The government of James VI is another strand of my research.
- 2017 with Steven J. Reid, James VI and Noble Power in Scotland, 1578-1603, Routledge Research in Early Modern History.
Alongside Steven J. Reid, I edited James VI and Noble power in Scotland, which contained essays from established and early career scholars, on a range of perspectives on noble power. Alongside my monograph, these essays revise the established assumption that this was a period of challenge to noble power. Although there was an increasing sophistication in the spheres of government and finance, James VI continued to rule through his nobles, very much like the previous Stewart monarchs, a system based on personal relationships over more institutional mechanisms of power. Although there is more research to be done, these findings have significantly moved debates on from old paradigm of an a centralising state curtailing noble power.
- 2021 Editor of James VI and I: Collected Essays by Jenny Wormald, with foreword by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Birlinn.
One of the articles in this volume was by Jenny Wormald, which Steven and I helped her finish in her dying days. Off the back of that I was invited by Birlinn to create the definite work on Wormald’s research on James VI, to which I added postscripts on James’ sexuality, the culture of court, and the overall picture of James in the twenty first century. This book sets down the key intellectual debates on the first king of Great Britain and helps reinforce Jenny’s reimagining of James the first of England as a distinctly Scottish monarch.
- 2020 with Michael Pearce, ‘King James VI’s English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts 1588-96’, Miscellany of the Scottish History Society XVI, pp. 1-94.
I’ve also look at some of the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of King James VI’s government. Specifically, with the historian Michael Pearce I’ve published on the royal expenditure relating to James VI’s voyage to Denmark in 1589, for which the Earl Marischal was ambassador. These accounts of James’ daring adventure to retrieve his bride, Anna of Denmark, are fascinating sources for the practicalities of fitting out of his ship and James’ generosity while abroad. The wider importance of these accounts, beyond the interesting nuggets of detail, is as a tool for getting to grips with James’ finances. James is usually considered to be financially illiterate and these accounts don’t dispel that – he spent money without hesitation, but these show what he was spending money on – necessary royal largess, a key means to express status, buy loyalty, and maintain power. They also show how he got away with such over spending – by burdening his loyal treasury staff until they broke and he replaced them.