights in both his realms.

These measures raised protests in England, but James continued to pursue his British agenda. When the Ulster plantation (the organised colonisation of the province by people from England and Scotland) began in 1609, he awarded about half the land grants to Scottish applicants; on sending 4,000 soldiers to the continent, to support two German Protestant princes in a succession dispute, he insisted a third of them be Scots so that the army would be seen as British.

So was 1603 really a watershed then? The transition from the Tudor to Stuart eras didn’t trigger a bloody war of succession, as some had feared. Nor did it bring about major changes in church and state. Even so, James’s Scottish roots, style of rule, and promotion of unpopular policies transformed political life once he had assumed the English throne, and caused new tensions in the state.

King James's ups and downs

Whose fortunes surged – and whose took a nosedive – in the new Stuart regime?

RISING

• Sir Robert Cecil - architect of the accession

Cecil was the younger son of Elizabeth I’s leading minister, William, Lord Burghley, and became his father’s political heir in the 1590s. In 1601, he began to correspond secretly with James VI of Scotland and pledged to manage his accession to the English throne on Elizabeth’s death. He kept his word and was repaid in 1603 with the retention of all his offices and entry into the nobility.

• William Herbert - the handsome youth

The 3rd Earl of Pembroke was exiled from the court in 1601 after abandoning his pregnant mistress. On Elizabeth’s death he hurried north to offer James homage and the “handsome youth” quickly became an intimate of the king. At the coronation, reported the Venetian ambassador, Pembroke“actually kissed his majesty’s face, whereupon the king laughed and gave him a little cuff”.

• Lucy Russell - the fortune seeker

On Elizabeth I’s death, Lucy Russell, the Countess of Bedford, headed north with her mother and paternal aunt to seek patronage from Anna, the Queen Consort, and improve the family fortunes. They proved successful. Bedford was made a lady of the queen’s bedchamber, and her mother became the governess of the queen’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth.   FALLING

• Sir Walter Raleigh - the fallen head

James deprived Raleigh (pictured) of the household offices and lucrative monopolies he had enjoyed under Elizabeth I. Soon after, Raleigh was accused of planning to murder the king in the Main Plot. He was sentenced to death, but James commuted it to imprisonment. Released in 1617, Raleigh angered the Spanish while on an expedition in South America. James had him executed the next year.

• Thomas Grey - the resentful plotter

The 15th Baron Grey of Wilton was out of sorts with the new regime. He wanted conditions to be imposed on James before he was proclaimed king, and he deeply resented the favour shown to his old enemy, the Earl of Southampton. Although a Puritan, he was drawn into the Catholic ‘Bye Plot’. Condemned to death, he was reprieved, and eventually died in the Tower.

• Elizabeth Knollys - the ageing reject

Knollys was a cousin of Elizabeth I and served her as a maid of honour and, after 1566, as a gentlewoman of the privy chamber. Queen Anna, however, did not want to have “elderly ladies in her service”, and Knollys was one of those to go. In 1605, she complained that “her fortune be sunk with the fall of their dear late queen”, and shortly afterwards she died.

Susan Doran is professor of early modern British history at the University of Oxford. Her latest book is From Tudor to Stuart: The Regime Change from Elizabeth I to James I (Oxford, 2024)

This article is from the July 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> From Tudor to Stuart: a brand new era? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/stuart-new-era-long-reads-podcast-susan-doran/ Mon, 19 Aug 2024 06:30:03 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/stuart-new-era-long-reads-podcast-susan-doran/ Susan Doran explores the pivotal moment of succession between the Tudors and Stuarts – and considers whether the arrival of a new king was all it was cracked up to be The passing of the English crown from Elizabeth I to James VI and I was welcomed by a nation hungry for change. But, as historian Susan Doran argues in today's Long Read, it wasn't long before tensions began to rise between the incoming king and his new subjects.

HistoryExtra Long Reads brings you the best articles from BBC History Magazine, direct to your ears. Today’s feature originally appeared in the July 2024 issue, and has been voiced in partnership with the RNIB.

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