“Pillars of the Authority of Princes”: Reflections on the Employment of Bishops in the British Isles in the Reign of James VI/I

Abstract

IN THE BRITISH ISLES IN THE REIGN OF JAMES VI/Ihis I must say for Scotland, and I may truly vaunt it, here I sit and govern it with my pen, I write and it is done, and by a Clerk of the Council I govern Scotland now, which others could not do by the sword." 1 So spoke James I to the English parliament in the spring of 1607, as his hopes for a comprehensive union between England and Scotland began to become hopelessly derailed. For a king whose accession to the English throne had been greeted as the harbinger of "...peace under one king, one law, one religion,...and the true happiness of Britain..." 2 , such a boast seems almost sullen when we realize that it was probably an attempt to calm English fears of being over-run by poor, ignorant Scotsmen, should hostile laws between the two kingdoms be eliminated. 3 We know, of course, that James did not get his comprehensive union, and that England and Scotland were not formally joined as one state until 1707. 4 Still,