The death of Queen Elizabeth without issue marked the end of the Tudor line, but, in fact, the ruling family started by Henry VII provided for continuation of the dynasty under a different royal surname. Prophesying that one day “the less [would] become subservient to the greater,” in 1503 Henry Tudor had married his elder daughter, Margaret, to the Stuart (or Stewart) king of Scotland, James IV. Their son, James V, fathered Mary, Queen of Scots. Despite a century of trouble between England and Scotland, Elizabeth arranged for a smooth, if complex, succession by bequeathing all her titles to James VI, the only son of Mary Stuart. One sovereign prince ruled the whole of the British Isles for the first time in history. The Scottish crown passed to James Stuart in 1567, when he was only thirteen months old, coming to him after the murder of his father, Lord Darnley, and the forced abdication of his mother, who later fled to England for safety. After his coronation, the sickly boy-king was consigned to the care of a series of regents who fell victim to the violent atmosphere of stillfeudal Scotland. In the midst of the chaos, James was brought up Protestant in the Calvinist mold and received an excellent education. In 1578 at age twelve, James VI nominally took the government into his own hands. By then, he had overcome the bodily weaknesses that beset him as a youngster through a rehabilitative program of vigorous physical activity. The emotional scars of his tumultuous childhood were harder to obliterate.

Plainly susceptible to domineering influences, in 1579 James fell under the sway of a distant cousin, Esmé Stuart, an agent of the French king and a Catholic. When James made Esmé Duke of Lennox and signaled his preference for him above all others, a group of Presbyterians called the Ruthven Raiders after their leader William Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, kidnapped the king. The Raiders kept James imprisoned for months, extorting from him a proclamation that brought down Lennox, but in 1583 the king managed to escape his captors and took firm control of power. He knew he needed to diminish the clout of the Scottish nobles and the dangers of the Presbyterian faction; he also wanted to assert his claim to the English throne.