The World of King James VI and I, Edinburgh review: 'a must-see show'

James VI and I reigned for 58 years - not a bad record for any monarch, and he lived in troubled times. Born in 1566 he became king of Scotland in 1567, aged just one, then king of England in 1603, and died as king of both nations in 1625. Anti-Scottish feeling in England is nothing new and as a Scot ruling England, James was not going to be instantly popular. Briefing against him started at once and much of that hostility has stuck to his reputation. A pamphlet entitled “The Court and Character of King James Written and Taken by Sir A.W. being an Eye and Eare Witness” sets the hostile tone with unpleasant personal remarks about the king’s appearance and habits.

This pamphlet is included in a brilliant exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which sets out to redeem James’s reputation. It includes paintings, portraits, letters, books and precious objects. James’s portraits both from before his move south by Adrian Vanson and from shortly after the move by John de Crtiz show him as intelligent but withdrawn and watchful, as well he might be. The iconography of a large picture that greets you at the entrance of the exhibition is an elaborate accusation that his mother Mary was complicit in the murder of his father, Henry Darnley. Later an engraving shows the Guy Fawkes conspirators in a group. These were tough and turbulent times. James maybe didn’t always get it right but he not only survived, he managed the transition from Scotland to England and, for better of for worse, his successful Union of the Crowns laid the foundations for the Act of Union under his great-granddaughter, Queen Anne.

Although his tutor, George Buchanan, looks pretty fierce in his portrait, James grew up both literate and cultivated. He wrote both verse and prose. The exhibition also includes jewellery, miniatures and and precious objects that testify to the sophistication of his court, both in Scotland and after he moved south. These objects include a beautiful clock by a Scottish clockmaker, David Ramsay, and the Eglinton Jewel by jeweller George Heriot, also the king’s banker. Aptly, the school in Edinburgh that bears George Heriot’s name is built in the Danish style. It looks a bit like Hamlet’s Elsinore, and the exhibition gives full credit to James’s Queen, Anna of Denmark, for the sophistication of their court. As the exhibition points out, too, it was James and Anna, not Elizabeth Tudor, who were Shakespeare’s principal patrons.

James preferred peace to war and the tangled power politics of Reformation Europe are reflected here in the dynastic marriages he either sought unsuccessfully, or actually realised for his children. After failing to catch a Spanish princess, James’s son and heir, Charles, married Henrietta Maria, daughter of the King of France. James’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Frederick Elector of Bohemia. She is known as the Winter Queen because she was for just one year Queen of Bohemia. She was, however, also the direct ancestor of our present monarch, but that is certainly not the only reason that this is a must-see show.

Until 14 September